Diary of a Radical Mermaid (7 page)

“My leg was injured in the car accident that killed my parents. I’ve got leukemia. I’ve always been frail. I’ve devoted myself to literature and to writing. Of course I’m different.”

“Well, la de dah, you’re the Bronte sisters and Emily Dickenson all rolled into one. A delicate flower of martyred bookworm-hood.”

What insults! Suddenly I remembered: I was M.M. Revere, the world’s bestselling children’s novelist next to J.K. Rowling. I was filthy, stinking rich. This loony dimwit couldn’t talk to me this way. I was M.M. Revere. Ducks adored me.

“I am leaving this room—”

“Oh, stop saying that. It bores me. Okay, I grant you: You don’t have the feet of a Water Person, but believe me, you’ve got the intuitions. Despite your tepid personality, with coaching you could develop some respectable abilities. Floaters aren’t hopeless, I always say. Just somewhat . . . retarded.”

“Your delusions are matched only by your lack of kindness and good manners.”

“Delusions? Try this on for size, you dusty little plain-toed ingrate.” She shut her eyes. “Lilith? Oh, Lilith? I need some help here. I told you I don’t make a good diplomat.”

The most amazing sensation filled my head. A beautiful voice sang to me, a voice like the finest alto in the finest choir, yet without melody. It was both sensual and maternal, orgasmic but spiritual.

You know where you belong, you know what you need, to live. Now come along, come along, Molly. Find out who you really are. Don’t be afraid. Dive in. Visit us in Georgia.

The voice, the vibration, faded away. I stood there, stunned, hypnotized.

Juna Lee Poinfax sighed dramatically. “I should have known Lilith would sing you into submission with one little pulse from her psychic cell tower. You are so easy.”

“What just happened to me?”

“Destiny, my little gimpy geek, destiny. That’s what Lilith calls it, anyway. You know you’ll come. You’ll come with me to the coast. If you don’t, you will get sick again, and eventually you’ll die. You need to be around your own kind — Water People. You need to find someone to love and be loved by before that decrepit Meow of yours goes to Kitty-Puss Heaven.”

Decrepit Meow? I snapped back to reality. I loathed Juna Lee Poinfax. “If this Lilith wants me to come to the coast and meet my . . . my alleged kind, tell her to write, call, e-mail, or visit me herself with the invitation. I’m certainly not trusting one word you say. You . . . you knot-headed Barbie. May I go now?”

Juna Lee Poinfax gave her last sigh, then handed me my cane. “You’ll regret it. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and every day for the rest of your life.”

“At least issue original threats. Don’t spout Humphrey Bogart’s lines from Casablanca.”

“Bogie was a Floater on his mother’s side.”

Trembling, I marched out of the shop. The ducks were waiting. The crowd applauded. “Oh, there you are,” my publishing rep said, as if I’d wandered off and everyone just noticed. “Ready to sign a few hundred books for your devoted fans?”

I was too shaken to do more than nod. How could I announce that my life had just taken a turn into The Twilight Zone?

* * * *

I kidnapped M.M. Revere the next day. Kidnapped her. Me, Juna Lee “Al Capone” Poinfax. So what? Once you’ve dissed Donald Trump and been banished from polite society, why not go all the way into a life of crime? Landers put up with celebrities who diddle children, with superstar jocks who ought to be neutered, and with politicians who steal the proverbial cookie jar and sell the cookies to China. Compared to that, I’m the Mother Theresa of Fin City. So cut me some slack, okay?

Here’s how I did it.

Her literary highness, Molly “Mallard” Revere, was a geek and a gimp, but she was also a Mer, whether she’d admit it or not. Which meant high altitudes made her want to hurl, so she didn’t take airplanes. Plus she carted her old kitty around with her when she went on book tours, and she’d decided the old puss needed the comforts of home. So she traveled in a gigantic customized bus, like some kind of gospel choir or country-western singer. Her personal bodyguard and driver was a fat middle-aged Boston-raised Irishman named Scotty. I guess he liked irony. Coaxing him away from the Peabody’s parking garage was like shooting Leprechauns in a barrel.

“Scotty, cute, handsome Scotty,” I purred, wrapping an arm around him as he stepped from the bus’s door. “Molly won’t be down from her room for at least twenty minutes. You deserve to treat yourself to a short pint and a smoke at the lobby bar before you steer this lummox back up the eastern seaboard.”

“Why thanks, lass, I believe you’re right. Uh, who are you? Have we met?”

“Only in your dreams.”

He laughed. Then he went inside the hotel, just like that.

Damn, I’m good, I thought. I’m the Obi-Wan Kenobi of mermaids. May the farce be with me.

I climbed inside the bus and prowled around. Molly’s framed bookcovers, a large poster from the first Water Hyacinth movie, and dozens of writing awards decorated the walls. There was lots of sage green upholstery and creamy cabinetry. The bus’s broad windows were all tinted a dark blue, for privacy. Shelves overflowed with books and seashells. The feeling was submerged and cozy. It was like a lagoon on wheels. Despite myself, I approved.

Thump thump thump. My victim climbed the steps, banging her cane against the narrow well of the entrance as she wrestled a large wicker cat carrier. She was dressed in a floppy sheath dress the tie-dyed color of a bad Easter egg. Her shoulder-length brown hair was stuffed up under a straw hat. She looked like a Holly Hobby. Suddenly she spotted me. And froze.

“How in the world did you get inside my—”

“Nab her,” I ordered.

Charley the Tuna leapt onto the bus and grabbed her from behind. My cousin Charley had been hiding on the bus’s far side — no small feat for a six-foot-seven, 350-pound merman dressed in jeans and a WWF T-shirt. Charley looked like a Caucasian Buddha. He was hairless from his bald head all the way down to his webbed feet. Most Landers knew him by his pro wrestling nom de smackdown: The Great White Shark. But I called him Charley the Tuna. You could say he wasn’t a typical merman. Bulky and trusting. Not smart enough to avoid my schemes, I mean.

“Sorry, Ms. Revere,” he grunted, then hoisted her and the cat carrier off the floor and elbowed the door lever as he did. The bus’s doors accordioned shut before Molly recovered from shock and shrieked. Not a soul heard her except us. Victory.

“What have you done with Scotty?!” she yelled, dangling from Charley’s beefy, hairless arms. Inside the wicker cat carrier, a scruffy old tabby hunched down on a sheepskin cushion and hissed at me.

“Oh, please. I didn’t hurt your Irish chauffeur. He’s in the hotel bar. By the time he wonders why he deserted you for a brew and a smoke, we’ll be halfway to Georgia.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“Yes, you are. I’m doing this for your own good. Well, actually, I’m doing this for my own good.” I stepped aside and waved a hand toward a door that led to a sumptuous bedroom. “Charley, deposit Molly and that ancient, bad-tempered kitty of hers in there. Lock the door. Then let’s get this tricked-out Greyhound on the road.”

“Are you insane?!” Molly yelled. She kicked and flailed her cane at me”— uselessly, of course. “People will look for me! I’m a celebrity! I’m M.M. Revere!”

I draped myself on a sage-green couch. “Get real. You have no close friends. You have no close family. All your publisher cares about is your next book, and it isn’t due for six months. Face it, Molly Mallard Martha: you could jump off a cliff and no one would even notice.”

This observation made her shriek again. Hey, the truth hurts. She uttered furious little squeaks and flailed her arms as Charley lugged her and the old cat into the bedroom. “Ouch,” he grunted. She’d clubbed him with her cane. He set her down, backed out of the room, locked the door, and lifted a brawny, tanned hand to the welt on his forehead. “She could be a wrestler.”

“Sorry, Charley. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

He put a hand to his heart in devotion, then lumbered to the front and climbed into the driver’s seat.

Whack whack whack whack whack. Molly pounded her mermaid-handled cane on the bedroom door. “If you let me out of here right now, I won’t press charges!”

I rose languidly and went to the door. Leaning close, I said in a pleasant tone, “If you keep whacking that heirloom cane, Paul’s mermaid will get dents in her fins. So calm down and shut up.”

“You can’t just take me prisoner and haul me to the coast!”

“Oh? Watch me.” I toyed with her cell phone, which Charley had pilfered from her purse. “You can’t phone home, ET. And if you think you can get help by scribbling Me And My Geezer Kitty Are Being Kidnapped on a piece of paper and holding it up to the windows so passing drivers will see, forget it. I’m tuned into you like a baby boomer to an oldies station. I’ll know what you’re up to. If you try anything I’ll come in there and . . . and I’ll dunk Geezer Kitty in the commode. Head first.”

She gasped loudly enough to hear it through the door. I felt her surge of fury but also her fear for her old pussy cat. She didn’t make so much as another gimpy peep. I’d won. I rolled my eyes. Like I was really serious about drowning her elderly feline. Like I’d really stick my hands in a commode.

“I can’t wait to get back to the ocean,” I said to Charley, settling back with dramatic weariness on the couch as he steered the bus down a Memphis street, heading for the nearest interstate. I can’t wait to get back to Jordan, I added silently. If Orion the Psycho Swimmer was really out there in the briny deep, and he was looking for his daughters, and he tracked them and their Uncle Rhymer to Sainte’s Point, and Jordan tried to help Rhymer fight Orion, and Jordan got hurt, or killed . . .

“Drive faster,” I called to Charley.

Charley frowned. “Juna Lee, what exactly are you going to do with Ms. Revere when you get her to the coast? I mean, you can’t keep her locked up. And I don’t see that your powers of persuasion are working too well. She’s a tough little she-crab.”

I frowned. He was right. Molly Mallard Martha Revere had given me more trouble than any Mer had a right to. Even Lilith’s song hadn’t hypnotized her for long. What kind of defenses did she have around that geeky little mind of hers? A shark-proof cage? If she didn’t succumb to psychic voodoo easily, how would I ever make good on my deal with Lilith? How could Molly ever be of any use to Rhymer in fighting off Orion? How could I help Jordan as long as I had Molly hanging around my neck like a pastel albatross? How could I matchmake Molly and Rhymer if I couldn’t make Molly even get on her own damned bus voluntarily?

“I’ll think of something,” I muttered. “Or she’ll be sorry.”

It never occurred to me that True Love might help me out.

* * * *

Uncle Rhymer. Uncle Rhymer? We feel you worrying again. Small voices, singing inside my head. I turned to find three pretty faces peering at me from a porthole in the sailboat’s main cabin.

I’m only testing the wind, girls. Stay silent, girls. Just stay silent. Remember. Never sing out.

The oldest, Stella, who was twelve, nodded somberly. The other two, Isis, eight, and Venus, five, whimpered inside my mind, then withdrew from the window. I could not let them keen in vibrant waves of mental song, could not let them heal themselves.

Their father would hear them if they sang. He would track them by the echoes. If he weren’t tracking them already.

I had cut across the English Channel in record time, knowing the currents the way only the Water People know them, slipping like a drop of mercury along the curving thermometer of the great summer ocean. I locked the wheel then went to the stern. I watched the receding waters of the other side of the world, my mind open, a net to catch the man, the myth, the thing, the mystery, that had seduced my sister, caused her death, and murdered a dozen people to steal her body before it could be returned to her heartbroken children. I felt his guilt in my soul; I sensed it in the psychic fury humming inside my brain — that poison in him, following me to a new continent. I didn’t believe in whimsies and fairytales, either my own kind or Landers’, but I did believe in evil, and what I felt seeping after my ship was as unknowable as the darkest evil of an ancient ocean abyss.

Stay back, you bastard. Or come forward and prove you’re flesh and blood, and I’ll cut the life out of you.

Every sense in my brain searched for him, listened for the low hiss of threat I’d heard from time to time, hummed a sonic minefield, daring him to follow. He was a killer, but so was I. No magic of our kind, no extraordinary psychic powers or other abilities would match the heavy automatic pistol in my belt or the half-moon sword snugged to my left leg. An ancient tradition, that. Bit of a throwback to the old ways, I was. Knight of the watery realm, you might say. A warrior.

A worried man.

He had not killed Tara with his own hands, no, but he’d lured her into his shadow world, convinced her to be a terrorist, and thus she’d died like a thief in the deep, cold waters off our own homeland, where he had not bothered to accompany her. He sent her to her death alone.

Now he wanted his children. Her children. Daughters he’d never even met. My nieces. All that was left of the sister I’d failed to protect. “You’ll no’ get the girls,” I whispered. “Whether you’re man or myth, you’ll no’ get them.” My brogue always became heavier when I was worried.

I leaned further over the bow, watching the empty eastern horizon, scanning the vast gray-green surface of the Atlantic. We were along the coast of the States now. We’d make Sainte’s Point Island by nightfall, if the wind held.

The wind will hold, an elegant female voice hummed in my ear.

I shut my eyes. Thank you, Lilith. Please keep steering us to your sanctuary.

The bow of the large sloop angled leeward as if pushed gently by a hand. The sails bulged, pregnant with the breath of the great waters.

My kinswoman, Lilith Bonavendier, had a way with the winds and the tides. Her island home was the site of old legends, old powers. I could hide my nieces there. I could protect them.