Promise Bound (2 page)

You should be mine
, Nadia thinks.
You should be with me. Not
with that plain, mouse-colored woman asleep in your bed
. Instead, we say, “Jason is a year old. He’s walking.”

“I won’t let you take him,” Tom says.

“Watch me,” we say, suddenly brave, louder than we planned.

He reaches forward—both angry and terrified—and takes two steps closer. “Quiet. Diana is sleeping. She thinks I’m a widower.”

We shudder at the thought. If Tom only knew how dead we feel. We say, “What do I care of her?” thankful that our words are strong and clear.

Tom closes the nursery door and turns on a small lamp that barely casts a shadowed glow around the pale blue room. The smell of the lake drifts through the open window. It lends the effect of being underwater. Nadia hopes Jason likes it.

Without planning to move, she and I are gliding across the floor. If the braided rug lies under our feet, we cannot feel it. Our hand, long and tapered, each finger like bleached driftwood, strokes the blond head dreaming in the crib.

Jason. My father.

Tom is close behind us. He winds his fingers through a lock of our hair. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, and for a second Nadia thinks he has changed his mind, that both he and the baby will be coming with us. Tom’s voice drops, low and soothing but still negotiating. We can hear the strategy behind the comfort. His warm hand cups our shoulder. “Find someone else, Nadia. Start another family. Leave Jason with me.”

A rush of heat flashes through our body and sparks snap in the dry air. Tom jerks his hand back. He knows better than to touch Nadia now, but not enough to stop explaining. “Please don’t take my son,” he says.

“Your son? Jason is mine,” we say.

Tom’s face hardens. His pupils expand until his eyes are black, smoldering things. The anxious fear of defeat burns in our gut, but we do not let our feelings betray us.

“He belongs with me,” we say.

“Over my dead body,” says the man who used to love us, I mean
her
 … Nadia.

We keep the feeling of betrayal trapped under the heavy weight of our heart. “Tempting,” we say.

He smirks. “You’ve told me too many of your secrets. I know how to avoid you, if I wish.”

We lean into him, a molten and hypnotic pulse building steadily behind our eyes.

He diverts his gaze and crosses the room. “Nice try,” he says.

We would have pursued him, but the baby rolls over, cooing sweetly. His cherubic lips purse like the open end of a raspberry. Our heart lurches with longing for him. We lunge, but Tom is quick. He has us by the neck, and he throws us against the wall. The window beside our head rattles in its frame, and we feel the chain slip from our neck, snaking over our bare shoulders before the beach glass pendant hits the floor.

“Don’t touch him,” Tom warns.

“This isn’t over,” we say. “You made me a promise.”

“Some promises were meant to be broken,” he says. “I can’t turn my son over to a murderer. I can’t let him become one.”

“You didn’t have a problem with who I was before,” we say. “I am not the one who has changed.” The sky rumbles with thunder, and the floorboards quake. The tremor races up the wall studs, through the drywall, and along our spine.

“Babies change every love story,” he says, and we have no answer because we know he is right. “Now go before I reveal you to the world. I should think that would put a terrible crimp in your hunting patterns.”

Fear runs the length of our arms. If he made good on his threat, what would become of Maris? Of Pavati and Tallulah? “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

We swallow hard and call his bluff. “No one would believe you.”

“Is that a gamble you’re willing to take?” he asks.

We straighten our shoulders. “I want my family to be together.”

Tom’s face transforms with an expression we cannot read. His colors are sad and worried and laced with … hope? It is only a flash, but that brilliant gleam of optimism leaves an unmistakable glow. Hope that we will be together someday? We have to assume our eyes don’t deceive us, though Tom is quick to mask the emotion. Still, that glimmer of hope gives us the courage to leave and try again another night.

“Your necklace,” Tom says, reaching for the floor.

“Give it to our son,” says Nadia, slipping away from me like water through my fingers, leaving me alone in the dream, and then …

I woke up in Sophie’s room (again), standing over her bed (again), while she released a banshee-like scream that rattled the glass in the windows. Again.

“Oh, for the love of God.” I slapped my hand over my little sister’s mouth, but she peeled away my fingers and took a swing at me. A pile of books lay open on her bed and a few slipped to the floor. The corner of one just about impaled my foot.

“What’s with all the books?” I asked.

Sophie slapped my arm and said, “Lepidoptera.” Then she groaned at my blank expression. “I’m studying butterflies. Now would you please stop sneaking up on me when I’m sleeping? You’re going to give me a heart attack.”

“Shhh, you’re only eleven.”

“I don’t think that’ll matter. What do you want?”

What did I want? For one, I wanted these dreams to stop, because if living in Nadia’s head weren’t exhausting enough, the chronic sleepwalking was turning me into the walking dead. Calder had told me the legend last summer—that Nadia’s pendant held his family’s histories—but if Nadia was trying to tell me something with these nightly episodes, she was being way too subtle for me.
Spell it out, Grandma. Then maybe we can both get some rest
.

“Sorry, Soph. Go back to sleep.”

“That’s it?”

“I said I was sorry. Go back to your butterfly dreams.”

Sophie groaned and flipped over. She covered her head with her pillow, mumbling, “You are so weird.”

I tiptoed back down the hall, hesitating in the spots where my grandparents’ ghosts still lingered along the walls and feeling the deep pit of loneliness that Nadia’s absence always left in my stomach.

S
ophie’s scream woke me up sometime after midnight. I whipped off the covers and leapt over the back of the couch, heading for the ladderlike stairs that led from the Hancocks’ front door to Lily’s and Sophie’s bedrooms upstairs.

“Trouble sleeping?” I whispered, crawling up the first three steps, careful not to wake Jason and Mrs. H, amazed that they too hadn’t heard the scream.

Lily slowly descended the stairs, her feet uncertain. She’d fallen asleep in her clothes, and an oversized cardigan drooped off her right shoulder. “Sleeping fine,” she lied as
the pallor of mustard-colored anxiety slowly drained from her face.

“You could have fooled me,” I said. Maris had called during the day. She and Pavati would be arriving in less than twelve hours. I blamed them for Lily’s restlessness.

“It’s just freezing up there,” she said.

Her hair was a wild tangle of red that gave her a beautifully feral look. I didn’t say it out loud, though. She brushed off compliments like a nuisance fly. So instead I watched her finish her slow trip down the stairs.

Lily took my fingers lightly in hers and led me back to the couch. She curled into the indentation I’d left in the cushions and faced the fireplace, where, by now, there was only a faint, flickering glow from the remaining log on the grate.

“Feeling better yet?” I asked, though I could see she was still exhausted from her last transformation.

“Maybe if I swam more often it wouldn’t be so bad.”

“You don’t want to overexert yourself.”

“At the very least I don’t want to hold you back. Don’t wait for me. You should go out tomorrow with Dad. You’re looking a little dry.” She moved over to make room for me on the couch. I hesitated, looking anxiously toward her parents’ bedroom.

“If it’s all the same,” I said, “I’m happier suffering through with you. Besides, you know how much I love a challenge.” And it was true. I was pretty damn impressed with myself. A six-day stretch between transformations! It used to be I’d get the shakes after twenty-four hours. A year ago, three days
nearly turned me to chalk. I didn’t know if it was a matter of practice, sheer will, creative coping skills, or something more phenomenal than all three put together, but I didn’t really care so long as I could be there for Lily. I could see how much she needed me.

“Good,” she said, as if she were considering a different challenge altogether, and placed her palm over the pendant around her neck.

“Why don’t you just take that thing off?” I asked.

She looked at me miserably. “I would, but I feel uneasy without it. I … I think Nadia is trying to communicate with me. Remember that story you told me?”

“No.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I mean, no, I don’t want to hear it. I’m sorry, Lily. I really am. But I don’t want to talk about my mother.”

She stifled a yawn. “That’s fine. I don’t really want to talk about her either.”

“It’s probably your imagination,” I said. “And the stress of all the changes you’re going through.”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”

I frowned.

“Okay,” said Lily, “then let me rephrase my earlier statement. I don’t think Nadia is trying to communicate with me. I
know
she is. It’s just that I don’t know what she’s trying to say. You told me the pendant stores mermaid histories.”

“That’s just a legend,” I said.

“Like the dagger was supposedly part of the legend? Like Maighdean Mara was only a myth?”

“Point taken, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have an overactive imagination.”

Lily avoided the argument and changed the subject. “Gabby called again today,” she murmured, tapping the couch cushions for me to lie down.

I added another log to the fire and lay beside her, curling my body around hers, protecting her from a threat that I could feel but couldn’t see. Lily pressed her face against my shoulder while the logs crackled in the stone fireplace.

“Did you talk to her this time,” I asked, my lips behind her ear, “or did you make her leave another message?”

“I couldn’t avoid it anymore. Gabby’s pretty persistent.”

“Is she enjoying college?”

Lily traced the point of my collarbone with her finger. “That’s not what she wanted to talk about.”

Yeah. I knew that. Lily rolled onto her back, and the fire cast a warm glow across her face. She closed her eyes, and her lids shimmered like gold leaf in the firelight. This was how I preferred her. Warm. The raspberry-pink glow of happiness melting around the outline of her curves. It had been awhile since I’d seen those colors on her.

Lily sighed, and I kissed her forehead. “So what do I do about Gabby? And Jack?” she asked.

“I’ve told you. There’s nothing anyone can do for Jack.”

Nearly half a century as a merman, and I’d never had to deal with this side of things before. It made me uncomfortable to think of all the families who were still searching for children because of what I’d done. The days when I hunted humans to satisfy my emotional appetites seemed
like a million years ago. Ever since Lily had fallen—literally—into my life, I’d forgotten what it felt like to be empty, desolate, alone. The need to hunt was forever gone.

Lily rubbed the pendant, her thumb moving methodically over its smooth contours.

As she did so, my eyes watched the ring finger on her left hand, wondering, dreaming. Unbeknownst to her, I’d spent some time over the winter fashioning a ring for her. It wasn’t fancy, only braided copper wire and a polished agate. But now that it was finished, I had no idea how to present it to her. I didn’t even know what it should mean. Only that I wanted her with me. Always.

I’d told Jason about it over a week ago. I guess I was asking his permission. I’d seen that in the movies, but his reaction didn’t make me any braver.

Jason: “Well, what did Lily have to say about it?”

Me: “I haven’t said anything to her. I thought it was normal to ask the father first.”

Jason: “Son, I appreciate the gesture, don’t get me wrong. But this isn’t something you should surprise her with. Are you sure? You’re both so young.”

Me: “Do you think she’d say no?”

Jason: “I think she’d say what’s the hurry.”

Hurry
. The need for hurry glowed in Lily’s skin, and in her eyes, and in the light that shone from both. Or rather, the absence of that light. Couldn’t Jason see that in his own daughter? Couldn’t Sophie, who despite her maintained humanity was more in tune to moods and emotions than any full-blooded mermaid I knew?

Jason: “It doesn’t have to be an engagement ring. Why don’t you call it a promise ring? They were very popular in my day.”

I had to admit, a promise ring fit my mer-sensibilities. In promising myself to Lily—a promise she knew I’d be incapable of breaking—maybe I could restore some of the happiness that last summer’s events had stolen from her. I don’t know. Maybe I was kidding myself.

As Lily worked the pendant in her fingers, she didn’t blink; her thoughts seemed very far away. “We could fake some postcards from Jack,” she said, propping herself up on one elbow. “You could go to Canada and send them from there, saying, ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m hiking through Ontario. I’m fine. Love, Jack.’ That sort of thing. I wish I had saved the card he gave me. You could have used it to copy his handwriting. It was messy. That’s all I can say about it.”

Beneath her oversized cardigan I recognized the Jimi Hendrix T-shirt she’d worn when she confronted Jack, and nearly lost her life.

“I would never go to Canada without you,” I said. I waited a few seconds, but she didn’t respond. Finally I prompted, “So?”

“So … what?” she asked.

“So, if I go to Canada, will you come with me?”

She looked at me with a serious expression. “Do you think postcards would give the Pettits some peace?”

“What more can we offer? Really, Lily, people go missing every day.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

No. Not really
. I drew one finger through her hair and
tucked a strand behind her ear. “Why do you have to feel bad about this? It’s not your fault what happened to Jack.”