“General Luce?” the woman bellowed. “Our viewers are waiting for your answer.”
Luce pulled herself straight and looked into the camera. How could she make herself say this?
“It’s true. Most mermaids do drown people.” Luce hesitated then made a wild leap of faith. “If my dad says something, you can believe him. But we don’t kill. The mermaids of the Twice Lost Army all promise never to kill humans except in self-defense. If we can change, that proves other mermaids can change too!”
“So you admit that mermaids are murderers. Why should we believe that you and your followers are any different?”
Luce glowered at the woman. “You can believe it because you’re alive to believe it!” She almost pointed out how easily the Twice Lost could destroy every human within earshot then decided not to say anything about that. The impulse seemed less than diplomatic.
There were tears on her face, Luce noticed. That was all wrong. She shouldn’t let the humans see her crying. Maybe, maybe, they’d think her tears were just droplets from the wave.
Voices buzzed chaotically above her. All she wanted now was to get away: away from the cameras. Away from the thought that her father might hate her. Away from Catarina’s glare, and from the possibility that she’d let her army down by saying too much . . .
“General Luce?” the woman called again. “Obviously emotions are running very high at this . . . this historic moment.”
“We have demands,” Luce snapped. She felt half-sick from grief; the interview was getting to be more than she could bear. “We’re keeping the blockade up until our demands are met. Until then everyone had better keep away from our camps. And”—she felt another stab of inspiration—“if any other mermaids out there hear about this, we could use your help! Join us.”
“What are your demands? General Luce . . .”
Luce looked up at the woman with her rigid hair and shell-shocked expression. At this moment humans seemed pitiful to Luce, but they were also pretty infuriating.
“We have to think about it,” Luce announced. “We’ll send you a letter.”
“But—”
Luce plunged. Her serpentine body flashed through what felt like a rising waterfall.
“Hey!” Imani called brightly into the mike. “I just wanted to say hi to everyone too!”
21 Voices Carry
Secretary of Defense Moreland was standing slack-jawed beside the president, a dozen generals, and half the members of the Strategic Affairs Council. He felt a shiver of icy anticipation as the microphone curved through blue air toward Lucette Korchak’s face. He was sure she would sing. She would kill them all, and his heart felt both frozen and boiling at the prospect.
He told himself that it was too late to do anything about it. Sweat sleeked his palms and his mouth seemed to be crowded with brittle leaves.
His jaw fell even farther when Lucette opened her lips—and started speaking instead of singing. She sounded remarkably sweet, almost innocent, and not nearly as stupid as she should be.
Moreland was blindsided by the force of his disappointment—and for one split second of lucidity he recognized how insane his reaction was. He’d genuinely wanted her to kill everyone.
Then he forgot all about his own madness. There was another mermaid in the wave, a redhead, and Lucette Korchak had said the name Catarina. Another of the singers he’d heard on the recording, then: an irresistible prize, a flame-colored coin minted from fresh desire.
“When I saw that wave standing there I knew it was a game-changer,” President Leopold grumbled. “But if everything this cute little general is saying is true, I think we’re going to need a whole new board.”
Andrew Korchak wasn’t watching his daughter. Instead he was sitting on a park bench, sobbing so violently that the world pitched and swam in his eyes. He knew beyond all doubt that Kathleen would be alive now if she’d never glimpsed Luce. Kathleen had been trying to help the mermaids, and they had killed her. He was positive of that, even if he couldn’t begin to guess how they had done it. It was worse than any treachery he could have imagined. And maybe it was his fault, too. Somehow those videos had brought Kathleen to the mermaids’ attention.
He should have told Kathleen he loved her. While there was still time.
Seb perched on a folding chair in the community center housed in a church basement, other homeless and luckless people crowded around him. When Luce got to the part about mermaids changing their ways, Seb burst out laughing and cheering so loudly that the volunteers ordered him to leave.
Gigi Garcia-Chang knelt with her cheek pressed to her TV screen. With one finger she followed the ever-shifting curves of Yuan’s pinkish gold tail. She’d recognized her rescuer immediately, even after so many years. Until this moment, Gigi thought, she hadn’t understood how terribly she’d been missing the mermaid who had saved her.
She was taking two summer classes, and then there was her part-time job in a café. Her responsibilities were a real impediment to just catching the next flight west.
But maybe she would anyway.
“Damn. How many guys do you want to bet are ordering sushi right now? Like, ‘Hey, um, can you deliver this to the bottom of the Golden Gate Bridge? And, like, tell that mermaid I sent it’?” Theo was laughing uproariously, though from something dark in his eyes, Dorian thought his friend was trying to conceal wilder emotions behind this display of silliness.
Dorian slumped on the green leather sofa, biting his lower lip and hoping that Theo wouldn’t notice his burning cheeks. His distress was partly provoked by bitter longing at the sight of Luce looking so proud and free and beautiful, and acting so brave. But that wasn’t all he was feeling. He was also queasy with shame. He’d watched Andrew Korchak’s appeal over and over, and he’d kept an obsessive watch on all the video testimonies that followed from it. But he hadn’t quite worked up the nerve to post a video of his own.
And now—now it was way too late to do anything like that.
Within hours thousands of people—and mostly, Dorian thought hatefully, they would be young guys, and some of them would be way better-looking than he was—would be posting videos claiming they had been personally saved from drowning by General Luce. There would be declarations of love, offers of adoption, the works. Damaged and defiant as Luce was now, she was simply that enchanting. Adding his own video to that ruckus would just make him look like a total moron. At best it would be an exercise in pointless humiliation.
There had to be something else he could do, Dorian thought. Something to show her . . .
“But I’m the one who’s going to get the date with her, because I know the secret. Mermaids can eat fish anytime they want, right? So the way to get their attention is obviously with pizza . . .”
Something to show her I deserve to get her back, Dorian thought grimly. Something to prove to her . . .
“ . . . we could use your help!” Luce exclaimed passionately from the television. “Join us.”
Her pale olive face gave off a subtle greenish shine. The glow shone brighter in the streaks of her tears. When they were breaking up Dorian had told Luce her problems weren’t real; he’d told her she wanted to stay a kid forever so that she could avoid responsibility; he’d even blamed her for letting herself turn into a mermaid in the first place. And now here she was, injured and scared but still leading an army into this weirdly peaceful battle, doing what no mermaid had ever done before, while he sat on his ass.