Promise Bound (7 page)

Actually, clear thoughts were hard to come by these days. I needed the water. I needed to swim. I could work out what to do about Gabby, if only I had a chance to clear my mind.

I raced home and skidded the car into the driveway, kicking up dust and gravel. The late-afternoon air evaporated the beads of nervous sweat from my face and neck as I ran to the lake, pulled off my leg warmers, and waded in. Technically I was supposed to wait until Friday, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

I needed the calm the water would bring—even if I had to endure the back-to-human transformation earlier than planned. Plus, it would be nice to be alone. Funny—I’d swum
alone plenty before my first transformation, back when Calder and Dad were gone on their perpetual training days, but never again. Calder was ever-vigilant since I’d made the change, even before Maris and Pavati came back. It was like he was watching for me to have a nervous breakdown or something. It didn’t matter how many times I told him how right I felt when I was in the water, how happy I was to be fully me, the me I was born to be. All he could ever see was the pain that followed.

Besides the beauty of being in my mermaid form, the fantastic speed, or even the pain, the hardest thing to get used to was the lack of privacy. Every Friday I was sometimes entertained, but mostly irritated, by the cacophony of thoughts that flooded Dad’s and Calder’s minds. Calder’s thoughts could be downright lustful, though he’d try to catch himself before the shocking images drifted on the current toward me or, God forbid, Dad, who (no surprise) became quite the chaperone.

Now that the ice had melted, I’d be privy to Maris’s and Pavati’s thoughts, too—just as I had been last summer. We were family, whether Calder liked it or not. As he’d once explained, we were beads on a bracelet—strung together—sometimes sliding together, sometimes sliding apart. Despite the apparent improvement in mer-relations, Calder warned me to stay clear—that Maris and Pavati were unpredictable at best, dangerous at worst. I knew that, but my need to swim trumped any risk they might pose.

I walked toward the privacy of the willow tree—I could almost smell the charred trunk from my dream—and dropped
my clothes onto its fallen branch that reached twenty feet across the shallows. Standing naked amid the budding foliage, I held my arms out wide, reveling in the wind, the lake air tingling my nose, and the sunlight and shadow dappling my skin.

I walked in—waist deep—and made a shallow dive. The explosion of pent-up energy was nearly instantaneous. How I wished the transformation back to legs could be as quick. I relaxed into my new form and swam straight north toward Red Cliff.

I reached forward with both arms and pulled myself through the water, my raspberry-pink tail undulating rhythmically behind me, pushing me. I wasn’t in a hurry. I wasn’t going anywhere special.

I squinted through the water, unable to navigate by sight and smell like Calder did. But I could hear just as well, and there was an unexpected vibration in the water.

I reached out with my mind to see who it was, catching muffled sounds, then the familiar clipped tone of Maris White.

“Good afternoon,”
she said with a smirk.
“I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”

I
stepped out onto the Hancocks’ front porch, surprised to see Lily’s car parked in the driveway. Reflexively, I looked back at the house, as if she were inside and I’d somehow
missed her return. But I knew better. And so did she. So what the hell was she thinking?

When I got to the dock and searched the lake, there was no sign of Lily. Neither was there any sign of Pavati. I crossed my arms over my head and pulled my T-shirt up and off, dropping it on the dry deck boards. Still nothing. No one. Not even a ripple. I pushed my shorts down to my ankles and stepped out.

“Where are you going, Calder?”

“Gah!” I cried, covering myself while Sophie giggled from her bedroom window. Clearly living with the Hancocks had caused me to lose my touch for being discreet. I dove and sliced the water before Sophie saw more than she should.

It had been a long time since I’d swum alone. I tried to remember, and decided it had been that day at Square Lake—the first time I saw Lily since my escape and her exile. Ever since then, I’d either been with Jason, or Lily, or both. The quiet was a nice change, though I couldn’t help but consider the inconvenience of no longer being able to hear my former sisters’ thoughts in the water.

My instincts told me Pavati would be close—north of the ferry line, south of Basswood, and somewhere in the space between Madeline and the mainland. It wasn’t long before I heard the tinny sound of bracelets sliding along an arm.

Pavati must have felt my disturbance in the water, because she swam directly toward me, smiling in greeting. I was fairly sure she was, out of habit, trying to communicate, but I couldn’t hear anything. She frowned at my nonresponse
and pointed to the surface. I followed her up, and we broke through the rough chop. The white-capped waves slapped against my face.

“Calder,” she said, her face melting into a familiar, dangerously compelling smile.

I looked past her shoulder to avoid getting pulled in by her hypnotic skills. They were better than mine, but I knew her tricks. Perhaps she’d forgotten.

She laid her hand gently against my cheek, but I took her wrist between my forefinger and thumb and lowered it back into the water.

She clicked her tongue. “Fine. I guess I understand why you’re still bitter.”

My eyes twitched in her direction, but then I looked away again.

“What can you tell me about my baby?” she asked, circling me, letting her delicate fluke breach the surface and catch the sun in dazzling cobalt blue. “Is Ambuj settled in with his father?”

“Daniel Catron,”
I said, reminding her of his name, “is calling the baby Adrian.”

“Hmm. I suppose that will do.” She continued to circle. “No, I like it. Tell him I like it.”

“I will, but I want you to tell me something.”

“Anything,” she said. Her whole demeanor softened, her eyes dimming from violet to lavender. Why the generosity? What did she want from me? There had to be some selfish motivation behind her smile.

“Tell me about the letter you sent Lily,” I said, cracking
my tail like a whip to keep up with her as she continued to circle.

Pavati’s mouth pulled into a close-lipped smile. “She didn’t tell you herself?”

“She’s been keeping a few secrets lately.”

Pavati turned to swim away, but I caught her before she dove.

She looked down at my hand, circling her wrist and said, “Well, who am I to—”

“Pavati.” I glared at her.

“Fine. If you insist. Maris is jealous of … Adrian.”

“Jealous?” I asked. “Wha—Why?”

“Now that I’m a mother, she thinks I’ll take over as head of the family.”

“That’s what you want?”

“Actually, it never occurred to me until I caught her thinking about it. She tried to scramble her thoughts right away, but it was too late. And … well … would that be so terrible?”

“Pavati, the letter?”

Pavati led me to a quiet cove, where the spring runoff had cut an inlet into the Basswood shore. She pulled herself up onto a semisubmerged rock and tipped her head back to soak up the sun. I stayed out deeper, growing more impatient with her delay.

“The letter?” I asked again.

“I’m getting to that.” Pavati reached down and picked off bits of plant life that were stuck to her scales, flicking them onto the rock.

A low growl rumbled in my chest, and she rolled her
eyes as she squeezed the water from her hair. “I sent Lily a letter after the New Year. I suggested to her that Jason, and you, and she might join me. Stage a coup, if you will. Actually, I was hoping Sophie might have changed by now, too.”

“I thought you liked Sophie.”

Pavati shot me a scandalized look. “I do! What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that the change hasn’t been good to Lily. It hasn’t come easy and it doesn’t show any signs of getting better. I’m surprised you’d want to put the little girl through that kind of pain.”

“I didn’t know.”

I believed her, and even though I knew better, it warmed me to her. “Did Lily ever respond?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“Pavati, I don’t have the patience for this.”

“No. She hasn’t. Not yet.”

Thank God. At least Lily wasn’t keeping too many secrets. If she had promised to join Pavati, I’d have more serious problems than Daniel. “We’re not going to join you, Pavati.”

“Things would be different if I were the matriarch.”

“Not so different.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Getting knocked unconscious has not hurt my short-term memory. Lily may be able to forgive, but it’s still not something I’ve mastered.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Pavati said. “Do you think any of that would have happened if I’d been heading up this family? Do you think any of us would have endured
those decades of hatred, searching for Hancock, taking down all those misidentified souls?”

“It would have been the same. A promise was a promise. So long as Maris had us believing one had been broken—”

Pavati slid off the rock and swam toward me, coming up under my chin, her lips nearly brushing against mine.

I made a noise at the back of my throat to show my revulsion and turned away. She grabbed my shoulders before I could leave. “I’m begging you, Calder. I can’t raise my child under Maris. Look what a mess she made of your life. You’ve never been whole.”

I pushed her away to gain some distance. “Leave Lily alone.”

She shook her head. “I can’t promise that.”

“What is Daniel’s place in this?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Will you keep him?” I asked.

“What? Commit? Take a husband?” She laughed. “Oh … I see! This isn’t about me, is it? You’re wondering about you and Lily. Marriage is not for our kind, Calder. Don’t go trying to impose human foolishness on me. Or yourself. That’s always been your downfall. You’re not human.”

“I used to be. I’m trying to be. And Lily still is.”

“You think?”

“And I didn’t say anything about marriage.” I’d always known there was no mermaid equivalency to marriage, although in many ways we were better suited for it than any other species. We held our vows sacred.

“If we were to join you,” I said, “who would be left to keep an eye on Daniel? To make sure he returned Adrian
next spring? Don’t you want some assurance? Leave me and the Hancocks alone, and we’ll do you that favor. You’ll have Adrian back, on schedule.”

“But if Maris is still in charge of this family, is that really what’s best for him?”

“You can’t mean to leave the baby with Daniel forever? The boy is clueless. He doesn’t know which end to kiss and which end to wipe.”

“If you’re sure Daniel has no interest in being a father, then your decision should be easy. He doesn’t need watching. Join me. Lily and Jason will follow. We’ll be four strong against Maris. In another year, we’ll be five.”

“And if you’re wrong and Daniel becomes a liability?”

She shrugged. “It will be my score to settle. I won’t put it on the rest of my family like Maris did. You and Lily can live your life however you want. Even if you mean to marry her.” The corners of her mouth twitched with amusement. “Like I said. Easy.”

She made a persuasive argument, but still … “There’s one thing I know for sure, Pavati. There’s too much history between us and none of it was ever easy.”

M
aris. Just my luck. I flipped around and tore off in the opposite direction.
Oh
, I thought,
Calder will not like this. Or Dad
.

Maris was having the same thoughts, but unlike me, she
was enjoying them. Plus, she seemed to be enjoying the pursuit. I tried to read her thoughts while hiding my own. I was surprised to find she was making no attempt at hiding hers. Maris’s mind was still a new frontier for me. Clearly, she had no more need or intention to hurt Dad. In fact, she was supremely curious about him.
What color is his tail? How fast is he?
And most of all: would he join her before Pavati staked her claim?
If I had first dibs on the Hancocks
, she thought, not caring that I heard,
that would make all the difference
.

So Maris knew that Pavati had asked me to join her? At least that was one secret I wasn’t going to have to keep from her, because as fast as I was, Maris kept up easily. In fact, it didn’t seem like she was exerting much effort at all.

The consequence of being a Half
, Maris thought, answering my frustration. Within seconds she was even with me, swimming in tandem. I wouldn’t look at her and pretended she wasn’t there, which made me feel ridiculous.

Darting in and out of sea caves, making abrupt turns around boulders, I raced through the underwater topography, but Maris matched my every move. Worse, she mocked every confused and nervous rattle of my mind. She took sadistic pleasure in the discomfort she caused, so I stopped. If I couldn’t outrun her, why go along for the ride?

Maris pulled up, too, and held her arms out to me, palms up. Her pale hair floated around her face like an angel’s.
“Peace,”
she said, which was about the last word I expected her to say. When I stared at her openmouthed, she repeated the word as a question, clear and bell-like in my mind.

The green beach glass pendant hung low around my
neck. Maris stared at it for a few heavy seconds before looking up to meet my gaze.
“Does it work?”
she asked.
“Have you heard our stories? What does Calder say about it?”

I hesitated.
“He’d rather I didn’t wear it.”

“That’s because it contains stories that he doesn’t want you to hear.”
Maris took my hands in a firm grip, lacing her fingers through mine. She pulled back the veil, revealing even more of her thoughts and inviting me in. I knew it wasn’t going to be a picnic. By the way Maris’s thoughts twitched, I could tell not even she enjoyed the workings of her mind. I winced as I slogged through her memories—it was like treading in molten tar. Maris almost seemed sympathetic.