he now?” In true Carmen fashion, the Vamp wasn’t going to let this go. “Interesting. Very interesting indeed.”
“I agree.” Maddie and Carmen exchanged looks. “Sounds like that’s settled then,” Maddie said. She seemed so satisfied. If she’d been a feline Shifter she would have purred.
Confused, Shayla glanced from one to the other. Her two best friends appeared to find this massively amusing, whatever this might be. Finally, she just had to ask.
“What’s settled?”
“You called dibs!” Both Maddie and Carmen spoke at once, grinning from ear to ear. “Finally. We’re so happy for you. It’s about time.” They high-fived.
Shayla opened her mouth to protest and then closed it. She could tell the more she spoke, the deeper a hole she’d dig. Let them think what they wanted. Zach Cantrell was attractive. She was female, so of course she’d noticed. End of story. Her friends knew better than anyone that she had no intentions of getting involved with a man right now. Not for a long, long time, if ever. Her fiancé had died and she never wanted to feel that kind of pain again.
Later that night, once she’d let herself into her house, she went out on the back deck, the side that overlooked the water. The sounds of the waves lapping up against the shore always comforted her and tonight was no exception.
When she’d first made the impulsive, heartbroken decision to abandon the sea for land, she’d gone upstate, to a small town between Houston and Dallas. The town sat near a large, freshwater lake. She hadn’t realized lakes wouldn’t work the same as the sea, and it had taken her becoming seriously ill for her to understand she’d need to live close to the ocean. So she’d moved to Galveston Island. She’d rented for six months, just long enough to see if she liked it. She did.
Her business procuring and selling rare artifacts found on the ocean floor made more than enough money for her to purchase a single-family home right on the water—a steal at less than a million dollars. From her house, she could not only see the water, but swim in it from her own small, private beach. This brought her peace and no shortage of happiness. And since the house came with a small boat slip, whenever she needed to go under the sea, she simply took the boat out and anchored it before letting her tail grow back.
Perfect solution. She’d truly come to love Galveston Island, even though in the spring and summer it became crowded with tourists. For her, it was the perfect compromise between her new life on land and her old one under the sea.
Maddie lived on the island too, though farther inland, close to The Strand. She shared a small apartment with another woman, also a Shifter. As for Carmen, when anyone asked where she resided, she simply answered in a warning tone that they didn’t really want to know. Shayla assumed that meant a cemetery crypt, but who knew? These days, the Vamps had gotten away from their traditional dwellings. It could be entirely possible that Carmen might have a luxury house or condo near the bay. She had that well-groomed look that money brought.
* * *
The next morning, after her breakfast of kippers and eggs, Shayla went out in her boat. Her body had already begun to let her know she’d stayed away from her natural habitat too long, and, even though Zach Cantrell hadn’t signed a contract yet, she planned to do some investigating while she was under the water. While she didn’t know Ion or his missing daughter, Nantha—just like on land, the Merfolk had numerous cities with thousands of residents—she could still ask around. The news that a Mermaid had gone missing would travel like a tidal wave among her people. For all she knew, it might already have.
The weather couldn’t have been more perfect. Overcast and slightly chilly, the steady mist that fell ensured she’d have privacy on her swim. She motored past Stewart Park, the beach where most of the tourists swam in the late spring and early summer. Since it was late March, a few weeks after spring break, she knew the beach would be mostly deserted, and it was.
She moored her boat about two hundred yards out, in the area where she’d once seen someone conducting a scuba diving class. Dropping her anchor, she slipped out of her raincoat and shirt, leaving only her bikini top. Brightly colored swimsuit tops had become popular among Mermaids, especially since so many of them enjoyed spending time appearing human. With the sea calling her, she slipped over the edge of the boat, beginning the change from legs to tail as soon as her skin hit the icy water.
The first shock of the cold had her sucking in her breath, but then as she slipped under the waves, her Mermaid nature took over, joyfully reuniting with her still-beloved sea. In her grief after losing her fiancé Richard, she’d had to forgive the very nature of the thing that was part of her essence. The marriage had been arranged, true, but the two of them had hit it off immediately, minutes into their first meeting. Sometimes, she’d thought, you meet someone and you just know. They’d both felt that way.
The wedding would unite two separate kingdoms. The celebrations had started immediately. Though they’d met several times in the weeks that followed, they hadn’t yet gotten around to discussing where they would live. Even though she’d known she’d have to move to his kingdom where he would someday rule, she’d been so blinded by love that it hadn’t mattered.
The wedding plans had gone into full gear. It would be an elaborate ceremony with dignitaries attending from seas all over the world. Her dress had been chosen and fitted, the sea anemones ordered and the invitations mailed out.
And then everything had changed in the flip of a fin. Richard had been out celebrating with his friends. He’d been drinking, and was clearly inebriated when he’d run into the massive great white shark in an isolated area.
Shayla often hoped the substantial amount of alcohol meant he hadn’t suffered as much pain.
The shark had later been hunted down and killed, far too late.
The kingdoms had also been stunned. His family went into mourning. Her family did, as well. As for Shayla, her grief turned into rage. She’d gone crazy, acting out, hurting the ones who’d only sought to comfort her. At least as long as she filled herself with fury, she had no room for the pain.
But once this had burned through her, she felt hollow and empty. She became a shadow of her former self, taking comfort in the gray numbness, glad she couldn’t seem to remember how to think, how to feel.
She’d sworn off the sea and tried to turn her back on the ocean. Coming ashore on South Padre Island, she’d headed north, inland, hoping to put as much distance between herself and the water as she could. She’d even managed to convince herself the tales of a Mermaid needing to be around water were old wives’ tales without a single kernel of truth in them.
Now she knew better. She needed the sea as much as she needed air to breathe when she was in her human form.
For its part, the ocean recognized her, too. Just like the land, the sea was a living, breathing organism, and as such, the instant she touched its surface, Shayla became an integral part of it. Joy flooded through her, joy and wonder and a tiny bit of aching grief that she pushed away.
Time to swim. She dove under. As usual, a few minutes passed before her eyes adjusted to the murky depths, but as she swam away from land, gradually going deeper, the entire seascape changed.
Use of sonar by humans to discover shipwrecks had made life more difficult for the Merfolk to keep their cities hidden. But in the deeper parts of the ocean, there were mountains and valleys, just as there were on land, and it was in those valleys where their civilizations had grown. In all
