My ankle throbs, but I don’t care. I’m doing something no one has ever done before: I’m swimming with a mermaid.
Despite the Scuba, I can barely breathe. Erie swims too fast for the gill-like device to properly separate oxygen from the water. But I couldn’t care less, because I’m swimming with a mermaid.
Have I mentioned I’m swimming with a mermaid? I’ll probably have a heart attack before I bleed out or drown.
Erie’s laughter fills the tank as she spins us through the water, faster than I can imagine. Her tail brushes my legs, while her long hair tickles my wrists. At this moment, I would do anything she asked.
She pulls me to the bottom, then shoots up toward the surface, and Holy God the pressure change will kill me. We break the surface, but I’m too heavy for her to lift, and we end up crashing back into the water. She laughs harder than I’ve ever heard her.
I push back to the surface, spit out the Scuba, and suck in air. Erie’s magenta hair rises, then her forehead, then her eyes. Her grin stays under the water, but I can still hear her mirth.
“Sweetness, you are the best.” I grab her shoulders, breathless.
She pulls me back under and hugs me, spinning us. I give her a quick squeeze, then swim back to the surface to breathe.
“Finn!” Jen yells. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fucking great!” I yell back. When Erie surfaces, I put my hands on either side of her face and kiss her forehead. It’s cold, and I realize I just kissed a fish, but I don’t care. “You’re amazing. I’ll get you out of here, I swear to god. I’m not giving up until you’re back home. I promise.”
Her face lights up even more. “You mean it?”
I do. I know I told Jen it was impossible, but I will find a way to free Erie. “I mean it,” I say and wipe my thumbs over her shark-skin cheek. “It may take a while, and we’ll have to do what Corporate wants until then, but I’ll find a way to get you out of here. I promise, Erie.”
As soon as I haul myself back onto the platform and take my first step, my ankle goes out and I fall to my knees.
“Finn!” Jen kneels next to me with her hands on my shoulders. She’s so much warmer than Erie.
“I’m fine.” I try to stand again, but she pushes me down.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Still?” A trickle of blood dilutes the water that streams from my wetsuit, turning it pink. We have to clean this up before anyone sees.
Jen’s hands shake as she grabs the Scuba and mask from me. Her face is pale, eyes wide with fear. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
“Hell no.” I grab her wrist, and she drops the mask. “You can’t tell anyone about this. Not about me jumping in, or Niku’s attack, or swimming with Erie. I’d be fired, and they’d be foamed.”
Panic flashes through her face. “But . . . you’re bleeding.”
“Yeah, and it’ll stop.” Probably. Actually, I don’t know what happens when you get bit by a dolphin, because who the hell gets bit by a dolphin?
“Finn.” She puts her hands on either side of my face and looks me straight in the eye. “I thought you were about to die.”
I sit on my hip, my injured ankle stuck out awkwardly, and take a deep breath. “So did I.” The swim with Erie erased the immediate terror, but when Niku grabbed me and pulled me under, I thought I was dead. I don’t know what Erie said to make him let go, but I will forever be grateful.
Apparently, so will Jen, because she pushes me to the ground with a kiss. It’s not the drunken kind of kiss from the Porch—it’s the “I thought I lost you” kind from war movies.
She pushes away faster than I would have liked; her warm lips were making me forget the pain in my ankle. “Sorry,” she says.
“Don’t be.”
She helps me sit and frowns at my foot. “You really need to see a doctor.”
I wink. “I’ll let you play nurse.”
Jen shifts her weight so she can reach my ankle. I wince as she rolls the ruined wetsuit up to examine it. The wounds are neat punctures—no tearing, despite the fact that Niku twisted and yanked it. Now that I’m out of the water, the blood is slowing. Jen’s probably right that I should see a doctor for antibiotics or something, but that’ll mean Erie’s death. I promised I’d free her, but not that way. That’s not what I meant.
“Don’t worry,” I say, like I didn’t just nearly die for the second time in a month. “Some Neosporin and a few Band-Aids, and it’ll be fine. We need to clean this blood up, though—if anyone sees it, they’ll look at the safety footage.” In general, no one watches the security camera footage after hours unless there’s an accident. If they don’t see the blood, they won’t know to look.
Jen wraps a towel around my ankle, washes the blood into the pool, then helps me to the locker room. The clock says seven—we still have two hours before anyone arrives.
She lowers me onto a bench. “Where’s a first aid kit? And your clothes?”
“Clothes are in my locker, third from the left there, and the first aid kit is on the wall next to the door.”
She grabs the kit and clothes. “Please tell me you’re wearing something under that wetsuit.”
“Boxers don’t fit.” I wiggle my eyebrows at her as she blushes. “But don’t worry, I’ve got a Speedo on.”
Most of the wetsuit is no problem for me, but Jen has to help me get it over my ankle, which is already bruised and swelling. I grunt in pain as she flips the pant leg inside out and forces the bottom over my ankle. It bleeds more, and she wraps the towel around it while she opens the first aid kit. I grunt again and squeeze the bench as she pours iodine over the wounds. She wraps everything in gauze and tapes it, then helps me get my pants on over the bandage.
She wipes her hair from her face. “Is there ice anywhere?”
“There are a couple ice packs in the break room fridge. Stuff the towel and wetsuit in my locker—I’ll take care of them later.”
She shoulders me to a chair between Erie and Niku’s tanks, props my foot up on a second chair, and covers my ankle in ice before letting Erie and Niku in.
Erie swims straight to me and puts her hands on the glass, glancing at my foot. “You okay?”
I smile, exhausted now that the excitement is over. “I’ll be fine, sweetness. Why don’t you teach Niku English so he’ll understand when I yell at him.”
She glances at him, eyes narrowing. “I yell at him myself.”
I’d love to be around for that. “Teach him anyway. I want to be able to understand him the next time he threatens me.”
Jen closes the door to the tube. “What are you talking about, teaching a dolphin English?”
“He can talk,” I say, and Jen purses her lips like she’s about to drive me to the psych ward instead of the ER. “You have to be in the water with him, and it’s the same fucked up fish language Erie speaks, but I swear to god, he was talking.”
“We speak the ocean,” Erie says.
Jen raises an eyebrow and stares at us like Erie and I are trying to pull one over on her. “Bullshit. Dolphins don’t talk—someone would have noticed by now.”
“Yep.” I grin. “And that someone is me.”
“We would be able to hear it. We can hear Erie. It makes no sense.”
I shrug, because she’s absolutely right, but I know what I heard. I heard Niku’s rough, male voice arguing with Erie while he had a death grip on my leg. “It must be something to do with echolocation, because my ankle was in his mouth while he did it. Erie, do you know how Niku talks?”
“He speaks the ocean.”
“Do other fish speak the ocean?” Jen asks.
“Dolphins and whales. Fish have own language, and sharks. Fish that live in Seadom speak the ocean. Creepy to hunt fish if know what say, so don’t eat ones in Seadom.”
“What’s the Seadom?” I’ve never heard her use that word before.
Her eyes widen as she smacks a hand over her mouth and glances at Niku. When she turns back to Jen and me, she presses her lips together, then whispers. “Seadom is home.”
Home. It’s the first time she’s said anything about it. “Do all the Mer live in the Seadom?”
She looks away and shakes her head, and now I know it’s fear that keeps her from speaking about home. Fear that we’ll capture the others.
“It’s okay, sweetness. We won’t tell anyone where you live.”
Her eyes are wide and full of fear when she turns to me again. “Promise?”
“I promise.”
The corners of Erie’s lips turn up, and I reach out to put my hand on the glass, but the chair isn’t close enough.
Jen glances at my ankle. “I hope you learned your lesson. You’re not ever doing that again.”
“Fuck that,” I say. “I most certainly am.”
“Yeah,” Erie echoes. “Fuck that!”
Aww, my little mermaid is all grown up and swearing like a big girl. I burst into laughter. Jen rolls her eyes.