Reluctantly, I pushed Jason’s arms off me and got off the couch before he could sleepily pull me back. Looking down at him, I could see that in his sleepy state, he was not happy about me leaving. His hand searched around for me, his face scrunched up in an adorable pout.
I giggled and reached down to snatch up one of the little decorative pillows we had shoved to the floor and placed it in the way of his searching hand. When his palm brushed against it, he grasped it and pulled it close to him.
Suddenly, there was a flash. Looking up, I saw Hip standing next to me with his phone out, snapping photos.
“Mr. Perfect cuddling a pillow. The perfect beginning to my new photo album, if only it were a stuffed animal.” He chuckled.
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “And exactly what is going into this album?”
“Photos of the others looking stupid, of course.” Hip grinned cheekily, holding up his phone with a mischievous grin on his face.
“I’m sure you cuddle pillows in your sleep, too.”
“Oh, of course I do, but I wouldn’t dare get caught doing it.” He chuckled before snapping another photo.
I leaned over his shoulder to study the photo. “We will see about that.”
I left Hip with his blackmail photos and wandered over to Percy, who was watching a sizzling skillet with a calm intensity. His gaze didn’t even waver from whatever was in the pan as I approached.
“Whatcha cooking?” I whispered.
“I am searing us up some salmon. I don’t want to burn it.”
I crinkled my nose in disgust. If I was being honest, I really didn’t like fish all that much. Most certainly not as much as all the boys seemed to. Though, knowing what I knew now, their love of fish made much more sense.
“Oh!” I gasped and beamed, excitedly. “Now that I know, you guys don’t have a reason to not tell me about the water bottles.”
“The water bottles?” Percy asked.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You know. The water bottles I’ve seen everybody carrying around. The ones you all pour freaking salt into.”
“Ah, yes. I was told about your first meeting with Jason.” He carefully flipped the fish in the skillet. “While our kind can walk on two legs and pretend to be human, we are not. We are creatures of the sea, and we must always return to the sea. Staying away from the water for too long causes us immense discomfort and pain. Drinking salt water stems those cravings, though they are a temporary fix.”
I tilted my head back, my mouth open in an ‘o’.
That made sense. Thinking about it, it also explained why a town who could hardly afford to keep its buildings up to code would spend thousands of dollars maintaining such a large saltwater filtered pool. They must feel more comfortable swimming in it than standard chlorine.
My brow furrowed when I remembered something. “I haven’t seen you toting around a water bottle.”
Percy let out a slow hum which sounded very much like a sigh. “Unlike Mr. Monroe, I don’t deprive that part of myself. There is a path behind the library which leads to the beach. I regularly take walks during my lunch breaks to go for a swim.”
I tilted my head and thoughtfully said, “I haven’t really felt any cravings like that yet.”
“It will probably take you much longer than those of us who were born Mer. You weren’t born in the ocean, so it isn’t as much a part of you as it is us.”
I nodded, unsure if that particular information bothered me or not. The way he was painting it made me feel like I had a foot stuck in both worlds. If I learned anything from reading urban fantasy, it was that being stuck in the middle of two species was a pain in the ass.
Percy scooped the cooked fish filets out of the pan and placed them neatly down on a large plate. “I am almost done with dinner.”
“Are you making anything else?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound too obvious.
Percy’s eyes flicked over to me, seeing right through me in an instant. “You don’t have to eat it. But I am betting you’ll find it much more appealing now than you did two weeks ago.”
“If you say so,” I grumbled.
He put the plate of salmon in the microwave to keep warm before pulling out a package of green beans from the fridge. “There are also potatoes roasting in the oven and some salad I tossed up in the fridge if it turns out you don’t like it.”
A warmth spread inside my chest. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Do you mind finding Theseus and Ajax and telling them to finish up with whatever they are doing?” He asked.
“Sure,” I replied, making my way out of the kitchen and back into the living room where Hip had gone back to watching T.V. and Jason still slept on the couch.
I wondered why Percy referred to the two of them so formally while calling Theseus and Ajax by their first names. It was something I made a mental note to ask him later.
I strode to the door, my bare feet making a soft clacking sound on the hardwood floor. Noticing it was different from the usual squeaky-thud sound I often heard and drowned out, I looked down. My feet were still scaly with wide webbing between the toes. Curious, I lifted my foot and studied the pads. There were scales there as well.
Why hadn’t I noticed them before? You would think something like that would have been noticeable before now.
I pushed the thoughts away and made my way out of the cabin. It was snowing outside, pretty heavily, actually. The little flakes of cold swirled around violently.
I pulled back, instantly thinking about grabbing a coat only to realize that despite having the door open I didn’t feel the chill air hit my skin as harshly as it should have. I had thought perhaps I hadn’t been bothered by the cold when we trekked to Ajax’s cabin because it had grown much warmer in my two weeks of unconsciousness, and Percy’s body was like my own personal space heater.
Tentatively, I stepped out of the cabin, my feet crunching into the pile of snow which had already accumulated on the porch. My toes should have been icicles, but instead, the snow felt no colder to me than perhaps the inside of a fridge.
“Well, that’s useful. I guess I won’t be needing a new coat any time soon.” I muttered to myself.
Stepping barefoot through the snow, I trudged over to the second, smaller cabin Ajax had, in nothing more than a thin, long sleeved top and old yoga pants.
Hopping up the steps, I knocked on the door and waited. When a minute or so passed with no answer, I knocked again and called, “Ajax! Theseus! Dinner is almost ready!”
Again, no answer.
With a huff, I tugged at the door’s handle and grunted as the hinges, which looked rusted, protested me trying to open the door. Eventually I got it moving, the door slowly creaking open.
Inside was a vast, extremely large, cluttered room. The first thing I noticed in all of the chaos were canvases upon canvases propped against one another. Some of them were blank while others were filled with color. Stepping up to one of the piles, I rifled through the paintings.
They were gorgeous, mostly landscapes filled with bright colors of the sky contrasting against the mirage of flowers or mountainscapes. There were a few portraits of people, but none of them I recognized. They were all so lifelike, almost as if they were photographs and not paintings.
Remembering that I needed to find the boys, I gently placed the paintings back against each other and moved further into the room.
There were a few sculptures in here as well. They were mostly of animals, though I did spy a random half-finished hunk of wood that looked like a woman’s figure.