Diary of a Radical Mermaid Read Free

over the world, but aside from preventing a few loony Mers from killing off all the Landers and establishing worldwide domination, I don’t see why the Council is so tight-assed. Tight-toed. Whatever.
    “I’m just having a little literary fun in the interest of public relations,” I said. “Besides, most Landers will assume my blog is fiction. Maybe I’ll become the Danielle Steele of Mer lore. Publish books. Have movies made. Be interviewed by Barbara Walters. Her great-great-grandmother was a Mer, you know. There are a few webbed toes hidden in that woman’s family closet. I think her tongue’s webbed, too. That explains a lot.”
    Tula groaned and shook her head. “Why don’t you do something useful, instead? Like take up water polo.”
    “I tried. The horse keeps drowning.”
    “Very funny.”
    “I want to write about our people. It’ll be fun. And harmless. You’ll see.”
    “I predict the Council will send someone to string you up by your webbing until you behave.”
    “The Council has far more important items on its agenda than little old me and my blog. They’re obsessed with UniWorld Oil trying to take over the planet. My little blog is a trifle.”
    Tula sighed and looked unconvinced. “I don’t like the smell of this fish, Juna Lee. You’ve gotten yourself into trouble, before, but this time —”
    “Oh, shut up and sell me something pretty.” I smiled, went over to a counter, then cooed in delight. “That little diamond tennis bracelet with the platinum setting will do. Put it on my account.”
    Tula rolled her azure eyes (and no, it would not be accurate, nor interesting, to call them simply ‘blue’). Anyway, rolled her azure eyes and went behind the counter to fetch my bracelet. “You don’t even play tennis,” she said. “Out of the water, you’re as graceful as a beached whale.”
    “Kiss my blubber,” I replied with great drama, then took my bracelet and marched out.
     
     

Lilith Chapter 3
    Of course, it didn’t take long for word about my diary to reach Lilith. About two nanoseconds, to be precise. You don’t want Lilith mad at you. Picture Katherine Hepburn in her prime, with webbed toes, two yards of wavy auburn hair, and a Southern accent that could melt a martini olive. That’s my great-aunt.
    As I’ve said, she’s seventy but that doesn’t mean a thing in Mer terms. You wouldn’t peg her at more than forty — and that’s sans any nipping and tucking. She rules the Bonavendier clan and all its subsidiaries, which are spread far and wide. More than a thousand Mers revere Sainte’s Point Island as the Mer equivalent of Buckingham Palace, the Statue of Liberty, and Hyannis Port all rolled into one. (Jackie Kennedy had the most discreet Mer family background, by the way. No surprise. Such style. Such intelligence, such class!)
    Lilith called me back from a shopping trip in Atlanta on a sultry afternoon decorated with puffy Gulf Stream clouds and warm spring waves. I left my car in Bellemeade and swam across to Sainte’s Point. It’s an easy swim from Bellemeade, no more than a mile, give or take a small shark or two. The local dolphins chirped at me like disgusted sisters. Dolphins are so full of themselves. “Oh, puh-leeeze, it’s only a blog,” I chirped back.
    After I dried off, wound my red hair up in a hefty braid, and donned a sweet silk sheath with darling little hand-painted Moroccan sandals, I made my way up the stone walkway from the island’s docks and boat house. There had been a good deal of hubbub at Sainte’s Point lately, what with the elaborate wedding of Ali to Griffin Randolph in the works, but there was a lull in the prenuptial preparations that day. At the sight of me, the household staff — two plump, angelic brothers and a sister — clutched their hearts and staggered about in feigned horror.
    Annoying little Tanglewoods. They were only Landers, but generations of their family’s spellbound service to the Bonavendiers had given