“I mean . . . if everything is different now . . . why hasn’t this changed, too?” Luce looked up at him, her eyes shining and vulnerable, spangled with hints of desperation. “Why do I still love who I’ve always loved?”
“You mean me,” Dorian said proudly. He brushed his cheek against hers.
“You and my dad. Dorian, do you know—have you heard anything about him since—”
“Oh.” He was ashamed now that he’d been so consumed by his own longing that he’d forgotten to tell her the news immediately. “I saw your dad this morning. He had breakfast with me and Ben Ellison. Luce, he’s way, way better. He still seemed—kind of out of it, like, spacy?—but he’s not all insane and catatonic anymore. You did an amazing job. Ben’s so impressed that he can’t really talk about anything else. I don’t know why. I mean, I told him you could do that, but I guess he didn’t believe—”
“What did my dad say?”
Dorian hesitated. He wanted to have this conversation with her, but later, once her responsibilities to the Twice Lost were completely out of the way. But Luce’s look was so worried and tender that he couldn’t hold anything back from her. “We talked about you.” He paused again. “About what you’re going to do after the war is really over, like once there’s a treaty and everything. Your dad’s already thinking about—you know, where he should live, and what would be best for you.”
Dorian was still hedging, but Luce was quick enough to guess what he was really getting at. “You mean, you talked about turning me human again?”
Now he was afraid of bringing up all the fights they’d had back in Alaska: fights about exactly this question. “Well, maybe. It is—an option now. If you want. But maybe you’d rather keep being a mermaid general than go to high school or whatever.”
Luce leaned her forehead on his chest again. She held him tight, and, in the way of mermaids, there was a long, long silence between each of her breaths. He could feel the intensity of her thought as if it were a physical thing turning against his skin. “I can’t be a general anymore,” Luce whispered at last. “As soon as there’s a treaty, I’m going to . . . let go of all that.”
He didn’t want her to see how happy that made him. It might seem like he was gloating. “You can’t be general? Luce, why—”
“I let my friends die, Dorian. I’m—broken inside. The Twice Lost General should be—somebody whole.”
Why did those words send a spasm of cold panic through his heart? “You mean when those mermaids got netted? Luce, you didn’t have any choice!”
Luce’s gaze turned skeptical and even harsh. “Of course I had a choice.”
“You mean to try and save them by wiping out San Francisco?” Dorian’s laugh sounded rough, almost hysterical, even to him. “That isn’t much of a—”
“I didn’t say I had a good choice. And I’d do the same thing again. But Dorian, you . . .”
That distant look was back in her eyes. He could almost see ghosts slipping through her irises like trails of mist. “Whoever was in that helicopter wouldn’t have let the mermaids go, Luce. No matter what you did. Right? They were obviously lying to you. So you shouldn’t keep blaming yourself!”
She was looking away, watching the streamers of light that raveled and split on the bay. Then she smiled. It would have been better, Dorian thought, if she hadn’t smiled. “And do you think that’s what Catarina was telling herself? While she was dying?”
There was nothing he could say to that, really. He was almost relieved when Yuan came toward them, splashing much more than she needed to, to tell Luce that they’d received a message. President Leopold would be arriving the next day.
Dorian clambered back into the kayak he’d rented. Water streamed from his sopped clothes and puddled at his ankles. He tried not to show how upset he was that Luce was suddenly too distracted to even kiss him goodbye.
She had work to do.
Luce rushed off. She had one last job for Seb. She found him in his usual spot and talked with him for a few minutes before heading on to the bridge. She’d slept through two of her shifts since no one wanted to wake her, and even after her long sleep she still felt peculiarly weary. The memory of Dorian’s kisses and of everything he’d said to her lingered in her thoughts, softly smoldering.
The Golden Gate Bridge swanned through the fading grandeur of a deeply golden afternoon. Below it the water-wall was noticeably lower than it had been before. Of course now that the mermaids weren’t afraid of being slaughtered anymore they were singing more softly and in some cases not bothering to show up for their shifts. The pervasive sense of peace had washed away the urgency of the war. It wasn’t really time to lower the wave yet, not until they had a treaty signed. But Luce couldn’t completely blame her followers for relaxing their guard.
There was Yuan, leaning against the shore and talking to Gigi again. Luce was surprised and a bit embarrassed to notice that they were holding hands. Giddy mermaids pirouetted in the water, no longer shy at all in front of the human crowds. And there was the usual press of people with their signs, their blown-up photographs of lost daughters. Luce skimmed the images out of habit, not expecting to recognize anyone—and did a double take at the image of a girl with wavy ruby-dyed hair.
JOHANNE ARIANNA SPIELDOCH.
Luce swam a little closer. She knew the pale, anxious face that glowed between those red curls. The woman holding the sign was chubby and worn-looking, wearing an eccentric flowing robelike dress in an odd shade of murky purple and several huge necklaces that reminded Luce of the strands of clattering toys that Jo always wore. In fact, that woman’s aged and worried face was a lot like Jo’s if all Jo’s brilliant beauty and youth had been stripped from her.
Beside Luce, a few mermaids had stopped to see what she was staring at. Luce glanced around and saw that one of them was Cala, now just as wide-eyed as Luce was herself. “Cala! Do you know where Jo is?”
“She’s on shift,” Cala whispered. “I guess she didn’t notice? Or maybe—she might not want to see that woman. Maybe she’s trying to avoid her.”
Luce remembered Yuan’s explanation of why Jo had been kicked out of her former tribe: Jo was caught trying to call her mom with a cell phone she found on the beach.
“I think that’s Jo’s mom,” Luce said breathlessly. It occurred to her how poignant it would be for all the other humans onshore to see someone find a missing daughter when their own children were still lost, but she couldn’t help that. “Please go tell her.”
A few moments later Luce heard Jo squealing and watched her streak like an arrow toward the shore. The police had stopped keeping people out of the water. The woman in the purple robes was squealing too as she stooped and tripped her way over the rocks. “Mom!” Jo was shouting. “Mom!”
Luce couldn’t help crying as she watched them clutch at each other. Jo didn’t seem like a mermaid at all anymore, not with her mother’s arms around her. She could hear them laughing and sobbing, and now and then she caught a broken fragment of conversation. “But I thought you’d be fine with Aunt Janet!”
“Mom, Aunt Janet is a total psycho! You wouldn’t believe all the things she did! I thought you didn’t love me anymore. I thought—”
“No, baby, no. Never. I was confused, and—I couldn’t function very well for a long time. I had to stay—in the hospital. But I always loved you! Losing you was the worst thing that ever . . .”