I’d said as much to Hailana a million times, but so far, she hadn’t budged. And whenever I asked any questions about Tiamat, she found a way to change the subject. Which was crazy, but then it hadn’t taken me very long to figure out that Hailana wasn’t necessarily playing with a full deck. And the deck she was playing with was definitely a little … confused. I wasn’t sure that senility hadn’t driven her just a little bit around the bend.
The only good thing we agreed on was that she let me train, let me figure out how to use my powers these last few months. Besides my time with Kona, the hours I spent in the training circle with Jared were the only things that kept me sane.
Except now, it looked like even that sanctuary had been taken from me. I fumed as I swam away from Coral Straits and out into the ocean. I wasn’t planning to go far, but I was going stir-crazy sitting in my room. Besides, I figured I should take advantage of my free time. Between school and training and learning to be an “adviser” to the merQueen, I didn’t get nearly enough of the stuff.
Part of me wanted to hightail it over to Kona’s, to pour out my latest problem in his lap and let him solve it, but just the idea seemed ridiculous. Kona had enough to worry about right now without my adding to the mix complaints about my psycho-Queen and new trainer. I had to deal with this on my own.
Which, for now, meant not dealing with it at all. Shoving Sabyn and Hailana out of my mind, I concentrated on swimming. On pulling one arm after another through the water.
I dived deep, went through a forest of kelp and seaweed, and relished the feel of the feathery stuff as it brushed against my highly sensitized skin. Then I swam back up some and shot the North Pacific current—it wasn’t nearly as exciting as surfing, but it was as close as I could get down here.
I let the current take me for about fifty miles, tumbling head over tail part of the way before dropping out to just float. I tried to clear my mind, tried not to think, but everything that had happened these last two days crowded in on me.
I didn’t know what to do. I felt stuck, trapped, like every way I turned was fraught with disasters and every decision I made was wrong. I wanted to love it down here under the ocean, wanted to be proud of the decision I had made to become mermaid, but it was hard. Harder now, even, than it had been eight months ago.
It just seemed like I didn’t belong here, no matter how hard I tried. I had Kona, who treated me really well and said he loved me, but Hailana’s words kept replaying in my head. That Kona’s parents would never let him end up with a mermaid, and most definitely not one who was half human.
Was she right? Was I being naive to think that this thing we had would last forever? And if it didn’t, what would that mean for Kona and me? What would happen to us when it was time for him to settle down? What would happen to me if he had to pick some nice selkie girl to be with?
Ugh. I was turning into one of those weepy, indecisive girls who couldn’t do anything without her boyfriend to guide her. Just the thought made me break out in hives.
I don’t need Kona, I assured myself. I loved him, wanted to be with him, but I didn’t need him. I could do this, could be mermaid alone, if I had to.
But I wouldn’t have to, I told myself. Kona loved me and wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with him. He didn’t care about me not being selkie—he would have told me before now if he did.
Yet, even as I protested, I knew Hailana’s words made sense, too. How could they not when I’d witnessed back on land how right they were? I’d been with Mark, had loved him completely, but even with that we hadn’t been able to make it work. Not when I was only partially like him. Only half human.
Either way, I wasn’t normal. Wasn’t like everybody else. Which left me with the same question I’d had most of my life. Where did I fit in? Where did I truly belong?
An octopus swam close enough to brush against me with its long, dangling tentacles, and I yanked my attention back to the present. I was doing it again—swimming in the open ocean like it was no big deal. Like there wasn’t a war brewing that could wipe me, and the other shifters who lived in the water, right out of existence.
Shoving my worries away for good—or at least until I had more time and energy to deal with them—I turned and started to head back to the city. Though Hailana’s waters were relatively safe, it wouldn’t pay for me to get too far from civilization.
I was about halfway to Coral Straits when I felt a tug deep inside myself, like a chord had been played that only I could hear. It vibrated through me, called to me in a way nothing but the ocean itself ever had before.
At first I tried to ignore it, but the vibrations quickly grew worse until I felt like I was going to shake apart. Slowing down, I glanced around to see if I had somehow managed to swim into a trap. If, even now, Tiamat was lying in wait for me.
I couldn’t see anything though, couldn’t sense the dark acid of her energy anywhere around me. Which meant that whatever I was feeling was not coming from her. I didn’t know if that made me feel better or worse—or even if it mattered, when the noise and the vibrations were getting worse until I had to move. Had to dive.
At first, I thought I was getting away from the sound, from whatever it was that had burrowed inside of me, because the deeper I went, the lower the vibrations became. But as I got near the bottom of the ocean floor, I realized it wasn’t getting harder to feel because I was getting away from it, but because I was getting closer. I was heeding its call and being rewarded by the lessening of pain.
The knowledge immediately threw me into retreat, and I swam straight up. Only to get to a point where I was shaking so badly that I could barely breathe, barely think. Barely swim. The water seemed to get thicker, until I felt like I was slogging through quicksand. No matter how hard I fought, I was getting nowhere. Just sinking down, down, down.
A little freaked out, I finally stopped fighting the pull. Figuring I could either wear myself out completely or meet this thing—whatever it was—while I still had some energy to fight back, I decided to dive deep again. I arrowed straight down until the weird feeling inside of me was all but gone and I was only a few feet from a series of caverns carved into the ocean floor.
I eyed them suspiciously. The last time I’d been in an ocean cave, I’d nearly died—and had ended up having to kill someone to escape. So to say that I really, really didn’t want to go in there was a little bit of an understatement.
Still, I was smart enough to know that whatever this was wasn’t going to leave me alone until I did. For a second, I longed for life before my seventeenth birthday, when my body actually did what it was supposed to, what I wanted it to. From the moment last fall when I’d been surfing and my legs had tried to become a tail, I’d been losing control—over myself, my life, my destiny.
This was just one more betrayal.
Sucking in a deep gulp of water, and what I hoped was a bunch of courage to go along with it, I swam right up to the mouth of the cave.
If the opening was anything to go by, this cave was a lot larger than the last one I’d been in. I didn’t know if that was good or bad. More places for me to hide, but that went both ways. Whatever, whoever, was doing this to me could be somewhere inside, just waiting to spring the trap.
And yet I was going in anyway. If Kona ever found out, he would kill me. So would Mahina. She was constantly on me about doing stupid things that put me in jeopardy—part and parcel of having a certified genius as a best friend. This definitely counted as both foolish and dangerous, but it wasn’t like I had a choice. I’d tried to leave, I really had.