“That is so messed up,” Layla says.
“Blow out the candles,” Mom says, “or the wax is going to drip.”
I bend closer to the seventeen little flames. I haven’t made a
birthday wish since elementary school. I was never the kind of kid who
made wishes on stars or cakes. Swimming came too naturally and I have
dozens of trophies to prove it. Girls came naturally, and I also have
the trail of angry ex-girlfriends to prove it.
Since I started shifting, I don’t know what to believe in anymore.
I know more things are possible. I’ve been to Eternity and back. I had
an oracle give me a powerful weapon. I met my grandfather. I kissed
the girl I love. But most importantly, she kissed me back.
Layla squeezes my hand, and I know that I’m not going to wish. I’m
going to pray, something I haven’t done in equally as long. When I saw
Kai doing it near the shipwreck, I wanted to get down with her, but I
didn’t.
Maybe it’s the same as a wish, the same as a promise. A totally
intangible mass of hope that everything will work out the way it’s
supposed to be. I take a deep breath and blow.
***
On the news, there’s a storm warning. The beach has been
evacuated. A murder victim on the boardwalk. Ben’s face pops up on the
screen. The details are vague, other than that his hands, feet, and
ears were cut off. No suspects yet.
While everyone eats cake in the living room, I volunteer to get
them drinks. I take the bottle of Eternity water and pour it into
their drinks. I pour the rest into an empty bottle of eyedrops and
pocket it. I picture my centaur maid’s fiery blood flowing, the head
of the trident sucking back into the murky black depths. Just what
every guy wants on his seventeenth birthday.
“You don’t have to do that,” she says.
I jump, and when I turn around, my mom is standing there. I wonder
how long she’s been watching me, but I realize it’s long enough.
“Yes, I do.”
“I thought they agreed not to drink it unless you did.” She comes
to me and lifts my chin with her finger. “You can’t save everyone.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For everything I said to you. I didn’t mean
it.”
“Yes, you did.” She cups her hand on my face. “You were right. For
a long time, I thought I could keep my old life away. The past creeps
up like the tide. I wish it hadn’t pulled you in.”
“Literally,” I say, laughing.
She kisses my forehead. “Happy birthday, my darling.”
We take the glasses to everyone and drink.
***
We load my dad’s car with weapons. Swords and bats and more arrows
than I can count.
“I can’t believe your dad lent you his car,” Layla says. “He loves
his car.”
I pat the trunk of the trusty Mustang. Kurt and Thalia are scoping
out the length of the boardwalk. There’s only one way Nieve and her
merrows will come onto the shore, and that’s through the sea.
“Has anyone ever seen Nieve on feet?” Layla asks.
“I don’t think she likes being on legs,” I say. I think of how she
forced me to shift into my tail. “She’ll be out in the water.”
“Is it too simple to say, ‘Don’t go in the water’?”
“I don’t want them to break the boardwalk. If they go into the
city-”
A sharp whistle blows behind me. A police officer comes our way.
“This is a no-parking zone.”
Layla points angrily at the sign above us. “No it’s not. Read
right there!”
The cop holds on to his belt. There’s something funny about him. I
can’t pick it out. “I can’t read. Why don’t you read it for me?”
His mouth twitches. I take a step closer to him and breathe
deeply. “Cut it out, Marty.”
The shape-shifter doubles over laughing. He looks both ways before
shifting back into his familiar cheesy smile. “You should’ve seen your
faces.”
“Hey, when I’m on Toliss, I’ll hire you as my court jester.”
“No thanks, bro,” Marty says. “I’d rather be queen, but I hear
that job’s already taken.” He winks at Layla and she returns it with
an eye roll.
“Tell Frederik I finally went to see the landlocked like he
suggested and it didn’t go well.”
“Tell him yourself,” Marty says. “He’s waiting for you.”
I look up at the white disk behind the gray sky. “I’m guessing he
can’t come out right now.”
“I’ll stay with Layla,” Marty says. “He wants to speak to you
alone.”
***
Frederik lives on the boardwalk.
I feel let down in his vampire skills. This whole time, I thought
of him as living in some cool hotel with all of his crime-fighting
friends or even a mansion, but we’re short of mansions in Brooklyn.
The face of the building has three arcs, all boarded up. There’s
an old mosaic of waves that’s chipped away to reveal the plaster
beneath. The metal gate has been pulled halfway up. A slow rain starts
falling. I breathe in the dampness of the air. I’m waiting for the
stink of merrow, but it doesn’t come, and I remind myself that they’ll
come in the shadows.
I push the gate the rest of the way up, and once I’m in, I close
it again.
I trust Frederik, I do. At least, I think I do.
But the way I feel, like I have to inch my way through the dimly
lit hall in case he comes zooming down at vampire speed to take a
chunk out of my neck? That’s just instinct, and no matter how cool I
think he is, I know I’ll never get rid of that.
The inside of the building has been hollowed out. It used to be a
restaurant and then a roller rink and now it’s empty. The ceilings
remind me of scenes from the ’20s. My dad says that’s the last time we
built beautiful things. After that, it was all straight lines and
plaster. I pick up a funny-looking gold vase that doesn’t look like it
can hold much of anything. I feel the chill break through the cracks
of the building.
“Frederik?”
He’s standing beside me. I jolt and drop the vase. It shatters.
“That was an antique, Sea Prince.”
“Yeah? Well, put it on my tab.”
He starts walking farther down the hall and I follow. He opens
another door and I hesitate. “You’re not still mad that I beat you at
poker?”
When he smiles, a yellow fang peeks from a corner of his mouth. “I
had the beginnings of a very promising flush.”
“So you folded on purpose?” I step inside the room. “Why?”
That terrible tingling feeling comes over me, like a thousand
spiders are walking over my spine.
“Because I want the sea folk off this land.” He flicks the lights
on. “And helping you is the only way I can accomplish this without
breaking any rules of the Thorne Hill Alliance.”
The large room is split in half. To the right is a
floor-to-ceiling library. I lose count of the numbers of shelves and
the age of the spines. There’s a rickety ladder that moves from one
end of the wall to the other.
“Read any good books lately?” I ask.
Frederik glances over his shoulder. I realize that, for the first
time since I’ve met him, he’s wearing all black. It brings out the
death in his complexion. His eyes are blacker, and for a vamp, the
dark circles under his eyes look more like bruises.
To the left is a different kind of library full of plants. There
are test tubes, microscopes, and a large machine giving off steam.
That side of the room is carefully arranged in shadow, and when I step
farther into the room, I can see why. The colors of one plant radiate
in the dark, while others are regular green.
“You’re a gardener?”
Frederik grumbles.