Diary of a Radical Mermaid Read Free Page B

before Hilton Head’s beaches, villas, and piney coastline came into view. Singing is a low hum, sometimes wordless but emotional, sometimes filled with images and messages. Who needs a cell phone when you’ve got a real psychic network?
    There’s a reason the vast majority of Mer people fall into the Singer caste. We sing. We sing to communicate without speaking, we sing to subtly control Landers (who can be maneuvered like remote-controlled toy cars, if one is in the mood). We sing to find loved ones over great distances, and we sing under water (sonar, remember — it’s a very useful little tool when you’re ping-ping-pinging along some dark, deeply submerged Mediterranean ruin looking for priceless trinkets).
    Anyway, singing can be practical. Singing can be soothing. Singing can be a warning. And singing can be a seduction.
    Bingo.
    The horndog fish was toying with me. Warming me all over with a low-pitched hum. If I gave it a voice, it would be a bass flute, deep and reedy, like a warm breath on my bare stomach. Standing on the deck of my yacht with my head thrown back in the wind, I swayed and clutched the rail.
    Stop that you outrageous jerk stop stop or I will hurt you, I screeched into his head. High pitched, lots of vibrato. Designed to pierce the psychic eardrum.
    His hum filled with a long, low, deep laugh, but he stopped.
    When I reached his villa I found him in his bizarre pool. Its one of those faux rock creations, woodsy and natural with a huge waterfall pouring over boulders, as if someone merely plucked an Olympic-sized pond from high in the Rockies and set it down on the other side of the continent. Jordan Brighton likes contrasts. There he was in the hot, sandy, moss-draped forest world of coastal South Carolina, surrounded by palm trees and hibiscus, and what did he do? He built himself a Rocky Mountain log villa and a mountain pond.
    Lander envy, I say to myself. How sad. His lungs would puff up like a blow fish if he tried to live in real mountains.
    I heard that, he sings back.
    There he was, lounging on the bottom of his silly pool with a high-tech, deep-water, submersible camera weighing him down. One of his experimental toys. I frowned at him. When Mers are underwater they don’t get that strangled, hamster-cheeked expression all Landers wear when they’re holding their breath. Mers are perfectly comfortable and look at ease. So he looked very handsome underwater.
    Planning to tour the Titanic again? I asked with psychic sarcasm.
    How boring, he answered. If you’ve seen one famous wreck, you’ve seen them all. He smiled up at me. Brilliant white teeth enhanced by deep blue chlorine. He was dressed in relatively demure black trunks — naked would have been a rude provocation, and a Speedo would just be gilding the lily — so he’d opted for classic and coy.
    My heart twisted. I hated him. I loved him. I was terrified of his effect on me. All the usual suspects.
    He surfaced with all the sensuous movement of a lazy squid. When his dark-haired head broke the pool’s surface he quipped, “You heard me calling, all the way down at Sainte’s Point. Couldn’t resist. As usual.”
    “Couldn’t resist? It was my choice to come here today. It’s been five years since that debacle at Cannes. If I couldn’t resist, I’d have strangled you long ago.”
    Cannes. The famed place, the famed film festival. He and I had gone there together, enjoying what I can fairly admit was the happiest time of my entire Mer life thus far. He’d anchored his yacht off the French coast and we filled it with the most glamorous party people in the world, both Landers and Mer. Mers love the movie star life — I could name names of more than a few superstars who are Mers — so we were there to party hearty with the webbed crowd. And we were there to make love to each other in the warm French waters. Which we did — wildly, wonderfully, and constantly.
    Everything was perfect until we had a misunderstanding as