How to be a Mermaid (The Cotton Candy Quintet #1)(4)

“Trust me, you don’t,” Neptune warned.

We all laughed. As the butt of the joke, Neptune grinned and joined in. It was like that with him. He was a grandfatherly figure to us and we were like a surrogate family for him.

A lone, high-pitched squeak brought my attention to the smallest of the tanks. Whereas the other two pools were connected by a hatch, this one was completely isolated from the others. A crane with a sling hovered a few yards above the pool, where it could transport animals from that smaller pool to the other ones. The sound was mournful in its cadence, and based on the other dolphins’ reactions, I could tell that they weren’t pleased by it. At the sound of the cry, they all dipped under the water, away from the trainers, who were obviously perplexed by their behavior.

“What was that?” I asked.

Neptune frowned, following my gaze. “I asked about it earlier. Apparently, that’s the newest member of the dolphin family here at the Houston Aquarium. They just brought him in today.”

I could tell from his voice that he wasn’t happy about it. I looked up at him, trying to read his expression, but he refused to look my way.

I meandered over to the holding pool and looked down. A bottle-nose dolphin much smaller than the others in the pool was listing to the side near the surface, its blow hole spraying every so often, like it was in sorrow. Based on its size and darker coloring, it was a young calf, probably only a few months old, squeaking piteously. Other than maintaining its position, it wasn’t moving much.

A lone aquarist was crouching on the edge, trying to tempt the dolphin with some fish. Every time he got close to it, the young calf veered away from him.

“Come on, Kai, you have to eat,” the aquarist said in a thick Texan accent. He tossed another bit of food into the water and the dolphin swayed away from it. The aquarist groaned in frustration.

“Kai?” I asked, startling the aquarist, who jumped up to his feet and looked back at me.

“Yep,” he said, nodding towards the dolphin. “That’s his name. It fits him, doesn’t it? He’s the newest addition to the aquarium.”

“He sounds so sad,” I said, more to myself than the aquarist.

The aquarist flashed me a smile. “Don’t worry your pretty little head.”

I knew he didn’t mean anything by it, but that comment with his accent rubbed me the wrong way.

Not noticing my anger, the aquarist continued. “He’ll be fine. He just needs to get used to being here, and we’ll get him acquainted with the other dolphins after his quarantine in the isolation pool.”

“How long will that take?”

The aquarist shrugged. “A week or so, until we know that he doesn’t have any diseases that can be passed onto the others in the group.”

I looked back at Kai and frowned. Even though I’d only been at Neptune’s World for a couple of months, I knew from talking with the aquarists at that park that dolphins were highly social creatures and that isolation was really hard on them. While quarantine was a must for new animals, surely they acted a bit more lively than this one.

“Where did he come from?” I asked.

“Not too far from here, actually,” the aquarist said. “He was caught in a fishing net and separated from his pod. The little guy is lucky to be alive. Mr. Stevens wants him to start training for shows within the next few weeks.”

I’ve met Mr. Stevens twice before. As the president of the Houston Aquarium, he was Neptune’s counterpart, though it sure didn’t seem that way. I could tell from the way the two men interacted that they weren’t on good terms with each other. Based on those two meetings with him, I didn’t like Mr. Stevens because he treated everything like a business venture. He wasn’t in this because he loved animals; he wanted to make money off them.

My heart broke for the poor dolphin. I wanted to reach out and touch him, to tell him that he was going to be with new friends soon.

“Hey buddy,” I whispered. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I miss my mama... I miss my friends...”

I froze at the words. They were in a childlike voice I didn’t recognize. In fact, they hadn’t even been audible. I had heard them inside my head. The aquarist was still flitting about the edge of the pool, acting like he hadn’t heard anything.

“Did you hear that?”

He blinked up at me. “Hear what?”

I hesitated. It was so weird, like a young boy was speaking to me right in my ear.

“...Mama...Daddy...”

A surging sense of heartbreak imploded my chest, making my ribs feel like they’d crack under the force. The air was sucked out of my lungs, and for a few terrible moments, I couldn’t breathe, and an overwhelming sense of desolation overtook me. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes.

These aren’t my own emotions.

As suddenly as it happened, it was gone. Bewildered, I looked down at the dolphin. Kai was watching me with one eye, keen intelligence bearing down on me in that gaze.

Did that dolphin just speak?

He moved slightly and when my gaze followed him, he stopped.

“Can you hear me?”

As crazy as it was, I opened my mouth to answer, then I heard my name from across the landing and I completely forgot what I was going to say.

“Tara!” Christine yelled. “Are you coming or what?”