Promise Bound (3 page)

“It feels like my fault.”

I sighed, trying to be patient. “If it were up to you, everything would be your fault … but you didn’t answer my question.”

“What question?” Pine sap snapped in the fireplace and scattered sparks on the hearth.

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

“Let’s just wait and see,” she said, kissing the end of my nose as if punctuating a sentence.

W
hen I came down the stairs, I was glad to find Calder awake, too. I didn’t want to go back to sleep. I smiled against his chest, remembering the way he half crawled, half climbed the stairs toward me and, when he stood up, how his pajama bottoms hung low on his hips, revealing the line of muscle that made my insides squirm.

His bare chest, broad and scarred with a crisscross of cuts in various stages of healing, expanded with a deep intake of breath. I’d never felt the misery I’d seen in regular mermaids, but his reaction to me—like I was filling some emotional tank—wasn’t too hard to understand. I felt the same way.

Calder’s body warmed me even more than the fire. I curled into his chest and wrapped one arm around him, pulling my knee up over his leg. He drew me closer, and I inhaled the patchouli-like scent of smoke and incense that perfumed his skin and flooded my mind with memories. He dipped his chin and tipped mine up, kissing me.

“Don’t fall asleep,” he said. “You need to get back to your room before your dad gets up for a midnight snack.”

I smiled at the thought of getting caught, but it barely moved my lips. All I could think of was how stupid I was being. Why had I suggested Canada? I wished I’d never brought it up. Why drag out hope for the Pettits that Jack was alive? It was cruel, really. Irrational thought must be the result of interrupted sleep. Right now, I wanted nothing more than three solid hours of dreamlessness. Was that really so much to ask?

No more
, I said soundlessly.

Though Nadia had been dead for over thirty years, I trusted she could hear me.
I’m just so tired. No more dreams
.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Calder said.

But I counted my breaths like sheep, marking each one with another plea because I knew Nadia had more to say tonight, and just like that, in the silent space between two breaths, the line between our two selves began to blur and blend like cream stirred into coffee. I slipped deeper into the dark well of her mind, my bloodstream cooling and my mind roiling bleak and black until the moment when I lost myself: I am me, and then I am we, and then I am not.

*    *    *

Nadia swims the shoreline. Her body is a solid sheath of muscle and pink iridescent scales that dazzle the school of fish trailing in her wake. Her mind is a tangled web of fury and grief. Someone has wronged her, and whoever that is, he should be afraid. She emerges from the lake, breaking the silver plane with head and shoulders. Dark rings of water run from her body.

Through her large eyes I see my house. Lichen grows on the shingles. Ah, I understand things now. It has been a long time since Tom Hancock has been here. It has been many years since he took Nadia’s son.

I clutch my chest in pain. From Nadia’s center, dark anger simmers, then boils like pitch, finally exploding in a bolt of electricity from her eyes and fingertips. The electric charge strikes an enormous willow tree at the shoreline and splits a branch down the length of the trunk, charring it, laying it bare on top of the water. Small green leaves rain down.

A sound of disgust rattles in the back of her throat, and with a great whip of her tail, she drowns the beach in a wave.

The dream drifted effortlessly to a new scene: a very young Maris cowers in the shadow of a sunken log and watches her mother. Nadia feels her eyes on her but does not acknowledge her daughter’s presence. Instead, she weaves in and out of caves, scraping her belly and tail along the rock, releasing her grief in a long trail of blood. She sings a lullaby that turns into a dirge.

Then there is a noise, or the feeling of noise: a suction and a sinking. And then again, this time louder and heavier than before. The sound pulls Nadia away from the rocks, and
she spies a tiny boy clawing with open fingers for the surface. His jaw slackens as his head falls forward, his body rising as if pulled upward from the shoulders. A tremor of bubbles, and the last bit of air escapes the little boy’s nose.

Black heavy curls float around the boy’s small face like a dark angel’s halo. “Calder!” I call out with a gasp.

I woke with a start. A cool hand rested gently on my shoulder and rocked me back and forth. “Babe, it’s time. You’ve got to get ready.”

I scowled at whatever was shaking me. Too rough. Too much. Stop it.

“Babe, it’s time to get up.”

I opened my eyes, disoriented for a moment, thinking the window was in the wrong place and I was too high off the ground. I gripped the edge of my blanket, hoping to find my place in the texture of its fabric.

“You fell asleep downstairs,” Calder said. “I had to carry you up before your parents woke up.”

“Oh,” I said, slowly recognizing the dead-poet portraits on my bedroom wall and the mountain of clean and dirty laundry on the floor. “Sorry.”

“Never a problem.”

I could still feel the coolness of Nadia’s pulse in the pendant. I rolled over so Calder couldn’t see my face. He had an easy enough time reading my emotions without letting him see the worry so plainly on my face.

“You really need to get a good night’s sleep,” he said. “It’s like trying to raise the dead with you.”

That’s ironic
, I thought, covering my head with a pillow. Every time I fell asleep I raised the dead.

He whipped the pillow away and dropped it on the floor. “What’s wrong?” His voice was tinged with worry.

I gave him a withering look. “Just a dream.”

“Tell me.”

I groaned and stared up at the ceiling. “You don’t want to hear it.”

“Tell me anyway. If you talk about it, the dreams will go away.”

Yeah, sure
. “Maybe if I talk about it, you’ll get pissed off.”

“I’ll try very hard not to.”

I looked over at him and had to grimace at his vain attempt to plaster a patient expression on his face.

“Fine,” he said. “Don’t tell me. But it’s ten o’clock. We should get going soon.”

He was right, but it didn’t make me want to hurry. Actually, I felt a little sick about what the day held in store. Maris had called the house the day before—which was weird and unsettling in itself—but she didn’t have a choice because Calder refused to take her calls when she tried his cell. Maris and Pavati’s winter hiatus in New Orleans was over. They were migrating back to Bayfield, and she had called to say they’d be here by noon. The fact that they’d called at all led Calder to one conclusion, but Maris didn’t say if Pavati had had a boy or a girl.

L
ily dragged her feet like they were encased in concrete. She’d already changed her outfit three times, making me wait in the hallway outside her room, then flinging the door open for a two-second fashion show. If I didn’t react quickly enough, she groaned and slammed the door—opening it again a few minutes later, wearing something completely different.

“I know what you’re doing,” I said through the door. “You’re just stalling. It doesn’t matter what you wear.”

“If you’re making me go, I want to look good!” she yelled back.

“For what? For whom? It’s Maris and Pavati, for God’s sake.”

“Exactly!”

I still didn’t get it, but when she whipped the door open to outfit number five (yellow leg warmers, a green corduroy miniskirt, and a Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band T-shirt), I was quick to say, “Perfect. I love it. Now can we go?”

“Fine,” she said, stomping down the stairs to the kitchen. “But I don’t see why we have to. If there’s really a baby, it’s Danny’s problem. Not yours. And definitely not mine.” She opened the refrigerator and drank milk straight from the carton.

“Because I don’t trust Daniel Catron to make good on his parental obligations,” I said, holding out the phone to her. “And since when did you turn into such an animal?”

“What do you mean?”

I gestured at the milk carton still at her mouth. “As for Daniel, I want to make sure he takes responsibility for the baby, and I want to make sure he gives it back when it’s time. It’s a long summer, and for a big lake, it can sometimes feel awfully small. If he bails on Pavati, we’ll all pay the price somehow. You should call him.”

She looked at the phone for a second longer, then took it from me. “You really think Pavati has a baby?”

“Let’s just be prepared, okay? If she does, she’s going to want to hand it off as soon as she gets here.”

“So much for motherly affection,” Lily muttered.

“It’s not that.” I didn’t bother to explain. Lily had never
experienced the normal desolation of the mermaid mind or the incessant need to medicate with human emotion. Whether that was because of her Half nature, or because I was the balm to her that she was to me, I didn’t know. It didn’t really matter. I was only too grateful for her immunity, and I hated to bring up anything that might make her think of it, like how a landlocked baby would interfere with Pavati’s hunting schedule.

“Whatever,” Lily said. She slid open her phone and hit Daniel Catron’s number on speed dial. When he picked up, Lily switched to speaker (though I could have heard him clearly enough without it), and laid the phone on the kitchen counter.

“She’s back?” Daniel asked, not even bothering with hello.

“Just about,” Lily said. “You need to be at the pier by noon.”

There were a few beats of silence, then Daniel whispered, “You’ve got to help me. My God, what was I thinking?”

Lily looked at me with an expression of restrained exasperation, then said, “Danny,
you
told me you had a plan.
You
said you had this all figured out. For crying out loud, you’ve had
over ten months
.”

Of course the kid had no plan. Give him another ten months and he’d still have nothing.
Hey, Mom and Dad. Yeah, I know I’m only nineteen, but I thought it would be a good résumé builder to raise my mermaid child for a year. I hear college admissions boards are always looking for unique extracurricular activities
.… I didn’t know who’d thought this through less: Daniel or Pavati. I could only imagine the conversation between my
sisters in the car ride up, especially with a wailing infant in the backseat. Maris had to be
loving
that.

I pulled myself up onto the kitchen counter and turned on the faucet. The warm water calmed my mind as I ran my hand through it.

“Of course I have a plan,” I heard Daniel say. “It’s just that the time went quicker than I thought it would. No one in Cornucopia even knows I have a girlfriend.”

“You
don’t
have a girlfriend,” Lily said. “I’m telling you, keep it up with the girlfriend talk and you’re going to end up dead, just like Jack Pettit. In fact, if Pavati doesn’t take you down, I might. So knock it off.”

There was another prolonged moment of silence on the other end. Although Daniel had once prematurely assumed Lily was a mermaid, he was now fully informed when it came to the Hancock family. I knew Lily was bluffing when she talked about murder, but Daniel had every reason to take her at her word. She was strong, and he knew she could do enough damage to make her point.

Daniel whispered, “I haven’t said anything to anyone.”

I butted into the conversation, speaking only to Lily but loud enough for Daniel to hear. “Tell him he should have thought about the consequences before he took off with Pavati.”

Lily waved at me to shut up.

Daniel groaned. “How was I supposed to say no to her? You can’t imagine how amaz—”

“Spare me the gruesome details!” I yelled, and Lily rolled her eyes. She’d heard Daniel’s account of his mermaid
hookup at least a dozen times. She agreed with me that Daniel Catron had been a supreme idiot, but she assured me it was only a symptom of Pavati-itis, and that he hadn’t always been so dense.

I was going to need more convincing. As it stood, I gave Daniel three months. By that time, I was pretty sure he’d either stick the baby with us, or he’d go in search of Pavati. And even an idiot knew how that would work out.

“Be at the fishing pier in fifteen minutes,” Lily said again. “You
are
coming, right?”

There was silence on the other end. I mouthed his unspoken answer to Lily:
Nope
.

She scooped up my car keys from the kitchen counter and tossed them to me, saying, “You better be there, Daniel Catron, or so help me.” Then she hung up. He would be a fool not to show.

But just as I expected, when Lily and I got to the fishing pier, there was no sign of Daniel. The adjacent playground was abandoned, save for one mother and her toddler, who was climbing a pink and blue dragon made out of old semitruck tires. We walked to the pier and took our places alongside the splintered rail, leaning against it, smelling the fresh clarity of springtime in the air. We all needed a new beginning.

I took Lily’s hand and absentmindedly rubbed my thumb over her ring finger. If she’d only be convinced to set up a new home, with me, somewhere else, far away … Lily squeezed my hand, and for a second, I had an unfamiliar flash of optimism.

But then she fidgeted and worry darkened the small bit of human light that still radiated from her body. I was thankful for even that glimmer of her humanity. I clung to it as it clung to her.

“He’ll come,” I said, hoping my reassurance would refresh her aura to its former raspberry glow.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Twelve oh two.”

She turned away from me and walked to the swing set, taking a seat in one of the black rubber slings. She hung there, barely swaying, picking at a loose thread on her leg warmers.

“Do you think this is going to work out?” she asked as I came up behind her.

“Are you asking me if I think Daniel Catron can raise a baby for a year, or are you asking me if I think there will be a problem at the end of the year?”