“Isn’t even what?” Andrew snapped.
“Human. She isn’t human. Not at the present time.” They were staring fiercely at each other, the kettle still shrieking behind them. “Of course you aren’t surprised to hear this, either.”
“Who cares? Whatever kind of . . . whatever she looks like now, she’s still my daughter, and she’s still a . . . barely more than a child, really. A juvenile, anyhow. Look. If somebody was trying to hurt her—”
“Can you contact her? Do you know where she’s going? That photo was taken off the coast of Washington, and at the time she was heading south. She was seen the next day not far from the Oregon border.”
“And if I did know that, you think I would tell you?”
“There are quite a number of people who are determined to catch her, and they’ll shoot her on sight.” Ben Ellison paused to let that sink in. “If you have some way to communicate with her, you’d be well advised to urge her to surrender before that happens. And if I’m involved in the process, I promise I’ll do whatever I can to ensure her safety.”
“Was it your people who tore up her ear like that? If you did . . .”
“That wasn’t us.” Ben Ellison was looking toward the window now, then abruptly he walked to the stove and snapped the kettle off. His expression was morose. “Mr. Korchak, the fact is that I think Luce has been . . . unfairly singled out. But she’s also been behaving in a way that is guaranteed to attract negative attention when she should be doing whatever she can to keep a low profile. That video, for example.”
“What video?”
“Check the Internet. Search for ‘mermaid.’ You might be the last person in America who hasn’t seen it.”
Andrew considered that. Things were starting to make a bit more sense. “So she’s in some video. But then how did you know it was her? You see a mermaid, you don’t go and spontaneously say, ‘Oh, I bet it’s that Lucette Korchak girl who everybody thought jumped off a cliff up in Pittley.’”
Ben Ellison wasn’t looking at him. He kept his eyes pointed at the sea.
“Somebody rat her out, Ben? Who’ve you got?”
No reply.
No reply in a way that told Andrew Korchak exactly what the situation was: not only was there an informer, but it was someone this FBI guy didn’t trust. Someone who was lying up a storm, talking all kinds of smack. Firing off ridiculous accusations, like . . .
“Who you all think Luce murdered, anyhow?”
“Five men, actually, in total. Special operations.” Ellison sounded remote, maybe sad.
“A fourteen—fifteen-year-old girl? You think she’s some kind of goddamned ninja?”
“She’s not technically a girl at all any longer. As we’ve discussed. And there’s no question at all that she can be dangerous.” Ellison looked away from the sea long enough to gaze bleakly into Andrew’s eyes. “The prevailing opinion is that she—and all the creatures like her—are nothing but monsters. Regardless of the fact that they were human at one time. I realize this isn’t something a parent wants to hear about his child, of course.”
“The ‘prevailing’ opinion,” Andrew growled.
“Yes.”
“Does that mean it’s the one prevailing in your head? ’Cause if it is, that just shows how damned ignorant you are.”
“I’m . . . suspending judgment. About all of them, but about Luce in particular. Clearly there have been situations where she’s made a deliberate choice not to kill, and where I’d imagine the temptation must have been intense.” Ben Ellison’s voice was grim and drowsy.
“You said . . . those special operations guys . . . it was self-defense.” Maybe they’d forced Luce to kill, Andrew thought. Maybe.
“They were firing spear guns at her, in fact. And they will again.”
“Can’t blame the girl for that! If she was just trying to survive—”
“Mr. Korchak . . . I’m afraid it’s worse than that. You say you’ve seen Luce quite recently. How much did she tell you about her life after she changed form?”
Not much, Andrew thought. “Enough.”
“She was a member of a particularly vicious mermaid tribe. It’s possible that she’s had a change of heart since that time, but it’s extremely likely that she was at least complicit in far more deaths than the ones I’ve told you about.”
“Like . . .”
“Hundreds. Probably hundreds. More. One ship last year had almost nine hundred passengers on board when it sank. And Luce was there. That I know for certain.”
“Luce wouldn’t . . . No way I’ll believe . . .”
“Tell her to turn herself in, Mr. Korchak. It’s the best I can do for her. Special Ops are out to avenge their own. If I’m there first, there’s a chance I can get her into some form of safe custody before anyone blasts her to ribbons.”
“Don’t you talk about my girl like that! My God, after everything she’s been through . . . me and her mom both gone, my loser brother beating her and— You’re talking about just slashing up a teenage girl like it means nothing.”
“I’m trying to prevent precisely that from happening. I sincerely want to help her. Luce rescued someone I care about, and I don’t believe she deserves . . . Can you find her?”
“I want to find her. She fished me off that island where I was stranded, but then she just zoomed off and vanished.”
“And? Do you know where to look for her?”
Andrew groaned. He was doing his best not to break down, but it kept getting harder. “I’ve got no clue where to even start.”
6
Dead Zones
Now that J’aime had taken over the mission Luce had assigned herself, there wasn’t the same desperate need to rush south as quickly as possible.
But now that she understood how hunted she truly was, there was an acute need for stealth. The black-suited divers probably knew that mermaids tended to cling to the coasts and that they needed air periodically as they swam. Slipping her head out of the water anywhere near the shore would be wildly risky; she’d have to travel uncomfortably far out to sea. Luce didn’t even want to think about how impossible it would be to find anywhere she could sleep.
For a whole day she lingered in J’aime’s narrow hiding place, letting her damaged body start to mend itself, singing low, melting songs to that piece of broken sky high above her. It was the first time in weeks she’d stayed so still and let herself succumb to everything she felt in the quiet. Her song curled around fragments of Dorian’s voice: If you want to kill me for this, you can. I won’t sing back. He’d given her a chance to stop him before he’d started trying to make sure the divers disposed of her. Maybe he’d decided only one of them could continue to live.
And already so many other mermaids had been slaughtered because of what Dorian had done. Girls lay in rotting heaps deep in their caves while the one in particular Dorian wanted dead somehow lived on, carrying the images of the lost with her. Dreamily Luce pictured herself trailed by ghostly faces, all glowing like jellyfish, all warping with the loft of the waves . . .
Was she sorry, then, that she hadn’t drowned him? She’d come so close; she’d forced herself to stop just in time.
But no, she couldn’t regret it. He’d wanted her to kill him, even tried to manipulate her into it, and the only vengeance left to her, feeble and fragile as it was, was to make him live with the knowledge that she was living, too.