Luce closed her eyes, feeling herself suspended in an expanse of water and music made one. Almost all the screams had slipped into silence now. The glassy darkness surrounding her filled with the knowledge that Catarina was almost surely dead—and that Luce herself had made the choice to kill her queen and her friend.
Her song twisted on like a living thing, vital with determination. But while her voice still lived, Luce was sure her heart hadn’t survived.
A rattle of gunfire burst through the immense upwelling song. Lost in numbness beyond grief, Luce could only feel a dull chill in place of fear. That helicopter’s crew was enraged by the mermaids’ disobedience—of course; of course, those lunatics had started shooting in frustration. Soon the bombs would fall, and the water would burst with crushing waves of energy. For some reason those people up there wanted San Francisco destroyed, and they weren’t about to take the mermaids’ no for an answer.
It was all over, then. Everything she’d tried to do was about to be obliterated. In a dark, mournful way Luce wondered how many of the Twice Lost would die and how many would flee before there weren’t enough of them left to sustain the wave. Maybe, just maybe, they could buy some of the humans onshore enough time to escape from the inevitable cataclysm.
She’d killed humans before, Luce thought dreamily. It seemed fair enough that now she would die trying to save at least a few of them. And then Catarina was dead because of her, and soon Luce would die too; that seemed right as well. She almost smiled as she reached out her hands, touching the water around her as if it were an enclosure of glossy diamond. As the guns cracked again Luce’s voice rose to meet their outbursts, wild and sweet. There were no words to her song, but it was still shaped by an emotion so strong that the music seemed to take on language: I accept it, I accept it, I accept . . .
“Luce!” It was Yuan. Luce wouldn’t stop the song until a spear or a bomb stopped it for her, but she opened her eyes to gaze at Yuan, trying to reassure her without words. You can leave, you can live, but I’m staying. I accept this. “Luce, something crazy is happening! Those helicopters—they’re shooting at each other! Not at us!” That made no sense, Luce thought hazily. Yuan obviously didn’t know what she was talking about.
Yuan pulled at Luce’s elbow, and Luce resisted her, suddenly stabbed by fear again after that long cold lull. It wasn’t death that horrified her, but the thought of seeing Catarina’s lifeless body swinging in the sky. “Luce, this is important!” Yuan gasped. “We have to understand what’s happening—we can’t just ignore it! You can’t.”
Yuan leaped, grabbing Luce around her ribs, then spiraled her tail so forcefully that they both rocketed to the surface. Yuan actually caught Luce’s short hair in one hand, jerking her head back to make her see . . .
Two helicopters waltzed around each other, rising, dropping and swooping with balletic grace. Strangely, Yuan was right; they didn’t seem to be shooting at the mermaids under the bridge or even paying any attention to them. Behind the two aircraft the clouds had parted, showing long sinuous sweeps of bright blue sky, and the spinning propellers cast ribbons of reflected sunlight into the air. The spectacle would have seemed mesmerizing, even gorgeous, if it weren’t for the net full of dead girls dangling horribly from one helicopter.
Serene if it weren’t for the staccato gunfire that spat abruptly, slicing straight across the helicopter’s tail.
The helicopter carrying the net sputtered as the bullets cut through it, as its tail sheered away and plunged into the water in a ring of spray. It seemed to stagger in the sky, crippled and shocked, then began descending in a long wobbling fall like a bird caught in a turbulent downdraft. The victor hovered just above, watchful and threatening, as its prey dropped toward shallow water. The net touched down first, then the wounded copter sank in defeat just ahead of it. Small dark boats converged on the spot.
Beside them the wave still held, tall and unyielding.
There was a disturbance in the water behind them. Luce glanced around, confused, and saw one of those human swimmers nearby, her arms flailing with exhaustion. A golden, chubby girl, her drenched clothes flopping around her. She pulled her head up, gasping, trying to say something—and Yuan gave a piercing cry and caught the girl in her arms. “Gigi! Gigi, are you crazy? You should have been running uphill as fast as you could! What would have happened if . . . if we hadn’t managed to—you would have drowned, and—”
“I couldn’t let you go through that alone, Yuan! How could you think for one second that I would? Oh, God!”
Alone? Luce thought wearily. Had Yuan really felt alone until Gigi arrived?
Where was Nausicaa now?
And even if he was angry or disappointed in her, why had her father still not come to look for her? Luce knew she’d done horrible things as a mermaid—but hadn’t she earned his forgiveness yet?
And Dorian? Could he be thinking of her now?
Luce stared back toward the circle of boats surrounding the downed helicopter. People were loading blanket-wrapped corpses onto the boats. And one of those veiled bodies was Catarina’s.
Who was she, what was she, now that she had allowed her friend to die?
31 Always a Price
The larvae tank wasn’t nearly as luxurious as the tank where Anais lived: it was an uncovered glass enclosure half-filled with bubbling salt water, set in the center of a bland white room. There was no need for the soundproof barrier that sealed Anais from the world. Larvae’s attempts at singing weren’t much more than eerie, dissonant squeaks that didn’t threaten anyone. The tank contained a small artificial shore, crudely formed from coated plaster, so that the larval mermaids would have somewhere to sleep, but apart from that there wasn’t much for the mushy little creatures to do. Charlie Hackett, who was extremely proud of his growing reputation for handling the captive mermaids well, had brought them a few random toys: pink plastic dinosaurs with glittery eyelids and docile smiles, a teething ring with a row of bright beads sliding in an endless circle, a battered Barbie doll in a golden swimsuit. As he entered their room, rolling the small gurney in front of him, he saw half a dozen larvae tussling in the tank, their stubby pastel tails flopping as they wrestled. They were squeaking fitfully, and after a moment Charlie Hackett recognized the source of the trouble: one especially temperamental larva had the Barbie and wouldn’t let the others play with it.
That made his decision easier. Because what he had to do now was definitely the worst part of his job. Coming back from yet another shopping expedition—they’d sent him out that afternoon to replace some of Anais’s broken belongings—he’d been disheartened to find the order to select one of his small charges for an experimental treatment. And they hadn’t even left him any time to check in on Anais, to refresh his mind with an infusion of her bright beauty. “Now, Snowy,” Charlie murmured. He’d named the troublemaker larva Snow White for her pale bluish skin, midnight hair, and beautiful sapphire eyes. “Now, Snowy, you know we’ve talked about this. You have to learn to share with your friends, and if you can’t . . .”
Something in his tone warned her. She looked up at him, burbling apprehensively, and dropped the doll. Her deep blue eyes rounded in wordless appeal. The others trilled out airy, piercing cries and shrank away from her into the corners. They’d seen more than one of their small companions carried off before, though he’d been careful to keep them from knowing what happened next.