“Aye, mermaids have no souls, so they go about stealing them.”
“Nay, she’s having her way with him. Mermen are unsightly creatures, which is why mermaids can’t resist a bonnie sailor. Drawn to us like bees to a flower.”
The men quietly considered this for a moment. “Weren’t we going to lower the longboat?” a sailor asked. “I volunteer to man it.”
As if. This bee wasn’t interested in any of those grimy, unwashed flowers.
In my arms, Jason stiffened, jerked upward, and coughed water all over me. It trickled down my chin and neck. Pretty much the most unromantic end to a kiss possible.
Jason’s eyes fluttered open and then fell shut again. He sunk into the water, and I had to tighten my grip around him so he didn’t go under. He was breathing now but still wasn’t conscious. The lump on his head had grown to the size of a golf ball and blood still leaked down his cheek. He needed help.
I could stay around and wait for the sailors to lower the longboat. They would take Jason back on board and get him warm and dry. But I doubted they were the best people to treat an injured man, and besides, I didn’t like the net a couple of the men were holding. They seemed to be judging my distance from the boat, getting ready to toss the thing at me.
Yeah, this sort of treatment was probably why mermaids didn’t like humans.
The shore wasn’t far away. In the story, the Little Mermaid took the prince there—a fact that made me not want to do the same. It felt like I didn’t have any choice, like the outcome of the story would engulf me no matter what I did. And I didn’t know if I was in the happy version of the story.
Jason was hurt, though, and it was my fault. My wish had done this. I needed to take him to safety. With one arm hooked around his chest, I swam toward the shore.
Chapter 6
The men called after me, shouting and threatening to catch and fillet me if I didn’t return the prince forthwith. I didn’t turn around.
A mermaid’s strength comes from her tail, so it wasn’t hard to swim while holding onto Jason. I pushed across the surface, carefully keeping his head above water. The rain continued to come down and the wind had picked up, frosting the waves with white foam.
The closer I got to land, the worse the idea of bringing Jason here seemed. How could I drag an unconscious guy onto the beach? I didn’t have legs. And as soon as I didn’t have the water to help support Jason’s weight, I wouldn’t be able to carry him.
I swam toward the shore anyway in hopes someone would be around.
A building came into sight—perhaps a lighthouse. No, it was too short for that. Someone’s home, maybe? I headed toward it.
There was a natural break in the shoreline there, a curve of the land that created a cove. As soon the waves entered it, they lost their fury and settled into as lapping, tired peace.
As I swam into the cove, I realized the building was actually a gazebo set on the edge of the shore. Its closest side spread across the water acting as a dock. Jason wouldn’t have walls to protect him against the wind, but at least the roof would keep off the rain.
Hoisting Jason up onto the floor proved tricky. I didn’t have the strength in my arms to lift him out of the water, and I accidentally banged his head against the stone floor trying. He let out a low moan.
“Sorry,” I told him.
He didn’t answer back.
The answer to this problem, I realized, was my tailfin. I’d been lifting Jason like a human would when I had an awesome, mythical tailfin at my disposal. If dolphins could leap out of the water several feet into the air, I could too.
Still holding onto Jason, I swam away from the gazebo, then sped back toward it.
Dolphins make leaping look easy. You see them in nature movies gracefully arcing out of the ocean. Playfully. Happily. Dolphins, it turns out, are liars.
My arc out of the water looked like I was being shot haphazardly from a cannon. I skidded into the middle of the gazebo—farther than I’d intended. Unfortunately, I also landed on top of Jason, something that made him let out another groan.
I slid off him and turned him face up. My movements were strained now that we were on land. It felt like I was dragging around a hundred-pound sack on a pair of useless legs.
Jason lay on the floor, pale and barely conscious. His lips looked more purple than red, and blood still oozed from the wound on his head. He needed a bandage. The only thing I could use was the sash around his waist. It wasn’t clean, but the pressure might stop the bleeding. I pulled it off and tied it over the cut.
His eyes flickered open and he coughed.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
His head turned at the sound of my voice. He stared at me blankly. Without recognition, without surprise—I wasn’t sure he even saw me.
“Say something,” I prodded.
“I’ll fight every one of you,” Jason slurred. “You better get my manager.” He shut his eyes again and went still. I ran my hand across his cheek, hoping it would elicit a response. It didn’t. He showed no other signs of reviving.
I couldn’t leave him like this—wet, shivering, and likely to get hypothermia.
A path led from the gazebo into the trees. I scanned the fluttering leaves for signs of a traveler, for anybody. Shadows grew and shrank with the branch movement, but no one stepped forward. “Chrissy!” I called. “Where are you?”
I didn’t get an answer except for another low moan from Jason. I pulled myself closer to him, and draped my arm across his chest, covering his legs with my tailfin so my body heat could warm him.
It was risky to stay on land. People here thought mermaids were dangerous. When someone finally showed up, what would they do when they saw me lying half on top of their wounded prince? Every moment I stayed out of the sea I was vulnerable and exposed.
I kept my gaze on the path that led to the gazebo. If anyone came that way, I’d pull myself back to the water before they reached me.
“Chrissy!” I called again. “I want to make another wish!” She had to come. She had to help Jason.
I saw no telltale sparklers going off. Only rain plunked down, tapping at the edges of the gazebo. I laid my head next to Jason’s, dejected. “I’m so sorry about this.” He couldn’t hear me, but I had to say it anyway.
“There you are.” The Irish brogue came from behind me, clipped with irritation. I turned to see Clover, dressed in green with a matching bowler hat perched on his head. He held a green umbrella, shaking the rain off it. “What problem is so terrible important, that you needed to drag me away from me poker game and have me trolling about in the rain searching for you?”
“What problem?” I pulled myself up on one elbow. “The problem is that Jason is injured, unconscious, and I’m a mermaid.”
Clover snapped the umbrella shut. “Yes, well, it’s been a bad day for all of us. I’d a full house. Aces high.” He vanished from the spot where he’d stood, just disappeared.
I looked around the floor, wondering if he’d left altogether. “Clover?”
“The lad’ll be fine.” Clover had reappeared by Jason’s head and was lifting the side of the bandage to see the wound. “He has a thick noggin. It’s a common enough condition among celebrities. Comes from having a big head.” Clover dropped the side of the bandage and stepped toward me. “He’ll have a right terrible headache, but outside of that, he’ll be back to his own arrogant self by tomorrow.”
I let out a sigh of relief. I hadn’t killed Jason Prescott. “And what about me?”
“Ah now, you’ll still be a mermaid. It’s what you wished for.”
I sat up straighter. “No, no, no.” These words were followed by so many more no’s that they transformed into a stream of N-n-n-n-n. “I never wished to be the Little Mermaid or any sort of mermaid. Not once did I ask for aquatic DNA.”
I held up my hand to stop Clover from interrupting. “I know Chrissy is just training to be a fairy godmother, and everybody makes mistakes, so I can overlook this. Really, I’m sure one day it will . . . well, if not seem funny, at least it will blur into a jumbled memory of panic and squid tentacles. What I’m saying is have Chrissy put Jason and I back in the twenty-first century, and we’ll start over again with the wish thing. I’ll be super specific about what I want next time.”