He’d staggered out of his toolshed—only to find Luce’s picture splashed across every newspaper he saw.
General Luce. He couldn’t get used to the idea that anyone actually called her that. His bookish, gentle, painfully shy little girl had become a mermaid general leading a naval blockade and giving defiant speeches on television?
Did he even know who she was anymore?
His confusion only lasted until he sat down with a crumpled newspaper he’d found lying in the street and read what Luce had actually said. Those words did sound like they belonged to his Lucette, just to the side of her that she’d usually been too shy to show to anyone but him. She was still honest and deep-hearted and strong, still doing the best she could in terrible circumstances.
And then, what that reporter had said to her—that woman almost made it sound like he’d started some kind of anti-mermaid campaign, when in reality he and Kathleen had been doing the only thing they could think of to help.
And Luce went and stood up for him anyway and told the world to believe whatever he said . . .
Yeah, he still knew exactly who Luce was. That was his girl, all right, and he never should have let himself doubt her. And he urgently needed to find her, no matter what it took, and explain how that reporter had distorted what he’d said in his video. He’d hitchhiked the rest of the way to San Francisco, and now—well, he still had a little bit farther to go.
“Hey!” The teenage boy’s eyes had flown open, carried on some tremulous gust in the music. “Hey, aren’t you—from that video? The guy who came out and told everyone about them? General Luce’s father? You are!”
Great. Somehow this wasn’t a possibility that had occurred to him—and attracting attention was hardly going to help him get past the line of scowling cops he could make out now between the close-pressed bodies ahead. His first irritated impulse to deny his identity, though, almost instantly shifted into the idea that he might be able to turn it to his advantage.
“Shhh,” Andrew hissed. He made his tone confiding, conspiratorial. “I’ve got to get to her.”
As he’d hoped, the boy nodded, but then he kept on nodding as if he were too entranced to stop. “That won’t be easy. They’re stopping everyone. Boats, anyone who tries to swim. I’ve seen like five people get arrested since midnight. I don’t know how you can.”
“How ’bout you distract the cops so I can get a head start?”
“There are police boats patrolling too, though. And then I think the mermaids have their own guards, and they might think you were trying to attack them or something.”
“If I can just make it as far as the mermaid guards, they’ll bring me to Luce,” Andrew whispered with far more assurance than he actually felt. “They’re not about to piss their general off by drowning her dad.”
Well, maybe they wouldn’t. But he’d worry about that once he got to them.
“Okay,” the boy said dreamily. “Okay. But hey, will you tell her I helped you?”
So there it was. The kid would do a better job if he was feeling really motivated. “Yeah, I absolutely will. What’s your name?”
“Josh Byrd. Tell her—I really believe in what she’s doing? I know people are complaining that it’s bad for the economy, but I think she’s right to try to protect the mermaids? Tell her—”
There was a sudden clamor of jabbering voices, moaning half-musical cries, and screams from the edge of the water. Andrew tipped his head, and he and Josh elbowed their way through bodies that were now so compressed that they seemed more like some squirming inhuman substance than like actual people. Once they fought their way through to the front, they saw what was causing this fresh disturbance: five mermaids were floating only twenty feet away, looking at the crowd with what appeared to be a kind of stage fright. They were so beautiful that the sight of their faces seemed to burn Andrew’s eyes.
“Um, hi?” one of the mermaids ventured, her shyness contrasting strangely with her ferocious loveliness. “General Luce says it’s okay for us to talk to you.”
The crowd yowled, several people who were carrying signs swung them recklessly, and the mermaid glanced around at her friends and started backing away.
“Don’t scare them!” Josh yelled. “Everybody act calm! Don’t scare them!”
One brown-skinned mermaid flicked her way just a little closer, gazing with obvious pity at someone Andrew couldn’t see. Someone on the shore to his left, probably standing right at the front of the crowd. “I, uh, God, there’s something I have to tell you. About Melinda. We were friends, and she—”
The mermaid broke off in alarm, but this time what had spooked her wasn’t the crowd’s uproar but an even more abrupt and disturbing silence. She visibly gathered her courage and kept speaking.
“I’m sorry I have to tell you this! Melinda’s dead. I saw her get killed—by those divers with the helmets. They got her in the throat with a spear. I saw it, and I couldn’t do anything to help her! I couldn’t—I barely got away! But Melinda . . .”
Horror pitched sharply through the mermaid’s voice, and Andrew suddenly noticed the long, imperfectly healed, crimson slash that began at her left shoulder and disappeared where the water covered her chest. It must have been the distracting power of her beauty that had stopped him from seeing sooner that she was hurt. He had the funny feeling that everyone watching the mermaid had noticed her wound at the same moment he did. People around him gasped, sobbed . . .
And then a woman pitched headlong into the water, bobbing limply face-down as if she’d fainted.
Beside her floated the sign she’d been carrying, emblazoned with the name Melinda Crawford above an enormous photo of a beaming honey-haired teenager. Water sloshed across the girl’s smiling face, dragging it under . . .
Police were in the water, grappling with that unconscious body; around Andrew people screamed and tried to surge toward the spot; someone else dived and was instantly caught and flung back toward the shore. In the corner of his eye, he saw Josh leap forward shouting, crashing into three of the cops and toppling one of them.
As distractions went, it was all pretty prime—and then those mermaids were so close. What with how crazy everyone was acting, they’d probably never come this close again.
The only thing still separating him from the water was a low embankment of heaped rocks. Andrew stepped up onto it, seeing Melinda Crawford’s face half erased by green darkness, seeing the single police officer who turned to stare at him with a look of furious realization—and hurled himself over the edge.
Gray and salt and cold. The violent rhythmic thrashing of his arms as he propelled himself forward, beating the low waves. Up ahead he caught a glimpse of blue frightened eyes as a mermaid turned to gape at him. He spat out salt water and called, “Luce! General Luce! I need to talk to her!”
The rush and whorl of mermaid song was much louder inside the water than it had been onshore. His brain seemed to tremble and melt into strange new shapes, rippling wave forms. His vision was divided between the gray of the sky above and the slopping green confusion of the water. He lurched high enough to peer across the water’s surface, trying to catch sight of those brilliant blue eyes, of the flash of fins.
They didn’t seem to be there anymore. Maybe just a little farther ahead? He kicked harder, his jeans and sneakers dragging at the water.