How to be a Mermaid (The Cotton Candy Quintet #1)(8)

I should have gone to dinner with Christine and the others.





CHAPTER 3


My ears were awake before the rest of me. Even before I opened my eyes, some man’s voice was yelling at me.

“What is this?” a rough, intense voice demanded. “What were you doing at the prison?”

I swam out of unconsciousness, an uncomfortable experience that revealed my entire body aching, my head most of all. It was so dark, and a strange feeling had overtaken my body. Like I was floating. I tried touching a hand to my head, only to find that I couldn’t.

What the-?

My hands were tied behind my back with what felt like...kelp?

The realization hit me and I thrashed about trying to free myself, and I finally opened my eyes.

I paused for a moment, unable to grasp exactly where I was.

I was...underwater?

Air bubbles popped out of my mouth in a flurry when a scream escaped my throat. A thousand thoughts filled my head, none of them making sense except for the overwhelming dread that I was somehow underwater with my hands tied behind my back. From what I could tell, there was no way I could get air to breathe. I’d lost a lot of air when I screamed.

Oh my god, I was going to drown.

My mermaid necklace was thrust in front of my vision, momentarily disorienting me.

“I demand you to tell me now!”

“What?” I asked out loud. A sharp pain zigzagged across my head from where I’d hit it on the rock. I was trapped underwater and this man wanted to know...what exactly? What my necklace was?

The necklace came even closer to my face, so much that I’d have to go cross-eyed in order to focus on it.

“Where did you get this? What is it?” the man demanded.

“It’s my...” I was unsure and still terrified of my situation. “It’s my necklace.” I gasped for breath, and somehow I was getting air into my lungs. “How...how am I underwater?”

That was the best question that could come to mind to sum up my predicament. I should have asked, “Who are you?” or “Why do you have me tied up?” but my first instinct was survival. I was doing the impossible by being underwater this long.

The intense movements of shoving the necklace into my line of vision paused, as if considering my words. I took this moment to look up at the face belonging to the hands and voice.

It was a boy, one who appeared to be only a few years older than me. He had dark hair that was slightly longer than what was in style, flowing in wisps around his face. His eyes were sea green, framed by a tanned face with a strong jaw. He was muscular, not from pumping weights at the gym, but from necessity. Like he had the body of someone who swam twenty-four hours a day.

He was gorgeous. Supermodel gorgeous.

When he came closer to me, I saw a pattern of angry scars crisscrossing his shoulders and his arms, spider-webbing all the way to his back. I couldn’t tell if they continued from there. It took me a second to realize where I’d seen marks like that before. I’d seen them on some porpoises we’d rehabilitated.

They looked like damage from fishing nets, although why someone like him would have them, I had no idea. It gave him a rugged look, one that didn’t detract from his good looks. If my experience with movie stars told me anything, it was that scars on a good-looking guy made them even more attractive.

I was transfixed for a split second. It actually gave me a bit of respite from freaking out about my predicament.

My aching skull tried to piece together everything. He’d been the one who was yelling at me about my necklace. He wasn’t tied up either, which must have meant that he’d been the one who tied me up. And he was underwater and talking to me.

What the hell?

Then my eyes dipped down, and I saw the tail. Where his legs should have been was a long, salmon-colored fishtail. It looked as complex as the silicon tails that we wore for our performances. Only... I squinted my eyes, inspecting it, and I screamed.

It was real. He had a real fishtail.

He was a merman, and he was holding me captive underwater.

I looked at him, locking eyes with him and the terror overtook me again as my vision tunneled. My ears rang and my vision blackened. I was about to pass out again.

“Finn!” someone yelled as darkness edged my vision. “Give her some space, she just woke up!”

There were more of them? It was too much for my injured head to handle. Instead of screaming for help, the ocean faded to black.

***

When I woke up again I felt like I was coming out of a bad dream. Tied up, underwater, a good-looking merman yelling at me about my necklace, a dolphin talking to me and asking for my help…

Someone’s hand gently pressed a compress to my forehead, like my mother soothing me when I was sick. That touch grounded me, made me feel like I was in control again, even though I felt weird, sticky, and waterlogged. I kept my eyes closed, because I wanted to relish this feeling of being safe.

It had been a bad dream. That’s all it was.

“Mom...” My voice sounded far away and muffled. “Mom, I had the strangest...dream. It was a nightmare.”

The hand caressing my face paused, followed by a resigned sigh. Then I heard a voice. It was a woman, maybe elderly, although my ears were still ringing.

“It was no dream,” she said, words coming out muffled.

Like she was underwater.