Authors: MaryJanice Davidson
Fish Out of Water (9 page)
Twenty-seven
“Awesome!” Jonas screamed, badly startling the saleswoman. “Princess Fred! Ohmigod! I can’t stand it!”
“I can’t stand it, either. Stop yelling.” Fred, standing in front of the full-length mirror, scowled at her reflection. The dress was salmon-colored, had a mermaid skirt (doubtless Jonas’s idea of a subtle joke) and a low-cut bodice and beading on the sleeves, and it clashed horribly with her hair. Odd. Jonas usually had much better taste than this. “And I’ll bite your ears off if you make me buy this one.”
“It wouldn’t be in
that
color. Be serious. I told you: apple red. Dr. Barb’s sister and cousin and you are all wearing apple red. Just like my tie and cummerbund are apple red—don’t you remember?”
“No.”
“Oh, look who I’m talking to.”
She nodded in agreement. The small bridal shop was jammed with dresses of every size, shape, and color. An entire wall was devoted to white satin shoes. Another wall: clutch handbags in every style and color you could imagine. Playing over the speakers:
Trumpet Voluntary.
Well, that part wasn’t so bad.
“So! When should I throw the party?”
“Party?” She had disappeared back into the dressing room to try on dress number four. She couldn’t get dress number three off fast enough—she thought she heard a seam tear. Fuck it. “What party?”
“Your engagement party, dumbass! Let’s see . . . we should probably have it at your rental house, since it’s the—”
Fred groaned. Slipped number four over her head. Hmm. This one didn’t entirely suck.
She stepped out. “Forget it. Artur and I have some Undersea Folk junk to look into. After the dust clears you can throw your stupid party.”
“And don’t forget, I’m planning your wedding.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said with complete and total sincerity.
“Now
that’s
not bad,” Jonas said, eyeing her up and down critically. She knew his taste was quite a bit better than hers and was happy to follow (fashion-wise) where he led. But she couldn’t help agreeing. Strapless, with a tight-fitting bodice. A-line, with the skirt falling straight to the floor, just past her ankles. And the color was right: apple red. It made her hair seem even greener, almost the color of pine trees. And her eyes—the color did wonderful things to her eyes!
“We’re done,” Jonas told the saleslady. Then, to Fred, “See, see? Not even half an hour. You should trust me more often.”
“I’m still digesting cake, you awful man. Never,” she vowed, popping back into the dressing room to get back into her shorts, ratty T-shirt, and flip-flops.
“Behold,” Jonas said mockingly as she stepped out. “The future queen of the Undersea Folk. At least they won’t care if you don’t wear a bra in the
“I hate bras,” she muttered and stomped toward the front of the store to pay for the damned dress.
Twenty-eight
Thomas had left a note saying he was meeting some colleagues at the Florida Aquarium in
That was how she found out Artur hated being closed up in automobiles.
“For God’s sake,” she said, amazed, “you’re perfectly safe.”
Artur had his legs drawn up under his chin. His seat belt was tightened to the point of asphyxiation. He was trying not to huddle and failing. “All these metal boxes, hurtling by at ridiculous speeds. Madness, madness.”
“You’ve never been in a car before?” She was dumbfounded. Then remembered this was a merman who lived at the bottom of the
“No. I was on a train, once . . . in
She managed not to groan. “Don’t tell me. You’re claustrophobic.”
“I don’t know that term,” he said, and she didn’t think he’d ever been so white before.
“It means that you don’t like small, enclosed spaces, um, mighty prince who conquers worlds and women with green hair.”
He laughed hollowly, then cringed when a semi zipped by them, blaring its air horn. Fred flipped the driver the bird with both hands.
“Keep your hands on the steering device!”
“It’s fine, see? I’m steering with my knee.”
“Please don’t,” he moaned.
“Artur, for God’s sake. You’ve taken on pirates, great whites, survived a coup, and you’re marrying me. I can’t believe you’re scared of anything, much less being in a car.”
“I am not scared! I am . . . cautious.”
She snorted. “Look, here’s the exit. We’re almost there, so don’t pee your shorts just yet.”
“You will show me the nearest body of water when we leave this place. I will swim back. You should join me.”
“And abandon my rental car? Forget it. Think of the paperwork!”
“Paperwork?”
“I signed a contract,” she said solemnly, trying not to laugh at him. “It’s a very serious thing among surface dwellers, you know. Rental car contracts.”
“I know of contracts. I would not want you to break your word. That would not befit my princess.”
“And it would wreck my credit rating, too.”
They pulled into the parking lot, picked up their visitor passes from a ticket seller, and went looking for Thomas.
Artur cheered up considerably once he was out of the compact car, and eyed the exhibits with great interest.
“Cheer up, brothers,” he said softly, standing in front of an exhibit of manta rays. “You are safe here and well fed. Were you free, you would be meat.”
“Stop talking to the rays,” Fred muttered, noticing the odd looks they were getting. She absolutely did not,
did not
, want to be recognized today. She and Artur had urgent business with Thomas. The business of her people.
My people,
she mused.
Huh. Always before I’ve said my father’s people. But they’re just as much mine. Why didn’t I see that before? Too busy hiding from myself, I guess. Poor Artur has no idea he’s marrying a coward.
“I could not help it,” he said, sounding wounded. “They spoke to me first. Besides, you cannot speak to them on land, so it seemed rude to indulge in an ability you do not share.”
Fred raised her eyebrows. That had come up before, her lack of telepathy on land. Artur had been almost embarrassed when he’d realized it. Was that going to be a problem for them?
She’d worry about it later, and for now led him away from the exhibit. She thought she heard someone say her name and she turned. But Thomas wasn’t there.
They continued their search, separating so Artur could have a good long drink at the water fountain while Fred continued looking, eventually finding herself standing at the top of Shark Bay.
She peered in and saw sand tiger sharks, blacktips, zebra sharks. An impressively large sea turtle. Lionfish—big-time poisonous. Triggerfish. Dragon moray eels. Jellies. It really was—
“It’s you! You’re that mermaid I saw on TV!”
Stifling a groan, Fred turned. Several teenagers were standing behind her, all with gaping jaws and reeking of Stridex. “Hi,” she said.
“Ohmigod! This is, like, rilly, rilly cool,” one of the girls said, chewing a piece of gum roughly the size of her fist. “Like, you’re a mermaid ’n’ stuff! Cool!”
Fred mentally groaned. The girl sounded awfully like Madison, the twit intern at the New England Aquarium. An hour with
Even if she hadn’t needed to spend her time as a press liaison, never having to lay eyes on
“Ohmigod, it’s really you!”
“Yeah, it is, but I can’t really talk right—”
They were getting closer, pattering her with inane questions, and she automatically backed up.
“—how do you have sex with a tail?”
“—true your mom isn’t a mermaid, so you’re, like, both?”
“—howcum all the mermaids are rilly, rilly hot? It doesn’t make sense. You mean there’s not one fugly mermaid in the whole world? Not
one
?”
“Apparently not,” one of the boys said, “and it’s awesome!”
“Hey!” she snapped, feeling her thighs touch the rim at the top of the shark tank. “Back off, annoying adolescents, like that’s not redundant.”
But just then, worse luck, a classroom of teeming third-graders (she guessed, given their height and general grubbiness) burst onto the floor, pushing into the teenagers, who in turn pushed into Fred.
Who in turn toppled backward and fell into
Twenty-nine
Getting oxygen was no problem, of course, but she couldn’t swim without her tail. She couldn’t even dog-paddle. She was as graceless in the water with legs as a penguin was on land.
So she flailed and wriggled and found herself upside down and batted aside the sea turtle and in general thrashed about like a dying seal.
She could see them.
She could see them
looking
at her, their noses pressed against the glass, their mouths open as they jabbered excitedly.
And damned if she was going to shift to her tail in front of a bunch of
She heard the hollow boom of water being displaced several feet above her head—someone diving into the tank. Ah, the final humiliation . . . rescued by a staff member and then hustled off the property by security. Must be Tuesday.
A strong hand seized her by the bicep and she felt herself being pulled toward the surface. She kicked, trying to help, and nearly got stung by a lionfish for her trouble. She had no idea if she was immune to their venom, so that was the end of the kicking.
They broke the surface and her rescuer took a deep breath.
“Hi, Thomas.” She wiped limp green hair out of her eyes. No, that was seaweed. Yech. She tossed it behind her. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
He grinned at her and she noticed he hadn’t taken off any of his clothes, just jumped in after her. “You thought I was in the shark tank? Come on.”
He climbed up the ladder, stretched down a hand, and hauled her out of the tank.
Everyone was
looking.
“Please,” Fred said, and to her horror, she was near tears. “Please make them go away.”
And she sank to the floor, miserable and drenched, and Thomas signaled someone and held her while the top of the tank was cleared of tourists.
Thirty
“Little Rika, what in the name of the king . . . ?”
She was still huddled in Thomas’s arms like some pathetic romance-novel heroine, but the threatening tears had abated. Now all she wanted was a towel and a Cobb salad. Oh, and to pretend that the last five minutes hadn’t happened.
Meanwhile, Artur was standing over them, hands on his hips, looking astonished and worried.
“What did you do?” he asked again.
“I fell in.”
Artur squatted beside her and Thomas. “Clearly. But why in the world did you need Dr. Pearson to help you?”
Fred said nothing. She liked Artur fine, and was more than a little horny for him, and was looking forward to
(running away)
starting a new life in the
“Are you kidding?” Thomas snapped. “D’you think she wanted to nude up and shift to her tail in front of two hundred gaping tourists? Bad enough she can’t go anywhere without being bugged. She’s not a goddamned exhibit.”
Aw, rats. Here came the tears again . . . tears of sheer gratitude.
She would have done anything for him then.
Anything at all.
“You are wrong.” Artur’s face—his expression bothered her—annoyed and disbelieving and something else, something she could almost put her finger on, something like
(shame)
embarrassment. For him? Or for her?
“You are wrong. My Rika cares not at all about what strangers think.”
“He’s right,” she said quietly. “Thomas is, I mean. I didn’t want to do that. Change in front of everybody.”
Artur’s brow furrowed. “But—but, Rika, why? Surely you’re not shamed by your beautiful breasts and tail. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “the nudity taboo surface dwellers insist on could be problematic, in addition to being quite silly. But you need not keep your hybrid nature a secret . . . Why, much of the country knows!”
“Look, I’m not a circus act, okay? They were all staring. I hate being stared at.”
“I do not understand,” he said flatly, mouth a grim slash. “It is not behavior that becomes one of the royal family.”
“Well,” she said. “I guess you’re wrong about that one.”
“Your behavior is senseless.”
“Oh, shut your piehole, Artur!” she snapped, straightening. She realized that Thomas had been holding her the entire time Artur had been nagging her. The big lug didn’t mind
that
, oh, no. But her tail shyness, that was the big problem.
For the first time, she truly understood the chasm that lay between her upbringing and his.
“I do not know what that means,” he said flatly.
“It means get off my back. You’re not the one being stopped on the street damned near every day. You’re not the one who has to talk to insipid reporters every week. You’re not the one on the cover of the
National Enquirer
with the so-flattering headline, ‘Freak Mermaid Pregnant with Alien Baby.’ ”
“But you agreed to all this.”
“I know! But sometimes it’s a little much, that’s all. You don’t have to act like I stuck a knife into the worldwide morale of Undersea Folk.”
“Uh, guys?” Thomas cleared his throat. “Listen, sorry to interrupt, but why don’t we go somewhere a little more private? You said you needed to talk to me about a big problem with the Undersea Folk?”
Artur and Fred glared at each other for a few more charged seconds, then Artur cut his glance away and said, “You are correct, Thomas. We require your help.”
“Aw.” Thomas beamed. “The Team Supreme, together again.”
“Let’s hope nobody gets shot this time,” Fred said sourly.
Thirty-one
“What do you mean, disappearing? They’re not showing up where they’re supposed to, or dead bodies are showing up, or what?”
Thomas had asked, very politely, if he could introduce her to his colleagues at the aquarium, and she had agreed. They seemed pleasant and professional, if a little wide-eyed, and asked no weird or deeply personal questions. For marine biologists face-to-face with a mermaid, Fred admired their self-control. She doubted she would have been able to equal it.
And then, after handshakes all around (and a formal presentation of a lifetime pass to the Florida Aquarium . . . Fred imagined it was their equivalent to the key to the city), they graciously withdrew, and the director said they could use her office, which is where they were now.
Artur was answering Thomas’s question, and thank goodness, because Fred had forgotten what it was, so busy was she studying her lifetime aquarium pass (laminated!).
“My father cannot find them. They have disappeared from his mind.”
“Bummer,” Thomas commented. Fred knew he wasn’t being flip. At least, he didn’t
mean
to be flip. He just had no idea how to process the information at this time, but still felt he had to contribute to the conversation. “I know your dad’s a pretty powerful telepath—”
“The most powerful,” Artur corrected, not without pride. “It is that to be king. I, the heir apparent, am second most powerful.”
“Whoa, wait,” Fred interrupted. “So how come you didn’t notice any of this?”
“Second powerful is still much less powerful than my good father,” Artur explained. “He is much, much older than I.”
Fred nodded. Artur, though he didn’t look it, was in his early fifties . . . fully two decades older than she was. Mekkam was over a hundred.
“Okay, so that answers that. Is it possible a bunch of them got—I don’t know, the Undersea Folk equivalent of the bubonic plague and died all at once?”
Artur was already shaking his head. “No, Thomas. Were they dying, my king would feel it. They are simply . . . vanishing from his mind. Where once he could sense a vibrant, living being, there is now only silence.”
“How many?”
“Four hundred seventy-eight.”
Fred met Thomas’s dismayed gaze and felt a similar expression on her own face. Almost five hundred! In less than a year!
“What—what do you want me to do? How can I help?”
Artur smiled for the first time in a long, long day. “Thomas, my people have a saying: we are made stronger by the honor our opponents hold. And at this moment you have made me strong indeed. We
do
need your help. We were hoping you might get in touch with your sire.”
“Dad?” Thomas frowned, and then his dark eyes lit up. “Right! Navy Intelligence. You think the government’s being sneaky, don’t you?”
Artur looked at the floor, unwilling to offend a former opponent whom he had always respected. Fred had no such compunctions. “It’s happened before, Thomas. It’s been happening since there
was
a government.”
Thomas ran a hand through his shaggy dark hair and nodded. “Yep, can’t deny that one. Well, Dad’s been retired, but he still holds the rank of captain. And he’s got a whole bunch of buddies still on active duty. I’ll call him right now.” Thomas laughed. “He’ll be thrilled his sissy son needs his help.”
Fred’s mouth fell open. “Whaaaaat? The captain thinks Switchblade Pearson is a sissy?”
“I didn’t go into the military,” he said simply.
“I regret asking you to do anything that will put any strain on your relationship with your sire.”
“Forget about it, Artur. This is a shitload more important than Dad and me.”
“I thank you.”
“But you’re a doctor,” Fred said, dumbfounded. “And a Ph.D.! And you’ve got street smarts and you designed the URV and you’re a bestselling author and—sissy?”
Thomas grinned. “Bestselling
romance
author, don’t forget.”
Fred made a mental note to slug Captain Pearson when she met him. Who
wouldn’t
want their kid to be so brilliant he could turn his back on medicine and study an entirely new field? And kick ass in
both
fields? Military-minded moron.
“Well, thanks. Should we go to him, or will he come down here?”
“I happen to know that since retirement he’s been bored out of his tits.”
“Pardon?” Artur asked.
“Never mind. He’ll come down here. He’ll pretend it’s a huge inconvenience, but he’ll be here. And then I guess we’ll try to get to the bottom of this.” Thomas lost his habitual wiseass expression and sobered. “I hope your people aren’t dead, Artur. I’ll do everything I can to help you find them.”
They shook hands, surface-dweller style.
