Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,40

in a way completely opposite of the flames still dancing in her memories. While she dithered, Sting reached into the back seat to grab her satchel and started pulling out the clothes he’d left in there. Banging his knees and elbows and every other body part on various parts of the car, he struggled into the castoffs she’d let him borrow.

She let out a tired breath. “You’re coming in with me, aren’t you?”

“Anyone desperate enough to come all this way without waiting for a reply won’t care about my eyes,” he pointed out.

As if his blank white eyes were the only giveaway. She sighed again. “Fine. Just… Don’t scare her, okay?”

“Anyone desperate enough to—”

“I said you can come,” she interrupted.

“You didn’t, actually,” he muttered.

Ugh. He was as much a victim of his heritage as she was, so why was she giving him such a hard time? “Come on. Let’s see what the future holds. Or the past.”

He followed her toward the door listed on Evens’ message, the pad of his broad, bare feet silent on the cracked concrete that fronted the exterior room doors. At least the webbing between his toes was less obvious than the unearthly white of his eyes.

When he held his wrist datpad to the door lock, she elbowed him aside and knocked the gentle rap of a neighbor, not a cop knock.

The scuffle of steps on the other side of the door reached her heightened senses and she took a deep breath. “My name is Lana Wavercrest. I’m here from the Wavercrest Foundation—”

The door jolted wide. “Lana!”

If Sting hadn’t been standing right behind her, if she hadn’t already known she might be facing her mother, she might’ve collapsed right there. As it was, she leaned back into his chest, her heart beating so hard it might explode with all the likely nasty spatter and possible conflagration.

The word mom filled her mouth behind tight-clenched lips, but she couldn’t let loose the breath to say it. “We got your message to the Wavercrest Foundation,” she said instead.

Her mother’s gaze—dark brown, like her own—roamed her face. “I saw the name—our name. And I saw some of the symptoms listed.” Her hand clenched on the cheap hollow-core door beside her. “Your symptoms, even though they tried not to say it outright.”

Lana nodded numbly. They’d had to be circumspect when they came up with list that included Ridley’s sudden-onset thalassophobia and Marisol’s aquagenic urticaria. And for Lana’s condition, they’d struggled even more. No use saying “Do you randomly emit electrical sparks or burst into flame? Ask your doctor about…” That would only bring the crackpots. But to anyone who’d lived through the stuttering manifestation of a nul’ah-wys would recognize what was implied.

“Tell me more. You’ve found a cure, haven’t you?” Her gaze went to Sting still lurking in the dark. “You’re not saying it’s aliens, are you?”

Lana grimaced. “I’m not saying it’s aliens.”

“But it’s aliens.” Her white teeth flashed in the big smile. “I should’ve known. Come on in, you two.”

Sting cleared his throat softly. “I don’t scare you?” Even more gently, he nudged Lana from behind in a see-I-told-you-so gesture. She waved him away behind her back.

“Young man, I’ve been semi-expecting this my whole life.”

Lana shook her head. Her mother had been younger than she was now when she had Lana; the intervening years had not aged her enough to justify calling anyone young man—especially not a shark-man.

Sting made a negating noise under his breath. “Then you should realize I’m not human.”

She nodded. “Of course. I apologize. It was close-minded of me to assume that you were male just because you look like…” She gestured at him vaguely.

Lana scowled. Okay, her mom wasn’t old, but it was still wrong for her to be noticing Sting like that.

But he stepped to one side as if displaying himself. “Tritonans do tend toward sexual dimorphism, although individual preferences may vary, and we do have some spontaneous parthenogenic expression in our recent genetic past, although our intent is to lessen the need for that if we had more females,”

“Now’s not really a good time for a Tritonan biology lecture,” Lana said.

Sting looked down at her. “But we’re here to find out if your mother is a suitable candidate for relocation to Tritona.”

Her mother straightened. “What? All right, I think we need to hit the mini bar.”

The room interior was just as advertised by the outside: small, old, but tidy enough. The minibar turned out to be a bag of groceries that included room-temperature orange