Deep Betrayal Page 0,86

since he never came back to the lake … all those years … that he wouldn’t be able to make the change.”

I stared at her without speaking.

“But Calder suggested that wasn’t the case. My next assumption was that delaying his natural development would have had some debilitating effects. Perhaps he is a little impaired?”

“He’s fine.”

“Is he sane?”

“Sane enough.”

“His brain hasn’t been addled by malice?” When I didn’t respond she started ticking things off on her fingers. “He isn’t unnaturally sadistic, melancholy, morbid, masochistic, neurotic—”

I held up my hand and stopped her list in its tracks. “Unnatural is an interesting word. He’s just going through some … growing pains right now.”

She sighed knowingly. “Maris said she always assumed he’d be a freak.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“What part?”

“I don’t believe any of what you’re saying. You’re not here because Maris wants to bring Dad—or Calder, for that matter—back into the family.”

“Why would you say that?” asked Pavati, her voice a velvety seduction.

“If that were true, you wouldn’t have been so hard for them to find. Calder wouldn’t have had to use me, my friends …”

“You’ve got that backward,” said Pavati. “I think you mean if Calder hadn’t left the family, we would have been easy for him to find. And vice versa. And I promise—”

“Promises! What about your promise to Jack? What about the promise you made this spring?” I asked, and Sophie drew in a quick breath behind me. “Did you really go see him two weeks ago? Jack said you did, but Calder had a hard time believing it.”

Pavati tipped her head to the side like a seagull examining an apple fritter. “Jack saw me? He knows I came?”

“He said you came, but then you ran away.”

She sighed and looked at Sophie. “I’m trying to make good on my promise. I need to make good on that promise. But the timing is out of my hands,” she said. She moved her arms gently across the surface of the water, bringing her hands together, palms up.

“Whose hands is it in?”

She stared intently at Sophie in a way that made me squirm. Instinctively, I positioned my body between my sister and the emaciated mermaid. “Easy,” Pavati said. “I’ve always had a soft spot for your sister. She knows I would never hurt her.”

“Why was it so easy for you to leave Jack?” I asked. It was a question that had bothered me for months—ever since Jack first told me his history with Pavati. It was the question that had allowed me to doubt Calder’s feelings for me.

“I don’t understand what you’re asking,” she said, her gaze moving from Sophie to me. The water rippled softly across her shoulders.

Her confusion made me more uneasy than the expected answer. “You loved him.”

“If you’d like to call it that,” she said, shrugging. Her eyes burned like the aurora borealis.

I wondered how she’d feel if she knew it was Jack who killed Tallulah. Would she want to kill him just as they’d wanted to kill Dad? Was there enough love between Pavati and Jack that she’d feel at least a little bit bad when she dragged him under?

Pavati dropped lower, the water now grazing her chin. “I understand you went looking for Maighdean Mara today.”

“How did you know that?” I hadn’t made any attempt to hide my thoughts yesterday. Calder had never asked that I “blank canvas” my mind. Had it been Maris and Pavati watching us? Had they watched ambivalently as we risked our lives?

“Did you find her?” she asked.

“We did not,” I said, my face and voice like stone.

“Hmmm. Maybe Coyote has a better idea.”

“Coyote?”

“Go see Jack’s dad. He knows him,” she said, her Cheshire-cat smirk disappearing in the darkness.

MY SCRIBBLINGS

I do not need to breathe

to write these lines because air

is a luxury for the weak

and if I haven’t mentioned it,

that’s not me.

MERMAID STATS

Best Swim Time: 5 Min. 52 secs

Voices: Able to Project and Receive

Tail: None

32

COYOTE

The Pettits’ house was a two-story farmhouse close to the lake. Calder wouldn’t go to the door, but he got out of the car and listened from the woods. I’d been here only once before—the night Calder attacked Jack—and it looked different in the daylight. I found the door, but I was too short to look through the three small square panes at the top. On the other side of the glass, the lights were off, although I could hear that the TV was on. I looked for a doorbell but, finding none, knocked several times. The sound