Promise Bound (16 page)

How was I supposed to deny my mom her chance at a long life? But I didn’t want to do what she asked of me. Even with the tentative peace between my family and Nadia’s, the old history was not that old.

The Maris option was a no-go. Calder—I winced at the thought of his name—would never forgive me for trusting my mother to her. I trusted
his
judgment on that.

That left me with Pavati by default, but just barely. I’d never answered her letter, so that made a good enough place to start. She wanted something from me. Mom wanted something from her. We were both reasonable people … and that’s where my mind stopped, because the thing she wanted from me—my alliance—wasn’t something I could give. At least, not until Calder came back.
If Calder comes back
. And even then there was the matter of convincing him we owed Pavati our allegiance. Fat chance.

I wondered if Pavati would take an IOU. Could that be up for debate?

Debate
, I thought, and pulled my phone out of my pocket and called Jules. She’d gone to the U without me, baffled by my unwavering decision to stay at the lake—a place she called “the death trap.” I couldn’t blame her. Her one and only visit had been a disaster that culminated with one of our friends attacked and nearly drowned.

“To what do I owe this supreme honor?” she asked, and
I immediately started counting backward in my head. How long had it been since I’d called? Six weeks? Seven? More?

“Hey, Jules. Got a sec?”

“Sure. I guess.” Knowing Jules as well as I did, I could picture her narrowing her eyes as she spoke. “I’d love to hear how life has been treating you since you fell off the face of the earth.”

I sighed. So it was going to be like that. “Sorry.” There was an awkwardness between us that had never been there before. “I’ve been really sick. And it’s hard to get good service up here. North woods, y’know.”

“Yeah, I remember. So why are you calling now?” she asked.

I straightened the sheets, then tucked them in tight around and under my legs, making—it occurred to me—a mermaid’s tail. “I don’t know. I missed you?”

That softened her. “Aw, hon.”

“And I could really use you right now.” I flexed my feet, then pointed my toes.

Now she laughed. “Make note of the date.”

“No, seriously.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Jules said.

“You were in debate in high school.”

“I know.”

I rolled my eyes even though she missed out on the effect. “I’m saying, can you give me some pointers? I need to win an argument.”

“With Calder?” she asked.

I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly. “Not exactly.”

There were some muffled noises as Jules told someone to go on without her, then she was back to me. I broke out of my encasement and rolled over to get a pen and a café receipt from my bedside table.

“Coach would say, first thing, dress the part. Which means none of your normal costumes.”

I wrote
dress the part
on the back of the receipt, then stared at my closet doubtfully.

“Then come up with two or three arguments for why your side is right. You can’t even be a little iffy. You don’t want them to smell weakness. Oooh, Lily. What are you up to? I’m starved for gossip.”

“Keep going. Then what?”

“Don’t get crabby. I’m skipping out on ice cream for you.”

I was one of the few people who knew what a sacrifice that must be for her. Jules was a foodie at heart, the kind who ate anything and everything and still fit into size 2 jeans. “Just tell me what else,” I said.

“Know what their counterarguments are going to be and have evidence to support your side and disprove theirs.”

“Anything else?”

“Note cards help. Lily, what’s going on?”

Suddenly the image of me, underwater with note cards and a flip chart, burst into my mind. I took a sudden breath and choked on it. “I don’t think that’ll work where I’m going.”

“Where you’re going? Oh my gosh, are you trying to convince your parents of something? Are you and Calder eloping?”

A sharp barb of adrenaline poked at my stomach as I
pictured the small velvet box lying in Calder’s palm, the earnest question in his eyes. I tried to laugh Jules off, but it only came out as: “Heh.”

“You are! You can’t do that to me. I’ve had dibs on maid of honor since we were six.”

“I know. It’s not that.”
It’s far from that
. “So, thanks, Jules. I gotta go.”

“Wait! What do you mean you’ve got to go? You just called.”

I crinkled the receipt between my fingers, right in the receiver. “The line’s getting a little fuzzy.”

“Sure, whatever, Lil. I taught you that trick. But you’ll tell me if you run off and do something crazy?”

“You got a deal.”

After a few hours of rummaging through my closet, I picked the most Pavati-perfect, dress-the-part outfit I could find: a long peasant skirt and an embroidered vintage camisole. I curled my hair and loaded up the bracelets. When I was done, I studied myself in the mirror and adjusted the skirt lower on my hips.
Hmm
. I looked more like a fortune-teller than a Bollywood superstar, but maybe it would have the psychological effect I was going for.

I took a few moments to work out my key points, then walked down to the dock, jingling with each step, and hung my feet into the water. If Pavati still wanted to talk to me as much as I thought she did, she’d notice my scent and show herself. Plus, I wanted the security of land. Sure enough, I waited only five minutes before she slowly emerged
in front of me—the top of her dark head, then lavender eyes, cheekbones, perfect lips, neck encircled by a silver band, which glistened in the fading sunlight. Water dripped from the tip of her chin. The lake rippled away from her bared shoulders.

“You look very pretty tonight,” Pavati said. “Going somewhere special?” There was a beautiful serenity to her voice.

Dress the part. Check
. “Nowhere special.”

She swam back and forth around the end of the dock, ten feet out, surveying me from all angles. “I don’t know why I never noticed before. You have potential.”

“Potential?” Hmm. Maybe I’d dressed
too
much the part.

“We could make a good team. Bait and lure, if you know what I mean.”

Danny had once called human beings mermaid Prozac. I knew exactly what Pavati meant by “bait and lure,” but by the looks of her, she didn’t need any help from me. Her face practically glimmered—backlit by some poor soul’s last smile.

“You don’t really mean that,” I said, shuddering. “You always considered me the annoying Hancock sister.”

“Try not to be so sensitive,” Pavati said. “Everyone knows I have a soft spot for the little ones.” She glanced up at the house. “Have you seen Daniel Catron today? How’s Adrian?”

“How could you do it?” I asked. “Who was it?”

“Who was what?”

I threw my arms up in the air. I realized it was a gesture I’d picked up from Calder. “Aren’t you supposed to be rationing yourselves? Hunting on some kind of controlled
schedule?”
What was I doing?
Negotiating with a murderer. This was insanity. Pavati was no better than Maris, no less a monster. I would have walked away, but Mom’s plea kept me rooted to the spot.

“I’m not a bad person,” Pavati said, her voice thick with stolen serenity. “I do what comes naturally. It’s not my fault I’m at the top of the food chain.”

I groaned. There was logic in that, but it didn’t make her hunting habits any less horrible. Still, could I really fault a predator for preying? Was the lion evil for hunting? Or the crocodile? Evil, no, I decided. Scary, yes.

She tipped her head, studying my eyes. Then she turned slightly, inviting me to follow. “Swim with me?”

I smiled at her question. I wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to read my thoughts before I was ready to share them out loud. “Not tonight, but tell me this. Do you have any idea what you’re doing to Danny? How can you play with his emotions like this? Particularly after what happened with Jack.”

It wasn’t what I’d come to discuss, but the question had been bothering me for so long I couldn’t hold it in any longer. If I thought she had an ounce of humanity, some smidgen of charity toward a human being, then maybe I could stomach making Mom’s ultimate request.

Pavati drew closer and her mouth tightened. “I thought we might talk about something else today.”

I stared at her. Silent.

She inhaled slowly through her nose, then exhaled fast. “Jack Pettit was an unfortunate mistake.”

“He was a human being, and you toyed with his heart until there was no humanity left. Now you’re going to do it all over again with Danny.”

She looked away. “I don’t hear Daniel complaining.”

I groaned mentally, but it was not lost on her.

“Lily,” she said, her voice a warm purr, “you are still so innocent, aren’t you?”

My stomach tightened at her question, and she tipped her head to the side as if she were reading my memories. I was right to refuse a swim.

“Men,” she said, “were put on this earth for one purpose, and one purpose only: to perpetuate the species. Daniel Catron, at his young age, has already achieved his ultimate purpose. What is wrong with that? He should be thrilled.”

“And what about love?”

“Love?” Her eyebrows shot up like birds taking flight.

“Yes, love,” I said, annoyed. “Don’t act like you’ve never heard of it.”

“And you think
I’m
dangerous,” she said, laughing at the irony. “Love is the most dangerous thing of all. My mother loved, and look where it got her.” She paused and her expression turned smug. “Yes. Even you know I’m right. I have no use for love.”

“Then what about your son?”

“Ah. Well.” She shrugged. “That is a different kind of love.” Her gaze left my face and she glanced toward the house. “Is he inside? Could you bring him to me? I’d just like to look.”

“Danny took him to his house.”

She bowed her head. “Is Calder with him, then? He said he wanted to keep an eye on the situation.”

“Actually, he’s gone away.”

Pavati chuckled low and throaty, like she thought she was finally getting the upper hand. “Let me guess. You’ve decided to join me, and Calder refused to stay and watch.”

“No, it’s not that. I’ve been having … dreams. About Nadia. About your mother.”

Pavati’s eyes widened and she leaned through the water toward me. She was so close now I could almost reach out and touch her. Her gaze dropped to the pendant and then went back up to my face.

“That pendant you’ve been wearing, it stores—” she said.

“I know. But the dreams … it’s not like I’m reading a history book … Nadia’s … communicating with me. It’s personal.”

Pavati looked at me hungrily. It wasn’t a hunger for my life—actually, based on how low I was feeling emotionally and what Calder had explained to me about absorption, I doubted she wanted anything I had to offer—but more like she was jealous of my dreams. I suppose that was right. If I’d lost my mother, wouldn’t I be hungry for one last conversation?

“What did Calder have to say about that?” she asked.

“He doesn’t believe it.”

The feathery ends of her delicate fluke flitted through the air behind her. “So what does Mother say? In your dreams?”

“Nadia wants Calder to find his biological mother. She was quite insistent.”

“The Thin Woman,” Pavati murmured.

I sucked in my breath. “You know her?” I asked, my voice rising an octave.

“I know a little,” Pavati said, sensing the upper hand her information afforded.

I got down on all fours at the end of the dock. The boards felt hard and splintered under my bare knees. “Tell me,” I said.

She smiled. “Join me.”

I shook my head, and annoyance flashed across Pavati’s face.

“So why did you call me? If it’s not about Adrian, and it’s not about my letter, and if you refuse to join me, what more can you possibly have to say?”

The time had come. I wished I’d followed Jules’s advice and brought note cards. My well-developed arguments were slippery and elusive in my brain. “Would you change my mother?”

Pavati’s eyes flew wide with scandalized disapproval. “Absolutely not.”

“Hear me out. I have something to give in exchange.”

She looked doubtful, but said, “I’m listening.” Her hands moved back and forth through the water.

“Adrian. Danny already understands that he holds the trump card. He’ll use Adrian to get to you. I can guide him any which way I choose. If I tell him you’ll follow if he runs and takes the baby, he’ll run. If I tell him his best chance to be with you is to return the baby on schedule, he’ll meet you at the pier.”

“You know what I’d do to him if he ran. You don’t fool me.”

“Yes. But you’d have to find him first.”

She clicked her tongue. “I’m surprised at you, Lily Hancock. I didn’t realize you could be so unfeeling. Such a gamble to take with his life.”

“Why won’t you negotiate with me?” I asked. “What is my mother to you in comparison with Adrian?”

“It’s about your sister,” she said.

“My sister? What does Sophie have to do with this?”

“She is young. She still needs her mother. I won’t be the one to take that away from her.”

“Mom’s illness isn’t going to get better. We’re going to lose her anyway. Sooner than you think.” I crossed my fingers behind my back. Saying the words out loud made them more true—truer than I wanted them to be.

“I don’t know that changing her would cure her, and I’m not going to take the chance of accidentally killing Sophie’s mother. Your mother.” After a pause, she rolled her eyes. “I know what you think of me, but believe it or not, I’m not completely heartless. I’ve been there. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Not even a Hancock.”

“Then would you change me, too?” asked Sophie, coming up silently behind me.

I spun, a flash of panic burning across my chest. “Sophie, get out of here! Go back to the house.”

Sophie set her jaw and folded her arms over her chest. “You can’t make me. It’s not fair. I want a vote in what’s going on around here. You sent Calder away. What if I wanted him
to stay? No one ever asks what I want. I want to be like you.
Both of you
.”