Call of Water (Madame Tan's Freakshow #1) - Marina Simcoe Page 0,46

in Paris, there was so much life in his expression. Humor and joy made him look more human back then.

Now, with the bluish tint of the water on his pale skin, the silver halo of the long hair floating around his face, his expression unnaturally serene, he appeared more as a vision than a real person.

He placed his hands against mine, splaying his palms on the glass inside the tank.

My chest tightened with compassion for him and sorrow for both of us. I could barely breathe. Tears filled my eyes, choking me.

I felt so sorry for all the time he had lost in that tank. For the many weeks, now going on months, of my own life that I had spent locked in the cage.

Anger sizzled through me, giving me an odd sense of power.

I wasn’t even sure if those emotions were his or mine, but I felt them deeply. So much had been taken from both of us, and much more would be taken if I didn’t do something as soon as possible.

“Amira!” A deep male voice called from upstairs somewhere, making both of us jump.

“Go back to your cage,” she whispered hurriedly, rushing out of the room.

A sad but warm and supportive emotion filtered through the glass to me, as if Zeph was now the one giving me hope and strength. It tightened around my heart, filling me with determination.

“Back to my cage, my ass,” I muttered as Amira’s footfalls faded down the corridor. It was as if all of the emotions I had been concealing all this time burst out at once. “Fuck this tank.”

I grabbed a barstool.

‘Stand back, Zeph,’ I mouthed then swung it wide, smashing it hard against the side of the tank.

To my utter disbelief, the glass held. The barstool bounced off it, making no damage to it whatsoever. Disheartened, I tossed the stool aside and slid my gaze along the walls of the tank.

“There has to be a way,” I whispered, stepping around it.

The tank appeared to be made from one solid piece of glass, with no lid or door to open anywhere. I recalled seeing nothing like that on the bottom of the stand either. There was no explanation how Madame got Zeph inside this thing in the first place. Or how she had been feeding him all this time.

To hold anyone in a water tank that could not be opened for feeding or cleaning, I imagined one would need some other way to provide nourishment and to filter out the waste.

Maybe Zeph really was a Fae like Madame claimed. At this point, I would not discount what she had said about Nerifir or its inhabitants as a lie. The strong distaste of “humans” she never failed to express also must mean she was something else herself.

In that case, I didn’t know enough about them. Maybe Fae did not produce waste, but I was fairly certain they ate food. Zeph did on our date, and Madame herself demanded her dinner be served every night.

She might be adding nourishment straight to the water somehow. Maybe she added something else to it, too. That would explain Zeph’s vacant expression—the emptiness in his eyes, even as he was staring at me, sending those wonderful emotions through the glass.

How would any substance be delivered inside the tank, though? Fish would die in a sealed aquarium, unless the water was aerated. Which could be done via tubes...

From that night at the CNE, I remembered squeezing between a number of tubes and pipes that were connected to the tank underneath.

Dropping to the floor on my back, I crawled under the tank once again, this time inspecting the underside of the stand that it stood on. Several silver wires ran underneath, all connected to the tank in a neat line.

These might be needed to illuminate the tank or possibly to deliver the shock that forced Zeph to open his fins. The memory of his silent scream made me angry all over again. Only the fear of causing him pain or possibly electrocuting myself in the process stopped me from ripping the silver lines out.

I focused my attention on the ribbed plastic hose instead, tracing it to a large canister behind the tank. When I lifted the lid of the canister, it released a thick silver puff of the same fragrant smoke that Madame liked to fill her property with.

She must be infusing the water in Zeph’s tank with it, too. I had no idea what exactly this smoke did,