*That the mermaid is already here.*His thumb traced a circle on her palm. *I just have to hope she isn’t a hallucination.*
*Are you sure you aren’t the merman in this hallucination?*
Something shivered in the undercurrents of his mind. *An octopus merman? That’s a bit too Ursula for me. Wasn’t she all about bad deals and cursing people?*
*And a shark is any better?*
Could he feel the same uneasy undercurrents in her psychic voice as she felt in his? She stilled, wary.
He sensed her stillness. At least, she hoped that was all he sensed. He looked back at her, his dark eyes strangely luminous. *I happen to like sharks.*
Then I must be a real treat.She managed to keep the thought, and the bitterness that wreathed around it, inside her own head.
He liked sharks? How long would that last, when he realized she looked like this all the time?
11
Moss
They headed back down to the beach, where Carol stared at the ocean as though it had a grudge against her and she was wondering whether it was feeling particularly vengeful today.
“Okay,” she said, her veneer of confidence so thin it would shatter at a hard look. “Time to go have a scout around.”
“Underwater?”
She turned those hypnotic eyes on him. “We’ve already seen everything we can from up here.”
“And what we’ve seen is that we’re stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere. Wouldn’t we be better off starting with some breakfast?”
What a whinger he sounded like. And it was going to get worse, if he had to keep finding excuses not to put on his octopus form and help her explore.
Carol shrugged. “Sure. Breakfast. We can kill two birds with one stone and grab something while we’re in the water.” She hesitated. “I hope you don’t mind your fish with bite-marks in it.”
“Pree-REE!”
“I’ll get some for you first, Maggie, don’t worry.”
“Whee-oo.”
“Only the best bite-marks for you.”
Maggie chirped and gnashed her teeth together excitedly, then looked around. The foggy image of a fridge bumped against Moss’s mind.
He laughed. “We’re going straight to the source today, kid. No refrigerated salmon steaks here.”
“Prrr?” Maggie tipped her head to one side.
“I don’t think she has any idea food doesn’t come from a cupboard,” Carol said. She stretched and shot another strange look at the ocean.
Moss nudged her mind and sensed a shiver of unease. *You don’t need to go in if you don’t want to,*he told her.
“What should I do instead? Sit around on the beach?”
“Enjoy a delicious meal?”
“I can eat while I’m swimming,” she said, still staring distractedly out to sea.
“How far are you planning on going to find anything you recognize? What are you expecting to recognize underwater, anyway?”
