“He’s got no right to call himself that!” Luce snarled. “Cala, it’s not sweet at all! It’s like he’s stealing our name!”
The bronze-haired boy wore a black T-shirt, and printed on it in huge white block letters were the words—
“Twice Lost Human? Luce, he’s totally being nice! He’s just saying he’s, like, on our side. And he’s cute.”
TWICE LOST HUMAN. How could he dare—after everything he’d done—how could he possibly have the gall to call himself that?
“Cala,” Yuan said coolly, strongly. “Cut it out.”
“I just don’t think he means it like stealing our name! He—”
“Don’t you get it?” Yuan’s tone was oddly matter-of-fact. “That’s Luce’s boyfriend. She doesn’t need to hear you going on about how sweet he is!” Luce reeled in the squeezing crowd of mermaids, spinning toward Yuan in outrage. Yuan only raised her eyebrows. “Isn’t he, Luce? That’s Dorian.”
All Luce wanted was to dive away and disappear. Eyes, both mermaid and human, came at her from all sides, curious and demanding, as if they wouldn’t be satisfied until all of Luce’s private suffering was dissected in front of them. She felt stripped and prodded; coarse fingers seemed to go fumbling through the chambers of her heart. Luce choked wordlessly, her tail lashing against the tails around her, wild with the urge to escape.
But Imani’s arms were around her and so were Yuan’s, and she was still their general—and their friend. She couldn’t just run away from them. Not anymore. She inhaled hard, forcing her tail to slow.
“Luce?” Yuan said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s just—”
“He was my boyfriend,” Luce announced flatly. “He betrayed me. For a human girl.” She couldn’t believe that she’d actually spoken those words aloud.
“And you let him live?” Cala asked, wide-eyed—then looked self-consciously at the humans watching them.
“No,” Luce snapped. After all the horrible things Moreland had said and then the shocking appearance of Dorian, her emotions still seethed inside her, threatening to sweep her away. “I made him live. He wanted to die.”
“Either way,” Yuan said sardonically, nodding at the screen, “it sure looks like he wants you back! Why do you think he’s doing this?”
The news show cut away from the protestors. Now the two newscasters were talking about a movie star who had just been arrested for drunk driving.
The sudden disappearance of the marchers hurt Luce more than she would have believed possible. Could Yuan be right? Luce gaped at the screen, where Dorian’s absence seemed to form a cataract of emptiness. And far too many people were still watching her.
“Let’s get to work,” Luce said. Her voice sounded dead. “It has to be almost six by now.”
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 Ringing
“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.