How to be a Mermaid (The Cotton Candy Quintet #1)(10)

This merman had no right to tell me what I did and didn’t hear. I know what I heard—unless I was crazy.

Nereia thoughtfully touched a finger to her chin. “Unless...” she started, her voice trailing off.

“I heard him,” I promised. “Why was he crying for help?”

“He was stolen.” Finn spat the words as if they tasted bad. “By humans.”

“I had nothing to do with that,” I said. “Nothing.”

“She’s telling the truth,” the mermaid said.

“Then why were you by his cage when I was trying to rescue him?”

“I wanted to see if he was all right,” I said. “He felt... I could feel his sadness, and I wanted to see if I could help him. I was performing a mermaid show and—”

“How could you perform a ‘mermaid’ show when you’re human?” Nereia asked, speaking each word slowly.

“I have a tail that I put on, and then I go in the water and go out and do a dance for everyone.”

Their expressions turned into disgust. Finn’s frown was so deep, he looked like a big mouth bass, while Nereia’s face wrinkled into a mask of distaste. It hit me then that me being a mermaid was quite possibly the equivalent of me mocking their culture with inappropriate clothing and customs. Now that I knew that mermaids were real, it struck me how wrong the entire idea of it was.

Who in heck knew mermaids were real?

“Sorry,” I muttered, unsure if even that was appropriate. If I ever got out of here alive, I’d make sure to tell Christine how mermaids really acted. Like concerned old women or haughty, handsome, annoying men. And they didn’t wear sparkly makeup.

“I need to go,” Finn said. He rubbed his hands in front of him, the awkwardness growing between all three of us. “I’ve got to figure out how to tell Nadia and Levi that I haven’t been able to free Kai yet.”

Nereia nodded. “Good luck. You’ll have to figure out how to tell them you dropped Kai’s potion.”

Finn’s face twisted into a frown and he shook his head. “It wasn’t my fault. I was...distracted.” He pointedly glanced at me. “I’ll need a new potion.”

“You know how long those take me to make, Finn,” Nereia warned. “And it gets more and more dangerous every time you go on land.” Her eyes widened slightly. “What if a human saw you?”

Finn gave me a wry glance. “One did see me and it’ll be okay. I’ll be more careful next time.”

Nereia’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m only worried about you and the deadline we have looming. I just want to help.”

Finn smiled. “The last time you helped me find a way, we froze a fleet of human ships in the Arctic.”

I saw a mad sparkle in Nereia’s eyes as she sighed. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah. It did.” Finn sobered. “Can you keep an eye on Tara?”

“Go do your business.” The old mermaid waved him off. Finn opened his mouth, as if to say something else, then turned and swam out of the cave.

I caught sight of the scars on his body again, and they did indeed cover his back with angry welts. Definitely a fishing net. I found myself wondering how he got caught in one. The faded marks looked like they must have hurt when they were fresh.

His body moved, the long, salmon-colored tail pivoting from his hips, swimming with the grace of a fish that had been in the water all his life. Were the movies true? If merfolk dry off on land, would they have legs to walk around? Would they infiltrate the human race? My mind wandered to all sorts of places, and I realized that despite the fact that I acted like a mermaid for a job, I really had no idea what they were truly like.

The older mermaid eyed me, not unkindly. In fact, she had a small smile on her face. “Don’t blame him for his behavior,” she said. “You’re the first human he’s ever met.”

“He’s being rude.”

“He saved your life.”

“Remind me to thank him when he’s not being a jerk.”

Instead of rolling her eyes at my childish comment, she chuckled good-naturedly.

“Are you a real mermaid?” I asked dumbly. I couldn’t help myself.

“I’m what you would call a sea witch.”

“Like Ursula?” The question popped out before I could stop it.

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t know what an Urr-soo-lah is,” she said, sounding out the foreign name. “But I was the one who treated you when Finn brought you to my chambers. Your head was bleeding terribly.”

“So you were really the one who saved my life.”

She didn’t get my joke. “I wouldn’t have known that you were drowning unless he brought you to me.”

“Of course.”

Despite the fact that I didn’t like him, I had to concede that if it wasn’t for him, I’d be fish food right about now. And even though I called him a jerk, I got the feeling that he really wasn’t. He acted like he had the fate of the entire ocean on his shoulders, and I didn’t quite know why. Other than failing to save Kai, which was a pretty big deal.

“How am I still alive?” I asked. “How is the pressure not killing me? How deep are we?”

Instead of answering all my questions at once, Nereia simply smiled. “I’ve taken care of that, pearl. You’ll be fine, so no worries.” She sighed. “I see that you have a lot of questions. I guess you would, this being your first time under the sea. Your world works a lot differently than ours.”