Deep Betrayal (Lies Beneath #2) (8 page)

“Lily, we need to talk to you.”

We?
I turned over quickly to find Calder standing in the dark, behind my dad’s shoulder, staring down at me with serious eyes. I pulled the blankets tight around me.

“I’m going to give this a go,” Dad said. “See if there’s any truth to what you’ve told me.”

“Yeah, Dad. Okay.”

“Tonight,” he said.

“Wait? What? Without me?”

“Lily,” Calder said, drawing closer. “Is that really something you want to watch?”

When he said it like that, when I thought about
all
that a transformation would require, I cringed. No. He was right. I didn’t need to see that.

“Our first step,” Calder said, “is to see if Jason can, in fact, transform.”

So it’s Jason now?

He glanced at my dad. “If he can—and I don’t doubt that for a second—then we’ll have to start training right away. He needs to know how to scramble his thoughts if Maris and Pavati can hear him, and he needs to know how to defend himself if they can’t. Well, he should really know how to do that either way. He’s not going to be able to stay out of the water—like you are.” He looked at me hard to remind me of my promise. “So we’re going to start training immediately.”

“Train?” My voice was a whisper. “How long will you be gone?” I asked, dreading where this was going. The feeling of abandonment trickled through my chest, and I braced myself against their answer.

Dad paced back and forth at the end of my bed. “I can’t stand it any longer, not knowing. I’ve got to stretch my … I’ve got to go. For just a little while.”

“Tell me how long you’re going to be gone,” I demanded.

“It’s just for a little while,” Calder said.

“But I haven’t seen you in over a month!” I hated how hysterical I sounded, but I couldn’t help it. This was unfair, and Calder didn’t seem to care at all.

“Lil,” he said, bowing his head.

Dad stepped closer again. “I told your mom the college was sending my whole department to a conference and that I’d be home on Sunday.”

“But that’s
three days
!”

“Shhhh,” Dad said, tamping down my volume with his hands. “It’ll probably take me at least that long to learn what I need to know.”

Dad looked at Calder and tipped his head toward the door. Calder took the hint and said, “Good night, Lily.” He hung in my doorway for a second before slipping away like a shadow.

I watched the hall for a few more moments, in the hope that he’d come back. When he didn’t, I set my jaw and flopped back on my pillow. I turned away from Dad to hide my face. He put his hand on my shoulder and rolled me back toward him. My cheeks were already wet.

“So it’s that way? You’ll miss him that much?”

“Every minute.”

“Remember you’ll be leaving for college soon, Lily. It’s not a good time for you to get so involved.” He brushed my long bangs off my forehead.

“You know what? I wish I’d never told you about any of this. This was my secret. I shared it with you, but now you’re taking it from me.”

“Lily, I’m not taking anything from you. Frankly, I don’t want any of it.”

I wiped my face on my pillow. Dad headed for the door, then he stopped and turned at the threshold. “You’re too young to feel so strongly about someone.”

I almost smiled. “Maybe you’re too old to remember.”

He smiled, and for a second, he was just my dad again. Normal Dad. The dad I wanted to remember. “Touché, sweet girl. I’ll be as quick a study as I can. I’ll have him back soon.”

“Promise?” I asked, wondering if he was enough of a merman that I could bind him to his word. But he wouldn’t take the bait, and my door closed softly behind him, without an answer.

I flipped on my light and pulled
MY SCRIBBLINGS
out from under my mattress. I bit down hard on my pencil to keep from crying. Within seconds, the loneliness I felt poured out of my heart and onto the page.

I almost missed the sound of one clean dive, followed by the sound of a second body convulsing in the water.

I
fell asleep with
MY SCRIBBLINGS
still in my hands. Sometime after two a.m., the rain stopped and the silence woke me. Moon shadows flickered across my walls. June bugs bounced against the window screen. Restless and lonely, I tiptoed down the stairs and out the door, closing it gently, resisting the pull of the springs that wanted to snap it shut. The porch steps creaked, but I didn’t think the noise was enough to wake Mom.

I walked halfway across the yard and peered out toward the islands, wondering where Dad and Calder were now. “Calder,” I said, under my breath.

“What are you doing, Lily? I told you to stay away from the water.” I turned and saw a dark shape sit up in the hammock under the trees.

“Calder? You’re back? Already? What are you doing in the hammock?”

He answered my questions in succession. “Yes. Clearly. For now. And trying to sleep. You’ve been tossing and turning all night.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were out here?”

“Jason told me not to.”

“And you listened?”

“Of course I did. I want to stay close to you, and he wasn’t about to let me sleep in the house. How could he explain that to your mom? I’m supposed to be on Madeline, living on my parents’ sailboat. Remember?”

“Yeah, but he’s making you sleep outside?”

“I always sleep outside. Don’t be mad at him. I promised I’d behave, and I want to stay on his good side.”

“So …?” I asked. “How did it go?”

Calder smiled in the darkness. “He transformed, all right. He’s a natural.” His eyes tightened on the last word. “Better than me when I was new.”

“Where is he now?” I asked.

“In the house, hopefully sleeping. The transformation back to legs took a lot out of him. He was puking for a good half hour.”

I bit my lip and turned to look at the house. “Are you sure he’s okay? Maybe I should go check on him.”

“Relax, Lily. This went much better than either of us expected. Something about science types, they find this whole
thing more fascinating than horrifying. That must be why Mother sought them out.”

I groaned in disgust.

“Hey,” Calder said. “Don’t forget this was your idea. We’re heading out again at sunrise.”

I climbed into the hammock alongside Calder. His muscular arms enveloped me, warming me against the night air. Then his fingers lifted the beach-glass pendant off my chest and turned it around in his fingers, just as he had once before.

“What is it?” I asked.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. There’s something different about you. The last couple of days, it’s like your colors are changing. I can see them even in the dark.”

I shifted uncomfortably in his arms. “Well, I
have
been under a little stress.”

“I know what stress looks like and, yes, I can see that, too, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Well, do I look different
good
or different
bad
?”

“Neither. Just different. You said your parents gave this to you?” he asked, still studying the pendant.

“It was a family heirloom from my grandpa,” I said, gently taking his hands from the necklace.

“Tom Hancock?” he asked, his voice raising.

“
Shush
. Geez, relax.”

“You’re right. You’re right,” he said, stroking my hair. “I’m sorry. Old prejudices die hard. Still, could you take it off for a second?”

“Why?”

“Just curious.” He reached behind my neck with both hands and undid the clasp, releasing the chain around my
neck. I took it from him and slipped it into the pocket of my sweatpants.

“Better,” he said. “You look more like you again. I wonder why that is.”

We lay in silence, the night pressing in on us, as I convinced myself that any kind of different would mean
different-bad
to Calder. When the silence grew to an uncomfortable length, I broke it.

“It’s killing me to think about you and Dad out there when I can’t come with.” My lips brushed against his shoulder as I spoke. A strange bitterness percolated in my gut.

“I know it is. I can
see
that, too—probably more clearly than you’d like to let on.”

“I never thought I’d have to be jealous of my dad. Other girls, sure, but—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, his hand slipping under my shirt, his long fingers encircling my waist.

“Did you ever think what would have happened if Dad hadn’t been there to pull me out?”

“I try not to.”

I pressed my nose to his neck, behind his ear, and breathed in the heady scent of him. I whispered, “If Dad hadn’t pulled me out of the water, I would have died.”

I felt a shiver run through him, and I cherished the confirmation that changing colors apparently didn’t change how he felt about me. “You said you would have reinvigorated me and made me a mermaid.”

“Those were desperate times. Desperate thoughts. It wouldn’t have worked. I told you before, only a
mermaid
can reinvigorate.”

I ignored him. “Then
I’d
be the one swimming with you this summer, instead of being on house arrest.”

“A part of me does wish you could come with us.”

“Then bring me,” I said, tracing the contours of his lips and then kissing them softly.

He pulled away, saying, “Please take this seriously. It’s important. You don’t want to undo everything we’ve worked for. Your dad without a target on his back. My freedom. Your safety.”

His words slowed to a deep, rhythmic pulse. Like blood through a vein. Like salmon pushing upstream against the current. I stared into his eyes and found my mind adopting the same steady pulse as his words, until my thoughts slowed to a stop, incomplete and lost. Just as a brilliant counterargument would occur to me, it would dissipate in the night.

“Go to sleep, Lily,” he said, and although I protested with my words, my mind was in complete agreement. I closed my eyes for only a second. That was my first mistake, because when I opened them again, it was morning. It was raining. And Calder was gone.

I did my best to follow Calder’s house-arrest orders. Honest truth. The first day, I folded everyone’s laundry and did the dishes for Mom. I dusted; I vacuumed; I alphabetized the CD rack, then the spice rack—pretty much did anything I could think of to kill time.

But by the second day there was nothing left to clean. I stared into my closet, wondering if I could color-code it, but
the whole thing was getting ridiculous. Screw it. I needed air, at least air that didn’t smell like Pine-Sol.

Outside, a storm front was rolling in. It was the kind of weather that made me feel boxed in. I pulled on my running shoes and ran out the front door and up the berm on the far side of the road, through the pine forest, and along a well-worn deer path. There wasn’t any harm in this. It wasn’t like I was going to run into a mermaid out here. I wasn’t breaking any of Calder’s rules.

I picked up my pace, reveling in the feel of the wind against my face, until the path dipped into a mud-slick ravine and slowed me down. I crept down the steep slope, carefully inching my way along the edge, clinging to pine branches to keep my shoes semi-clean. I thought I was past the worst of it when I slipped on a patch of loose pine needles and had to catch myself against the trunk of a tree. A layer of amber-colored tree sap smeared against my palm.

As I looked for something to wipe my hands on, my eye caught a movement on the path ahead. I watched as a guy dressed in a dirty baseball uniform approached. He didn’t see me. His eyes were on his shoes as he kept track of his footing. Baseball cleats hung around his neck. He was about my age and not much taller than me, stocky, with brown, shiny skin—like an acorn—and gelled, spiky black hair.

He held his expression in a serious scowl, and when he got ten feet from me, he inhaled sharply and looked up with a panicked expression. Surprisingly, his wide, frightened eyes were a pale sky blue.

He said, “Whoa! You’re a long way from home.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Do I know you?”

He gave me a puzzled look. “Huh. Guess not. Thought you looked familiar for a second.” His face fell back into its serious frown, and he looked over his shoulder as if he were being followed. “What are you doing out here?” he asked.

I wanted to retort with
It’s a free country
, but just because he was impolite didn’t mean
I
had to be. “I thought I’d get some exercise. Go for a run. But the path’s a mess.”

The serious boy laughed, startling me with his volume, like I’d said the funniest thing he’d ever heard. I took a step closer, but my foot caught on a tree root, and I stumbled forward. I reached out to catch myself on him, but he leaned back, letting me fall in the mud.

“Careful!” he said. “Don’t touch me.”

“Geez, what’s your problem? Ah,
crap
, these are newish pants!”

“Listen.” He looked over his shoulder again, as I got back on my feet. “I’m not supposed to be talking to you anymore.”

“Anymore?”

“You know what I mean.”

Behind him, the muffled sound of voices grew louder. Then he whispered, “I gotta go. Do us both a favor and hide behind that tree. I don’t need my brothers to see you. They wouldn’t like it if they caught us talking.”

The approaching voices rose and fell with bits of laughter.