Promise Bound (31 page)

I felt Lily’s despair seep in, slowly pooling through me with inky darkness, as if she were writing on my heart with a leaky pen. I didn’t fight it even when my stomach constricted with nausea and my fluke convulsed beneath me.

Seconds into the exchange, I felt the change in her: the softening of her lips, the faint smell of citrus in the water, the weight of her hands turning from a push to a pull as she held me closer.

She gasped, first with exhaustion and then with surprise. I didn’t know if the surprise came from her coming back into herself or from the wretched sight of me. I had never felt such anguish as that which I had just taken from her. From the way the world looked through my eyes now, I was sure my face was black and hollow. I doubled over from the pain of having absorbed such an overload of negative energy. It was worse than I could have ever imagined.

Lily pulled me back to her and kissed me again, wrapping herself around me as if she meant to protect me from the world. Our bodies twisted into one, like two trees that had grown too close together. She said my name over and over like the chorus to a song. Her hands were in my hair … and she was filling me again, but this time with something that buoyed me back up to the living.

Her thoughts were a whisper, as if she had no idea of the chaos that was happening around us.
“What did you do to me?”

“I saved you,”
I gasped.
“It was my turn.”

Lily released me and smiled for just a second when I lifted my head. But then something else caught her attention, reminding her of where we were.

Maris and Pavati circled each other, their tails lashing back and forth.

“What are they saying?”
I asked.
“What are they fighting over?”

“Danny,”
she said.

My relief at my mother’s safety outweighed any concern I had for Daniel Catron. He, at least, had chosen his fate. My
mom hadn’t chosen danger. I’d put her in that position.
“Then my mom’s still safe in the boat.”

Lily turned to me in horror when she realized whom her prey had been.

Before I could confirm the question in her eyes, we both turned in panic at the coppery smell of blood in the water.

“Danny!”
Lily cried as Daniel’s body went limp and slowly sank deeper, his arms raising to his sides and then up over his head.

Pavati chased after him, a streak of blue, then there was a loud crack and a burning smell in the water.

“Oh, man,”
I whispered.

“Danny,”
Lily whispered, as he raced away with Pavati, hand in hand, matching blue tails bending and arcing through the water, a trail of silver bubbles in their wake.

Maris, in her fury, charged the boat again. She would pacify herself with a victim, any victim, one way or another.

Lily screamed,
“Help!”

“What do you need?”
I asked.

“Not you,”
she said.
“Nadia. She owes me.”

I would have protested, but before I could speak, Lily gripped the pendant in her fist and closed her eyes.

“I did my part,”
she said, but she wasn’t talking to me.
“Maris is not keeping her promise to you. If you want your family—what’s left of it—to be together, you need to step in. You still have time. You still have time.”
Lily was practically chanting now.
“There’s still time to intervene.”

I reached out for her. She must have been delirious if she thought Nadia was going to come to anyone’s rescue.
My fingers, however, were not met by her hand. Instead, they found an electricity surrounding Lily like a force field. It pulsed from the pendant like a heartbeat, throbbing, then pounding, then beating with a deafening noise. I covered my ears and closed my eyes as we all rose to the surface.

I
t started with a trembling. A thin layer of silver water vibrated on the surface of the dark lake like rain on a snare drum. Taut. Tense. Bouncing. A tremor of electricity raced through my veins, and instinctively I surfaced to search the sky. Storm clouds tumbled over one another like wrestling children, but no sign of lightning, no sound of thunder. Oh, God, what had I done now?

I dropped my gaze just in time to see a stampede of droplets skitter across the surface like tiny beads of mercury, rolling, then racing, all bound for one central point. Maris
retreated a few strokes and stared. I could hear Calder breathing heavily behind me, and my mouth fell open.

“Lily, do you know what you’re doing?” he asked.

Of course not. When did I ever? I’d always gone with my gut and things rarely turned out the way I planned. Still, it was the only way I knew how to do anything.

At the point where the beads of water joined, they leapt from the lake like rain in reverse, then a small fountain shot upward, collapsed, then shot higher. A geyser in Lake Superior. I was hyperaware of everything around me.

Gabby screamed and scuttled backward, falling onto the floor of the boat. Mrs. Boyd held Adrian with one arm and wrapped the other protectively around Sophie, who declined the comfort and went to stand at the rail. Maris cowered behind me and Calder.

We were all pinned in place—spellbound—by what took shape in the geyser: a head, a slender neck, beautiful shoulders, and the suggestion of arms. The geyser collapsed, followed by a terrifying hush, then shot up again in a roaring rush of sound, towering over us by twenty feet, this time holding its form.

“Holy hell,” Calder mumbled.

“Nadia,” I said.

Then came the voice. It was just as in my dreams, but deeper and farther away, as if she were speaking through a tunnel, or from a grave.

“You’re not all here,” she said, her voice tumbling. “Where’s Pavati? And Tallulah?”

Calder grabbed my hand and pulled me behind him as
if he’d forgotten I was the one who’d summoned her. What would we say? How could I explain all that had happened?

“It’s my fault,” Maris said.

“Maris?” Nadia asked.

“I failed you.”

“Who called me?” Nadia asked.

A small whimper escaped my lips, and Nadia spotted the pendant around my neck.

“My daughter,” Dad said, swimming up behind me. I could sense his irritation at having found me missing from my room. “Your granddaughter.”

Nadia’s face softened at the first sight of her grown son—if softening was possible in the watery mask—and I swear I could see the love there. She rushed at my dad, making a giant wave and engulfing him in an embrace that took him under.

The lake fell quiet. Then Dad resurfaced behind Maris, his face shocked but exuberant, as the geyser shot up again.

“You came home,” she said to my dad. Then she looked at me and Calder. “Did you find the Thin Woman? McElroy?”

“I did,” Calder said, gesturing at the boat.

The pillar of water twisted like a cyclone and found Mrs. Boyd, who still held Adrian tight. She stood alongside Sophie and Gabby at the rail. Her mouth hung open in awe.

Nadia twisted again, finding me. “You did well.”

I beamed with pride, and Maris let out a howl of betrayal. She flung herself from the water, arching into a back dive that marked her angry retreat.

Calder lunged and grabbed her arm, catching her. He
yanked her to his side and forcibly turned her chin to face Nadia. “Oh, no you don’t,” Calder said through gritted teeth. “Stand and face the music, Maris.”

“There is no music to face, sweetheart,” Nadia said to Maris, but based on the beautiful sound of her watery voice, that matter was up for debate.

The pillar that was Nadia curved and bent toward her oldest daughter. “Don’t be ashamed, Maris. It was wrong of me to put so much responsibility on one so young.”

Maris couldn’t look at her mother. She closed her eyes and, still held tightly in Calder’s hands, wrenched her head back and forth.

“I’m better off on my own,” Maris spit through a locked jaw. She clawed at Calder’s hands, trying to pull herself free. “I don’t want to be a family with the likes of these. How do you expect me to look at them and not remember how they hurt you?”

“I’m not asking you to forget,” Nadia said. “I’m asking you to forgive. To forgive them, to forgive me, and to forgive yourself.”

Maris shrieked and sent a shock wave of pain through the water. Calder’s hands flew back. I heard myself yell “No!” And with a flash of white light, Maris made her escape.

N
adia melted away into the lake, finally laid to rest, her promise to Mrs. Boyd fulfilled. Lily held the pendant in her fingers, looking at it anew. “She’s gone,” she said, but she didn’t have to tell me. I could feel her go. We could all sense Nadia’s relief. The lake stilled to a glassy calm, warmer than it had been all season.

As soon as the water went quiet, Jason raced back home to tend to Mrs. H. He had revived her, just as I had done for the kayaker, but there had never been a proper reinvigoration. None of us knew whether the shock that had killed
her would also change the course of the disease. I had my doubts, but only time would tell.

Sophie captained the Pettits’ Sun Sport back to shore with Adrian slung over her shoulder, while Gabby and my mother huddled on the floor of the boat, in shock over what they’d seen. Honestly, I was no less in shock. We would try to explain everything to them later.

Maris was gone for good. We knew that as soon as Pavati and Daniel returned to check on their child, and Pavati said she could no longer hear Maris in the lake—the mental thread that bound them finally cut.

I wondered at the tenuous reunification of our family. Jason’s promise to join Maris meant nothing now that she had severed the familial ties, and I had to admit that Pavati’s actions in the lake made me more inclined to trust her as our new matriarch. The future looked brighter than it ever had.

For now, though, I could barely take my eyes off Lily, as she lay on top of the water, entirely peaceful, basking in the spot where the pillar of water had dissolved. I imagined Lily could still feel the love there.

Shards of pink light radiated from her tail, nearly blinding me. The way I felt brought Lily’s poets back to memory. I was tempted to quote them—something about loving her to the depth and breadth and height my soul could reach. But the words didn’t sound like enough, so I didn’t ruin her moment.

She was the most amazing creature I’d ever seen. Because of her, I was more than I’d ever been before. I had a family. A real family. And it was bigger and better than anything I
could have hoped for. I had a past. I had an identity. I was Patrick McElroy. My evolution was complete.

I gave Lily one more look—memorizing the image—before heading to shore.

Later that night, as we sat around the fireplace in the Hancocks’ cozy living room, I watched the light flicker across all the faces I loved: Jason’s, Carolyn’s, Sophie’s, and Lily’s most of all. Mrs. Boyd sat silently, wrapped in a blanket, recovering from the day, holding Adrian.

Lily couldn’t say sorry enough, but Mrs. Boyd … 
Mom
(that was going to be hard to get used to) would have none of it. Seemed she was having trouble connecting her former employee with the memory of the sea monster who had nearly killed her.

After Mom left, making me promise to come see her in the morning, and after Sophie fell asleep, Lily stood up and pulled me outside and onto the front porch.

She rose on the balls of her feet. “Patrick,” she said, kissing me once. “I guess I could get used to calling you that.”

I wrapped my arms around her and laced my fingers behind her back. “It doesn’t matter what you call me, so long as you let me stay.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“Oh, I think I’m entitled.”

She bowed her head, gently bumping her forehead against my chest three times. “You know I was right to send you away. How could you doubt how I felt about you?”

“Chalk it up to a lifetime of insecurity. But you’re right. I should never have doubted you. From the first time I met
you I knew you were something special. You’ve proved that to me over and over again. I guess, when you told me Nadia was talking to you, I was just too scared to believe it.”

“Well, you don’t have a monopoly on fear, but … I think that part is over for now.”

Lily led me off the porch to our hammock. She had me get in first before crawling in, curling her body to mine.

“So,” she said.

“So?” I asked, running my fingers up and down her spine. She shivered and pulled herself closer to me, which was, of course, the desired effect.

“Maybe we can get back to that conversation we were having?” she suggested.

“Which conversation was that?”

She tipped her head back and looked at me with a serious expression. “The one that was so rudely interrupted.” Her silvery eyes shone in the moonlight, and I sucked in my breath at their intensity.

I tangled my fingers in her long hair and reveled in the return of the happy pink light that shimmered from her shoulders, the tip of her nose, the curve of her ears. Even though I knew what she was talking about, I played dumb. “You lost me.”

Lily blushed and looked out toward the lake. “You know the one. The one about our future.”

A small laugh rumbled low in my chest. “Oh, that. Well, I had plenty of time to think about that while I was out on my own. It was probably a stupid idea. Just the result of an impulsive moment—”

“Calder!” she said, slapping my chest with her palms.

I grabbed her wrists and held both her hands between our bodies. “But …,” I hedged. “I’m known to be impulsive. I’m sure the moment will hit again someti—”

“If you won’t do it, then I will.”

“No … wait … I think I feel something coming on.…” I released her hands and reached into my pocket. With only a second of hesitation, I took out the circle of braided copper and slipped it on her waiting finger. The polished surface of the banded agate shone in the lights from the kitchen window. “I’m not perfect,” I said.

She kept her eyes on her hand.

“But I’ll try really hard to be that perfect Tennyson merman you’ve always wanted.”