“Regardless. We must go soon.” His voice lowered. “My brother’s mind works in the same way as mine. If he cannot get to the scribe stone, he will be searching for a Mer to trick. He will need one to take him to their realm. We must beat him to it.”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but I don’t know any mermaids, Donovan.” My fingers tapped my keyboard listlessly, trying to concoct a reply to a customer complaint that was more diplomatic thango fuck yourself.
“Of course you do. You must know some mer. The mer infest the mortal realm like ants on a sugar lump,” he said. “Their own realm is too small to hold them all, and their lust for praise and admiration consumes them. They cannot keep themselves away from humans.”
“Well, I don’t,” I murmured, tapping out a reply to the complaint email.I’m sorry my team’s service did not reach your expectations today. We’re always looking at ways to improve, and I would like to thank you for your valuable feedback. If you call to speak with any of my team again, you can rest assured we will not end the call before a resolution is reached. Even if you scream the most disgusting, vile abuse at my team like you did last time, please ask to be transferred to themanager, and I will be happy to call you a cunt and hang up on you myself.
“I honestly can’t think of any.” I deleted the last line of my email, signed off, and moved to the next one. “I know for a fact that I haven't seen any half-fish people around lately.”
He scoffed. “They have magic, Chosen. They wear charmed necklaces to change their tails into legs so they can walk among humans, and always return to their own home before night falls.”
“Why before nightfall?”
“Their charms are solar-powered.”
“Ah. Well, if they look like us, how would I know who is a mermaid?”
He let out an exasperated grunt. “Molinere should have taught you how to expand your vision so you can see the magic in front of you.”
“Well, he didn’t,” I murmured, tapping out another gracious reply to a customer who was outraged that he couldn’t get insurance coverage without actually paying for it. “Molinere got ratfaced drunk and disappeared with my dad.”
Donovan moved closer. I couldn’t help it; I shivered. “You will be able to sense them,” he murmured. “You are the One of Every Blood; you have a trace of Mer heritage. You will know your own kin. Think well, Chosen.” His lips were so close to my ear. Too close.
I slumped over my keyboard. Suddenly, I wondered why the hell I was answering my emails when I was probably going to get fired before the end of the day, anyway. The only thing in my future was me, hitting the streets, looking for a minimum wage job that wouldn’t ask too many questions.
I might as well have some fun before I get fired. “Fine,” Isighed. “I’ll think… er…well, as you so poetically put it.” I reached for a marker and a scrap piece of paper and wrotemermaidon it. Underneath that, I wroteonly here during the daytime.
“What else? You said they’re vain, right?”
“Yes. Physical beauty is very important to them.”
I wrotevainon the paper. “You said they love to be admired. Do you mean for their beauty, or something else? Am I looking for a model, or an actress, or?—”
Cress snorted. “They sing, of course, Chosen. The Mer love to beguile with their voices.”
A weird tingle raised the hair on the back of my neck—a strange sense of the familiar. I tapped the page and wrote downsingers.“And they have to wear a necklace?”
“Yes. It will not be a small trinket. Transformation magic requires a large vessel, so the pendant will be quite conspicuous.”
I scribbledchunky statement jewelryunderneathvain, and pursed my lips. I could already think of the perfect person who matched this description.
It figured. “Of course.” I should have already seen where this was going. “Hyacinth,” I muttered. “That bitch is just about as insane as I am.” She’d even referred to herself as a siren on stage a handful of times.
This was crazy.
Cress bristled. “A water flower?”
“Hyacinth is not a flower. She’s my nemesis,” I said.
There was a pause. “You will have to elaborate on that further, Chosen.”
“As part of my treatment, I was encouraged to find a creative outlet to express myself, to try and channel the overwhelming…” I hesitated and sighed heavily. “You know what, I’m not going to go into it. To cut a long story short, I found that I enjoyed singing, especially to a little crowd. My therapist Bronwyn said that it was understandable—I always found it cathartic to bring my audience on an emotional journey through song.”
“Obviously,” Cress muttered. “You have mer blood.”
“You crave to be understood,” Donovan corrected her. “Go on, Chosen.”
I shifted in my chair uncomfortably. It’s not shameful to admit when you need help, I told myself firmly. “When I started here at Base Budget Insurance, I knew I needed an emotional outlet, just in case I got overwhelmed. I found a K-bar in a basement only a block away.”
