Table of Contents

Title Page

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Other Books by Carrie Vaughn

About the Author

Copyright

“Explain it to me again,” Cormac said with what he thought was profound patience but probably came off sounding harsh.

Kitty didn’t seem to notice the harsh, but she was used to him by now. “The story is that a kid fell out of a boat, went under, and everyone was sure she drowned. But an hour later she turned up on shore next to a boat launch, perfectly fine, just soaking wet. She said a mermaid rescued her. So.” She glanced back with that wry smile of hers. “We’re here to figure out how to get a mermaid to come talk to me.”

Dusk gave the water at Horsetooth Reservoir a metallic sheen. Cormac had the feeling of trying to look through a clouded mirror. The surface rippled with its natural movement; nothing unusual appeared. On a weekday evening, not too many people were around, not too many boats were out on the water.

Kneeling at the edge of the water, Kitty helped her own toddler, Jon, pick out stones, which he then hurled, not very far, watching the splashes with fascination. Ben stood back, his arms crossed, wearing a vague satisfied smile. Producing offspring had mellowed his cousin.

The kid had gone from blob-like baby to walking and grabbing and looking and talking in what seemed like the blink of an eye. That’s what children do, Amelia murmured.

Did you ever want kids? he asked her. Jon wore a T-shirt with a duck on it, kid-sized pants and kid-sized sneakers. A whole world of kid-sized things had invaded Cormac’s life.

I didn’t really have time to think about it. I might have, someday.

Amelia had been around twenty-five when she was hanged, and her body died, even if her spirit survived. She didn’t really get to want anything, after that.

It’s all right. I think we make a better auntie.

You mean uncle.

She answered with a noncommittal Hmm.

Cormac looked across the water, watchful. Always watchful, around his family. The spring air had a chill to it. Almost too warm for a jacket, but too cool to go without.

“You believe the story?” Cormac asked.

“I’m willing to entertain the idea. This is just such an un-mermaidish place, I don’t see a kid making up something like that, not here.”

“Enchanted Horsetooth Reservoir,” Ben said, chuckling. “Yeah, no.”

The reservoir, west of Fort Collins in northern Colorado, was typical for the region, an artificial body designed to provide water for this section of urban corridor. It filled a valley, and hills covered with pine trees and scrub oak rose up almost all the way around it, except for a couple of inlets where boat launches and tiny beaches were located. They had parked in a turnout near one of the dams containing the lake and walked down a short hill to a sandy patch, an easy fishing spot. He’d come here a couple of times to catch smallmouth bass with his dad, when he was a kid.

“Do you know anything about talking to mermaids?” Kitty asked. “Does Amelia?”

“Maybe you just have to ask,” Cormac said, half joking. Not that anyone ever recognized when he was joking, his voice always sounded the same.

But Kitty cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Hey! If you can hear me, I’d love to talk! Just for a minute!” In the still evening air, her voice seemed to fade dully. They waited a minute or two; the water’s surface still didn’t change.

Cormac didn’t doubt that mermaids existed—not after everything else he’d seen. But he didn’t know anything about them. Not for real. He didn’t trust anything from movies or fairy tales—they often got so much wrong.

My knowledge is hypothetical. I never met a mermaid, and I never met anyone who has. They’ve always been elusive.

“Maybe if I sing a Disney song or two. Can you smell anything?” she asked Ben.

He gave an amused snort. “Just the reservoir. Dead fish and runoff.”

Kitty, gazing across the water, narrowed her gaze skeptically. “‘I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me...’”

“Is that a spell?” Ben asked.

“No, it’s T.S. Eliot. I always thought that was such a sad line.” She leaned back down to pick up Jon and prop him on her hip. Kid had kept hold of a rock which seemed to occupy his full attention. “Maybe this is a bust.”

“You said she rescued a kid?” Cormac asked. “Do mermaids like kids? Maybe you could toss the rugrat in—”

“No,” Ben said curtly, at the same time Kitty said, “We are not using my child as bait.”

Cormac shrugged. “Just a suggestion.”

I have an idea, Amelia said. A reclusive legendary creature is not likely to respond to a human call. But... there are other legendary creatures here.

Kitty and Ben were werewolves, and the main reason he didn’t trust movies and fairy tales for arcane knowledge. The reality didn’t always match up with the myths. The couple had a house in the suburbs, for crying out loud.

“What if one of your wolves called?” Cormac said, and they both looked at him. “You know, one supernatural creature to another. That’s Amelia’s idea.”

“That might actually work,” she said, brightening. She started to hand Jon off to his father, but Ben shook his head.

“If you’re a wolf you can’t talk. I’ll do it. You look after him.”

“That... makes sense. Thanks.” They exchanged one of those couple looks, full of subtext Cormac couldn’t interpret.

“You’ll owe me one.” He kissed her on the forehead.

Ben started off toward a section of scrub, and Cormac was relieved he wasn’t going to strip down and shapeshift right here. He’d seen werewolves, including Ben, shift before, and the process was disconcerting.

Magical, even, Amelia observed.

Cormac intercepted him, speaking low. “Sure you’ll be okay?”

“Nice of you to ask,” Ben said wryly. He glanced back at Kitty, who talked softly to Jon, distracting him. “I think it’s worth doing. Just... watch our backs?”

“Yeah,” Cormac said. Always.

Ben pulled his T-shirt off over his head as he entered the scrub.

“So what are you going to say?” Cormac asked Kitty. “Assuming there’s a mermaid and you can actually talk to her?”

“The first thing I want to know is how she got to Horsetooth Reservoir. After that—you know, the usual. Her whole life story.” Kitty grinned.

Five minutes or so later, a big wolf moved along the waterline. Bigger than a wild wolf—Ben’s hundred and seventy pounds or so, in fact—and covered in thick fur, dark gray flecked with rust, he trotted on long, rangy legs, ears up and tail out like a rudder. Kitty dropped her shoulders and tilted her head, a wolfish greeting, like a tail and ears dipping with affection. The wolf bumped her hip and rubbed his whole body against her, and she leaned into the touch. The toddler reached to it, and the wolf sniffed back, wuffling its nose all over the kid.

Cormac had gotten used to this, seeing a huge wolf behaving nothing like its natural counterpart. The rational response, seeing a big predator nose up to a kid like that, would be panic, and to lunge forward to separate them. In the old days, Cormac would have reached for a gun. These days, he didn’t even twitch. He would never get used to getting used to this.

In just a couple of strides, Ben as wolf reached the water and stopped with all four legs submerged to the knees. Then, he tipped his nose up and howled.

The thin, haunting note carried, wavering. It rang in Cormac’s ears even as it traveled down his spine, raising the hair on his neck. Otherworldly and pure, the call cut across space and froze time.

Oh my goodness, Amelia murmured. They rarely heard this, especially so close.

“A territory call,” Kitty said softly. “He’s saying I’m here, where are you?”

Ben’s wolf howled again, ringing across the water. If anything was out there, they must have heard it. A third howl trailed off, uncertain, and the wolf turned and splashed back to shore, trotting along the edge of the water, glancing out.

“Thanks, hon,” Kitty said to the wolf, whose ears were pricked up and out, listening.

A splash broke the water, maybe fifty yards out. It caught all their attentions.

“Fish?” Kitty set Jon down, taking his hand. In any large, stocked body of water like this, you’d see fish jumping, splashing back in.

The splash came again, closer this time. A wide fin, silvery scales. Cormac’s heart jumped. Everything they’d both seen, all the supernatural business they’d encountered—he still couldn’t believe it.

It’s real.

Part of a face emerged. Only her eyes showed, and a trailing length of dark hair, floating in the water.

“Watch him,” Kitty said, setting Jon down before she waded into the lake.

Cormac hated when she said that. The kid looked up at him with what could only be described as malevolence, no doubt planning all the ways he could get in trouble. Jon promptly stuck a rock into his mouth.

“Yeah, don’t do that.” Cormac took the rock away and picked him up before he could start crying. Cormac wiped his now-slimy hand on his jeans and sighed.

Meanwhile, Kitty stood with her hand on Ben’s back. “My name’s Kitty! We won’t hurt you, we just want to talk.”

The mermaid moved quickly, sinuously. Diving, a silvery blue tail arched after her. She reappeared closer, her whole head coming up above the surface this time. She extended her arms, keeping her stable in the water. She looked exhausted, her skin pale, shadowed, a frown pulling at her features. She wasn’t young—she had crows’ feet at her eyes, loose skin at her neck. This was one of the ways the stories lied: they never featured middle-aged mermaids. Merwoman, maybe.

They studied each other across the water: mermaid, wolf, and woman.

“Do you need help?” Kitty asked abruptly.

“Oh yes. Please,” the mermaid breathed.

A little ways up the shore they found a stand of boulders jutting into the water. Kitty went out to the edge of this to meet the mermaid. Ben waited on the shore, sitting at attention, ears pricked forward. Cormac deposited the kid next to him, once again overcoming a jolt of panic at the sheer insanity of setting a small child next to a big furry monster. Except the monster was the kid’s father. Cormac stopped himself from asking the wolf if this was this okay, mostly because he was afraid he’d understand the answer.

Ben’s wolf nudged the toddler, who sat on the gravel and clung to the wolf’s leg. It was odd. It was cute.

Cormac needed to know what Kitty and the mermaid were talking about.

The mermaid was holding loosely to a partially submerged rock. She rested at the surface, her body stretched behind her, and Cormac got his first good look at her. Her waist-length hair drifted around her pale shoulders like a shawl. Her head and torso were all human, but the skin of her waist merged into scales. What would have been hips on a human were wide, muscular. Her tail was long, double the length of her torso. A fan-like dorsal fin fluttered in the water; a pair of fins under her spread out, helping her stay afloat. The tail was wide, the membranes tough-looking, iridescent. Her whole tail shimmered between green, blue, and silver. Cormac was entranced.

Kitty, perched at the edge of a boulder, was finishing introductions. “...that’s my husband Ben and our kid, Jon. And this... this is Cormac.”

The mermaid drew back, sinking under the water a few inches. Cormac stopped, holding his hands up in a calming gesture.

“He’s okay,” Kitty added. “Most of the time.”

“I’m Nia,” she said.

“Nia. It’s so nice to meet you. I have so many questions. How did you get here? What happened? How can we help you?”

“I want to go home,” she said. Her voice was low, musical. A note of whale song turned into speech. “I’ve looked for a river, but there’s only dams—”

“Yeah, this is a reservoir. I’m afraid you’re stuck.”

She rubbed her face. If there were tears, they’d never see them.

Gently, Kitty prompted, “How did you get here? This isn’t exactly mermaid territory.”

“I was dumped,” she said. She had an accent. Irish, or maybe Scottish, something with a lilt from that part of the world. He wondered where mermaids learned to speak English. “My memory of that time’s not good. I was in a tank, in a room full of bad light and bleach. A laboratory?” She tried the word out slowly, like she hadn’t ever spoken it before.

Beside him, Kitty flinched, her hands clenching. She had spent her own short but memorable time in a lab. “I’m so sorry,” she said, heartfelt.

“The people there... something changed. Some kind of urgency, like the place was shutting down. I wish it was more clear.” Nia shook her head, rippling the water around her. “I... convinced a pair of them to help me. But this was as far as they could carry me. I suppose I should be grateful they put me somewhere wet.”

“Convinced how?” Cormac asked. And was she “convincing” them now? Vampires could hypnotize people; Amelia knew of spells that could influence the mind. What could mermaids do?

They sing, Amelia said. Remember the old stories of sirens luring sailors to their deaths.

Nia wasn’t singing now. She looked sad and wilted and deeply out of place in the reservoir’s murky water. “I’m afraid they’ll come back to look for me. They must be looking for me.”

“Where’s home?”

“If I can get to the Atlantic, I can get myself home. Is there any way to get there? A river?”

“None that go to the Atlantic. Not from here.” Kitty sat back, flustered. “Of course we’re in a landlocked state. Because of course we are.”

“The only way you could be further from a coast is if you’d ended up in North Dakota,” Cormac said.

Nia ducked her face under the water, shivered a little. A mermaid’s sigh.

Cormac. We have to help.

Of course they did. “So we drive.”

Kitty perked up. “Yeah. Aquariums move dolphins and things all the time, right? How hard can it be?”

“Never ask that,” Cormac said.

“I’m assuming you need a tank?” Kitty said. “Can you leave the water at all?”

“I need water. Not much, enough to cover me. But I need it to breathe.”

Kitty turned to Cormac. “We’re smart people, we can figure this out. Can’t we?”

“Can I trust you?” the mermaid asked. Her tone suggested she had trusted before and regretted it.

“I can say yes, but you’d have to trust I’m telling the truth,” Kitty said. “I’ll just say this: I’m a werewolf, and I’ve spent time in a cage. I understand. I want to help.”

Cormac said, “We get a van, a tank. Then we drive. We can be on the east coast in just a couple days if we don’t stop.”

Nia’s tail turned, the fin splashing in the water. She wiped her face—and yes, there must have been tears there. “I can hardly believe it.”

A buzzing noise cut through the air suddenly, and Cormac got to his feet. He knew that sound. In the twilight it took a bit of searching, but he found it: a small drone, about twenty feet up, flying along the shore, then stopping to hover.

“Kitty,” he said, tapping her shoulder.

“Shit,” she muttered. She reached toward the water. “You should get out of here, we’ve got spies.”

“How will I find you again?” she asked.

“Listen for the howl.”

Nia gave a push and slipped under the water. With a couple of flicks of her muscular tail, she was gone.

Cormac looked around and found a couple of good throwing stones. The drone was still hovering. Presumably, it had a camera. He met what he imagined was its beady mechanical gaze, and threw one stone, then another before it could veer off. The first one hit, but only knocked it off balance. It dodged the second stone and then raced inland. He lost sight of it in the fading light.

Kitty had already scooped up Jon. Ben loped beside her, up the hill and back to the car. Cormac looked out over the water for a silvery glint of fin or a splash, but the mermaid was gone. Good. He took a moment to grab Ben’s clothes, folded neatly at the edge of the scrub because wasn’t that just like him? When he reached the car, he tossed them in the back seat.

Up on the road, an engine rumbled and tires squealed on pavement as a shining black Range Rover came to a sliding stop in the turnout behind their car. It had a lot of fancy antennae on it, and strapped to the roof was an even larger drone than the one that had found them. The driver and passenger immediately got out. The driver was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a thick dark beard and a ball cap, embroidered with the initials FRACH, jammed over his hair. The passenger was a stocky woman with red hair in a ponytail, holding up what looked like a small video camera, filming.

Cormac had to tamp down the thought that it was a weapon and he needed to reach for his own. On second thought... He marched forward. The woman with the camera stumbled back, but not before he could grab the thing away from her.

Fearfully, she pressed herself against the hood of the car. He supposed he ought to feel bad about scaring her.

“Hey, you can’t do that, that’s assault!” the guy yelled. Cormac ignored him, studying the camera’s screen and fiddling with the buttons until he deleted the footage.

“So is this.” Cormac gestured with the camera before setting it on the hood.

The wolf stood at the back of the SUV, hackles up, head down, teeth bared. Cormac didn’t know if he’d be able to stop Ben if he decided to strike. These two had no idea what they were up against.

Fortunately, Kitty was there. She must have gotten Jon stashed in the car. Now, she came up and put her hand on Ben’s back. The hackles flattened—slightly.

“Oh my God, is that a werewolf?” the ponytailed woman said, reaching again for the camera.

Cormac pointed. “Don’t.”

“You’re Kitty Norville!” the driver in the hat exclaimed. “What do you know about the mermaid?”

Ben’s wolf growled softly, and Kitty hissed a warning at him, stepping in front of him. “Why should I tell you?”

“The public has a right to know!”

“And what about the right to privacy?”

“There’s no privacy in science!”

She gaped. “Is that what you think you’re doing here? Science? You maybe have an ethics board to check in with about that?”

Cormac bet the guy was recording audio. The whole setup screamed publicity, that they were playing to an audience somewhere. These guys had an angle. He walked up to Kitty, said softly, “We need to get out of here. Don’t engage.”

“Yeah.” She patted the wolf’s shoulder and started around to the car door.

“Bet you I can catch her before you can,” the guy said, his lip curling.

Kitty paused and looked back at him. “But I don’t want— That’s your plan? Catch her? Then what?”

“Then we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”

“Kitty, we need to go,” Cormac said, and opened the door for her. She urged Ben to hop in first, then followed. Cormac drove, peeling around past Mr. FRACH and the Range Rover. The guy was laughing.

So that made the situation a little more urgent than it had been a few minutes ago.

They headed south, back home. Cormac drove. Kitty got Jon secured in his car seat and calmed down. Once the kid was calm, Ben’s wolf stretched out in the back, trying to sleep so he could shift back to human. Kitty was anxious, with one hand on the toddler, her attention divided between Ben in the back and her phone.

“Let’s find out who these guys are, shall we?” she muttered in a vaguely predatory tone.

Meanwhile, Amelia was thrilled. We need a van. We can rent this, yes? And a container for water. Where do we even look for such a thing? And will it even fit in a van? Cormac, I know nothing of these details...

“Holy cow, that was fast,” Kitty said. “Video from that drone is already up on YouTube. The Horsetooth Reservoir Mermaid. Geez. And there it is. Front Range Cryptid Hunters. FRACH.”

“That’s a stupid acronym,” he said.

“I know, right? Oh my God, this YouTube channel is off the rails. They’ve got twenty low-light videos looking for Bigfoot in Rocky Mountain National Park. And this one—that’s not evidence of a Slide-Rock Bolter, you moron, that’s tailings from an old mine! How is it I’ve never heard of these people? You’d think I’d have heard of them.”

The staticky, distorted sound of a buzzing drone emerged as she played a video. There were no voices, so maybe the sound wasn’t good enough to record what they’d been saying. Small favors. “The light’s bad enough they didn’t get too many details,” Kitty said. “But they got pictures of Nia. And there’s you throwing a rock at it. Nice aim, by the way. They’ve got your face, front and center.”

“Shit,” he muttered. He’d looked straight at the drone. Whoever this was could probably ID him, dig up his criminal record, his father’s connections...

The static dropped out, replaced by traffic background noises and a male voice speaking in an urgent tone, as if he was reporting a news story and not a local oddity. It was the guy who’d confronted them.

“There you have it, definitive proof: the stories are true, there is a mermaid living in Horsetooth Reservoir. And what’s more—the creature has been in contact with known celebrity werewolf Kitty Norville. People, this is big. This is a conspiracy. How long has Norville known about this? Why hasn’t she come forward with information? What is she hiding? We’re still tracking the identity of the man with her, but we do know—he’s not her husband. There’s a story here, and she doesn’t want us to know! You can bet we’re going to be looking into pressing charges for his unprovoked attack on our completely legal drone activities.”

“Oh for crying out loud,” Cormac muttered. Did he need to get a lawyer? Ben, who was in fact a lawyer, was still lupine and nonverbal and couldn’t chime in.

“Hmm, I smell a libel suit,” Kitty murmured. “Go on, keep pushing there, bucko.”

The narration continued. “We’re increasing our surveillance of the reservoir while we work on the next phase of this investigation. We’re going to find this mermaid. If you like what you see, subscribe to our channel and consider backing us on Patreon, so we can continue with our work. I’m Eddie Foster with FRACH, bringing you the truth.”

“He called her a creature,” Kitty said. “Like she isn’t even a person. I don’t like him.”

“He’s not going to let up,” Cormac said. “Going to be a lot harder getting Nia out of there with this kind of attention.”

“Working on it. I’ve got some ideas.”

That was almost as ominous as learning about the existence of the Front Range Cryptid Hunters in the first place. “What ideas?”

“Still thinking. Gotta talk to the lawyers first.”

Kitty’s phone beeped, and she studied the screen. Hit a button, and the call cut out. Then it beeped again. She declined that call, too, but the next beep came right after. She hit the mute button and sighed. “I’m going to be getting a lot of calls about this, aren’t I?”

“Too many people have your phone number. We talked about this.”

“Yes, I know, but it’s my job!”

He was off the freeway and nearing Ben and Kitty’s house when a groan came from the back of the SUV.

“Hey there,” Kitty said soothingly. In the rearview mirror Cormac could see Ben sitting up, rubbing his face. He was naked and looked a mess, like werewolves almost always did after shifting back to human. “Welcome back.”

“What happened?” He sounded hung over.

“We’re on YouTube!” Kitty said brightly.

“That is never good.”

“Your clothes are there.”

“Oh, thank God. Did you manage to talk to the mermaid?” Ben asked, pulling on his shirt.

“We did,” Kitty said. “We also made some new not-friends. And now we need to figure out how to mount a rescue.”

By the time they got back to the house, it was dark and after business hours, but they did what they could. Cormac hated the idea of this Eddie Foster guy going after Nia, but there wasn’t a whole lot they could do until morning, except hope FRACH didn’t have a way to search underwater in the dark.

That is a large body of water, Amelia reassured him. And I imagine Nia has a lot of experience hiding.

Amelia was probably right, but that didn’t stop him from feeling like he needed to do something right now.

Kitty called her contact at the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology, the department within the NIH tasked with studying all things supernatural. Kitty tried to keep up a good relationship with them, despite their dodgy past, for just these situations. Cormac didn’t catch the whole conversation because Kitty was pacing in and out of the room during the call, displaying increasing levels of frustration.

“But you’re saying the Center did study mermaids,” she said. “Had mermaids in captivity at some point.”

The reply carried over the speaker. “Well, yes, but that was under Dr. Flemming’s supervision—”

“You know my feelings about Dr. Flemming.” She almost growled when she said this.

Flemming had been the director of the Center who had captured Kitty on the night of a full moon and forced her to shapeshift on live TV, early on in her career. Kitty wasn’t generally inclined to hold grudges, but this one had stuck. She never let the Center live it down, even though Flemming had been dead for years now.

Kitty pressed on. “Can you just check your records for any listing of a mermaid named Nia, in the northern Colorado area?”

“Does this have something to do with that YouTube video going around?”

“Why, yes,” Kitty said bitingly. “Yes, it does.”

“She might not have been held at a federal facility, you know. There are private firms who also conduct research into paranatural subjects. Pharmaceutical companies in particular.”

Kitty put her hand on her forehead. “Oh my God. That’s a can and a half of worms I don’t even want to open right now. Just please call me back if you find out anything. Thank you.”

Ben stared. “Pharmaceutical? What, like studying vampires for the secret of immortality? I’m not sure that’s a crusade you can take on right now.”

“Yeah. One crusade at a time. Excuse me, I need to hug my kid.”

Cormac pulled up a USGS map of Horsetooth, marking service roads and back ways to the water they could maybe use to avoid being watched. Found a couple of likely spots. He was even getting a crazy idea about how to keep Nia safe during a cross-country road trip.

He called a family friend who ran a junkyard. “Hey, Fred. I need a container of some kind. Maybe seven feet long, three feet deep, that can hold water. It has to fit in a cargo van, and I need it by early afternoon.”

“Are we talking... what? Like an aquarium?”

“Not necessarily, it just has to hold water.”

“Maybe a bathtub? Like, a big industrial tub.”

That might work. “Something like that, yeah.”

“Is this about the mermaid in Fort Collins on that YouTube video?”

“I’m starting a mobile dog-washing service,” Cormac answered flatly while silently cursing the entire phenomenon of viral videos.

Fred laughed. “Yeah, right.”

“Fred. You owe me, don’t ask questions.”

“Fine. I’ll see what I can come up with.”

He tried to rent a car online but couldn’t find the sort of commercial cargo van he would need for this endeavor and would have to wait until morning. The ticking clock hung over them but there was nothing else they could do right now.

“The plus side is Eddie Foster won’t be able to do much until morning, either,” Ben said.

“We hope,” Kitty muttered. “I suppose we should try to get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be... something.”

Cormac stayed the night in their guest room, and the next morning their kitchen turned into something of a war room. Kitty and Ben traded looking after Jon, making calls, and watching updates on the TV. The mermaid hadn’t been sighted again, even with news helicopters scoping out the scene. They’d started at first light.

The Front Range Cryptid Hunters video was all over the local news, and even some national outlets had picked up the story. The clip just kept playing, over and over. Nia’s silvery form disappearing under the water, Kitty kneeling by the shore, and Cormac looking straight at the drone’s camera. Small blessing: the drone had failed to get any footage of Ben’s wolf and Jon sitting on the shore nearby. None of the commentary mentioned them.

All the local news channels sent trucks to the reservoir, and what must have been hundreds of gawkers joined them, people lining up along the road and filling the parking turnouts, bringing binoculars and cameras and looking for a glimpse of the mermaid. A festival atmosphere took over, with news reporters delivering breathless accounts and cameras surveying the lines of cars jammed on the roads. Someone had managed to get T-shirts printed overnight—they read “The Horsetooth Mermaid” in big letters with a generic stylized woodcut-style image of a mermaid—and were selling them out of the back of a station wagon.

Whatever chance they had to make a clandestine rescue was obliterated.

A stream of reporters called Kitty, hoping for an interview. She turned them down, even after her nominal boss at the radio station where she based her talk show called, begging her to issue some sort of statement. Kitty told him she needed a plan first.

Cormac was finally able to call about a renting a van. At least that was a little more straightforward. Ben handed over his credit card, which was nice of him.

The rental agent asked, “Shall I add the extra insurance?”

Cormac hesitated a beat, then said, earnestly, “Yes. All the insurance, please.”

The main problem was still going to be getting Nia out without drawing attention. Cormac didn’t have a solution for that. He asked Amelia, I don’t suppose you have some kind of invisibility spell we can cast over the whole reservoir.

The trouble with that is if the whole reservoir turned invisible, someone would notice.

Some kind of spell to avert the gaze? So people don’t notice us?

Those sorts of spells work better when people aren’t already looking. They’re going to be looking very carefully, Cormac.

“I’ve got it,” Kitty said suddenly, grabbing her phone and heading to the other room.

Ben stared after her. “Oh shit.”

Cormac knew exactly what he meant. She had that gleam in her eye, the one that usually preceded something dramatic, like unexpected YouTube videos. “Good thing you’re around to tell us where the line is between legal and not.”

“As if that actually ever stopped anyone from going over it,” he said with a huff. “Better if I don’t say a word. My professional conscience is clear.”

She returned after just a minute, which could have been good or bad. And smiling, which also could have been good or bad. “Well, that’s all taken care of.”

“What’s all taken care of?” Ben asked, a bit desperately.

“You want to avoid attention, you’re going to need a distraction,” she said. “Well, I’m your distraction. I’m going to run a press conference while you two get Nia away.”

It wasn’t a bad plan. Except that it involved putting Kitty in the spotlight, the focus of far too much of the wrong kind of attention.

“I’d be worried except that seems to be her natural state of being,” Ben said, when Cormac expressed the fear. “I think it’s a good plan.”

In fact, just an hour after she’d made a few calls, the news stations started publicizing the presser, and social media blew up with the announcement. She planned to stage the event early that afternoon near the marina at Inlet Bay, on the southwest end of the reservoir. It was something of a bottleneck—one narrow road in and out, on the far side of the reservoir from the town. Cormac picked an escape route at the opposite end, to the north. Satanka Cove—not as crowded, easier to get away from. It had a boat ramp, so they could pull the van right down to the water. Everyone, including Eddie Foster, should be so focused on Kitty, they wouldn’t notice Nia making her escape.

“And what are you going to say at this press conference?” Ben asked.

“I’m going to baffle them with bullshit,” she said, grinning. “I think I can get you guys about forty minutes before people figure out I’m full of it.”

“That going to be enough?” Ben asked Cormac.

“I think it’ll be plenty. Just as long as Foster doesn’t have a crew watching out for us on the side.”

They learned what they could about Foster and FRACH. It seemed to be a newer organization—the earliest video had been posted less than a year ago. Two different teams showed up in the videos, with no more than eight people. Not enough to cover the reservoir—Cormac was hopeful.

They had just a couple of hours to pull it together. Cormac picked up the van, a large commercial model with no side windows and a bare cargo space. Perfect. Next, he headed over to Fred’s junkyard east of Greeley, where Fred was waiting with the requested item on a forklift.

“Hey there!” Fred called, after Cormac had backed in the van. Cormac and Ben had gone to high school with Fred’s brothers—Fred was a couple of years younger. Cormac’s father had bought cars from Fred’s father. He hadn’t seen him in years, but he recognized him, his heavyset frame and hair in a ponytail. He wore a flannel shirt untucked over faded jeans and biker boots. His smile was jovial. Cormac summoned all the politeness he was capable of and waved a greeting.

Fred had, in fact, brought him a bathtub. Large, plain white, a little beat up. Cormac hoped it was still watertight. Fred had also brought along an armful of rope and tie-downs, and a sheet of Plexiglas.

“It’s a lid,” he explained. “We can tie it down over the tub. I figure you’d need that to keep the water from splashing out, and to keep the mermaid safe inside.”

Cormac took a moment to rein back his temper. “What mermaid?” he asked calmly.

“Cormac. Please. It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone.”

“Fred, does the phrase ‘plausible deniability’ mean anything to you?”

“Oh, and I went ahead and caulked up the drain so it wouldn’t accidently get unplugged.”

That... was actually a good idea. What choice did Cormac have but to say, “Thanks.”

“I just know a mermaid doesn’t belong in Horsetooth. You’re taking her someplace safe, right? Back to the ocean?”

“That’s the plan.”

He nodded once. “Good.”

Amelia’s heart melted a bit. Maybe even Cormac’s, just a little, if he was honest.

Fred let Cormac fill the tub from his own spigot, after helping him secure it in the back of the van. It took up most of the cargo space, along with a whole web of tie-downs. Weighted down with water, it wasn’t going to budge. Cormac was more worried about the van itself tipping. He’d have to drive carefully. Then Fred produced a couple of twenty-gallon coolers, and they filled those, too, to use to refill the tub.

He didn’t know if the water needed to be a certain temperature, if the junkyard’s well water was going to be safe for a mermaid, what kind of food she needed—surely she’d need to eat before they got to the coast. He packed a cooler and threw in a couple packs of smoked salmon, just in case. Filled up with gas, so they wouldn’t need to stop for awhile.

Amelia cast a whole raft of protection spells over the van. General stuff—turn away harm, safety on a journey. Every little bit had to help.

He picked up Ben at a Starbucks where he and Kitty were waiting. Kitty would head out on her own for the press conference.

“I love it,” Kitty said, examining the setup. “I gotta go put out the bait. Good luck, you two.”

Ben hugged her, long and fiercely. Cormac looked away, and when he turned back, Kitty was driving out of the parking lot.

“Fred really came through for you,” Ben said, nodding at the van.

“He was very excited.”

“He guessed, didn’t he? He going to rat us out?”

“I don’t think he will. He really seemed to like the idea of helping rescue a mermaid.”

Ben snorted. “Who wouldn’t? How often does anyone get a chance to recreate an old Tom Hanks movie? It’s great!” Sometimes, Ben got sarcastic enough that he swung back around into sounding sincere.

They weren’t going to head to the reservoir until just before Kitty’s show. A van sitting next to the water ahead of time would look way too suspicious. They’d drive in quick, get Nia, then drive out. Easy.

He’d just keep telling himself that.

She’d announced a start time at two. Her plan was to start twenty minutes late. More, if she could push it without people getting too restless. Cormac didn’t want her by herself, but Ben was on it—he’d called in members of their werewolf pack. They’d keep an eye on the crowd, watch her back, and babysit Jon.

“Nice, having your own gang to call on,” Cormac said.

Ben’s mouth pursed, like he was going to say something snarky. Then he sighed. “Yeah, it is.” He constantly checked his phone for the time, until it was finally time to head over.

This is nerve-wracking. I’m not sure I can stand it.

Amelia didn’t even have a body with taut nerves and clenched shoulders. Her nerves were wracked vicariously.

Doesn’t matter. I still feel it.

Ben turned the radio to the local public station, which was carrying Kitty’s press conference live. Nothing from Kitty yet, just the background hum of the crowd and a reporter repeating a summary they’d probably repeated five or six times already, about the viral video and the possibility of a mermaid in the unlikely setting of northern Colorado.

Afternoon sun was slanting over the water. The cove was startlingly empty—Kitty’s announcement had drawn people to the southern end of the reservoir, maybe convincing them the mermaid would be a part of it. Only a few paddleboarders splashed around here, and they seemed more concerned with staying upright than paying attention to the van. Cormac kept his ears open and his eyes on the sky. No drones, yet.

The big question mark in the plan was whether or not Nia would find them in time. They hadn’t had a chance to work out a good signal with her. Ben had a recording of a wolf howl—Kitty’s, the one she used to introduce her radio show. Maybe it would be enough.

Ben stood at the end of the boat ramp, holding his phone up as the howl played. The recording wasn’t quite so piercing and sonorous as the real thing, but the sound still carried. They waited.

And waited.

This whole thing might have been for nothing.

Then, Cormac pointed. A ripple in the water was followed by the arc of a silvery body, the flip of a fin. It happened again, closer to shore. Ben shut off the howl. The paddleboarders didn’t see her; they just weren’t looking.

The mermaid came to rest in the shallows, leaning on muscular arms, her fins rippling on the surface. There were bare breasts—strategically and artfully hidden under the drape of her hair, as if by magic.

Be polite, Amelia admonished.

Of course.

Since she would recognize Cormac, he approached. “Hi. We’ve got a van and a tank—sort of. I’m not sure if it’ll work, but if you still want to get out of here, we can go.”

“Where’s Kitty?” she asked anxiously.

“She’s the distraction,” Ben said. “Hi, I’m Ben, we didn’t really get a chance to meet yesterday.”

“Oh, I remember you, and your lovely singing voice,” she said, and winked. Ben blushed, which was amusing.

Cormac hadn’t backed the van all the way down the ramp—its angle was steep enough that water started spilling out of the tub. They’d have to carry her up. Opening the doors so she could see in, he belatedly observed how incredibly dodgy this must look, inviting a near stranger into a windowless van. Trust us, sure.

“It’s so dark in there,” she said, uncertain. Hugging herself, she rocked back on her tail.

She’d probably been dumped from a setup just like this. Kitty should have been here; Kitty was so much easier to trust than a couple of scruffy-looking men.

Cormac rubbed a hand through his hair and nervously glanced skyward, listening for drones. “Look, you’ve got no reason to trust us, just because we say so. I get it. But this is Kitty’s gig and the thing you gotta understand about her is she just... wants to help. Everyone. And if I let anything bad happen to you she would murder me.”

Ben shrugged. “She might not murder you but she’d be very disappointed in you.”

“Close enough,” Cormac said, and this—that he cared what Kitty thought about him—felt like admitting a dark secret.

In the afternoon light, the mermaid seemed particularly mystical. Rippling water flashed around her like starlight. Her eyes were searching.

“All right,” she said finally. “I want to go home.”

Cormac checked the time. Quarter after two. Kitty’s audience would start getting restless.

“So how do we do this?” Ben said.

They’d have to carry her. “Here,” Cormac said, pulling a blanket out of the back of the van. He took one side, Ben took the other, and they lay it out in the water. They were ankle deep in it, their shoes soaked. She regarded the makeshift lift and nodded, satisfied. Maybe this—not directly manhandling her—earned them a little bit more trust. With a thrust of her tail, she hauled herself on the blanket. Gripping each corner, Cormac and Ben lifted. Cormac’s shoulder twinged uncomfortably, and he winced.

“You okay?” Ben asked, watching him carefully.

“Yeah, just give me a sec.” The gunshot wound in his shoulder was healed enough that he could forget about it sometimes. Then he tried to lift a body and his whole shoulder rebelled. He just had to remember to be ready for it. Ben frowned skeptically at this answer, but Cormac didn’t wince again. They moved toward the van.

Her brow furrowed and jaw clenched, she clung to the edges.

She was heavier than Cormac expected. Her tail was long, muscular, and twitching, what seemed to be a reflexive shiver in response to the movement. She was nervous—of course she was, and he wished he knew how to set her at ease. He backed into the van; Ben climbed in next, and they eased their passenger to the tub. What had seemed pretty good for a last-minute plan an hour ago now seemed half-assed and pathetic.

Nia gazed into the water, and to Cormac’s relief, she seemed to relax. Pushing down the edge of the blanket, she rolled herself out, for all the world like a fish escaping a net, slipping deftly into the water with barely a splash.

They got the Plexiglas lid strapped into place. It only covered two-thirds of the tub—she could stick her head up anytime she wanted, but it would still keep the water mostly in the tub. She hung her arms over the edge, watching.

“Thank you,” she said. “Mo sheacht mbeannacht ort.”

Amelia said, It’s Irish. It means, ‘My seven blessings upon you.’

Cormac set his lips in a grim line. She ought to wait to thank them until this was all over. They closed up the van, double-checked everything. He got in the driver’s seat, Ben in the passenger seat. Still no drones. They might get out of this without being seen.

The paddleboarders were staring now, pointing. One of them had a phone up, taking pictures. Who the hell brought a cell phone out on the water? These guys, apparently.

They set out, and Nia gave a small gasp as the water sloshed. But everything held together.

The radio was still tuned to the news conference, and Kitty had finally started talking.

“Thank you all for coming and being so patient. These things never quite go the way we plan them, do they?” She sounded bright, cheerful. Drawing them in, being everyone’s friend. Cormac didn’t know how she did it. “First of all I’d like to confirm that yes, that was me in the viral video that was posted last night. I’ll be happy to answer questions about what was happening in that video and my role in it. But I’d like to say a few words first, and if you could please save your questions to the end of my statement, I’d really appreciate it. As you all know, we’ve been drawn here by evidence of a mermaid living in Horsetooth Reservoir. In case you weren’t aware, the first mention of mermaids in the written record can be traced to Ancient Greece—”

And she was off to the races. After five minutes, she had gotten as far as Irish folktales. After ten, she was listing her favorite mermaid movies, and then she launched in on a history of Horsetooth Reservoir. By that time, they were well on their way to I-25.

“God, I love her,” Ben said admiringly. “You pick a route?”

They were away from the reservoir in minutes and heading back to the freeway. At I-25, Cormac would have to turn north or south. North to I-80, or south to I-70. Both went all the way to the east coast. “I-80. It’s closer and there’s less traffic. Unless you think I-70?”

“No, definitely I-80.” It was thirty miles or so to Cheyenne and the turn to the eastbound freeway. After that, Cormac could breathe a little easier.

Ben’s phone rang just a minute later. He put it on speaker.

“It’s me.” Kitty. She sounded flustered. Not even a hint of lightness in her voice. “Eddie Foster was here. They bugged out in that tricked-out Range Rover before I finished, I couldn’t take a break to call until now. We have to assume he’s on your tail.”

Kitty ended the call with a heartfelt plea to be careful. It had taken awhile for Cormac not to be offended by such exhortations—of course he was careful, what did she take him for? Because it wasn’t really about whether or not she thought they were being careful.

A tricked-out Range Rover could make much better time than an overloaded cargo van. Nothing to do about it at the moment but keep going and cover as much ground as they could. He’d suggest an alternate route, but the problem with the road between Fort Collins and Cheyenne was there were no alternate routes. Nothing else but county roads and open range. They’d make better time on the freeway.

“Shit,” Ben murmured, compulsively checking the mirrors and craning around to look out the back. “Do we have a plan B?”

“I’m not going to panic until we spot ‘em,” Cormac said. The white van stood out, and it would stand out even more after dark. He noted every car around him, every car that passed, wondering if they were tailing him.

Nia sank under the surface of the water and stayed there.

The weight of responsibility for this other being suddenly hit him. He was driving a mermaid across country. He shouldn’t be doing this.

You’re in it now, Amelia said soothingly.

Got any spells for hot pursuit? Not that he could drive and cast spells at the same time.

Let me think on it.

Ben got out his phone and started typing.

Cormac glanced, trying to see what he was doing. “What’s that?”

“You know those hotlines where you can text to report dangerous drivers to highway patrol?” He donned his feral lawyer grin that had somehow grown even scarier since he became a werewolf.

Cormac approved. Now, just twenty-five or so hours of driving to go. Once they took the turn to I-80 east, the trip was practically a straight shot. Nothing to worry about. The exit ramp was wide and gentle; he barely had to slow down.

A car was parked on the verge, a gray SUV with a long CB radio antenna climbing up the back, and a couple of other add-ons beside. Not standard. As the van reached the end of the ramp and merge lane, Cormac watched in the mirror as the SUV pulled onto the road and sped up, following. Wasn’t enough traffic around for it to be subtle.

“Ben, look.”

Ben cursed low. Turning off on side roads to try to lose them wasn’t an option. Their pursuer was faster, more maneuverable. Changing course would only make it easier for them to catch up. And what exactly were they going to do when they caught up? Probably just wait for the van to stop. Everything Foster and his crew were driving got better mileage than the van, which would have to pull over for gas at some point, and they’d be cornered. Then what? That was a question Cormac didn’t particularly want the answer to.

“What do we do?” Nia said. This must be maddening for her, not being able to see what was going on. Being helpless to do anything about it even if she could.

“Same thing we’ve been doing. Don’t let on we’ve spotted them,” Cormac said.

“Can you read their plates?” Ben was on his phone again, texting.

“No, they’re hanging back.”

They called Kitty. Ben put her on speaker. “We’ve got a car on us, a different one than the Range Rover,” he said.

“Not surprised,” she said with a sigh. “I’m trying to contact Eddie Foster, to find out what exactly he hopes to accomplish. He’s not replying, but he has a live feed going on his YouTube channel right now.”

“Wait, I’ve got to see this.” Ben hung up the call and tapped away at his phone.

The video began playing in the middle of a breathless monologue, spoken in Eddie Foster’s familiar dramatic voice. “—the Horsetooth Mermaid has been kidnapped! I’m very sensitive to charges to libel so I don’t want to come out and say that talk-show host Kitty Norville is involved, but I’m currently gathering evidence that Kitty Norville is involved and I promise you I will get to the bottom of why. For now, the biggest question is—where is the mermaid now and why has this happened? I’ve got chase cars on the freeway, and I’ll report back with news. Fans and listeners, I need your help. They’re in a white cargo van heading east on I-80, just past Cheyenne. If you see the van, being driven by the man in our original mermaid video, please contact me at the number on the screen. We need your help! FRACH out!”

A lot of background noise marred the recording—a blustery wind and freeway hum. A glance at the screen showed Eddie in the Range Rover, racing on some freeway. Not too close, Cormac hoped.

“Well that’s just great.” Ben dialed his phone. “Hey hon,” he said when Kitty picked up. “Did you catch him siccing his fans on us?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Don’t worry. Two can play at that game.”

“Kitty,” Ben said pleadingly. “I think you should try to keep out of trouble, we don’t know what this guy is capable of—”

“Ben, my fan base is way bigger than his,” she said sweetly. And hung up.

There was a mild splish of water in the tub. “Ach, I’m glad she’s on my side,” Nia said.

Cormac adjusted his grip on the wheel and glared at the ceiling a moment. The dull black plastic interior was cracking. “This was supposed to be a straight shot. Was there anything we could have done to make this a straight shot?”

“Just drive.”

The SUV was still on them. It was clear from the video that Foster intended to get some kind of sensationalized video confrontation he could promote. Cormac didn’t know how to shake the tail. Not while keeping them all safe. If it was just him, that would be one thing, but it wasn’t. When he asked himself what was the worst that could happen, the answers he came up with were pretty damned bad.

He wasn’t used to taking care of other people. Defending, yes. Protecting, definitely. He was fine putting himself between people he cared about and bullets, metaphorical or literal. But this was different.

Let me try something.

He wasn’t sure what Amelia could do.

There should be some sage in your coat pocket—

“I can’t dig around in my pockets while I’m driving,” he said irritably.

“What?” Ben said. Cormac ignored him. He hadn’t realized he’d answered her out loud.

Perhaps Ben would be willing to work the spell—

This was too much. Ben didn’t have the experience, and relaying her instructions sounded like too much effort. Cormac unbuckled his seat belt. “Here. You drive.”

Ben looked back at him, blank-faced. “That sort of thing only works in the movies, you know.”

“Just pretend we’re still seventeen and unkillable.” Cormac thought for a moment, tilting his head. “You being a werewolf means you probably won’t die if we get in a big wreck.” But Nia might. Easy, then. No crashing.

“Jesus, just stop talking.” Ben unbelted and slid over next to the driver’s seat.

This really did feel like some of the shit they got up to in high school. He grinned.

Ben gripped the wheel, and Cormac slipped behind him, out of the seat, with his foot still on the gas pedal. Soon, he was crouching between the seats, while Ben settled in. Ben counted down, and Cormac backed out as Ben took over the pedal. The gas was only off for a second or two; the van barely lost speed.

“Hot damn,” Ben said, fumbling to get the seat belt buckled. “We are never telling Kitty about this, right?”

Cormac was busy searching his pockets for Amelia’s requested materials. Sage. Matches. Blue ink. Paper. She was constantly asking him to fill his pockets with... stuff. He never questioned it, but he was always a little surprised at what he was able to dig out in moments like this.

“Are we all right?” Nia asked. She’d hooked her elbows over the edge of the tub to watch him. Her hair dripped, her pale skin was shining. He was right next to the tub, close enough to catch an enticing, salt-touched scent. She smelled like the sea.

“Not sure,” he answered truthfully. “Doing our best here.”

She donned a bright smile, crinkling the wrinkles at her eyes, and he hesitated. That smile made him forget what he was doing for a moment.

Cormac, Amelia reminded him.

He might have blushed, and quickly set to work with the sage and candle stub.

“You know magic!” Nia said.

“Sort of,” he responded.

The difficulty with casting some sort of diversion spell, to encourage people not to see us, is we’re moving at high speed with dozens of other vehicles also moving at high speed. We don’t want to be invisible. We need people to be able to see us.

Imagine, changing lanes and discovering that spot wasn’t empty after all. Cormac wholeheartedly agreed.

Instead, we want to try to appear... different. Just a little. I can’t make us look like an entirely different car. But perhaps a different color...

Burning sage tinted the air. Cleansing, protection. A bit of mint, for a new way of looking at the world. Cormac pressed his hand flat to the floor, and let Amelia step into his body, giving her his voice. She breathed out the incantation in a whisper.

Then she stepped back, the candle burned out, and the sage was gone. Only a whiff of it remained. The van felt the same, humming along the freeway. He had no idea if the spell worked. He sat back on his heels and sighed.

“Your aura changed,” Nia said. “Just for a moment.”

“You can see auras?” he said.

“I can see lots of things. Will you tell me why?”

“Maybe later.” He moved back to the passenger seat, and Nia sank under the water.

He studied the mirrors, searching for the gray SUV. “Change lanes. Get some cars in between us and them. Let’s see what happens.”

“What’d you do?” Ben asked.

“I’m not exactly sure.”

“Okay, then what did Amelia do?”

Just wait...

Ben got into the left lane, accelerated around a semi, then moved back.

“Wait, did you see that?” Ben said, glancing at the side mirror.

As they got ahead of the semi, Cormac was able to see more of the freeway behind them. The SUV with the big antenna sped up, zoomed right up behind the semi, jumped lanes—then it fell back. The car almost looked disappointed as it drifted farther behind.

“I swear they were looking right at us and didn’t see us,” Ben said.

“I think they saw us,” Cormac answered. “We just didn’t look like they expected us to.”

“Then what did we look like?”

He’d love to know. “Just get some distance between us.”

“Who is Amelia?” Nia asked.

Ben chuckled a little. “That’s a long story.”

“We’ve got time,” she said.

They looked at Cormac. Inwardly annoyed, he said to Amelia, I never know what to say. It sounds crazy.

It is crazy. You always seem to do fine. It’s not our fault if someone doesn’t believe you.

“Amelia’s the hundred-plus-year-old magician whose spirit shares my body,” Cormac said.

“Really?” Nia said. “She can hear us right now?”

“Every word.”

“Then I’m happy to meet her.”

“Likewise,” Cormac said. Nia had taken the story so matter-of-factly, he was a little bemused.

I love her. Can you imagine all the lore she could tell us? Everything we might learn from her?

They had a lot of hours of driving ahead of them. There’d be time.

Ben’s phone rang. He’d left it sitting in a cup holder in the console, and Cormac picked it up. Caller ID said Kitty, of course.

“Yeah?”

“Hey. Where’s Ben?” she demanded.

“Driving,” Cormac said curtly.

“Wait, did you guys stop? What’s happening?”

Cormac exchanged a glance with his cousin, who was gritting his teeth. “I’m not allowed to tell you,” he said.

“Oh my God, why do I even ask. I’m still watching Foster’s livestream and he just freaked the hell out. One of his chase cars was on your tail and just lost you. They can’t figure out what happened. It’s not like you guys are inconspicuous. But now he’s putting pictures of the van up all over social media.”

“We’re going to have to change strategies,” Ben said.

“Get off the freeway,” Cormac said. “Next exit to a state highway. We can change routes then figure it out.”

“Don’t tell me where you’re going,” Kitty said. “I’m still trying to call Eddie the Night Stalker but he’s only responding to Twitter posts. So we’re doing this in public. Performative asshole.”

“I’m sure you’re holding your own, hon,” Ben said.

“I’ve gotten him to admit he’s soliciting corporate sponsorship for this stunt. He did better when he was asking people to feed his Patreon.”

Ben leaned in and said, “Talk to Detective Hardin, see if she can help you get a restraining order in place, to keep those clowns away from us. One that’ll work in multiple jurisdictions.”

She sighed over the line. “This is very complicated.”

“Just trying to think of everything.”

“Yeah. You guys be careful.”

From the back Nia was leaning on the tub, listening, and she called, “Kitty. Thank you.”

“Of course.” She ended the call.

They exited the freeway and made a couple of turns. Within minutes, they appeared to be in the middle of nowhere, nothing but rangeland marked off with barbed-wire fence in all directions. The road was nearly empty of traffic. Cormac gave Ben a couple of directions to get them back on an eastbound route. They kept up speed. It would be a few hours before they had to think about gas. Finally, he started to relax. Nia submerged again. She must have needed to spend a lot of time underwater, though she seemed able to breathe air well enough. She needed to breathe air to be able to speak, didn’t she? He had no idea.

He got out the road atlas he’d shoved in with the rest of the supplies. He always, always kept paper maps in his car, and got teased for it, but if the phones ever went dead—or you ever wanted to avoid having your phone ping your exact location for whoever might be chasing you—you went with paper. The current route was on track, so he looked ahead to the end of the trip. I-80 eventually ran to New York City. To avoid that meant facing a tangle of interstates feeding south, through New Jersey. New Jersey was good, lots of coast line in New Jersey. Maybe too much coastline, because now he had a lot of possible destinations to take Nia to. On one end was Atlantic City and overdeveloped tourist beaches, and on the other the industrial and shipping shoreline of the most populated region of the U.S. This was way outside Cormac’s territory and he didn’t like it. He just wanted a nice, quiet beach where they could get Nia to the water without drawing attention.

“What’re you finding?” Ben asked, glancing briefly at the map.

“I know nothing about New Jersey.”

Ben huffed a laugh. “No, I guess not.”

“We could try one of the rivers feeding into the bay there, but there’d be a lot of traffic, a lot of chances to get caught. And it’s still a long swim to the Atlantic from there.”

“I don’t mind the swim,” Nia said.

“How do you do with shipping traffic, pollution, that sort of thing?”

She hummed a little and said, “The waters run deep, and there are paths you can’t see on your maps.”

Didn’t that sound just a little ominous...

Cormac ran his finger down the coastline, and found a large, incongruous stretch of green jutting into the bay. Gateway National Recreation Area, Sandy Hook Beach. Nothing but wide-open Atlantic Ocean beyond.

“There,” he said. “We’ll shoot for that spot.”

“Nice, having a more specific destination than ‘the Atlantic Ocean,’” Ben said.

“I have every faith in you,” Nia said.

Now to earn that vote of confidence. Cormac sat back, closed his eyes, and sighed.

“And that’s Nebraska,” Ben said. One more state down, and too many to go.

Cormac shook himself awake, scrubbing his face. He’d nodded off; the nap made him crankier. According to his phone a couple of hours had passed. Ben seemed calm, which meant nothing was going wrong. Which, perversely, put him more on edge. Things always went wrong. Night was falling; Ben turned on the headlights, and the world seemed to shrink to darkness around them, with just a tunnel of light ahead.

A little while later, the van slowed. Ben had taken his foot off the gas. “You see that?” he asked.

Cormac straightened and studied the road ahead. Distinctive blue and red lights flashed, particularly bright in the twilight. Cop cars. Lots of them, forming a barrier across the highway, maybe half a mile ahead. All their headlights were on, illuminating the spot ahead of them.

This stretch of road had no intersections, no driveways, no place to stop and no way to turn around. Even if they did, the police would have no trouble chasing after them.

“What’s going on?” Cormac asked uselessly.

“No idea.”

Closer, the scene ahead of them became clear: a dozen cars, everything from highway patrol to unmarked federal sedans, were pulled across both lanes of highway, forming a roadblock.

Several movie-inspired scenarios ran through Cormac’s mind. Veering off the road, jouncing over grassland, initiating a massive chase. Doing some kind of squealing one-eighty, burning rubber to race back to some tangled route of escape. Crashing straight through the wall of cars as if the van were a battering ram. Racing the van off a cliff in a misguided blaze of glory.

All those scenarios ended with Nia getting badly injured. Besides, Ben was driving, not him. Ben was a square.

“No,” Ben muttered, as if he knew exactly what Cormac was thinking, and that clinched it.

Ben slowed and stopped without any debate. “Keep your hands visible, please,” he ordered. His own hands were planted firmly on the steering wheel.

“Yes, counselor,” Cormac said, raising his hands. Ben scowled.

A handful of uniformed officers emerged from the roadblock, weapons drawn, and circled the van. The floodlights glared straight at them; Cormac squinted past the bright light, trying to see what was going on.

“You know,” Ben said. “All the shit you and I have been through since we were kids and I’ve never once been arrested?”

“So we’re getting arrested?”

“Depends on what excuse they’re using to stop us.”

So, this was exciting.

You do seem to have these confrontations with law enforcement on a regular basis.

It wasn’t like he ever meant to. At least he wouldn’t have to call his lawyer this time.

The ones who ended up approaching the van were two agents in suits, each sauntering up to a different window. A pale man in dark blue with a muted tie approached the driver’s side. A Latina woman in a gray pantsuit with dark hair pinned up in a bun came to the passenger side. They didn’t have weapons drawn. This was only marginally comforting.

“I’m calling it: FBI,” Ben said.

“Treasury,” Cormac said.

“Ten bucks?”

“You’re on.”

“Should I be worried?” Nia said, sloshing a bit of water out of her tub as she leaned on the edge.

Ben answered, “We’ll let you know in a minute.”

“Maybe stay out of sight in the meantime,” Cormac added, and she submerged.

Ben waited until the male agent tapped on his window before reaching to roll it down. Cormac did the same on the passenger side. Both agents flashed badges. Cormac had just enough time to read the initials: PSA. Paranatural Security Administration. Oh, this ought to be good.

“Can I see your ID, sir?” the male agent asked Ben. The woman was glancing sidelong, past Cormac, trying to get a look in the back of the van. From the angle, he couldn’t tell if she was able to see anything. Nia was being quiet. Not so much as a ripple.

Ben put on what Cormac thought of as his courtroom smile. “Yes, of course. Good evening, Agent... I’m sorry, I wasn’t quite able to read your badge there.”

“Stein. Agent Stein,” the man said patiently. He nodded to his partner. “This is Agent Perez.”

“I guess the roadblock means you’re stopping everyone? Can I ask why?”

“We have an Amber Alert for a vehicle matching your description. We just need to have a quick look in the back, if you don’t mind.” That was law-enforcement code for: Go ahead, try me.

“The Paranatural Security Administration is following up on Amber Alerts?” Ben asked in mock confusion.

“The back doors. Are they unlocked?” Agent Stein replied evenly.

This whole situation smacked of “kidnapping across state lines,” if someone wanted to press the issue. Cormac wondered if they’d been set up. Scratch that, he was pretty sure they’d been set up and he was pretty sure who had done it.

“Cover your ears,” Nia murmured from the back.

Cormac froze, not sure he’d heard right. Ben caught his gaze, questioning. Agent Stein also cocked his head, and Perez leaned in.

“Do it!” the mermaid said.

Cover your ears, Amelia said urgently. Please.

Cormac put his fingers to his ears and pressed. Ben followed his cue, while the agents looked on, confused. In the enforced silence, he couldn’t be sure what exactly was happening. He felt something, a quiet vibration rising up through the seat. The air seemed to move, like a sudden breeze coming in through the window. His breastbone thrummed.

Something was happening, because Agent Stein blinked quickly, and then his eyes glazed over. Agent Perez put her hand against her forehead, as if she was wracked by a sudden headache. She squinted, backing away from the van, and stumbled, only barely keeping herself from falling. A moment later, the cops at the roadblock reacted, leaning on their cars, shaking their heads, their gazes going blank.

Cormac was aware of a sound growing louder, the air growing thick with an otherworldly vibration that made his skin crawl. There seemed to be a melody in it, an enticing rise and fall of notes, a sweet voice... He wanted to hear it, to listen for himself—

Don’t do it, Amelia said.

What is this...

Remember Greek mythology.

Sirens, who lured sailors to wreck on rocky shores with their songs. Sirens were said to be a close relative of mermaids. Ben caught his gaze, asking the same question: What is this?

Cormac shook his head and kept his hands firmly on his ears.

Agent Stein’s arms fell to his sides. He seemed dazed. They all did; the two agents, all the officers—they stared into space, unblinking, their expressions slack.

The vibrations, the strange thrum in the air, stopped.

Nia leaned as far over the edge of the bathtub as she could and touched Ben’s shoulder with a dripping hand. Finally, the two men lowered their hands. The silence felt profound.

“Drive! Go!” she urged.

Ben threw the van into reverse and backed out, swinging around in a turn as soon as he was clear. Cormac checked the scene behind them in the mirror—the cops were starting to wake up, shaking their heads, rubbing their foreheads, still dazed. That wasn’t going to last long. Any minute they’d be in their cars, in pursuit. Ben floored it; the van’s engine roared. Away from the bright lights, Cormac rubbed the glare out of his eyes.

“Did you do that?” Ben asked Nia.

“I know a few tunes,” she said wryly.

They were running out of routes. Backtracking now felt like defeat. Ben turned onto a state highway that traveled roughly toward the interstate. At the moment, losing themselves in traffic still seemed like the best option, if the side roads were being watched. Were the FRACH crew still tracking them? Had Eddie Foster tipped off the authorities? Were they working together, or did the Feds have their own agenda?

He didn’t know which one would be worse.

“Thanks,” Cormac said to Nia.

“It only worked because the windows were open,” she said. “Can’t say it’ll work again.”

“Understood.”

“We’re not going to get far if we’ve got the Feds after us,” Ben said. “‘Nationwide manhunt’ is not a phrase I want to deal with, ever.”

“We’re going to have to stop for gas soon,” Cormac said. Making this trek in the middle of the night made it seem that much more daunting. They couldn’t see the bad guys coming.

“Yeah,” Ben said tiredly. “Call Kitty, will you? Let her know what happened?”

“The Feds are probably tracking our phones.”

“Shit,” Ben muttered. “Turn them all off, then.”

Cormac was constantly checking the mirrors for flashing lights. That he didn’t see any didn’t make him feel any better, which seemed unfair.

Getting gas involved a whole decision tree of impossible choices. Find a big 24-hour truck stop that would be busy, crowded, easier to hide in—and have lots of security cameras and eyewitnesses. Or find some little farm town gas station which might not be under surveillance, but they’d stick out like a sore thumb. And probably wouldn’t be open this late anyway.

In either case, pay with cash. Always pay with cash.

They ended up at a truck stop outside of Grand Island because it was open and because the van’s gauge was pointing at empty. They operated on the assumption that they’d be spotted and tracked, and so moved as fast as they could. A pump had never worked as slowly as this one seemed to, but finally the tank filled, and they were away.

Nia surfaced briefly when they stopped, to see what the matter was. Ben did his best to reassure her, and she sank back to the bottom of the tub. Maybe she was managing to get some sleep.

As they pulled back onto the highway, Ben said, “Okay. I’ve got an idea.”

“What?”

“We need another decoy.”

Dawn found them near the Des Moines International Airport, smack in the middle of Iowa, on a stretch of road full of industrial buildings and long-term parking lots. They’d found a place to rent a van, but it wasn’t open yet, which put them both on the sidewalk in the humid morning, with the sound of jet engines rumbling in the background.

Ben handed the key fob to Cormac. “Just go, I’ll be fine. You need to keep moving.”

“You sure?”

“I’ve got a phone and a credit card. It’s all good. If we can confuse them a few more hours, well—you’re halfway there already.”

Splitting up felt wrong. They were both tired and buzzed on coffee. Cormac had managed a couple of hours of sleep. They’d switched drivers when they’d stopped for gas, and then Ben had gotten a couple of hours. They were both okay, but definitely weren’t at their sharpest. He just had to be satisfied that Ben could take care of himself. He’d use the credit card to rent the van. That would ping his location to anyone who was tracking transactions and draw their attention. Or so they hoped.

Ben looked in to the back of the van one more time. “Nia. It’s been good meeting you. Safe travels.”

“I’m grateful for you, Ben.”

Cormac drove off, watching in the rearview mirror as Ben made his way to the office to wait. He tried not to think of everything that could go wrong with this.

It’ll be fine.

How could she know?

One problem with leaving Ben behind: Cormac was now the only driver. He was pretty sure he could drive for a dozen more hours, but that meant a lot more coffee in his future.

Soon after dropping Ben off, he had to stop for gas again. Every stop made his anxiety spike. He looked at every single other car in the place, every single driver, every one wandering into and out of the convenience store. They couldn’t all be staring at him, but it sure felt like it.

He got himself a large coffee, a pack of energy drinks, some beef jerky, and twenty gallon-sized jugs of water for Nia. The clerk looked at him funny; Cormac glared back.

Water had sloshed out of the tub during the trip, and the extra he’d brought in the coolers went fast. At this point, the floor of the van was permanently wet. What water was left must have been feeling pretty stale. Or maybe tasting stale, or deprived of oxygen, or something. He didn’t ask about Nia needing a restroom; frankly, he didn’t want to know, so he got the fresh water and didn’t ask. She’d found the package of smoked salmon in the cooler and was peeling strips off to eat. For the first time he noticed her fingernails were sharp, more like claws. Perfect for skewering fish and picking at meat. Were mermaids predators? Clearly. Until now, he’d never thought to wonder.

“Need anything else?” he asked.

“If I were going to be here longer than another day, yes. For now I’ll manage.”

“Shouldn’t be longer than another day. I hope.”

He really wanted to call Kitty and Ben to find out what was going on from their end. To get any updates on what Foster knew, and if his band of hunters was still after him. They’d gotten lucky, he felt, on their trek across the Great Plains. But now, east of the Mississippi, they were only going to be facing more people, more traffic, more eyes on them. More risk.

I’m still not entirely sure how this tracking phones thing works.

It has to do with the signals and the cell towers.

Let’s not risk it, then. It all seems weirdly mystical. Electronic scrying.

He agreed.

Just as he was about to get back into the van, an SUV with a big antenna pulled up the drive. A familiar, gray SUV. It screeched to a stop, literally, tires sliding on the asphalt. The driver, a woman with a round face and her dark hair in long braid, stared at him. And like a moron, Cormac stared right back.

In the passenger seat, a young-looking white guy in glasses held up his phone and presumably started taking video.

“And there it is,” he muttered. The other shoe dropping.

“Something wrong?” Nia asked.

“Yeah. We’ve been spotted.” He hopped in the driver’s seat.

The problem was, the van was ponderous, with a terrible turn radius and bad visibility. Even pulling straight out of the lane by the pumps required checking all the mirrors and easing around a sedan parked in front of him. The gray SUV was already looping around, clearly intending to cut off his access to the nearest exit. Cormac hauled the steering wheel around, aiming for the secondary exit, but the nimble SUV was already veering to cut him off again. The driver was intent, glaring out with a bright expression of victory, while the passenger talked into his phone. This was probably going up on a livestream.

What the hell did these people want?

A semi-truck, a big red cab hauling an unmarked trailer, pulled into the lane separating the islands of diesel pumps from the passenger cars. The driver’s side was facing Cormac; the driver lowered his window. Guy had a beard, sunglasses, and a Turkish eye made of blue glass hanging from his rearview mirror.

He gestured for Cormac to lower his window as well. The SUV had parked on the other side of the lot, engine idling. Just waiting. The van was trapped between the two of them and Cormac was at something of a loss.

He lowered the window.

The trucker called out, “You’re Kitty’s friend? The one with the mermaid?”

What... was happening? “What about it?” Cormac asked cautiously.

He nodded decisively. “We’ve got your back. Don’t worry, just get out of here.”

Cormac could only stare, until Amelia prompted him, Don’t question it. Drive.

“Thanks,” Cormac said finally, giving a brief wave.

“Don’t mention it. Good luck out there.” The driver grinned at the SUV like he had a plan.

Cormac drove. Swinging back around, away from the SUV and out of the semi’s path, he headed back toward the secondary exit. Just as the SUV started to follow, the red semi pulled forward, blocking the way. Then it just sat there.

At the primary drive out, another semi pulled through and stopped. Cormac couldn’t see the SUV anymore. Which meant the SUV couldn’t see him. He didn’t linger to see how this was going to play out, but as he sped out his suddenly clear exit, a third truck came up behind him, turned, and blocked that drive, too. The SUV was stuck at the truck stop until the semis moved.

The van was clear. He raced back onto the road and took the first freeway ramp he came to. Ten minutes later, after pushing the van as fast as it could go, he checked the mirrors. Near as he could tell, they weren’t being followed. He blew out a relieved breath, hoping this latest reprieve would last a couple of hours.

“Kitty came through,” he said, letting out a nervous laugh. “I hope that FRACH crew got it all on video. She’ll love it.”

“I told you,” Nia said. “I have faith in you.”

Seven blessings she’d said, right? Maybe they wouldn’t have to use them all up before the trip was done.

The midwest vowel states—Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio—had a sameness to them that felt oppressive. Giant truck stops, billboards, a flat greenery heavy with a haze of humidity that was utterly alien to him. Not a mountain in sight. Increasing lanes and traffic marked the stretch past Chicago. The traffic turned out to be a boon—it slowed them down, but there were a lot more white cargo vans around. There were toll roads, which he managed to navigate even as he was aware of the security cameras spying on him. In the afternoon heat, he discovered the van’s air conditioning was broken, and was a little jealous of Nia soaking in the cool tub.

Amelia, you there? He prodded the back of his mind, and he was tired enough it felt like reaching into a snowdrift for a dropped set of keys. He knew she had to be there, but couldn’t seem to find her.

Always, dear.

I really want to see you.

They had a space they shared. A mental construct, a dream—he wasn’t sure exactly what it was or what to call it. It used to be his alone, his escape, an image of a high mountain valley that calmed him. But then she came, their partnership started, and it became theirs. They created it, but it also reflected their moods, their inner selves. It was where they had first met when he was in prison, and her spirit had crashed into him, demanding to be heard. Since then it had become their refuge.

But he had to close his eyes to imagine it, to send himself there, which he obviously couldn’t do right now.

That would be lovely. I know you’re tired.

It was the anxiety as much as anything. He didn’t like being hunted.

She said, I can imagine my hands on your shoulders. It’s difficult, on my own. You’re the one with the muscles and nerves that work. But if I could, I’d put my hands... there.

He could almost feel it, her slender hands resting on his shoulders, kneading some of the stress out of them. He sighed, and his muscles shivered.

He asked the eternal question between them: was it real, or were they imagining it? Did their thoughts somehow make it real?

I don’t know, she said, and he could have sworn he felt her breath against his cheek. He wanted to close his eyes, fall asleep with her in their meadow... Cormac. Stay awake, she commanded sternly. He shook himself and took a long drink of cooling coffee. There’d be time later for philosophical discussions with Amelia about the line between the physical and spiritual planes of existence.

He turned up the radio; he needed some noise.

“Nia?” he asked over his shoulder. The splash of water told him she was at the surface, listening. “Can you talk to me? Help me stay awake.” His whole body was vibrating from the hum of the tires. He didn’t want to think about the headache starting to pound behind his eyes.

“About what?” she asked in her lilting voice.

Questions. I have questions.

Cormac sighed. “Amelia has questions.”

“Oh? Like what?”

The torrent came too fast for Cormac to really convey them, but he tried. Best thing would have been to let Amelia take over his body and have a conversation with Nia herself—but she couldn’t drive.

“What’s your native language? How did you learn English? When you enspelled those police, did you sing words or is it more about the sound? Do mermaids practice magic? A particular brand of water magic? You would need spells that don’t require flames, and would such spells even work out of the water? Could you teach us?”

In the rearview mirror, Cormac saw Nia staring back at him. “That’s a lot of questions.”

“That’s maybe half the questions,” Cormac muttered. “Amelia can be a little much.”

Really now, Cormac. I’m only curious.

The mermaid wore a wry smile, and craned her neck to look out the windshield. In the back of his mind, Amelia’s disappointment was plain. Nia wasn’t going to answer her questions.

“Hmm,” Nia said, almost a song. “I had no idea how far away from the sea I was. No wonder I’ve felt so... wrong.”

“Wrong how?”

“Weak. Fuzzy in the head. My people’s strength comes from the sea.”

“The ones who did this to you, you think they knew that? That’s why they brought you to the middle of the country?”

“Has to be, I think. Wish I could remember more.”

“You think they drugged you?”

She was silent for a moment; he glanced in the mirror, watched her submerge, then come back up, sweeping water back from her hair. “Maybe they did.”

“How shitty does someone have to be to drug a mermaid?”

Very, Amelia observed.

“I just want to go home,” Nia sighed. “I want to see my children again.”

Children. Everybody wanted to talk about their children, so Cormac prompted her. “How many do you have?”

“Two. A son and daughter, all grown up. Nuala and Conn. We... are prone to wander. Long journeys, along the pathways of currents, all over the world. I’ve been gone long enough they might even have begun to miss me.”

Her people, she’d said. A whole merperson society, journeying all over the world. “Are there a lot of you? Are there underwater cities, something like that?”

Atlantis, Amelia murmured. Can you imagine it?

He couldn’t. It felt like stories to him. If anyone should believe in such stories, he should, but this one was hard to picture.

“It’s probably not what you think.” She sounded wistful.

“Where—”

“I’m not going to tell you where,” she said sternly. “I’m grateful to you for helping me, but I’m not going to reveal secrets.”

“Fair,” he said, chuckling.

“Now, I have questions about you, Cormac.” His name had a lilting cadence in her accent, like it was part of a song. “What’s your tale? You’re asked to rescue a mermaid and don’t bat an eyelash. You’ve got a wizard living inside you and stay cool as an iceberg. What magic do you have of your own? You must have some.”

He’d always thought of himself as the opposite of magic. He hunted magic. Killed it. His father had taught him that it was up to them to protect the world from the supernatural, a duty that had been passed down through his family for more generations than Cormac knew. Cormac had destroyed that legacy in just a few years. Probably just as well his father wasn’t alive to see him buddying up to werewolves and vampires, working magic and ferrying mermaids...

“You’re not asleep, are you?” Nia asked. A bit of water splashed his arm, where she flicked it from the tub.

“No, just... no one’s ever said anything about me being magic. I had to think about it. I used to be a hunter. I hunted werewolves, mostly. But also vampires, skinwalkers, all kinds of monsters.”

“I see. But you stopped.”

“I met Kitty. Kitty doesn’t believe in monsters. There’s just people who do good and people who don’t.”

“And she made you want to do good?”

“Well, a stint in prison might have had something to do with that, too. I don’t ever want to go back. Neither does Amelia.”

“I understand that very well.”

“I bet you do.”

“So the magic’s rubbed off on you, through the years?”

“Amelia says I’d never have gotten into any of this if I didn’t have some of my own to start with.”

Indeed, I think in another time and place you could have been a great wizard in your own right.

Well, it’s lucky I met you, then. Amelia merely hummed an agreement.

“A wise woman.” She cocked her head. “What’s that singing?”

“Radio.” He bumped up the volume.

“I like those voices.”

“It’s Simon and Garfunkel, I think.”

“Hmm. They’re telling a story.”

With a splash and ripple, she pulled herself up on the edge of the tub, leaning where the skin of her torso met the scales of her tail, to better hear about the ride on the Greyhound and the New Jersey Turnpike. Her hair dripped water onto the floor of the van. Reaching, she touched Cormac’s elbow, where it leaned on the armrest. The damp soaked into his shirt, a chill reached his skin. But somehow, she wasn’t cold. Her touch was full of life, conveying affection. It warmed him. He wasn’t a hugger; he normally kept his distance. But he shifted his grip on the steering wheel so he could cover her hand with one of his, twining their fingers. There was comfort in the touch. They stayed like that for a mile or so, until the song ended, then she squeezed his hand and pulled away, slipping back into the tub.

At one point he hoped they might reach the coast by nightfall, but he was pretty sure now that wasn’t going to happen. The sun was sinking west, and they still had a ways to go.

In Pennsylvania, the landscape grew hilly. Mountainous by eastern standards, but these would never look like more than hills to Cormac, who’d grown up in the Rockies. The trees were different, too. Not pines, but deciduous forests, budding out with new spring growth.

They crossed Pennsylvania. The next state was New Jersey, and he had his route to the coast all mapped out. Mere hours away, now. He left I-80, which felt momentous. It marked entering the last stage of the journey. He stopped again for gas, coffee, the restroom, and fresh water. The hyper-awareness of being in the open woke him up a little. At the same time, getting closer to their destination exhausted him. There wasn’t any more tiring phrase than almost there.

He weighed the pros and cons of turning on his phone. He worried about Ben, and he needed to get news of what Foster was doing. Kitty would probably appreciate some reassurance that they were alive, random clandestine livestreams notwithstanding. On the other hand, he liked not having the distraction. Putting his head down and just going. It was like he was in his own little world, in this van, with a mermaid in the back. It seemed unreal. He could just stay in that world for awhile.

In the end, he needed information.

The second he turned the phone it, it beeped endless notifications at him. He must have had hundreds of messages and voice mails. He didn’t want to look at a single one of them, so he just called Kitty.

She didn’t wait for him to say hello. “Are you okay? Is Nia okay? Don’t tell me where you are, just tell me you’re okay.”

“We’re both okay. Still on track.”

“Oh thank God. It’s been nuts here. Eddie Foster and I have threatened to sue and countersue each other like ten times and I don’t know what even is happening.”

“Is Ben okay?” Cormac asked.

“Yeah, yeah. He’s on his way home. Looks like the decoy worked for a few hours, but I take it that was enough to get you some distance.”

“Seems so. Anything I need to know?”

“I guess you met a couple of agents? Stein and Perez? They called me. They seem nice.” Her sarcasm had spikes.

“Well, they didn’t shoot, so there’s that.”

“Foster wants to call you. He says he wants an interview.”

Cormac let out an angry huff. “Why? He could have asked for that two days ago and saved us the trouble.”

“Yeah, if he just wanted video or some kind of exclusive interview with Nia that would be one thing. But the way he’s going after you physically—it’s weird.”

“I’m not talking to him.”

“That’s what I told him.” The toothy grin in her voice was plain.

“See if you can string him along, keep him distracted. We’ve just got a few more hours to go.”

“Good luck.”

In fact, according to the phone, Eddie Foster had called him dozens of times. The guy had gotten his number, which wasn’t totally surprising. It did justify Cormac’s decision to leave the phone off for most of the trip. Foster left a handful of messages. Cormac only listened to the last one to save time.

“Mr. Bennett. I can save us both a lot of trouble if you’ll just talk to me. Neither of us is doing this for fun. We both have our reasons. I’ll tell you what I’m willing to do, but not in messages. We need to talk.” The line cut off. Foster sounded exhausted, his chipper podcaster voice abandoned. It made him sound rough, threatening.

“He could explain himself to Kitty easier than he can talk to me,” Cormac muttered.

Yes, Amelia said. But Kitty doesn’t have custody of Nia. Foster wants Nia.

The publicity was all a distraction. Cormac had a sudden image of how the confrontation at the gas station could have gone, the pair of Foster’s minions successfully cornering the van, then teaming up to pull Cormac out of the driver’s seat and steal the van—

It hadn’t happened. It wouldn’t happen. They were so close to the ocean, now. This was going to be fine.

This time, he left his phone on.

He kept searching for the gray SUV and black Range Rover, but didn’t see them. Didn’t mean they weren’t there, and he was sure Foster had others looking for him. Spotters, fans of the show, whatever. This was confirmed when he noted a car, an older sedan, moving oddly. Speeding up, passing a few cars behind, running parallel with the van for a mile before getting ahead. Falling back and doing it over again, like it was trying to get a good description of the whole vehicle, including the license plates. This hunch was confirmed when Cormac noticed a passenger in the back seat with a phone up, taking pictures.

Then the car changed lanes and pulled up alongside him again, and another passenger pressed a sign to the window, handwritten on paper torn out of a spiral notebook. It read, TAKE THE CALL.

A moment later, Cormac’s phone rang, and caller ID listed Eddie Foster.

Answer it, Amelia said. I’m curious.

“Shit,” he muttered, because he couldn’t think of anything better to say, and put the call on speaker. “Yeah.”

“Cormac Bennett. Is it you?” It was Eddie Foster.

More often than not, Kitty succeeded when she was just able to talk to people. It had worked on him, at least, when he’d been sent to kill her and he just... listened to her. But she’d been talking to Foster for two days now and he hadn’t budged. He was immune to her charm, her own little brand of magic, and that said something about him. Cormac wasn’t Kitty. He wasn’t good at talking. Cormac wasn’t going to try to convince Foster to leave them alone just by talking. So this was about what he could learn from the guy.

“What do you want?” Cormac said in his low drawl.

“I just want to talk. You’ve kidnapped the Horsetooth Mermaid. We have video evidence, we’ve tracked you halfway across the country. I want to know why. What are you going to do with her?”

Foster’s voice was up-tempo, urgent, engaging. Cormac recognized the cadence—a radio voice, a public-speaking voice. Kitty’s voice did the same thing when she was on the air during her show. Which meant Foster was live, streaming this online or whatever the hell he did. Foster hadn’t warned Cormac that this was going live or being recorded. While he wasn’t sure doing that was illegal, it was certainly scummy.

“She has a name,” Cormac said, annoyed. “And it isn’t ‘the Horsetooth Mermaid.’ Christ.”

“Oh yeah? Then what it is?”

“Not your business,” Cormac said, the same time he looked in the mirror and saw Nia shaking her head, then sighing with relief. Yeah, Cormac wasn’t going to give this guy anything. “If you wanted to know more you could have played nice from the start and not turned this into a circus.”

“People have a right to know the truth!”

“How do they know that’s what you’re telling?”

“They trust me. You—you’re a felon. Who should they believe?”

Cormac chuckled. Foster said it like he assumed the label would bother Cormac. That he’d get mad and lose his temper, put on some kind of show for his audience. “Well, I didn’t go to prison for lying.”

“That’s right. Manslaughter, wasn’t it?” Foster’s tone took on dramatic urgency. “What are you going to do to the mermaid, Mr. Bennett?”

Jesus... “I think it says a lot about you, that you’re assuming I’m doing anything but my very best to help her.”

There was a click on the line, a shift in the quality of the background noise. “All right, Bennett. I’ve stopped streaming. It’s just the two of us now. No more lies, no more games. I want to make you an offer.” His tone was completely different, the dramatic air gone.

A chill shivered across Cormac’s skin. This voice was ruthless. Now they were getting somewhere. “Talk.”

Foster spoke in a steady, business-like tone. No chance for misunderstandings. “It’s simple. I pay you. I pay you a lot. All you need to do is tell me where you are. Then park the van and walk away. That’s it.”

Nia ducked under the lid to press herself to the other end of the tub; the shimmery membranes of her tail draped over the front edge. Her expression seemed wary, but not afraid. She was waiting. Surely she trusted him by now. He met her gaze in the mirror, tried to nod, to convey his intentions.

“How much we talking about?” Cormac asked, as if he were serious.

“A million,” Foster said.

That’s a lot, isn’t it? Amelia asked. Where does someone like him get that kind of money?

Cormac had some ideas about that. “Now tell me, Mr. Foster—what are you going to do with the mermaid?”

“I think my price buys me a little privacy.”

Over the years, Cormac had done a lot of unsavory jobs and met a lot of unsavory people. Not much turned his stomach. Eddie Foster was turning his stomach.

“Well? We have a deal?” Foster prompted. Cormac had been quiet for a time. Maybe Foster assumed he was actually thinking it over.

He was not thinking it over. “Naw, we’re done here.”

He hung up.

With a splashing of water, Nia turned again. “I do not like the sound of him. My scales are twitching.”

“I hope you didn’t think I would really sell you out.”

“Well, no. But I imagine a deal like that is how I ended up needing your help in the first place.”

She might have gotten caught in a net—plenty of stories like that in the folklore—or washed up on a beach. It would just take one person carrying her off and finding a buyer. Cormac could probably call a few contacts to find out how to get in on that kind of black market.

A dozen years ago, he might have thought getting in on that kind of black market was a good idea.

The sun was bending west, the shadows growing long, and he wondered if they would ever reach the coast. The sky felt close and small. There were too many people, and he was feeling claustrophobic.

Then he knew he was getting tired because on the last state highway before taking the turn that would eventually get them to Sandy Hook Beach, the gray SUV suddenly appeared behind him. They must have raced to catch up. Cormac’s heart fell, because they were so close, and he was out of ideas about how to get away from these guys. The van wasn’t going to go any faster. He was running out of escape routes, as the roads funneled him toward New Jersey’s northeast corner.

On an open stretch, the gray SUV raced ahead and changed lanes to land in front of the van. A second SUV with one of those oversized antennae took its place, coming up behind the van and matching speed.

The van was sandwiched.

The two pursuing vehicles weren’t doing anything overt. This only meant they were tracking him, waiting. He’d have to pull over sometime. He’d have to stop; they were just waiting for their opportunity. Maybe he didn’t have to stop—maybe he could find a road or a pier and drive the van straight into the water, and Nia would be home and he... well, he’d figure it out. He’d made worse plans in his time.

Then he saw the third vehicle keeping pace with the SUV behind him. A Range Rover, big and black, with a whole forest of antennae and other equipment, and what looked like a drone the size of a large dog strapped to the roof. Eddie Foster himself.

This was an escort. They already had him nailed; they were just waiting to make a move.

He got his phone, dialed Kitty, put her on speaker.

“Where are you?” she asked, first thing.

“New Jersey somewhere. You have a way to contact Agents Stein and Perez?”

“What’s happening?”

“Foster and his crew have three cars flanking us. They haven’t done anything yet, but I’m not sure how patient Foster’s going to be.”

“You trust the Feds more than you trust Foster?”

“Right now? Absolutely yes.”

“I’m on it.” Her confidence was inspiring. She conveyed not a flicker of doubt.

Nia was gripping the edge of the tub, keeping herself steady in the sloshing water. “I’m glad you tried, however this turns out.”

“We’re not done yet.”

They passed a sign for Sandy Hook Beach. When the exit came up, he veered over and off. He wasn’t trying to get away anymore. He just needed to get to the water before they were on top of him. Get Nia to the water, that was all he had to do.

The two cars behind him followed, unbothered by the change in direction. The gray SUV in front had already passed the exit. That didn’t stop the driver from slamming on the brakes and swinging over in a one-eighty that left big black skid marks and wisps of smoke from burned rubber. A half a dozen cars behind hit their brakes in turn, swinging this way and that to avoid a collision. Unbothered, the SUV shot back toward the exit.

For a time, he thought he could keep the way ahead of him clear. Win some little scrap of distance and breathing room. But once again, the gray SUV raced ahead, swerved, and jumped right in front of him so he had to slow down

Half the water must have sloshed out of the tub. Cormac glanced in the mirror.

“You okay?”

“You know, I might be a little seasick?”

Nice of her, to try to make a joke. That didn’t change how much shit they were in.

His pursuers had him hemmed in again. No question, the drivers of the three vehicles were communicating, coordinating. Cormac was alone and didn’t stand a chance.

Any ideas? he asked Amelia.

Caltrops? Explosives?

Wouldn’t that be great?

The lead SUV was slowing, slowing. Cormac watched the speedometer creep down to fifty, forty-five, forty, and slower. So this was how they were going to do it. Corral him and force him to a stop.

No. He cranked the wheel over and swerved. Hit the gas, plunged ahead, half on the shoulder, intending to muscle his way around the obstacle. The SUV responded by swinging around to block a lane and a half of the road and stopping dead, lurching on its tires, almost losing stability. Right in front of him.

Cormac slammed on the brakes but there wasn’t enough time. The van plowed into the gray SUV with an appalling crunch of metal and shattering plastic, and lurched to its side.

The following silence was profound.

Cormac’s heart was racing, his ears were ringing, and he was unable to make sense of what he was seeing—he’d ended up slumped forward against the seat belt, hanging toward the door, which was on the ground. The windshield was opaque, webbed with cracks. If he breathed on it funny it would shatter.

He didn’t feel hurt. He’d just had the breath knocked out of him. Struggling, he tried to unbuckle the seat belt.

“Nia!” he called, craning his neck back to try to see her. The cargo space was a mess, everything inverted and scattered.

She was out of the tub, curled up against the back of the driver’s seat in a pool of water that had collected on the side, but was draining quickly. Her tail flopped, dripping water.

“Nia!” he tried again.

“Alive,” she said tiredly.

The back doors had popped open, and through them he could see the Range Rover and the second SUV pulling up. Eddie Foster and a couple of his minions rushed out. Foster carried what looked like a handgun at his side. So did his minions, who were spreading out to surround the crash. Their expressions were all hard, professional. Not amateur cryptid hunters and minor internet celebrities, not even a little bit.

Cormac had lost. He’d failed. But they wouldn’t get him without a fight.

By some miracle the tub was still secured in place. Nothing else was: water bottles had tipped over, their supplies were scattered and smashed. Nia clung to the back of the seat, gasping a little. Water dripped off her. Scrambling, Cormac pulled himself past her over the side of the tub, to the back. He couldn’t tell if he was disoriented from everything being at the wrong angle, or if he was actually dizzy. At last, he got to his feet, hunched down by the open doors.

A tire iron was secured to the side above the wheel well, with a spare tire. He grabbed it, hefting it like a club, and marched out, putting himself between Foster and the van.

“Stop right there,” Cormac said. For all the good it did.

Amazingly, Foster stopped. He raised his weapon. The gun didn’t look right, and Cormac realized it was a tranquilizer gun of some kind, firing a pneumatic dart.

“You should have taken the money when you had a chance,” Foster said, sneering like some movie villain.

“Could have but I’m not an asshole like you,” Cormac shot back.

“One last chance. You can walk away from this. Just walk away and you won’t get hurt.”

“Or?”

“That’s a pretty bad crash,” he said, nodding past Cormac. “Wouldn’t take much to make it look like you died in it.”

A flopping, falling noise sounded from the back of the van. Cormac didn’t dare take his gaze off Foster, but his heart gave a lurch, thinking of Nia trying to move in the worst possible environment, getting cut up on glass and metal—

“You.” Nia had managed to crawl to the van’s back, hauling herself with her arms, half-propped up on her tail, which curled behind her. Now, she sat braced on her arms, her hair draped over her chest, and glared out at Eddie Foster. “I remember you,” she said steadily, accusingly.

One of the minions aimed; Cormac stood in front of Nia.

“Cover your ears,” she murmured, leaning forward.

Foster pointed at her. “Don’t sing or I’ll shoot him.”

“Get back,” Cormac said to her. With a muscular lurch, she slipped back, sheltering at the side of the van.

“He was there, where they held me,” Nia said. “He worked for them. I remember. I remember now. Two of the doctors helped me escape, but we didn’t have time, they brought me to the lake—”

“And they’re now being prosecuted for theft of company property,” Foster said.

“She’s not property!” How hard a concept was this? He needed to call Ben. Kitty. Everybody. “What company is this? Kitty was guessing pharmaceuticals.”

“There’s a lot to learn from creatures like her,” Foster said. “How do they survive in the cold? How do they process oxygen? What will we find when we sequence their genome?”

“And how can you monetize it?”

He opened his arms; he wasn’t sorry.

“How many of my people have you killed for your greed?” Nia asked, anguished. “Can you answer that?”

“You know? I don’t think I can.” Foster said.

Cormac said, “Your show, your whole cryptid hunting shtick. It’s cover, isn’t it? You’ve got this whole network of people feeding you information, doing your legwork for you. You put on a show, searching for Bigfoot with night vision headcams and all that. What people don’t know is that you do find the cryptids you’re looking for. But instead of telling anyone about it you disappear them into your private research hell. Jesus.”

“It’s not like they’re people.”

Cormac desperately wished for one of his guns. The tire iron would do, though, if he could just get close enough.

“Walk away,” Foster said. “Now.”

“Not gonna happen.” Cormac chuckled a little. Not a bad way to go, really. Protecting—trying to protect, rather—a mermaid. Kind of heroic. It had been a nice drive.

“Cormac, go,” Nia said softly. “I don’t want you to die for me.”

He didn’t answer. What could he say? He asked the back of his mind, because Amelia deserved a say in this. What’re you thinking?

I’m not really sure. I’m just so angry.

You want to walk away?

Oh, no. Not at all.

You got anything we can use here?

Prayer?

“Fine,” Foster said, raising his tranquilizer pistol. “We’re done here.”

A car came screeching up the road, swerving into the midst of the drama. Another followed. Both were driven professionally, stopping to block the other vehicles, facing down Foster and his minions. Both were dark sedans with government plates.

Agents Stein and Perez barreled out of the lead car, weapons drawn.

Those guns used bullets.

Cormac dropped the tire iron and put his hands up. And, well, he prayed that this wasn’t going to get worse.

Another couple of agents exited the second car, and they all shouted commands—get down, put the guns down—and so on. The occupants of the gray SUV Cormac had crashed into were just now emerging, dazed and bleeding from cuts on their heads.

Cormac waited, wondering how much trouble he was in. Trouble was better than dead.

The chaos resolved somewhat. Foster’s minions immediately knelt and put down their tranquilizer guns. Foster stared back at the agents, blinking in confusion. He rested his finger on the trigger, just for a moment, like he was actually thinking about tranking a couple of federal agents. But then he also knelt, glaring hard at Cormac the whole time, as if he had something to do with this.

No one came over to Cormac. The agents noted his presence, but he didn’t seem to be their target. He immediately went back to the van to check on Nia.

She was curled up as small as she could get, with her back against the van’s ceiling-turned-side. Her tail was pulled in close, the fins clenched and small. She hugged herself and shivered.

“You’re bleeding,” he said. Blood, thinned by water, traced a trail from a cut on her forehead down her cheek.

She touched her head, looked at the pink on her hand. Such a familiar, human gesture. “What? Oh. What’s happening? Are we saved or damned?”

Good question. A few bottles of water remained intact. Cormac gathered them up, because it felt like doing something useful. “Don’t know. How long until you dry out?”

“Not long. I need water, it’s uncomfortable being out of it.” Her body wasn’t made to support its own weight like this.

The van was toast. No way they could get it back up and refill the tub.

“Mr. Bennett?” Agent Stein came and stood over him and Nia. She shivered harder, probably more from shock than cold.

“Yeah.” He found the blanket they’d used to carry her in and spread it over her.

Stein turned to Nia. “Ma’am?” There was something really odd about the neatly suited agent calling this otherworldly creature “ma’am.” Odd and endearing. “Can I ask you to please not do that singing... siren-y thing again? It’s disruptive.”

“It’s supposed to be,” she said. “Are you going to give me a reason to?”

The agent seemed daunted at this, regarding her thoughtfully. “Are you all right?” He asked, and a thread seemed to snap, a tension breaking. Cormac started to hope.

“I need to get to water,” she said. “I’m not being kidnapped, I asked for help, Cormac is helping me. The one who wanted to kidnap me is that—” Nodding at Foster, she said a watery, guttural word that none of them understood, and yet the meaning was clear.

Cormac said, “We’re just trying to get to the coast so she can go home. That’s all.”

“You should have contacted the agency sooner, we could have helped.”

Cormac chuckled a little. “You understand if I don’t completely trust the suits and badges. Especially not after what people like you did to Kitty.”

Stein frowned. “That was—”

“Before your time, I get it.”

“Wait here just a moment.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Cormac said with a sigh, and slumped back.

Nia took his hand. Just to have something to hold on to, it seemed. “What did they do to Kitty?”

“The first director of the Center for Paranatural Biology locked her up during a full moon and broadcast her shapeshifting on national TV. Ask Kitty, she’ll tell you how many hits the video has on YouTube.”

“That’s awful!”

“You can see why she was so interested in helping you.”

“I hope the director was punished.”

“Oh yeah, he was.” Eventually...

A couple more cars pulled up, including what looked like highway patrol, colored lights flashing. Didn’t make Cormac feel much better. But he was very happy to see a couple of officers putting cuffs on Foster and company.

Foster, hands cuffed behind him and standing near one of the cop cars, lunged out of the officer’s grasp. “I could have made you rich, Bennett! You ruined your chance! I’ll remember this, don’t think I won’t!” He was still shouting when the door slammed shut, and they didn’t have to listen anymore.

Stein went back to consult with Perez. The conversation turned urgent, with gestures, and several glances back at the wrecked van.

“I’m sorry,” Cormac said. “We almost made it.”

“I’m not sorry at all,” Nia said, smiling. “Story’s not over yet.”

They waited, Nia’s hand resting on his arm, until both agents came over.

“Everything I’ve seen in this job and it’s still kind of a shock. La Sirena,” Perez said. Crouching down to put herself at the mermaid’s eye level, she stared; it was a little uncomfortable. “You’re not going to do the singing thing, are you?”

“On the other hand,” Stein said thoughtfully, “The lab wonks would love it if we got a recording.”

Nia looked at Cormac, her gaze pleading. Cormac laid it out. “We need help.”

More cars pulled up, filling the opposite shoulder, blocking traffic. The people who stepped out of them looked ordinary, and they had their phones up, presumably taking pictures and video. A handful of cops were put on traffic duty, but the situation was getting increasingly chaotic.

Agent Perez said, “We can take you to a safe place—”

“The coast,” Cormac said. “Not that there’s anything I can do about it, but she needs to get to the ocean. Ball’s in your court.”

Nia reached and rested her hand on Perez’s arm, met her gaze, and said, “Please.”

The crowd was getting bigger, rowdier, and there weren’t enough uniforms to keep order. Their window of escape was closing. Stein and Perez glanced at each other. Stein nodded.

Agent Perez pulled her key fob out of her jacket pocket and handed it to Cormac. “We’ll clean this up here.”

“Thanks,” Cormac said with a sigh.

They still had a mess to get through. Perez and Stein made a big show of wrangling the crowd, and uniformed officers managed to get people back in their cars and get traffic moving again. Tow trucks arrived. Cormac gathered up the remaining jugs of water and put them in Perez’s sedan, along with a couple of wet towels he’d found. There was nothing much else to salvage.

That left how to get Nia to the car, and Cormac was just about to admit he would need to ask for help when Agent Stein came alongside. “Can I help?”

Yes, Cormac admitted, he could.

The two of them got on either side of Nia and formed a chair between them, while she clung to their shoulders. Even though she’d been out of the water for awhile now, she still felt damp. Her hair pressed wetly to his shirt and Stein’s suit. Her scales glittered. All her muscles were clenched, rigid with anxiety. And no wonder.

The cops and bystanders still on the scene fell silent and watched their trek from the van to the car.

“I don’t like being seen,” Nia said. “We’re hardly ever seen.”

They managed to get her into the back seat; she tipped herself out of their arms and curled up. Her hair was starting to dry, taking on reddish highlights, with a few streaks of gray around her temples. It would have been beautiful except it meant she was going to be hurting even more soon.

“I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life,” Stein murmured.

“Good. You should.” Cormac got in the car and drove away.

Somewhere in the wreck and the aftermath, Cormac had lost his phone. Hadn’t even thought about it, and he was weirdly okay with that. It wouldn’t distract him. Right now, he just needed to drive.

With another round of splashing, Nia doused herself and sighed with relief.

The sun was behind him, setting. He knew the route he was on; the signs for Sandy Hook Beach came frequently enough he knew he was on the right track. In the mirror he saw Nia folded over her tail, the fins hanging limply. She hadn’t spoken in a while.

“Nia?” he called.

“I’m all right,” she said, but her voice was weak.

He went faster, checking intersections before running red lights and stop signs when the way was clear. So, really, he shouldn’t have been surprised when red and blue lights flashed in his rearview mirror.

The sedan was so much faster and smoother than the van had been, and speeding was an absolute pleasure. This was a car build for chasing down bad guys. And he didn’t dare stop. He couldn’t see the markings on the patrol car to tell where it was from. County sheriff maybe. Surely they’d run the plates by now and discovered it belonged to a federal agency. That hadn’t made them back off.

Didn’t matter. They were too close to the goal and Cormac wasn’t stopping. He floored it. Entirely predictably, the patrol car’s siren howled in response. A mile later, a second cop car joined the pursuit.

They weren’t going to make it to Sandy Hook before the cops ran him down.

That was when he spotted another sign: Ideal Beach. With an arrow helpfully pointing the way. They must have had at least one blessing left.

He took the turn and hit the gas. Looking at the map, he’d dismissed this stretch of the shore as being too commercial, but right now it had the significant advantage of being close. They were out of time.

The road narrowed, and there was traffic to dodge. Every time he had to step on the brake made his temper rise, and he was so sure one of these cops was going to jump on a side street to get ahead of him. But the signs gave him hope: Ideal Beach, indeed.

Then the sky opened up. Trees, towns, traffic, streets—all gone. He caught a glimpse of wide gray in the distance.

“I can smell it,” Nia said, tipping her head back, closing her eyes. “We’re here.”

“Almost,” Cormac murmured. It could still all go horribly wrong. He hated races. He could be as patient as stone, waiting for something he needed, setting an ambush, springing a trap. But this charging ahead to a finish line he could finally see, still not sure he would get there, was agonizing.

He swerved the car into the first parking lot he came to, a spare bit of pavement with a couple of trash cans in the corner and whole list of rules painted on a big sign. A few other cars were parked here, a few people were wandering farther down the beach. A sandy stretch, broken by scrub, spread fifty yards down to surf. The waves rolling in were low, capped with white. The sky was overcast, turning dark with twilight. Across the water, the lights of skyscrapers, bridges, a whole sprawling city, gleamed. Dusk gave the scene a metallic tone, molten with the last orange blaze of the setting sun.

Cormac kept driving, forcing the car over the concrete parking blocks with a thump and a crunch of shocks. Nia gasped as she bounced in the seat.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

He drove out to the sand, hitting rocks, until the tires started spinning and the car bogged down. Sirens echoed and four police cars veered into the lot behind him.

Cormac got out and opened the back door. He regarded Nia, her damp hair and shining tail that made her weigh more than a woman of her size ought to. They were so close, and he was so tired already. His shoulder twinged with anticipatory pain, the old gunshot wound complaining. “I’m not sure I can carry you by myself.”

Nia met his gaze. “You can. Slow and steady.”

She put her arms around him, and he was again struck by how she could be so chilled by the water that soaked her, and yet her touch was so warm. He got his arms under her, and oh-so-carefully he lifted.

“You! Stop! Turn around, put your hands up!”

The police poured out of the cars and lined up, guns drawn. Wearily, Cormac looked back at them.

“Oh my God, is that—”

He held a mermaid in his arms. The half a dozen cops who gathered to confront him just stared.

“Go,” Nia whispered in his ear, and he went. Wanted to go faster, but the sand was slippery, making every step treacherous. Slow and steady, she’d advised, so he stopped trying to run and made sure each step was solid. He locked his arms against her so they wouldn’t waver. His shoulder throbbed, and he ignored it. The waves shushed and whispered, a rhythm that drew him on. He expected one of the cops to come tackle him from behind, or just shoot him. But the shouted commands had stopped.

Then, at last, his feet were wet. Then his knees. He shoved his way into the water, even as Nia let go, gave a great muscular kick of her tail, and wrenched out of his arms, splashing into the sea.

He was now waist deep, staring at his own empty arms like he wasn’t sure what had happened, because Nia was just gone. Sunk under the surface, just like that.

Then she splashed up and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling herself close.

“Thank you, Cormac Bennett.” She kissed him hard on the mouth.

He had just enough sense to put his arms around her and kiss her back, his lips moving against hers, opening to taste the rich saltiness of her. Then she pulled away, gave him a sly grin, and twisted backward, splashing back into the water. Her tail kicked, and she swam fast. Her hair rippled behind her, her scales shimmered silver just under the water. He lost sight of her as she dived into the next wave. Caught what might have been the flicker of a tail in the wave after that. And she was gone.

That is the most wondrous thing that has ever happened to me, Amelia whispered in the back of his mind. Given what had happened to Amelia and how she’d even gotten here, that was saying something. Cormac stumbled back to shallower beach, dropped to his knees, and let the surf shove him where it would.

“Hands up! Hands up right now!” The cops had caught up with him, splashing into the water to get to him.

Cormac didn’t even care. Chuckling madly, he put his hands up. He didn’t look away from that spot far out in the waves until they dragged him away.

Cormac was drunk on Nia’s kiss. The cops kept asking him questions, and he just grinned stupidly at them like nothing in the world mattered.

They arrested him. Even that seemed like a small thing, after the last couple days. He was soaking wet and crusted in salt water when they stuck him in the back of a patrol car, and him dripping all over the seat seemed hilarious. The cop who drove was a sheriff’s deputy, someone-or-other. He kept glancing at Cormac in the rearview mirror, through the Plexiglas barrier.

“Was that really a mermaid?” he asked finally.

“She really was,” Cormac answered.

“Wow. But where did she come from?”

Cormac waved his cuffed hands behind him, back toward the ocean. “Out there.”

“Just... out there?”

“Yup.”

Cataloging his possessions at the jail turned into an ordeal, as Cormac struggled to clean out the pockets of his damp jeans. He kept finding more bits and pieces, all of them wet and sticking together. Candle stubs, a matchbook, some twigs, string, a bent nail—

“I want all of that back when I get out,” Cormac said to the officer who dutifully put everything in a plastic bag but was clearly annoyed about it.

“Even the string and twigs?”

“Especially the string and twigs.”

“Weird,” the guy muttered.

“Don’t argue with me, I just got kissed by a mermaid,” Cormac shot back. Yeah, he was definitely feeling a little drunk.

I like it. Don’t fight it.

He chuckled again, and everyone in the place was side-eyeing him.

They stuck him in a holding cell, and he could finally lie down. Two days of exhaustion hit him all at once, and he suddenly couldn’t move even he’d wanted to. He’d meant to ask for coffee. Maybe it was just as well he hadn’t.

He closed his eyes.

The dream-state valley smelled like a rainstorm had just passed through. Fresh, clean, electric, every blade of grass producing a perfume that smelled like life distilled, infused with fertile soil, and the icy touch of snowmelt. Every pore on his body seemed to take it in, as he stood in the middle of the meadow, surrounded by forest and snowcapped peaks.

As if he had a body here, able to smell and feel. It was just memory, emotion. But it felt real. He and Amelia were constantly discussing the metaphysics of it and never reached a conclusion.

Amelia stood nearby, in her usual pale blouse and full-length dark skirt. Her dark, curling hair was held back from her face by a clip and left to fall loose down her back. She didn’t even have a body, and yet here she stood, as she remembered herself in life. When she had first appeared to Cormac, her clothing was more formal, a gown and jacket laced all the way to her neck, gloves on her hands, her hair primly bound in a neat bun. She had grown comfortable with him. First the gloves had gone, then her hair let down. She smiled more.

Closing her eyes, she tipped her face up, took a deep breath, and laughed.

“Amelia,” he said.

Smiling, she ran at him and crashed into his embrace. He wrapped his arms around her and held tight. Yes, she was real. Maybe it was all in their heads, they were imagining all of this, but while he was here with her, it was real, and he needed her.

“We did it, we did it!” she said into his shoulder.

“We’re back in jail.”

“Right now I hardly care. We’ll worry about it tomorrow.”

He drew back to look at her. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her this happy, flushed, with the wide smile and shining eyes. She looked younger. He smoothed a thumb across her cheek. This wasn’t real, so this should be easier, right? Taking that step. But it was real, and it mattered, and he didn’t want to screw this up.

He kissed her. As if he could pass on some of the magic Nia had given him, as if Amelia hadn’t been right there, experiencing it with him.

Amelia clung to him and kissed him back, and then they were both in a frenzy of kissing, and she was pulling his T-shirt up and over. His hands were too clumsy to work the delicate buttons of her shirt. He popped the first couple clean off, then decided he didn’t care.

Somehow, he ended up lying on the damp grass, and Amelia was on top of him, running her hands down his chest, across his ribs. Her touch on his bare skin was eager, warm. He wanted more. She sat up a moment, struggling to peel off her blouse and the camisole underneath, her weight pressing against his groin, and the pressure lit up his brain and made him even harder than he already was—

He froze, suddenly aware of the uncomfortable pressure in his still-damp jeans, of his physical body in the Monmouth County, New Jersey, sheriff department’s holding cell.

Amelia stopped and furrowed her brow. “What’s wrong?”

Cormac tipped his head back and chuckled at the unfairness of it all. His hands on her hips, his gaze studied the pale skin of her chest, her breasts, waiting to be stroked and held...

“I’m really turned on,” he said.

“Good, that’s the idea.” She leaned in and kissed his neck, and his body—his physical body—shifted uncomfortably.

“No, I mean I’m really turned on. My body. If we keep going I’ll have to do something about it and I’d rather not put on a show for the security cameras.”

She slid off him, to lie on the grass at his side. He felt a chill when she drew away. He wanted her back. He also wanted privacy. How the hell did his life get so weird?

“Well. That’s sobering,” she said.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said, chuckling. “The weirdest shit happens to us.”

So they lay shirtless in the grass, enjoying the sun, the spring. She propped herself on an elbow and traced his chin. Stubble had grown in—he hadn’t shaved in days. And why should it matter here whether he’d shaved? He had no idea.

She said, “I hope that we can revisit this experiment in the boundaries between the physical and spiritual realms very soon.”

“Absolutely,” he said, taking her hand, and drawing her in to rest her head on his shoulder.

They let him out the next afternoon. No charges, which seemed a small miracle.

The process of getting his belongings back was just as tedious and absurd as turning them in had been the day before. He made a show of counting, making sure every piece of string and crushed bit of herb was there. He had no idea it if was all there; Amelia was the one who kept inventory and she declined to comment. But he wanted to annoy the officer.

The miracle of his release was explained when he stepped outside and found Ben waiting for him, sitting on a bench by the walkway leading to the parking lot.

“You live,” Ben said wryly, standing. “But you look terrible. You’ll need to take a shower before we get on an airplane.”

Both he and Amelia felt a rush of relief that they wouldn’t have to drive the two thousand miles back home.

“How’d you do it?” Cormac asked.

“Which part?”

Cormac realized that yes, there were a lot of questions. How did Ben get here, what happened after they parted ways in Des Moines, and how had he convinced the cops to let him go. He finally settled on the most immediate. “How’d you convince them to let me go?”

“Not sure I can take credit for that one. I did the usual, all ready to ask what they were going to charge you with and getting them to set bail and all that. Turns out Agents Stein and Perez called in ahead of me. Asked the local jurisdiction to just...” He gave a wave of his hand, like a stage magician making something disappear.

“Really,” Cormac said flatly.

“I think they’re hoping you owe them a favor now.”

“I don’t think I owe them a favor.”

Really, I think you do owe them a favor, for giving you their car if nothing else.

She was probably right, but he wasn’t going to admit it. He’d forgotten about their car, left abandoned on the sand of a New Jersey beach. He assumed the agents were smart enough to figure out how to get it back. Hoped they had good insurance.

Ben chuckled. “You might be interested to know that Foster’s looking at a couple counts of aggravated assault. He’s got some fancy defense lawyers courtesy of his employer, though, so I expect he’ll plea down.”

“His employer?”

“Eden Medical Advancement. On paper it’s a think tank. Off paper? I don’t even know where to start.”

“Any chance of suing their asses off?”

That toothy grin was pure werewolf. “Kitty’s working on that. I’ve referred her to some people I know. I hope you saved your receipts.”

“I wasn’t thinking about receipts. Sorry.”

“Kidding.”

“It’d feel really good to smack him down in court. Nice, not to be a defendant for once.”

“It’s what I’ve been telling you all along, you have to work the system when you can.” Ben led him to a rental car, a very ordinary sedan this time. “Is Nia okay? Someone posted some video from the beach, but it was from a ways off. Hard to tell what was happening.”

“She kissed me,” he said, his voice gone a little dreamy. Yeah, he was going to be thinking about that for a long time.

“Well all right then,” Ben answered, amused.

“She’s home, now. It’s good.” Tell him the rest, Amelia murmured. He’s your cousin, your best friend, tell him the rest. Cormac set his jaw. He’d nearly died lots of times on lots of jobs. He’d been shot, stalked, threatened. But this... this had shaken him. “It got really bad there, Ben. Foster planned to kill me without a thought. But I just kept thinking how I couldn’t save her. She was completely dependent on me. And I couldn’t help.”

A thoughtful pause followed, and Cormac couldn’t read Ben’s expression, whether he was confused or upset or just thinking. Finally Ben said, “But you did help. It’s a win.”

“I was a little surprised at how much it ended up mattering to me. Getting her home.”

“Deep down, you’re a good guy, Cormac. I don’t think you hear that enough.”

“Not sure I am. I got a lot of shit to make up for.”

“That you’re aware of it puts you ahead of the game. Ahead of someone like Foster, for sure. Let’s get out of here before someone changes their mind about charging you.”

“You’re right.”

“Hmm?”

“I need a shower.”

To read more about Cormac and Amelia, look for “Long Time Waiting,” available as part of

Kitty’s Greatest Hits.

Kitty’s Mix-Tape

Other Books by Carrie Vaughn

Carrie’s Website:

www.carrievaughn.com

Carrie Vaughn’s work includes the Philip K. Dick Award winning novel Bannerless, the New York Times Bestselling Kitty Norville urban fantasy series, over twenty novels and upwards of 100 short stories, two of which have been finalists for the Hugo Award. Her most recent novel, Questland, is about a high-tech LARP that goes horribly wrong and the literature professor who has to save the day. She’s a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at www.carrievaughn.com.

Charmed Waters

Copyright © 2021 by Carrie Vaughn, LLC.

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Cover Design: Joe Campanella

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