Deep Betrayal (Lies Beneath #2) (13 page)

The water combed through my hair and caressed my cheek. It pulled along my legs, making them seem longer than before. I kicked and propelled myself away from shore, skirting the surface, pretending I was a real mermaid, that I could keep up with Calder and Dad.

Reaching forward, I pulled myself through the water stroke after stroke, stroke after stroke, feeling the remaining bits of my rage dissipate. I turned a somersault. And then another. Twisting in the water. Startling a lake trout that came up to investigate. It made me want to laugh, and I surfaced so I could. I made no gasp at the air. It was all too easy. So very easy.

When the air hit my face, I turned in a quick circle, completely disoriented. The dock was gone. The willow tree was gone. I turned again to look for the scattering of islands and realized I was at least a quarter mile north of our dock. How long had I been underwater? Or was it a matter of speed? No. That couldn’t be it. My body was nothing more than human. I hadn’t suddenly broken out with a tail. I would have noticed that. Still, I couldn’t help but look. Nope. Two legs.

I turned south and filled my lungs to capacity, submerging and swimming underwater as I had before—though this time without fooling around. I counted in my head,
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi
 … When I hit sixty, I started to panic, but not in the normal way. My lungs didn’t burn with their pending collapse. I had no need to scramble toward the surface. This time, the panic came from not
needing
to breathe. At least, not yet.

Two hundred Mississippi. Two hundred one …

Familiar voices filled my head. The higher-pitched ones were muffled and far away. The lower ones were closer, south of the ferry route. There were no distinct words; instead, they hummed and blended into a kind of melody, an eerie harmony, like wind over an empty bottle.

The lake floor sloped up to meet me. I reached forward, my hands hitting the slippery timber-and-boulder foundation
of our dock. I threw one arm up on the deck, and the sun hit my face, unnaturally hot, burning my skin, like someone was staring at me.

“Have a nice swim?” Sophie asked. She was sitting cross-legged at the end of the dock, drawing in a sketchbook with one of Mom’s charcoal pencils.

“Yeah,” I said. How long had she been there? What had she seen? “Thanks, Soph. Can you go grab me a towel?”

“You’re done already?” She rubbed her pencil furiously over the page.

“Um, yeah. Think so.” I stared at her, waiting for her to look up from her drawing, wondering how to interpret her words, but she just kept scribbling. “No, I’m good,” I said, finally giving up.

“Okay.” She set the sketchbook down, saying, “Back in a sec,” and she ran for the house.

I pulled myself out and sat on the edge of the dock. Four minutes. I’d held my breath for four freakin’ minutes. Without really trying. That was seriously messed up. More amazing: I’d only come to the surface because I’d reached the dock. How much longer could I have gone? I’d find out tomorrow.

I dripped water on Sophie’s sketchbook, leaving dime-sized circles that bled into quarters. When I picked up the book, I saw a picture of myself. But this time the metamorphosis was complete. She’d drawn me with a tail.

I turned around and watched Sophie come skipping across the lawn, whipping the towel over her head like a lasso. When she got to the end of the dock, she tried to snap it at me, but I grabbed it out of her hand and wrapped it around my shoulders.

We sat in silence, staring out across the lake. Dad and Calder were out there somewhere. Did Sophie know that? I sincerely hoped I was reading too much into her drawing, but I had to ask.

“What’s with the picture, Sophie?”

“You don’t like it?” she asked, her lips pursed.

“Who’s that supposed to be?” I asked, tapping the picture with my fingers.

“It’s
supposed
to be you,” she said. “Is it bad?” She held the picture closer to her face, scrutinizing the details.

“No, not at all,” I said. I put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s just that the last time I checked, anyway, I didn’t have a tail.”

“No,” she agreed, still sounding disappointed. “But it’s pretty, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t know you were into mermaids,” I said casually.

“They’re pretty,” she said. She picked up her things and stood. Before she left me she said, “Mom’s making blueberry pancakes. Are you coming?”

“Yeah, I’ll be up in a bit.”

Sophie stared at me for a few seconds, then said, “Don’t skip out.”

“I won’t. I said I’d be up.”

Sophie chewed on her lip and stared at her feet. “Mom looks weird. Kind of sad. So be really nice to her.”

“I’m always nice.”

“And be nice to Calder. You weren’t nice to him last night.”

Before I could retort, Sophie stole the towel from around my shoulders and ran back to the house chanting, “Lily’s in her un-der-wear! Lily’s in her un-der-wear!”

T
hursday dinner went by, still without any word from Calder and only an email from Dad, which was sent from another fictitious teachers’ conference sponsored by the so-called
Midwest Ecology Review
. All I could think was
M.E.R.
? Was that supposed to be funny? Mom didn’t seem to think so, either, although not for the same reasons.

Sometime around three in the morning on Friday, I woke up shaking. I’d left my window open. Cold lake air filtered in, and my teeth chattered uncontrollably, threatening to shatter like glass. There was an extra blanket in my closet,
but I was too cold to leave my bed to get it. Same was true for shutting the window. For a second I wondered if I could telepathically close the window from where I lay. If I thought about it hard enough. Long enough.
Harder
. Nope. Not going to happen.

The tree branches creaked and dragged wooden fingers across the roof. No matter how cold I was, it shamed me to think Calder was somewhere out in that wind with nothing more than the trees to cover him. No matter how mad I’d been, no one deserved that.

I pulled myself from the sheets and, just in case Calder was there, gathered what he might need. I found him shivering in the hammock outside.

“How have you survived all these years living outside?” I asked.

“It’s warmer underwater, or by a campfire. I’m not used to so much wind. What you got there? Sleeping bag?”

He rolled out of the hammock, and I handed it to him. He wrestled it flat and, finding the opening, crawled inside. “Very roomy.”

“I zipped two of them together.”

His green eyes glowed in the darkness. “Does this mean we’re not fighting anymore?”

“Sophie says I have to be nice to you. Besides, I like my fish fresh, not frozen.”

He laughed warmly and held the bag open for me to climb in. I snuggled into his chest, and he pulled me up so our faces were even. Gabby was wrong. I appreciated every inch of him. And not just the parts I could see, but the way he made me feel when he looked at me like this—like I filled some hollowed-out part of his heart.

“You’re in a better mood,” I said, zipping the bag closed around us.

He winced. “Marginally. But don’t worry. It’s not because I took someone last night.” He sounded ashamed, even though he was telling me he had nothing to be ashamed of. “I mean, if you were wondering about that. You look nervous. I’m guessing that’s it? I didn’t really think I would—take someone, I mean. At least, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t. Jack set me off, and then you … well … you scared me … the way you looked. Something’s changing with you, Lily. I wish you’d tell me. I promise I won’t be mad.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“Okay, I will
try very hard
not to be mad. But I will promise you this: I won’t ever try to guilt you again. I was wrong the other night. If, for some reason, I was to slip, it wouldn’t be your fault. It would never be your fault. You’re still all I want.”

I ignored the contradiction in his words. I couldn’t take my eyes off his lips as he spoke. I put my finger against them and lied, “I never thought you’d slip.”

“Then tell me what’s bothering you.”

I took his bottom lip between my teeth, tasting the sweetness. He inhaled sharply and pulled me so close I imagined what it would feel like to be absorbed, to be soaked into his skin as pure emotion, to be but one body. My heart flip-flopped between us as his fingertips pressed my lower back toward him. I slipped my hand inside the back of his shorts, feeling his muscles tense.

“Lily, are you sure?” he asked, his breath hot in my ear. His hand slid over my hip, then up my waist to my rib cage. He threw one leg over mine and waited for my response.

He was right. I wasn’t sure.

Desire turned to fear, which—no doubt—he could see on me, too. He groaned and rolled away from me.

“Wake me up before my dad finds me out here,” I whispered.

He shook his head and said, “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

“Which part? The waking or the finding?”

“Shhh.”

Something about the way he dismissed my question put my mind on red alert. “He’s barely been home since we got back to the lake.”

“I know,” Calder said. “He’s having a hard time adjusting. I’m trying to help.”

“Please tell me you’ve at least made some progress in finding Maris and Pavati. Has Dad been able to hear either one of them?”

Calder closed his eyes. Two vertical lines formed between his eyebrows. The hammock swung gently, and I watched as Calder gathered his thoughts and rolled back to face me. “Is this
really
what you want to talk about?” he asked, kissing my eyelids and then my nose. “Your dad?”

“Yes. No,” I said, my mind addled.
What did I ask?

“The answer to your question is no, not yet. And no, he hasn’t been able to hear them, either, but I’m working on a theory.”

“Tell me.”

“He’s never heard their voices before. On land, I mean. Maybe he
is
hearing them, but he doesn’t recognize the sounds for what they are.”

“That’s possible.” It occurred to me that I was in a unique
position. Dad, Maris, Pavati—even Calder—were all family to me, by blood or by choice. I knew all their voices on land. I’d heard Maris’s screeching accusations and Pavati’s seductive murmurs. I knew Calder’s, of course, and Dad’s best of all.

Although I’d heard no distinct words in the water before, only muffled sounds, I was convinced it had been all four of them I’d heard the other day.

“That’s my theory,” Calder said. “The other option is that they’re a million miles away. They
feel
like a million miles away. Especially now, when you’re here with me. And we’re not fighting. Now, can we talk about something else?”

“Are you and Dad going out again tomorrow?”

He sighed. “He wants me to, but after how Tuesday night ended, I told him I still needed to recharge, that I needed to spend some concentrated time with you.”

I choked on my words as I asked how my dad reacted to
that
. “Yeah,” Calder said, laughing a little. “That might have been more than he wanted to hear.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “It’s okay if you need to go.”

Calder pulled back so he could see me fully. His eyes narrowed as he scrutinized my face, his nose twitched at whatever he was seeing.

I scrambled to put his mind at ease. The last thing I wanted to do was tell him about my experiments and apparently I was unable to disguise them completely. “I’ve got … things … I’m working on. If you and Dad need more time to train … I don’t want you to think I’m moping around. I got on fine before I met you. That was only a couple of months ago. I think I can figure out how to fill my day.”

“You don’t need to use reverse psychology on me. When
I say I need to spend time with you, I mean it.” He placed his finger on the end of my nose and drew it over my lips, my chin, down my neck to my belly button. He grinned, then swallowed hard, his eyes closing.

I molded my body to his, feeling his muscles flex against me and his skin flushed with heat. I traced circles in his hair, lightly across his temples, watching his eyes flicker, then close. His muscles relaxed, and he sank heavier into the hammock, which barely swayed with his changing weight. His skin was smooth, taut, and packed with muscles and sinew and bone. I drew my finger along a pattern of scars on his shoulders, feeling his exhaustion, but also his contentment.

“Go with Dad,” I said. “When you get back, I’ll be here waiting for you.”

While I was generally oblivious to the light he saw in me, I could sometimes see traces of it on him. For instance, right then, I could have sworn the inside of the sleeping bag shimmered like the northern lights.

A
s soon as Calder got back from his morning expedition with Dad, he suggested we finally pay Mrs. Boyd a visit at the Blue Moon Café. I wished we hadn’t put it off because it felt awkward now that we’d been back for two weeks. Calder and I walked to the café hand in hand; he grinned, while I struggled to come up with several well-phrased apologies for having left her so abruptly. But when the bell over the door rang out and Mrs. Boyd looked up, I forgot every one of them.