Allowing herself and her sister to find their own divergent paths in life was a bit like being forced to eat brussel sprouts. It was good for her, but it still tasted like ass.
In fact, she’d spent most of her first week on the island holed up in her new bedroom, disoriented by the silence and heartsick for her old life. It wasn’t just separation anxiety that gripped her, but grief. Real, cry-your-eyes-out-until-you-can’t-do-it-anymoregrief.
She was right,Clementine reminded herself for the thousandth time as she aggressively coated the last somber gray inches of wall in cheerful blue paint.This is good for us. We need to have our own lives.
Nelly didn’t seem to be having any trouble doing it, which definitely didn’t bother Clementine at all. Certainly not. Nelly had fearlessly accepted a position in a remote Montana town and lived on her own just fine. It was well past time that her big sister found her own path, too.
After that first awful week, it wasn’t so bad.
The silence had taken some getting used to, though. Clementine was accustomed to a constant, low-level discomfort and strain that came with even the smallest population centers. Staying in San Francisco for three months of interviews and training had been psychic torture. She wasn’t certain even her diamond-hard psychic barriers would have been able to withstand one more day of bombardment.
Thesilence,though. She’d been desperate for the quiet, but upon arrival, she found it disorienting, even a little spooky, to only hear the low, background hum of animal consciousness. The silence was so profound on Demon’s Tooth because there wasn’t a single soul within thirty miles of its dangerously rocky shoreline.
Except that wasn’t quite true.
Clementine calmly rested her roller in the pan and took a step back to admire her work. Only one panel of the wall had been painted, since the rest of the rectangular home stretched perilously over slick boulders and was therefore almost impossible for her to reach, but the blue really did add something special to the place.
She would have liked to admire it more, but that was impossible with an audience.
Her heart beat a quick rhythm against her ribs as she turned to walk a ways up the beach, toward the ghost of a winding trail that led up the tallest slope and the remains of the lighthouse. Sea birds whirled overhead, crying out for their mates and chicks. Normally, she liked to get her exercise by walking that steep, zig-zagging trail, but not today.
Today, she turned back around to face the beach. Her gaze swept over the water again. It tumbled over the rocks, hissing and foaming with impact, before retreating once more.
Everything looked normal. It wasn’t, though. Sheknewsomeone was out there.
Even on a deserted island, Clementine was never foolhardy enough to relax her barriers. Getting lazy had dire consequences. But no barriers were perfect. Brains were elastic and so too were psychic barriers. They flexed to accommodate needs, and in that necessary movement, minuscule gaps were formed.
Those gaps allowed her to sense a baseline of consciousness around her at all times, as well as pick up the presence — if not the clear thoughts — of a person lingering in the surf just out of sight.
Mr. Hauf, the elvish bureaucrat who was her boss, had been adamant that if she ever encountered one of the merfolk, she was to move to higher ground immediately. When she asked how exactly she was supposed to forge an understanding with her neighbors, which was a primary goal of her employment, from twenty feet away and up a hill, he’d simply given her the steely-eyed look that told her he was once again considering firing her.
He’d never wanted to hire her in her first place, on the grounds that he was absolutely certain she’d die. A valid concern, given the island’s history. It was just too damn bad for him that the elvish sovereign, Theodore Solbourne, had commanded the position ofFarallon Ambassadorbe filled by any means necessary by the end of the year.
She was the only applicant.
Clementine wasn’t exactly scared as she eyed the distance between the rocky beach and where she stood on the narrow border between the grassy slope and the sun-baked pebbles. Very little scared her. She could defend herself better than even her elvish boss could, with his diamond claws and bone-shattering bite force.
One thought and the person in the waves would have their gray matter leaking out of their nose.
No, the reason her heartbeat thudded in her pulse points with increasing speed was because she was… nervous. She wanted to makefriends.It didn’t matter that she knew that was a ridiculous hope. What was the harm in trying?
They could kill you. That’s the harm.
Clementine licked her lips. Her boots moved in the gritty, rocky earth as she shifted her weight. She wasn’t going to be murdered today or any other day.
Merfolk were notoriously vicious, but they were slow out of water. Her predator would have to drag themselves up the beach with their hands in order to harm her, which would give her ample time to disable them.
The distance was safe, but it also made communication almost impossible. What was she supposed to do? Yell ahellofrom the end of the beach?
A weenie move if I ever saw one.
Clementine was no weenie. She might not have had any experience socializing, but she knew enough to understand that acting like a coward wasn’t a good way to start.
Saying a quick mental apology to Mr. Hauf, she squared her shoulders and walked back the way she came. The wind was picking up, bringing with it the cold stinging spray of salt water. It made her wavy hair curlier than normal as it was tossed around her face. Her scarf was coming loose, but she barely noticed it as she came to a slow stop by a cluster of boulders only visible during low tide.
Propping her hands on her hips, she squinted at the water. In all honesty, there wasn’t much of abeachto speak of. Her home took up most of what could only be generously considered one. The rest was barnacle and sea star covered boulders fallen from the sheer cliffs on either side of her. There wasn’t even a gradual, sandy slope into the water.
Herbeachwas all sharp pebbles, boulders, and then a sheer drop into shark and merfolk infested blue. The Farallones were one tip of what marine biologists calledthe bloody triangle —one of the three places in the world where great white sharks and merfolk mingled in huge numbers. She’d read that at one point, the shark population had been so dense that a person could “walk clear across Grim’s Bay on their backs.”
