Chapters (34)
Anais mulled this, her blue fins rippling irritably. Then her face changed completely. All at once she beamed with gentle innocence. “Of course I’ll help. It isn’t safe for anyone to have Luce swimming around out there! She’ll just kill so many of your men if no one stops her!”
“Quite so.” Moreland’s tongue slid across his bluish teeth, and his eyes widened with a fake sincerity that almost equaled Anais’s, except that his smile kept twisting into a leer. Every tiny disturbance of the water sent greenish light crawling across his stiff white hair. “We’re very grateful for your patriotism. Now, did . . . Lucette ever mention the name Dorian to you? Dorian Hurst?”
“Who?” Anais asked. Her confusion looked genuine enough.
Moreland was disappointed again, but Anais suddenly leaned forward in excitement. “Wait, wait, wait! A guy? You’re saying that Luce was seeing a human guy? That is so sick!” She squealed with laughter. “And she thought she was supposed to be queen! Oh, I can’t wait to tell . . .” Anais’s laughter faltered abruptly, and she looked down.
Moreland observed her for a long moment. His gray eyes were covetous, cold. “Oh, but there’s no one left to tell, is there, tadpole? The abominations who would have liked to hear your gossip about Lucette and her human boyfriend are all dead.” He gazed at her with something that might have almost passed for compassion. “We destroyed every last one of them in front of you. And even as we speak the teams are out there, hunting down other groups of your kind.”
“I didn’t want to be a mermaid!” Anais snarled. “I never wanted to! They’re not my kind! I loved being human. Everything was so perfect . . .”
Moreland considered this. “You didn’t want to be a mermaid. Were you somehow changed against your will?”
“Of course I was!” Anais was staring down, plainly on the verge of tears. Maybe they were even real.
The secretary of defense didn’t look convinced. “Then who changed you?”
“Luce did it.” It came out in a sullen whimper. “She forced me, but I . . .”
“That’s very sad.” Moreland stared at Anais for a few more moments. Now that she wasn’t looking at him, he examined her stunning form with a mixture of hungry fascination and naked loathing. “Well, then, it’s a very fortunate thing that you’re living with humans again, isn’t it? You can talk to us. Now, what you said before, about this Luce . . .”
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About the Author
SARAH PORTER is the author of the young adult novels Lost Voices, Waking Storms, The Twice Lost, and Vassa in the Night, as well as the middle grade novel Tentacle and Wing. She is also an artist and a freelance public school teacher. Sarah and her husband live in Brooklyn, New York.