Undead and Underwater (13 page)

“The badass beat down you just gave me. And I couldn’t mojo you.” The woman was looking at her thoughtfully and, though she wasn’t behaving in a threatening manner, Fred sensed she was more dangerous now than she’d been before. “Not all the way, anyway. You shrugged it off after a while. That’s never . . . huh. Why do you smell like fish?”

Fred blinked.
This was . . . yes. This was happening.
“You’re in an aquarium, you idiot.”

“Touch-
ee
. Betsy Taylor, by the way.” She stuck out her hand.

Fred looked down at it, then back up into Betsy’s blue green eyes. Then remembered
mojo
and jerked her gaze elsewhere. “I’m not shaking your hand.”

“Ouch again. It’s okay; they warned me about people from Boston.”

“I’m not—” Fred shut her mouth.
Why am I having a conversation with this creature? My kingdom for a spear gun.

Undeterred, the woman continued, “I’m Betsy Taylor. You must be Madison Fehr. We got here as soon as we could. Sorry if I scared you.”

“That’s okay.” Madison was hiccupping, from fear or adrenaline or both, but got hold of herself enough to shake Betsy’s hand. “I didn’t handle that very well. I haven’t handled any of this very well. I’m rilly, rilly sorry.”

“Yeah, I was hoping we could talk about that. And about you, of course. I take it that whatever jam you’re in, she’s not part of it?” Jerking a thumb in Fred’s direction.

Madison, still hiccupping, shook her head. “No. Not yet, but she probably will be, and it’s my fault.” For the first time, Fred saw how wretched Madison looked and sounded. The girl was barely out of college, had the money to buy anything she liked, and usually looked carefully put together.

Madison tended to dress like she still went to an exclusive East Coast private school: pleated khaki skorts, crisp white blouses, navy cardigans, and her I’m-only-an-intern-but-they-gave-me-this-cool-lab-coat lab coat. Hair pulled back into a curly platinum ponytail. Minimum-to-no makeup . . . the
only
thing she and Fred had in common. Madison didn’t need it, and Fred had always found stuffing her pores with foundation, tugging on the delicate skin around her eyes with pencils and makeup brushes, and plastering her lips with wax preservatives to be exquisitely stupid.

That other one was wearing makeup: bronzer and blush. She didn’t need it, either, which pissed Fred off. Irrational and irrelevant, but tonight she was a slave to her baser emotions.

“I don’t suppose either of you are in a smoothie mood, huh?” Betsy asked.

CHAPTER

FIVE

“If neither of us is the problem, what’s the problem?”

Madison was having trouble meeting either woman’s gaze. “Um, I’m the problem. Me and the bad guys. Okay, these guys I met? They think I’m Fred? And they wanna kill lots of Undersea Folk?”

As Fred stared, Betsy—sounding truly unpleasant for the first time—said, “I hate when women make everything a question? I don’t understand how you can’t hear how annoying that sounds? Like you can’t get your thumb out of your butt and be assertive?”

Fred snorted; her sentiments exactly. She hadn’t anticipated having even one thing in common with Betsy Taylor.

“What do you mean, the bad guys think you’re me?”

“And who are you?” Betsy asked.

“Don’t do that.” The only thing that made Fred more uncomfortable than the people who recognized her were the ones who pretended they didn’t recognize her. “If you’ve ever watched TV or been on the Web, you know who I am.”

“Wow, the ego on
you
. And if I’m calling you on having a big ego, it’s time to reexamine your life. Let’s try one more time: Who are you?”

“This is my work friend,” Madison lied. Fred did
not
consider the platinum-haired dimwit a friend. But
this is my pain in the ass
sounded unkind, even to her ears. “Betsy, this is Dr. Fredrika Bimm. She’s one of those mermaid people.”

“By
mermaid
people do you mean
heavily medicated
people?”

Fred slapped the counter in her annoyance. “Oh, come on! It’s been all over the news for months. Mermaids are real, they’re called Undersea Folk, and we’re all going try to live in peace. Hum your favorite parts from ‘Come Together’ and it’ll all fall into place.”

“I’ve been busy with my own stuff—does this sound familiar since I just said it? So how about you get to the actual reason we’re all in a big fish warehouse on a Tuesday night after the place is closed when I could be around the corner enjoying an oyster milkshake at the—the”—Betsy held up one finger in the universal hold-on-a-second gesture, fumbled through her dark green tote bag, then whipped out
Boston For Dummies
—“Union Oyster House. Says here it’s the oldest tavern in America.”

“You called a tourist for help?” Fred asked Madison, who had the decency to blush at the shame of it. “And you! Step
away
from the guidebook. First, you should have gone with Rough Guides
.
They’re not as bossy.
Second, mermaids exist, I’m one of them, and that’s probably why Madison’s in trouble. I have to speculate, though, since Madison hasn’t coughed up the reason she’s in trouble. As for you . . .” Fred seized Betsy by the arm and hauled her up the stairs . . . and up, and up. Madison tripped along behind them, wringing her hands. Fred was unaware women did that outside of gothic novels. “I can see we’re gonna be stuck in neutral unless I can get you past this one thing.”

“You mean about you being clinically insane? It’s okay, though,” she added hastily as they came to the top level, and the top of the tank. “My husband is, too, so I’m not judging. What does any of what you’re doing have to do with—Hey, a turtle!” She peered into the enormous tank, home to several dozen species of fish and reptiles. “And sharks!” Then: “Whoa.”

She had whoa’d because Fred had kicked off her flip-flops and stripped down to her . . . nothing. Yep, she was down to her nothing. Then she stomped over to the stairs beside the side of the tank, ascended them, and—

“I’m pretty sure you’ll need a note from a parent or a doctor before you do that. Seriously. Will you get down? Hey—don’t!”

—dropped in.

* * *

The NEA’s Giant Ocean Tank
**
was a four-story live exhibit at the heart of the aquarium. More than twenty feet deep and over thirty feet wide, the thing held two hundred thousand gallons of salt water as well as turtles, stingrays, eels, reef fish, sharks, assorted excrement from same, discarded food from same, coral reefs—lots o’ stuff, in other words. The water itself was bathtub warm.

From inside, Fred could see wavy, indistinct versions of Betsy and Madison looking down at her. She was a little nervous. Not out of fear of the tank’s inhabitants. Like all Undersea Folk, Fred shared a low, telepathy-based form of communication with the fish here, and they were (for the most part) on friendly terms. Yes, they’d gone on a hunger strike a couple of years ago when Fred refused to pipe in more Pet Shop Boys (coral reef fish adored ’80s glam rock for reasons unknown to Fred, who loathed it). Yes, there were occasional power struggles. But in general they got along.

No, she was afraid of how the other two would react. Though she had outed herself as a mermaid-human hybrid to the world, she was still overcoming decades of conditioning to keep her deep dark secret a deep dark secret.

Speaking of which, time for the show, especially since she couldn’t swim without her tail, which made snorkeling a challenge: she stretched, wiggled in place, and felt her legs recede and her tail come forth. Not that her legs went anywhere, or her tail came from anywhere. It was difficult to describe the process, which she’d found personally frustrating as someone with a background in biology. It was like her legs were . . . subsumed, she supposed. Like getting a tan: the tanned person looked different, but they were still the same person. Even when she couldn’t see her legs, she knew they were there, knew they were a part of her.

She swam back and forth for a minute, letting Betsy get a good look and glad for a chance to work out some muscle tension. Then with a powerful flick, she zoomed up to the top, her head popping out with a satisfying splash.

Betsy was clutching the top of the tank, white-faced. “Oh my God.”

“I see you’ve grasped the situation.”

“Oh my God!”

“This is what I was talking about.” Fred made sure she was within reach of the ladder before shifting back to her legs and climbing out. “Somehow you’ve missed the fact that an entirely new sentient species has existed with yours for millennia and picked the last six months to expose themselves.”

“I’ll say,” she muttered, eyeing Fred as she gathered up her clothes. “Nice rack, by the way. Unreal! Not your rack. The situation.”

“Only to some.” But she smiled to soften her comment, then wondered why she wanted to soften anything for the tote-bag-toting, nonsense-spouting, thought-hijacking bitch.

“I can’t believe it!”

Betsy seemed so astonished, and so sympathetic (though that was a little weird—why would she have sympathy?), Fred found herself warming up to her.

“You sometimes have a
tail
? You’re a half mermaid thingy or whatever so sometimes your feet just
disappear
?” Betsy sounded more distressed now than when Fred was tossing her into break room walls. “So half the time you can’t wear shoes! Half the time
you can’t wear shoes
! Even—”

“What?”

“—if when, even if when you have feet and buy the cutest pair ever, sometimes your feet just
vanish
!” She staggered and, startled, Fred put out a hand to steady the tall blonde. “I’m so, so sorry!”

“It’s not that bad.”
Was she serious?

“No, just—I don’t mean to—you’re very brave. I could never be as brave as you with this; I’d take it much harder. I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.”

She was! Why am I surprised Madison asked an idiot for help?
Fred went to the secret towel cache she tucked beside the exit, briskly dried herself, then started putting her clothes back on. “Anyway. Per Madison, here, somebody tried to kill her because they thought she was me. Is that right?”

“That’s the condensed version, yeah.” Again, Madison stared at the floor. Fred didn’t know if she was glad the girl had no comment about what she’d just seen, or miffed. You’d think someone who
rilly, rilly
loved dolphins would be just a teeny bit blown away by seeing a real mermaid in the flesh, so to speak. “The long version makes me out to be pretty stupid.”

I’m sure.
“So now that—”

“I have to tell my husband about this!”

“As you like, but right now we have to deal with—”

“Whoa, okay? Whoa,
whoa
. I’m gonna need more than thirty seconds to process what you just did.”

“You’ve had months, like everyone else,” Fred forced out through gritted teeth. “Unless you’ve been off the planet, there’s no excuse for—”

“I
wish
it was as simple as being off planet. You know? I absolutely wish I’d been
only
off planet, fighting space lizards or feeling Khan’s wrath or whatever, so instead of someone yowling, ‘Khaaaaaan! Khaaaaan!’ they’d be all, ‘Betseeeeey! Betseeeeey!’ But I was time traveling and in hell and getting my friend Jessica pregnant and things just sort of stacked up on me. And big damn deal! I don’t have to justify my to-do list to you. Great, you’re a fish.”

“
Part
fish. No, dammit, no fish, I’m a mammal!”

“Yeah, a mammal with fish scales. Is that why you were able to shrug off my mojo, and smell weird?”

Remembering her desperate battle to think her own thoughts, Fred muttered, “Shrug off isn’t how I’d have described that. And I do not
smell
.”

“I don’t think you smell, either, Dr. Bimm.”

“No, no,” Betsy soothed. “Don’t take it wrong. It’s not a bad smell. It’s just different. It’s not your fault—I’ve got a super sensitive nose. And I’m still learning, so at first I thought it was just me, but now I know it’s just you.”

“What?” Nothing. Nothing this woman babbled made sense, ever.

“Okay, this is a terrible example, but I’m hoping it’ll help so that you’ll be able to overlook the terribleness of it: You know how when you walk into a good sushi restaurant, you smell fish? And it’s not a bad smell, but it’s a smell? You’re the sushi restaurant of my . . . er . . .”

“Olfactory canyon?”

“Yes! That! But again, not in a gross or smelly way.”

“I dislike you intensely,” Fred said. She’d had enough of the blonde, enough of the other blonde, enough of the tank, and enough of the entire mess, which
still
had not been explained to her satisfaction. “Did you mean it about wanting a smoothie?”

“Really?” Betsy’s face lit up and Fred was startled at how quickly she could go from pretty to gorgeous. “You’re not teasing, right? Because if you are, that’s just not funny. So are you? No? We can? Smoothies? Now?” She threw her arms around her, which Fred found alarming and touching.
A little touching. Barely touching. Not really touching at all.

She figured the woman had a lot of friends. Probably she made positive first impressions on others, ones who didn’t mind her penchant for thought rape. She could see how Betsy could grow on her. Like a fungus. Like . . . blonde athlete’s foot.

So I’d better work doubly hard not to let her in me or let her win me over.

Thus resolved, Fred explained how easy it would be to score smoothies in Boston on a Tuesday night.

CHAPTER

SIX

“Whoa.”

She must say that a lot,
Fred concluded, though she was pleased to see Betsy enjoying the marketplace. The scents, sights, and lights were dazzling to Fred, and she’d lived in the area most of her life. What must it be like for . . . er . . . for someone who was from . . . uh . . .