“Uh.It’s fine,” Blake replied as he watched Celeste shove their cousin back out of the screen, hissing something at them over their shoulder in French.Goose responded by shoving a middle finger into Celeste’s face, which they proceeded to snap their teeth at.“Is… this a bad time?”
“Huh?No, you’re good,” Celeste replied, even as they scowled at their cousin off screen, flipping them off in turn.They took a moment to compose themself, flicking a stray lock of white-blonde hair out of their eyes.“Are you still at the park?”
“Yeah,” Blake confirmed.“Hey, uh.I have some stuff to talk to you about RE: the Marin situation, so maybe you could step out of the room for a second?”
“Oh for sure,” Celeste confirmed, corralling their cousin through the nearest doorway and slamming it behind them.“Go away.Go watch Cocomelon or whatever you children do these days!”Blade heard the muffled sound of Goose releasing an incredibly teenaged, indignant sigh on the other side of the door.“All right, so I reached out to the Pauls and only got back two ‘what the hell are you talking about’ e-mails so far.What’s up on your end?”
As Blake and Marin took turns explaining the developments of the day, Celeste kept their responses to a minimum, not even batting an eye when they explained Noel’s heritage.
“You’re… taking this really well,” Blake admitted.“I was really shocked when I found out there was more than only humans.I’m still kind of reeling from it, to be honest.”
“I mean, it makes sense to me.”Celeste shrugged.“I’ve known that things like pygmalion, ghosts, and curses are real my entire life.Why’s a merperson any different?”
“I guess that makes sense,” Blake said.He glanced between Celeste and Noel.“Did you want me to hand the phone over so you can introduce yourselves?”
“Sounds good to me,” Celeste shrugged.
“Sure,” Noel nodded, reaching out for Blake’s phone.“I’ll be careful not to drop it.”
As the two chatted, Blake saw Marin waving him close out of the corner of his eye.
“What’s up?”he whispered, careful to not speak over Celeste.
“Come here, I have something to tell you,” Marin beckoned Blake with a quick flicker of his fingertips over the surface of the water.
Blake returned to his original position at the waterside, draping his legs over the ledge.Marin continued to gesture for him to come closer and Blake leaned down towards the water until he was almost bent in half.Only then did Marin cup his hand over the shell of Blake’s ear and whisper:
“Think fast.”
Before Blake could register what he had said, Marin splashed a handful of water into his face.Sputtering, Blake spat a mouthful into the pool, choking on chlorine between peals of laughter.
“You sneak!”he accused, grinning over at Marin, who had laughed so hard that he flopped back into the pool.
“I can’t believe you fell for it!”he crowed, teeth gleaming in the halogen lights.“That’s like the oldest trick in the book, you dork!”
“I’m going to come in there and get you!”Blake threatened playfully, already tugging his tee shirt out of his swim trunks.Marin stuck out his tongue.
Back on the phone, Celeste groaned.“Hello?Are you two even listening to me or are you so caught up in each other you forgot there’s other people here?”
“Sorry,” Blake apologized, although he was still smirking at Marin.He shook his head, holding a warning finger out at the merman as if to say ‘I’ll be back for you’.“What’s up?”
“I asked what our next course of action was,” Celeste told him.
“Ah, that.”Blake nodded.“Actually, I was going to try to find the location of Marin’s manufacturer and then try to look up some obits in that area.We’re looking for someone in their twenties who died of a head injury between 1997 and 2003.”
“Where did you get those dates?”Noel asked.
“I remembered Pokémon earlier today, which came out around then,” Marin explained.“And my boat was installed in 2003.”
“Okay, so are we going to use the Internet for that or what?”Celeste asked.
“The computers at the Sacramento Central Library have free access to the California Digital Newspaper Archives,” Noel chimed in.“They also have a bunch of stuff on microfiche.I’d be willing to go down there tomorrow morning to look.”
“It would be faster if there were more of us,” Marin said.“Blake and I should meet up with you there.”
“Ugh, if all three of you are going, I might as well tag along, too.”Celeste huffed.“How about we meet up there at ten?”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Blake agreed, looking over at Noel, who nodded intently.
