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Fun of a Lifetime 47
Angel stopped swimming. That’s right. Logan had made his damning accusations, his pronouncement of how things would be, and she’d slunk back into the sea with a broken heart and a big ol’ pity party. What happened to her backbone? She used to have one. Angel grabbed the hair that was floating around her like sargassum in a hurricane, perfectly mirroring her mood, and draped it over her breasts and tied it in the back like a Human halter top, but not. She did used to have a backbone. And she wanted it back. “Hey, Ang.” Mariana dove into a somersault and headed back Angel’s way. “Let’s not go back to Atlantis just yet. A group of my friends are vacationing in the South Pacific right now. Let’s join them. A girls’ week-end. Or two. Relax, sun ourselves on a deserted beach, drink some fermented pineapple, have a grand ol’ time. We’ll just pretend this didn’t happen.” “Really? And what are you going to tell Rod when he wonders what took you so long to bring me back?” Mariana went for
Fun of a Lifetime 48
“ARE YOU SURE THIS IS WHERE YOU FOUND HER, KID?” A.C. circled the area again, changing the angle of his head to keep the kid’s stubby little legs out of his eyes. The portside eye was more than a little irritated. As was he. He didn’t have a clue where Angel had gone, and any fish he’d tried to ask had taken one look at him—and his passenger—and had swum the other way. The little tuna-shits. If he didn’t have this stupid hitchhiker, he’d show them about swimming away from him… Instead, he’d come up with another way to find her: let her find him. The one plus to those scaredy-fish swimming from him was that they wouldn’t be able to keep their gaping mouths shut. A shark carrying a Human on his back was sure to hit the gossip pools. All he had to do was float tight and wait for her to show. The kid slid sideways on his back. “Yep, this is the place, but I don’t see her.” Neither did A.C. But then, he was only working with one good eye. He angled that eye downward. This was where
Fun of a Lifetime 49
A.C. WAS IN SOME SERIOUS SHIT. “Ah, A.C. We meet again.” Ceto swirled her finger in the water, and the whirlpool circled him closer to her, and, ironically, that stupid hat closer to him. “And who do we have here?” “Do you know Angel?” the kid asked, leaning off to get his damn hat. “Pipe down, kid.” A.C. tried swimming backwards, but the current was too strong. So, yes, he’d planned to eat the kid, but at least he’d make the death quick. Painless even. Well, after that first bite. But Ceto? She was known for stretching torture out over eons. No one deserved that. “I do know her, child,” Ceto answered, her tails seeming not to move at all. Yet somehow she was closer despite A.C.’s attempts to get away. “Who are you?” “I’m Michael.” The lucky S-O-B actually got the hat and managed to stay on A.C.’s back. “I want to see Angel. She promised she wouldn’t leave me, but she did.” A smirk settled on Ceto’s lips as she met A.C.’s gaze. “Altruism, darling? How unlike you.” A.C. thought
Fun of a Lifetime 50
SEEING LOGAN’S MIR-A-MAR RACING THROUGH THE WATER off to the northwest, Angel adjusted her angle of ap-proach accordingly. Boats traveled faster than she could ever hope to swim so she didn’t want to undershoot in-tercepting him. “Captain, can you have one of your pod flag Logan down to let him know I’m here and ask him to stop?” “Are you sure, princess? Having a dolphin break the Rule of Speech is a serious infraction.” As if that mattered with her list of felonies. “I’m sure.” The captain eyed her a bit longer, then whistled the order to the pod. One sleek, gray body dropped low, then sped off as the rest of them continued skimming the waves toward the boat, matching their speed to hers. Angel was getting tired, but nothing was going to stop her from saving Michael. Why had he gone with a shark? Why had Logan let him? What had any of them been thinking? A few minutes later, Logan’s boat slowed. She hoped Logan was as receptive to her as he had been to the messenger. He was w
Fun of a Lifetime 51
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, ANGEL SAW A SIGHT THAT MADE her blood run cold. Floating on the waves, rim side up, was Michael’s hat. Logan saw it a second later. He cut the motors, leaving one barely idling so he could steer alongside it. Then, leaping off the bridge and clearing her tail, he grabbed a fishing gaff to scoop the hat from the water. The waves kept it just beyond his reach. Cursing, Logan tried again—and almost ended up in the ocean. Which was where she belonged. Checking first for shark fins, Angel took matters into her own fins and dove over the side. Within seconds she had the hat, and two seconds later, Logan had it. “Where the hell are they?” His skin blanched beneath his tan as he traced the rim of the hat, such stark pain on his face that Angel couldn’t look at him. Not knowing she was responsible. “I’ll see what I can find out.” Ten minutes of searching the ocean floor and finding a fistful of discarded hammerhead teeth gave her a clue—as did the lack of sea l
Fun of a Lifetime 52
SHE HAD TO KISS HIM. There were a million reasons for Logan to back away from that stipulation, chief among them that she was a mermaid. As much as he hated that fact, he couldn’t deny that he’d wanted to kiss her last night. Before he’d known. And could, if he allowed himself, want to again. But she was a mermaid. What would be the point? There was no future for them. And even if there could be, he had Michael to think of. His son would have to lie to everyone he met because he couldn’t tell anyone that his stepmother was a mer¬maid. Back-to-school night? “Oh, sorry, my wife couldn’t make it. She’s having her tail washed.” Homeroom mom? “Sure, but the lemonade is made with saltwater.” Never going to happen. No and hell no. He wanted Normal. A mermaid was not normal. To bring that thought home, her tail brushed his legs. “Logan?” And what the hell was he doing even thinking the word wife in relation to her? “Are you ready?” She floated a little closer. The kiss. Right. “Yeah
Fun of a Lifetime 53
THE PINK CORAL-COVERED BUILDING WHERE THE SEA MONSTER was holding his son morphed from fairy-tale charming to dungeonesque the closer they swam and as Logan sur¬veyed the lay of the… land?… around it. Other than the terraced coral garden in front, only aquamarine water surrounded them—and comparing the color of the water in this hellish place to Angel’s eyes would be an abomination. “We need to find somewhere to lie low so we can scout the area, Angel. That… molehill, crab heap— whatever—back there isn’t going to cut it.” “There’s no reason to.” Angel stopped swimming when he did. “And no way, either. All of Ceto’s pal¬aces are set up with open space around them. There are guards in every tower monitoring arrivals. She already knows we’re here.” Son-of-a-bitch. “So your plan is to go straight in. Meet her face to face. In a position of power.” Bluffing. “Unless you’ve got a better idea?” She started swim-ming again. Well, hell. He was a decent poker player—and it wasn’t as if t
Fun of a Lifetime 54
THE CORRIDOR OPENED INTO A CAVERNOUS ROOM, TIERS OF seating descending to a stage carved from stone and marble. Massive columns held up a scallop-edged roof, sea grass or kelp or something draped from it like cur-tains. One side was tied back—with an octopus? The other side flowed away from the stage in the current, and stone statues lined the concave back of the stage— But they weren’t just any statues. No, those looked like… Logan blinked. Easter Island faces? A cloud of jellyfish circled above the statues with synchronized pulsations, their tentacles swaying from side to side as a swarm of different-colored morays dodged in and out in an other-worldly allemande left. A large dais made of glass sat at the center of the stage, and on it… On it was the most amazingly horrific creature Logan had ever seen. The sea monster. Only… she didn’t look like a monster. She didn’t look like anything he would have thought a sea monster looked like. Like a giant squid or some-thing. Not th
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