“Hey,” Dorian said softly. He didn’t know how he’d gotten in the dubious habit of talking out loud to her all the time. “Hey, girlfriend.” That was a pretty sick joke, really. He suppressed an unwanted memory of her arm holding his waist, her glossy, almost luminous shoulders, that bare chest. His lips twisted into something between a smirk and a grimace. “I really don’t want to cause trouble for you, but you’re forcing me to. I have to do something . . .”

Of course there was no answer. There never was. It seemed like all he ever did these days was talk to the unresponding night.

4

The Diver

She could stay away from him, Luce told herself. After all, she’d had the self-discipline to develop the power of her singing in ways the other mermaids had never even imagined, practicing hour after hour. And she’d managed to overcome the cold desire to sing humans to their deaths, bind them in enchantment, even as she’d felt the dark, addictive thrill of controlling so many people. With her singing Luce could force anyone to love her to the point of self-obliteration, but she’d refused to continue doing it. Compared to that, ignoring one pathetic human boy should be easy.

It was dangerous, of course, to have him howling her song on the cliffs at night. If any of the other mermaids heard him, they’d probably figure out that Luce was guilty of letting him survive; her song was so recognizable that it would almost certainly give her away. But as Luce thought it over, she decided it was a risk she could take. Her old tribe almost never swam that far from their own cave, and as long as the boy didn’t see her again, he’d get tired of calling her and give up before long. Humans were cowardly and weak-minded. They got bored easily. There was no reason to believe he’d be any more determined than the rest of them. For the next few days Luce deliberately swam in the opposite direction, toward the Aleutians, even though there were more orcas that way.

On the fourth night, though, her curiosity got the better of her. Was he really still showing up at that spot on the cliffs, singing his ugly parody of her song? She skimmed through water that glowed blue with dusk and shivered with whale song, stopping at a rock heaped with drowsy seals. They were used to her and didn’t startle, though a few of them looked up with dreamy black-glass eyes and snuffled.

She’d made up her mind to see if the bronze-haired boy was still singing to her. Why was she so reluctant, then, to discover the truth? Luce imagined arriving below the cliffs and hearing nothing but the rasp of surf and wind and suddenly felt almost nauseous with loneliness.