Emerge (36 page)

“Stop! What story?”

“
Come now,
” her father says, putting down his brush and swimming toward us. His puce-colored tail swipes through the water in sharp, deliberate passes. He looks down his nose at me.
“You know what story. Even humans know it. A beautiful young sea maiden makes an unimaginable sacrifice for the sake of love.”
His voice sounds even more oily in his native Mermese.

“But in the real version, no one sang their way into the sunset to a happily ever after, that’s for sure,”
Melusine says, finally ceasing her assault on Clay.
“Like a little idiot, the Little Mermaid believed that love would conquer all. So, she struck a deal with the Sea Sorceress when she begged her to permanently banish her tail. If the prince married anyone but the Mermaid, the Mermaid would perish on the first sunrise after the wedding.”

Of course, I know all this. When I don’t say anything, Mr. Havelock picks up the thread.

“The Mermaid—your distant cousin, I believe?—managed to hold the prince’s interest for a time, but then he married another girl. A human princess, as well he should have. You should always stick with your own kind.”
He glares at me and then at Clay, as if to make his point.
“But the Mermaid had sisters, like you do.”

“Except they were much smarter than yours are.”

“Her sisters cared about her very much,”
Mr. Havelock continues, as if his daughter hadn’t interrupted,
“and didn’t want to see her throw away her immortality for a lower life form. They went to the Sea Sorceress and pleaded with her to spare their sister. They traded their lovely hair for an enchanted obsidian dagger. The Little Mermaid had a choice: kill her one true love with the dagger and turn back into an immortal Mermaid, or die herself at sunrise. Unable to take the life of the man she loved, the Little Mermaid chose her own death. And so, say the humans, ends the tragic tale.”

“Not!”
Melusine interjects.

“Most decidedly not,”
her father agrees.

“I know!”
I make my impatience evident. Every Mer knows.
“She refused and dropped the dagger into the ocean. The dagger unleashed a terrible curse the moment it hit the water. Because she had valued a human’s life above her own immortality, all Mer were stripped of our eternal youth and forced to live human lifespans.”
I rattle off.
“But what does that have to do with Clay?”

“All that research on his family and you never figured it out?”
Melusine shakes her head in mock disappointment. She swims up close to me—too close—and clamps my chin in an iron grip. “
Clay is the only direct descendant of that very same prince.
”

What?

Everything fades away. The bruising pressure on my chin, the smug look on Melusine’s face, the seaweed holding me prisoner. All I’m aware of are her words and Clay’s unconscious, frozen face.

How is that possible? Clay’s an American. We don’t have royals. If he’s a prince, why isn’t he sitting pretty in Denmark with a crown on his head? Denmark … His family is from Denmark … where the Little Mermaid’s prince was from …

When we were going over our family histories, Clay said he was the last one left on his mother’s side. The side descended from the opera singer, Astrid. The one who was banned from the royal court after a scandalous affair. Could that mean … ?

“Long after the Little Mermaid’s prince had become king, an ancestor of Clay’s fell in love with the prince’s grandson. She had the grandson’s baby in secret, then disappeared.”

Astrid. It was Astrid. She moved to America to escape her shame and start a new life.

My thoughts whirl, and I have to concentrate on Mr. Havelock’s words.
“My family has tried to track down the descendants of that baby for over a century. We nearly lost hope. And then help came from the most unlikely source. The humans.”

He moves toward Clay’s immobile body
. “I despise humans, and I loathed every minute I spent among them each time I snuck up to land over the years to continue the search, the way my father and grandfather taught me. Humans multiply and pollute. Their sonar kills our whale and dolphin hunting companions, their thirst for oil and nuclear energy poisons our seas, their exploratory missions force us into hiding. Yes, human technology has devastated our home in many ways. But it has also made information easier to access than ever before. And this information led me to finding the one person I thought was lost forever.”
He pats Clay’s head like he’s a prized racehorse. “
Ancestry websites, immigration documents from over a century ago, birth records—all right there at my fingertips once I taught myself to use human machinery. Yes, I have known this boy’s identity for over a year now. Just enough time to finish preparing Melusine—to have her perfect her English and leg control—so I could bring her on land to perform her part.”

“The Little Mermaid should have killed her prince two hundred years ago. If she had, we never would have been cursed,”
Melusine says, releasing my chin at last.
“Killing Clay tonight will solve our problems. Killing Clay will free us all.”

I can’t let her do it. I test my bonds again, pressing against them as subtly as I can. Pain shoots up my bent tail. The restraints don’t budge. I have to keep her talking, keep them talking, until I can figure out what to do.

“Why tonight?”
I ask.
“You’ve had plenty of time alone with Clay. If you wanted to kill him, why didn’t you do it while you were still dating, or as soon as you knew I was on to you?”

“What day is it?”
Melusine spaces out each word like I’m an idiot.

Oh! I am an idiot.
“The two hundredth anniversary.”

The water muffles Melusine’s applause.

“The curse can only be changed every one hundred years, at sunrise.”
Mr. Havelock explains.
“My family would have changed it on the one hundredth anniversary, but they had found no descendant. That’s why tonight’s so important, Miss Nautilus. Why the approaching sunrise is so crucial.”
In the green glow of the jellyfish, his face looks even more angular, even more intimidating.
“I’m glad you’re here to celebrate with us.”

“Yeah, Lia, wanna party? Maybe when we wake Clay up, he can sing for us. If he’s still breathing.”
Melusine laughs again, sending bubbles skittering around our heads.

I need to distract her. To get her out of my face and give myself time to think
. “If you didn’t need Clay until tonight, why did you bother sirening him? Did you just want to mess with him?”

“I’ll leave you girls to your gossip,”
Mr. Havelock interrupts
. “I need to retrieve the artifact.”
With no further explanation, he swims across the large room and disappears through an archway into the darkness beyond.

“Alone at last,”
Melusine says, swimming around me in a slow circle before stopping in front of my face again.
“To answer your question, I might hate humans, but playing with them sure can be fun.”
She winks lasciviously at me. If we weren’t in the water, I’d spit in her face. Instead, all I can do is clench and unclench my hands behind my back, causing painful, needling tingles. My hands have long-since gone numb. So much for taking her down while we’re alone.

“But no,”
she continues,
“I sirened Clay for a reason. Like I told you before, this story’s all about love.”

“You love Clay?”
I ask in disbelief.

“Don’t be gross,”
she shoots back.
“I could never love a lower life form.”
She waves a hand, dismissing the idea.
I bristle. My parents would never have allowed me or my sisters to refer to humans as lower life forms. They’re not. And they’re certainly not any lower than the despicable Mermaid in front of me who keeps talking as if she hasn’t just insulted an entire species.
“The crux of the curse is love. The Little Mermaid loved the prince, and he broke her heart. She didn’t just die for him. She died heartbroken. Understand? We don’t just need Clay to die. We need him to die heartbroken. We need someone he loves to break his heart.”

She lets her words sink in, then continues,
“That’s why Daddy needed my help. He explained everything to me before we surfaced. Before we came to live in your stifling little Community. He told me that I needed to make Clay love me and keep him in love with me until the anniversary, so I could break his heart.

“I thought it would be easy. Laughing at the right jokes, a few well-timed hair flips. How hard could it be to get a human boy to fall for someone like me? I mean, look at me.”

I do, despite myself. I can’t deny she’s beautiful. Stunning even. I don’t know which are more arresting, her dazzling, piercing eyes or her impossibly high cheekbones. Her diamond-studded
siluess
draws attention to her full, feminine chest. The water makes her ebony hair fan out in long, curling tendrils around her head. In the dim light, her coral-colored tail blends into her creamy skin, making her appear almost naked and decidedly sexual.

“But he didn’t fall in love with me. He dated me, held me. But no matter what I did, he didn’t love me.”

I remember what Clay said. That love didn’t matter. That it hadn’t kept his parents together. It was almost like he didn’t want to fall in love. Maybe he went out with Melusine at first because he didn’t love her. Because he thought she was safe.

Boy was he wrong.

“Then Daddy and I remembered that in some other ancient spells, the siren bond had worked as a substitute for real love. It was a risk, but time was running out. So I sirened Clay.

“He obeyed me. Lusted after me.”
She smiles, knowing the words bother me. I’m jealous, even now. I’ve only ever kissed him once. A stolen kiss.

“He clung to my every command,
” she continues.
“It wasn’t real love, but I hoped it was enough to satisfy the ritual. Then you came along and took him from me. At first, I panicked. I knew I had to go to any lengths I could to get him back before the anniversary.”

“So you poisoned him.”
Rage boils in my veins at the memory of Clay’s painful seizures.

“
When you came to me afterwards, when I saw how shaken you were, I realized you really loved him. And since you felt so strongly for Clay, there was a higher chance that under your siren spell, he’d experience real love. And after all, as long as a Mermaid breaks his heart on the anniversary of the curse, it doesn’t matter which Mermaid. So, I let you have him, and then I brought him here.”
She crosses her arms over her chest, a look of victory on her deceptively delicate face.
“I knew you’d take the bait
.
”

Her meaning seeps into my every pore. I’m going to be sick again.
“So, if I hadn’t come
…
”

“Then we couldn’t perform the ritual. Killing Clay would be useless if you weren’t here to break his heart first.”

“I won’t do it.
I WON’T DO IT
!”
No matter what they do to me, if it’s in my power to keep Clay safe, I will. Or I’ll die trying.

It’s that last part that terrifies me.

“Oh yes you will, my dear.”
Mr. Havelock’s voice is hard as he swims regally back into the room carrying a silver box the length of my forearm.
“If you refuse to see reason, we have ways of making you do our bidding.”

“They won’t work,”
I say with more conviction than I feel.
“Even the ritual won’t work. Killing Clay won’t break the curse. It can’t be broken. All the experts have agreed on that for two centuries.”

“And that’s why we don’t intend to break it,”
Mr. Havelock says.
“Just
…
twist it. We don’t know how to break the curse, but we can mollify the magic—lessen its effects—by giving it Clay’s life.”
His words are informed, but cold. Detached.
“Clay’s life will replace the life of the prince, which should have been taken long ago. Clay’s death will appease the curse for one hundred years.”