The Twice Lost (34 page)

For once, her followers ignored her. “But if they won’t even
negotiate
with us—I mean, what’s the point of trying so hard?” someone muttered behind her.

Most of the humans waiting by the bridge were friendly, but Luce knew there had to be spies mixed in with them. “We’ll talk about—about our
options
later. But we’re not giving up that easily!” Luce braced herself to say something she didn’t entirely believe. “That Moreland guy was bluffing, anyway. Couldn’t you tell?”

Still no one moved. “Luce?” Cala whispered nearby. “Do you still love him? Dorian?”

Before Luce could get upset by the question she was distracted by a commotion some distance to their left. A young, strikingly handsome man in a beige trench coat was fighting his way toward the water on that side, where there were fewer police—and where a lovely chestnut-haired mermaid Luce didn’t know had actually come close enough to rest her crossed arms on the embankment. With a touch of bitterness Luce thought that the two of them were probably falling in love; they seemed to be gazing at each other with ravenous fascination. “You’re amazing,” Luce heard the young man say. “It’s hard to believe that anything could be so beautiful. How can you be real?”

The mermaid’s reddish fins fluttered up behind her, haloing her in falling droplets. “Well, thank you. I’m really not about to vanish or anything, though.”

“Noooo,” the man drawled, and Luce looked at him more sharply. “No, I know you’re just as real as me. And you have such a sweet face, such gentle eyes.” His voice was purring, seductive. “It’s hard to believe you could kill people. Have you really done that?”

Luce wondered if she should try to interrupt the conversation, but her friends pressed in around her; it wouldn’t be easy to get over there. And anyway, she
had
said her followers could talk to anyone they wanted. But this was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable.

“Oh, I used to,” the mermaid acknowledged casually. She tucked her long hair behind one pale, exquisite ear. “But I really do think General Luce is right, like, there wasn’t much of a future in hunting ships and everything. I’m pretty much over that stuff now.”

“Pretty much?” the man crooned. Both his hands sank deep in the pockets of his long coat. “Do you think one of the people you killed might have been this woman?”

The mermaid’s eyes went reflexively to the photo the young man suddenly held in front of her—so that she didn’t watch his other hand as it came up pointing a gun. Luce was already screaming at the chestnut-haired mermaid to dive. The girl had just time to pivot her head quizzically in Luce’s direction before the air cracked wide and a blood-bursting hollow opened where her perfect ear had been.

27

“We made the news!” Theo was already busy with his phone, scanning through the Internet results about their march barely over an hour after it was over. They were sitting in a dark café, all thrift-store chairs and tables plastered in collaged pictures cut from magazines. “Look, you can totally see us! I think you look better than I do, though. Why did I have to make that stupid face? You’re doing this killer noble-and-determined thing. Wait, I’ll go back in a minute, you can see . . . And—ooh, shit—it looks like some freakazoid shot some random mermaid’s head off right afterward. You don’t think the Twice Lost will decide to wipe out San Francisco, do you? To retaliate?”

Dorian’s heart slammed up in his chest, and he reached to snatch Theo’s phone, but his friend was too fast, jerking the phone far out of reach at the end of one ropy arm. “I made a point of saying that she was
random,
good sir. ‘Some random mermaid,’ I said quite clearly. So you’d know I wasn’t referring to that very not-random mermaid whom you’re going to such lengths to impress.”

Dorian relaxed but only slightly. “Luce is okay? But, Jesus, one of them
shot
. . . Was Luce there?”

“Kind of hard to tell.” Theo was back to watching tiny images scrolling on the phone’s screen, images made even tinier by the fact that he was still holding his phone as far from Dorian as he could. A taxidermy pheasant loomed from a bookcase behind him, its beak gaping as if it couldn’t believe what it was seeing. “Oh—wait, it looks like she was. You can see her in the background of this one. She’s screaming.” He pulled farther away, anticipating Dorian’s leap from his chair.

“Let me fucking
see
that already!”

“It looks like General Luce, screaming loudly. Surely you can take my word for that?” Theo groused even as he surrendered the phone.

A still photo on the screen showed a man in a trench coat aiming a gun at a mermaid who was looking away from him, her waves of vibrant chestnut hair startling against the pale gray water. She was looking in the direction of two crowds separated from each other by an expanse of sea: one gathering of humans and one of floating mermaids, both a short distance away. And there in the center of the mermaid crowd was Luce, her mouth wide and her face frantic and contorted as she shrieked in warning.

And he couldn’t hold her, couldn’t comfort her, couldn’t do anything to
help
. . .

“Hey,” Theo said. There was a sudden note of seriousness in his voice, maybe even of concern. “General Luce will probably hear about the march, since it was on TV? And then she’ll know there are people who want to help, and we’re not all rabid mer-bashing jerks, right? And that might make her feel a little better?”

“Maybe,” Dorian muttered. But the march he’d helped organize suddenly seemed pathetic, overshadowed by this outburst of violence. How could the support of a few distant humans make up for seeing one of her followers murdered that way?

“Hey, you want to text those girls we met? The hot one—wearing all the gothy shit?—said something about a party tonight. Want to go?” Theo nudged Dorian’s arm, trying to make him look up again.

“I can’t deal with a party.” For Dorian that image of Luce’s screaming face veiled the shadows. He needed to get home to his own computer, find out everything he could about the day’s events in San Francisco. “You go, okay?”

“I got the distinct impression they really wanted you to come, though. They were just talking to me because you seemed all like brooding and romantically unapproachable. You seriously need to give me lessons in that, dude. And they were all really into your T-shirt.” Theo eyed Dorian’s black shirt covetously. “Would you make another one for me?”

Privately Dorian thought that Theo was about as un-lost as they came. But whatever. “Oh—sure. Just get me the shirt you want and I’ll do the screen print.” He considered the idea for a second. “Maybe that’s what we should call the whole movement? Twice Lost Humans?”

“Oh!” Theo stared. “Yeah! That’s way better than whatever those other names were, like ‘Human-Mermaid Solidarity Front.’ Too freaking long.”

“Right.” Dorian shook himself and stood. “You go on to that party. I’m going back to the house. I want to do some work on the blog.”

“If I drive you it’s going to be way out of the way. She said they live way over in—”

“I’ll take the bus.” He wanted to be alone with his thoughts anyway.

“But we could just go to the party for, like, a couple hours? And you could work afterward?” Theo pleaded.

Dorian just shook his head and lifted one hand in a perfunctory goodbye before he stalked out of the café. The city was glazed in the moist heat of a midsummer evening. Slabs of deep blue air rested between the elegant brick row houses and vintage boutiques. Dorian caught himself staring into one window at the mannequins in their cowboy boots and quirky veiled hats, wondering how Luce would look—as a human, of course—wearing that midnight blue dress with the pearl embroidery around the neckline.

***

The tall narrow house where Dorian now lived with Theo and his mother was dark when he reached it. He was relieved by the opportunity for solitude. Maybe he could find out more about what Luce and all those other mermaids had been doing, hanging around so close to the humans onshore; maybe he could find videos that would reveal more of her reactions, more of her feelings. In that squeezing, jostling crowd there must have been several cameras pointed Luce’s way. Dorian sat on the bed and curled around his laptop, clicking eagerly.

At first he found mostly dross: a sappy tribute song for the Twice Lost that had gotten inexplicably popular, another song that made fun of the first song, some clips of various senators denouncing the mermaids at press conferences. But then he noticed “Twice Lost Mermaids Watch the News” in the sidebar. His hand shook a little as he started it.

It was a strange video. Whoever had shot it seemed fixated on Luce and the mermaids who were pressed around her. The camera never swerved from their faces or showed what it was they were looking at with such intensity. There was one corner of a laptop screen visible but it was facing away, toward the water. By turning up the volume as far as it would go Dorian could barely distinguish their voices, interspersed with the louder voices of the humans onshore and the babble of a news program. Someone was being interviewed, and after listening for just a few moments Dorian made out enough of what was being said to understand why the mermaids all looked so upset.

But—whoever that man was who kept droning on—what he was saying was plainly ridiculous. Luce had never been human, even though plenty of people remembered her as a regular schoolgirl? She’d murdered
herself,
stolen her own face? Nobody would believe that, would they? Then the stuff about Kathleen Lambert: old news as far as Dorian was concerned, though clearly it wasn’t old to Luce. He watched her raw dismay and craned to hear the faint notes of her voice. He could catch only a few blurry words.

Dorian couldn’t sit still any longer. He started pacing, his stomach tight, watching the screen from the corner of his vision. He was doing everything he could think of, but it wasn’t
enough.
Luce could still die any day. He stopped to stare out the window at the dark street, the trees like masses of congealed night, the lonely glowing rounds under the streetlamps.

Then—wait, what were they showing now? Dorian wheeled around. The mermaids sounded excited, and then Luce was speaking again, her voice raised in anger so that Dorian could suddenly hear every word: “He’s got no
right
to call himself that! Cala, it’s not sweet at all! It’s like he’s
stealing
our name!”

It took him an instant to understand what they were talking about. It became clearer with every sentence that followed, even with the mermaids’ voices coming through fragmented and murky.

Luce had
seen
him. She’d watched him marching on her behalf,
fighting
for her . . .

Furious or not, she had seen
him.

Dorian’s nails were digging into his palms. His knees trembled, and he felt sick and wild and exhilarated. Even thousands of miles away he’d found a way to make her understand how much he missed her—whether she wanted to know that or not. It was as if he’d sent her the strangest love letter imaginable, a message cast out wildly into space, and against the most phenomenal odds she’d
received
it. With a sudden flash of vanity, Dorian remembered everything Theo said about how noble and determined he’d looked in that march. Good.

“You
see
now, Luce?” Dorian hissed out loud. “You see? You can be a general or whatever, but I’m
with
you, and I’m not going anywhere!”

He had no right to call himself Twice Lost? Dorian imagined arguing with Luce, pointing out that he’d been lost the first time when the mermaids killed his family—and the second time when he’d broken up with her. But he could only communicate with her in such awkward, indirect ways.

Well, then, he’d organize more protests, blog like crazy, put up a Twice Lost Humans page on every site he could—

His cell phone started ringing. Dorian’s first reaction was annoyance at the interruption—but what if it was something important? What if it was news about
her?

“Hello?” His heart was pounding, and his tone came out strained and breathless.

“Is this, um, Dorian Hurst?” A shrill-sounding girl. Dorian was fairly sure the voice was new to him. Maybe it was one of those girls Theo said wanted to meet him so much? He half expected to catch the clamor of a party in the background: Theo calling out and music blaring and people giggling.

But no, everything was silent. Maybe, dimly, there was a kind of electrical buzz. “Yes?” Dorian asked curtly.

“Are you at home?” the girl’s voice inquired pointedly.

“Yeah. Who is—”

“Alone? Because I really need to talk to you without anybody
interrupting.
”

That seemed even weirder. Prickling chill brushed up Dorian’s back. “No one’s going to interrupt. What’s this about?”

“You used to be with Luce,” the girl pursued curiously. “Right? You were actually her boyfriend? In
love
with her, like you thought she was just so special?”

Nobody knew about that except for Zoe and Ben Ellison, and Dorian felt reasonably confident that neither of them would blab. Or, well, maybe some people in the government knew it too, but this girl sure wasn’t from the FBI. “How do you know about that?” Dorian demanded. There was a sudden fogginess in his head and he fought to clear it. “Who
is
this?”

The girl didn’t bother to answer his questions. “What did you
see
in her, anyway? She’s such a little freak, and she’s not even that pretty.
Seriously?
And she has hair like a boy. I can’t believe any guy would want to—”

“I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know
what
your goddamn problem is, but Luce is incredible. Just look at what she’s
doing
now!” Dorian growled—and suddenly he knew that he was making a mistake by letting the strange girl bait him into this conversation. He wasn’t thinking straight. Something was wrong here.

“I’m not really supposed to be getting into a big discussion with you,” the girl confided. “I’m just curious. I never understood why anybody thought Luce was
anything.
But actually I’m only supposed to—” He could hear her suck in a breath and there was a very slight sloshing noise.