No. I hadn’t been the one to seek out the fairy. It had been the other way around. Same with Alex and Jake. I was a magnet for the sleazeballs of the world.
Just the thought of going to dinner with someone else made it feel like Brett was walking away from me all over again.
There was no way in hell I was keeping that date with Schwint.
There are other places you haven’t tried that will get the demon out of your mind, since you’re too pathetic to manage on your own.
Whether of their own volition or placed there by the voice, the image of the door that led to the back room of Bar floated behind my eyes. The only time I truly hadn’t felt any pain at all over Brett in the past four months had been flying through the trees and then diving deep into the earth.
I could have that again. If the human’s blood had so much Spor it had that much effect on me, how much better could it be if I took it the way it was meant to be?
The final few hours dragged by painfully slow, though the rest of the day was a blur. Cynthia and Mom were nothing more than incoherent shadows beside me, their concerned tones a hazy buzzing in my ears.
When at last it was over, I didn’t even try to fool myself that I was going home or to Mom and Dad’s. Oblivion was less than half an hour away.
Eleven
BRETT WRIGHT
Aftersix meals with the mers, I still felt like I was sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner. No turkey or anything, but more lobsters than I’d seen in a tank at those fancy fish markets, let alone on one table. Not that there was a table either. Food was just spread across the ocean floor in the middle of all the huts. Like Thanksgiving, it seemed mandatory that the entiretribebe in attendance. There had been twenty-six mers gathered around the feasts at each occasion. I suppose there may be a few mers off scouting around the sea or vacationing in the canals of Venice, but if not, then this was everyone. Each evening, a little before sunset, the tribe would gather the spoils of the day.
It took me several days to get used to one meal a day. However, I soon discovered the mer were able to eat me into the ground! I’d never met anyone who could come close. After stuffing myself beyond capacity each night, I’d stopped being hungry until midday the following afternoon.
It seemed a strange ritual, at least from a developmental standpoint. Most fish and other sea life eat nonstop. Constant grazing. From an evolutionary perspective, I couldn’t understand how this single meal fit in. I added this to my ever-expanding list of a billion questions. I could ask Lelas, as we’d spent the majority of our days together, but after her first bout of the tell-me-your-life-story game, she’d seemed to realize I preferred spending most of my time in silence. To her credit, she was just as at ease in quiet meditation as she was during conversation. Good thing too. Without her, I would have been utterly alone. Even Therin hadn’t approached me since our arrival. Even at meals, he arrived late and darted off before anyone had even come close to finishing the mounds of food. I’d noticed Syleen gave him reproachful stares as he came and went, but it appeared she didn’t have the desire for him to speak to his faggoty-demon offspring either. Only Zef gave me the occasional dip of his chin in greeting.
Lelas was the one who dragged me, literally, to my first meal. The others gave me a wide berth as I took my place among them. Lelas sat close, not in the uncomfortable mer boundaryless way, but close enough to communicate a sense of kinship. I wondered if she was receiving any flack for her acceptance of me. If she was, she didn’t show it in word or deed.Word or deed?I’d only been in the ocean a few months and only a week with these people, and already I was starting to think like a King James version of the Bible.
So far, I’d done a pretty remarkable job of not inspecting my fellow diners. I couldn’t even tell you the ratio of mermaids to mermen. If I’d met one on the street, I wouldn’t be able to single out their face from anyone else. Of course, their tail might be a giveaway, but other than that…
There was one exception. A gorgeous merman with shaved brown, nearly black, hair. A violet tattoo crossed his massive chest. His muscles were so abundant, I wondered about the possibility of his own demonic family history. Even his tail set him apart. It was patterned with brown striations outlined with some white-and-black lines. His fins were flared and barbed, like those of a lionfish. As I tried not to notice him, he reached out, plucked one of the squirming lobsters from its kelp enclosure, and sank his teeth into its head, then ripped to the side, the feelers gyrating in a nauseating way from his mouth as he began to chew. Somehow, his animalistic nature only added to his magnetism. I forced my eyes away. If he was aware of my observations, he didn’t let on. Syleen was a different story. My eyes rose to meet her judgment and then darted away.
I felt my cheeks burn, part in anger, part in shame. It wasn’t like I was lusting after him. Well, not much, anyway. But his presence was like putting the northern lights in front of a person and expecting them not to notice. He was a force of nature. A hurricane. Still, my reaction was only a primal, bodily response. I wasn’t going to act on it. I didn’t want to. Honestly. I hated looking at him as much as Syleen didn’t approve. With every flex of his beautiful body, Finn flashed through my mind. They looked nothing alike, but just observing another man brought Finn to mind. Guilt and hurt flushed away any feelings of lust that might otherwise be there. Be that as it may, what business of hers was it if I lusted after the merman or not? As much as her prejudice against me grated my last nerve, my concern over her approval chafed even more.
While there was an abundance of lobsters, the vast majority of the meals were of a less than five-star restaurant caliber. Sea slugs, tiny shrimp, and anemones made up the bulk of the meats. Even so, protein was a minor portion of the meal. Most was vegetation of one sort or another. I wasn’t sure what a lot of it was. I think most were roots and bulbs of plants. The one time Lelas and I had done anything other than explore the surrounding sea, was an afternoon she took me to another nearby kelp forest where we cut down the kelp and dug up the tangled tendril-like roots.
Without a doubt, the most abundant food source was the kelp itself. I’d eaten seaweed salads and such when I’d gone out for sushi and always loved it—the glistening, nearly glowing green coils captivating in a minimalistic white bowl. At first, all the kelp surpassed every one of those experiences. After the third meal, it lost its glory—glowing or not. During the first meal, there’d been a small assortment of fish to choose from, but none since. Lelas assured me that they typically ate a lot more fish, but they were in a time of ceremonial cleansing. Perfect timing. As soon as she starting explaining the religious aspects of the cleansing, I tuned her out. I’d had enough religion on land. I for sure didn’t need it here. Every once in a while, when a school of fish traveled through our kelp forest, I contemplated trying to catch one. Well fed as I was, another day of mostly seaweed and I might attempt to eat a mer.
Even though I hadn’t let myself inspect the rest of the mers in the tribe, I was aware that there didn’t seem to be any children. Even though there weren’t that many mers, it seemed strange that there wouldn’t be any kids swimming around. All in all, it seemed a pretty subdued, serious tribe. Maybe my grandfather would have approved after all. Grandma, on the other hand, would have wanted more laughter, more noise.
Grandmother. Like Finn, each time she wafted through my mind, guilt sliced through my heart. What must she be feeling? She gets her gay grandson back, is told about demons and vampires, only for her grandson to disappear again. She must think I’m dead. Actually, I hoped she did. The thought of her waiting for me to return, looking out her window every day with only an empty sidewalk to meet her, was more than I could handle thinking about.
I noticed Lelas glancing at me from the corner of her eye between dainty bites of urchin. Realizing she’d been caught, she abruptly became fascinated by one of the tiny spines that had broken off and somehow gotten wedged between two of her lavender scales.
I checked to see if Syleen was watching—for once, she wasn’t—and leaned forward.“What is it?”
She continued to finger the spine, casually pulling it free. She gave no response.
“Lelas! What is it?”
Still refusing to look at me, she turned her attention to wrapping a stretch of kelp around her finger and then sliding it off with her teeth.“To what are you referring?”
“You’re not conniving enough to pull that off, Lelas. I saw you looking at me with that look in your eye. Something’s up?”
She chewed, only partially turning her head in my direction.“It is nothing of concern. I should not have been staring at you. I am sorry.”
“Then it shouldn’t be a big deal if you tell me. What is it?”
Her left shoulder rose and fell in the suggestion of a shrug.“The others were just discussing you, that is all. Nothing that should worry you.”
