Deep Betrayal Page 0,73

is she wearing Mother’s pendant? She has no right to it. Give it back. Give it back!”

Their mother’s? Calder squared his shoulders but didn’t answer. Had he known all along? I looked sideways at him, but he didn’t look at me. Why hadn’t he told me? I hoped he wouldn’t make me give it back. I squeezed the beach glass in my fist, and it gave me courage.

“We have more important things to discuss,” Calder said.

Maris did not force the issue but kept her eyes riveted on me, watching warily, as if she expected me to make a sudden move. “I suppose you’re here to say you’ve changed your mind and you’re coming back?” Maris asked Calder.

Calder was losing patience. “Don’t toy with me. You know what this is about. You and Pavati are getting out of hand. You’ve been hunting recklessly. You need an intervention.”

“It’s not me!” Maris screamed, dispatching a flock of grackles from the pine trees. They scattered in a cacophony of squawks and chortles.

Calder threw his hands into the air, his eyes flashing in a way I’d never seen. “So that’s it? You deny it? You realize you’re going to get caught, don’t you? You’re going to end up betraying the whole community of merpeople.”

Maris snapped her head to glare at him. “I betray nothing,” she said.

“At the rate you’re going, how long do you think it’ll be before rip currents and hypothermia aren’t good enough explanations for people? There can only be so many accidents. You’ve let four get away. They’ve talked to the police. News reporters. Now there are two bodies in the morgue. That’s six in the last two weeks.”

“So you’ve proven you can count.”

“That’s it?” Calder stormed at her. “That’s all you can say? Jack Pettit is telling everyone and anyone who will listen that there are mermaids in the lake, mermaids attacking kayakers, mermaids killing swimmers. It’s only a matter of time before someone takes him seriously—one more kill for the pendulum to swing from mocking the lunatic to searching for monsters. If you keep this up, people will come looking.”

She rolled her eyes toward the sky and held them there. “And if they come? What will they find?”

“You tell me? Are you planning to let them find you?”

“We won’t be found,” she said, her voice flat. “Soon there won’t be anything left of us. We’ll be nothing more than wasted shells. And we’re well aware of Jack Pettit’s antics. That’s why we’ve been keeping a low profile. If you can’t tell, I haven’t made a kill in over a month.”

“Pavati, then.”

Maris shook her head.

“I don’t understand,” Calder said, his shoulders falling heavily.

“Get this through your thick skull,” Maris said. “It’s not us. Something else has turned the lake into a killing ground, and its appetite has forced us to suppress our own.”

“It’s really rip currents?” Calder asked, almost too quiet to hear.

“Don’t be a fool,” Maris said, and she returned her gaze toward me. Her eyes narrowed again, studying the pendant and then searching my face. For what, I didn’t know, but I didn’t like the way she was looking at me.

I tugged at Calder’s elbow. We’d found Maris and Pavati. We’d delivered our message. We’d warned them about Jack and the risk of hunting recklessly. “Let’s go,” I whispered.

“One second, Lil,” he said, waving me off. “You weren’t trying to spite me—leaving the bodies to rot so conspicuously?”

“We’re not above spite,” Maris said.

“But it’s not you,” he said, confirming something he could not quite rectify with his assumptions.

“No.”

None of this made sense. If it wasn’t them … I heard myself blurt out, “Then what?”

Maris whipped her head to glare at me again, her eyes blazing. “Maybe it’s your father. Ever consider that?”

“That’s impossible,” I said, my voice more air than sound.

Calder looked at me nervously. “I’ve been with him. I’ve stayed close.”

“Clearly, you aren’t with him all the time,” snarled Maris.

“Jason doesn’t need to kill. His family keeps him happy,” Calder said. “He can avoid the curse.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Pavati, finally walking up the beach on too-thin legs, scarlet and glistening in the sun. Her skin was more sallow than I’d seen it before, and her collarbones stuck out in dangerous points.

Dressed in tattered rags that barely covered her, she walked immodestly on the sand right toward us, without apology. I had to turn away, and I heard her chuckle under her breath. Calder seemed nonplussed. He barely acknowledged her presence.

“It’s possible. I’ve done it,” Calder said.