The girl was scampering back, a heap of mussels balanced on her outspread hands. A few of them fell as she ran.
“What are you doing, Chrissy?” The woman on the dock was calling to the little girl.
“Playing,” the girl said defensively. It sounded like a lie.
“You know you shouldn’t pick the mussels if you’re not going to eat them.”
“I’ll put them back in the water. I’m just moving them over here . . .”
The couple on the dock had finally found the paddle, and they were lowering their canoe into the water. Luce found herself gazing after them with emotions she couldn’t sort out: a strange kind of sorrowful envy. As long as Dorian had kept pressuring her to turn human again, she’d been convinced she didn’t want to, but now that it was too late, now that Dorian didn’t care anymore, was she sure she’d made the right decision? Not that turning human had actually been an option . . .
Chrissy dropped the mussels in a clattering heap at Luce’s elbow, and Luce smiled at her with genuine gratitude. “Thank you so much. I’m not . . . feeling very well.” She glanced nervously toward the canoe. It was just pulling away, and the couple was chatting about what the best picnic spot would be. Being this close to strange humans felt almost as dreamlike and peculiar to Luce as the hallucinations that had overcome her as she’d lost consciousness the night before.
“Why aren’t you eating?”
“I will. As soon as they’re gone.” Cracking the mussels would be noisy; Luce was nervous about trying it at all. Then hunger jabbed through her again, and she decided she didn’t care who heard her. She smacked one on the dock’s stone foundation then gobbled it too quickly. Another, then another.
Chrissy watched her while she ate, clearly fascinated. “You’re so pretty. Even with bites in your face.”
Luce didn’t feel like smiling anymore. “That’s just because of magic, Chrissy. How pretty I am.” The adoring shine of those warm brown eyes made Luce sad. “You shouldn’t take magic things too seriously, okay?”
“Why?”
“Because magic can trick you. You shouldn’t let it.” After all, Dorian hadn’t. He’d called her enchanted beauty “freakish.” That was all she was to him.
“You’re not trying to trick me,” Chrissy murmured uncertainly.
“No,” Luce agreed. Lying under this dock, looking at this child striped by sunlight, it was horrible to remember how she’d helped her tribe sink ships before. Luce knew she was partly responsible for the deaths of girls just like the one sitting beside her now. Dorian’s little sister had been about this age. Luce smiled warmly at Chrissy, and her smile felt like a scar. “But that’s because . . .” Luce wasn’t sure what to say. Chrissy obviously admired her, but Luce wished she wouldn’t; she gazed at Luce, her expression somewhere between hopeful and apprehensive. Luce sighed. “Because we’re friends.” Chrissy beamed.
Luce knew she’d rested for too long. It was time to be moving on again. She had to warn the next tribe, and the next, before they were killed. The responsibility was all hers.
Did she even care that there was another group of people, maybe half a dozen this time, already getting out of their cars and heading for the dock?
3
The Video
It was lucky that Zoe lived so far away. Even if she started driving right after school let out—and sometimes she did—Dorian would have at least an hour to sit on the beach alone without Zoe catching him at it. He didn’t see any reason to mention it either. It wasn’t like he’d even glimpsed Luce since the day they’d broken up, since she’d refused to drown him and left him dripping on the shore. He always sat in that exact spot now. It was funny, in a sick kind of way, to realize how much he still resented Luce for not murdering him. Maybe he should have been grateful. But it was hard not to think that, if she’d only loved him more, she would have gone through with it.
He was pretty sure Luce had left the area. If she hadn’t, wouldn’t she have come to look for him at least once? One time he’d even rowed to the shallow cave where she used to take him, just in case, although getting there and back in the rowboat took a full day of exhausting effort. It was dangerous, he knew, to steer such a small boat through the rough seas. But it wasn’t like he could do any of the things he might have tried with a human girl, like calling or sending an e-mail.
And even if he could call Luce, what would he say to her? That he was sorry; that he was still in love with her? They’d only have the exact same problems as before. It was ridiculous to think the two of them could have a future together.
His phone let out a burst of percussion and Dorian jumped. Just for a fraction of a second he was possessed by an irrational fantasy: that she’d somehow turned human again, that she missed him too . . .
It was his friend Steve, already talking as Dorian answered. “. . . got to come over! You are not going to believe this!”
Dorian groaned inside, but he kept his voice calm. “Believe what?”
“You’re the mermaid guy, right? There’s this video. It’s got to be fake, but—”
“You mean on the Internet?”
“What do you think? But, dude, she’s got short hair. Just like that one you used to draw all the time. She looks so real.”
Dorian was already on his feet. His knees were trembling.
“Dorian? Are you—”
“I’ll be right there.”
“It’s got to be fake, but it really looks . . .” There was something strange in Steve’s voice, Dorian thought; it was a little too soft, too floaty.
“I’ll be right there, okay? Ten . . . ten minutes.”
Then he was sprinting, the gray road and tattered spruce trees veering around him, billows of mist parting around his face.
There were a lot of mermaids out there, Dorian knew. He’d met a few of them personally, and some of them besides Luce must have short hair. But this particular mermaid was also reckless enough to let herself be filmed . . . His heart surged and his stomach cramped, but he kept running at top speed all the way back to the village, his sweat instantly turning clammy in the fog. Then he was dashing up the low wooden steps and his outstretched hand slapped hard against Steve’s door.
He had to knock a few times, more and more loudly, rocking with impatience. “Okay . . .” Steve finally called from inside, and shuffling steps approached. The door swung open and Dorian looked in, across the living room and down a hallway and through another open door. A sliver of the computer in Steve’s room was visible. Even that partial glimpse was enough to set Dorian’s heart thudding quicker than it had from his run. Steve’s face had a stunned, foggy look to it. The rims of his eyes were red, and he didn’t even say hello as he caught Dorian by the elbow and hauled him down the corridor. As they got closer to the computer screen, the video stopped.
Steve’s hand was already reaching out hungrily to hit Replay as he skidded into his chair. Dorian stood behind him.
The video started normally enough. A few people jostling around on a dock, laughing, taping one another, and then turning the camera toward a pair of seals lounging on a sandbar off to the right. A little girl in a red windbreaker came wandering into view on the beach below. She kept looking back over her shoulder, obviously watching something, maybe under the dock, that the adults hadn’t noticed.