Haunted Read Free Page B

true. I am thinner these days, but it’s hard to eat when you’re haunted by a persistent mermaid. And other things.
    “I’m off at four, remember,” Ben says after a few beats. “You’re working today too, right? We’ll do something after.”
    This is another part of why I’m with Ben. So many guys like to play the whole unavailable game. It’s one of Tess’s biggest issues with Neal. He pretends he doesn’t know her schedule, or he blows her off to go out boozing with his buddies and tells her that she’s making a big deal out of things when she reminds him that they had plans. But Ben’s not like that. He listens when I talk and shows up when he says he will and even calls me before he goes to sleep just to say good night.
    “After is good. But it’ll be a little longer than that. Mrs. Benson has me scheduled from three until we close at eight.”
    Mrs. Benson is Amelia Benson, owner of the Jewel Box antique and estate jewelry shop, where I’m a part-time salesgirl for the summer. It’s the shop that my mother helps manage—the same one that got pulverized last fall during the whole disastrous Anastasia rescue effort and has now been reroofed and restocked. Not that anyone seems to understand that’s what happened, of course, or that a witch called Baba Yaga caused the destruction. People’s memories seem pretty selective these days.
    “I’ll meet you at Java Joe’s a little after eight,” I suggest. “You can buy me something with whipped cream.” The whipped cream reference is my feeble attempt at making light of the weight thing.
    “Hmm.” Ben arches an eyebrow and smiles his cute smile. I’m sensing that the whipped cream reference has sent his boy brain to more interesting places than just fattening me up.
    “I’m thinking venti mocha latte, Ben. Not whatever you’re thinking.”
    Ben looks mildly disappointed. Back at the main pool, someone blows the safety break whistle. Ben unwraps himself from me.
    “Gotta run, babe,” he says. “Duty calls. Have to do a pH check before the kids all crash back into the water.”
    He’s all business then, striding away. I start to follow him, only some mom in a black suit with one of those skirts that’s probably supposed to hide her thighs but doesn’t steps in his path. She starts a mild rant about why, why, why are there no peanut butter crackers in the snack machine because that’s her son’s favorite. Safer to hide on my little bench behind the slide.
    Only it’s not.
    In front of me in the kiddy pool, the woman in the lilac gown slips down the mouth of the green frog slide and settles herself gracefully in its spacious lower jaw.
    My heart goes thump. We stare at each other for a few beats. Me and my own personal mermaid, eyeball to eyeball. That’s what she is, by the way. Not that I understood, at first. But it’s amazing what I’ve learned in the wee hours when I can’t fall back asleep after yet another crazy dream. Eventually, it was easier to just stay awake, fire up the laptop, and figure out what was stalking me. And so I did.
    Rusalka . Russian mermaid. We haven’t ever spoken, so I don’t know if she’s actually Russian—but given who I am and what I’ve seen, it’s not that much of a stretch. Rusalka. A formerly human girl who somehow died tragically. Or got betrayed by the man she loved and then died tragically. Or whatever, blah, blah, blah, and then died tragically.
    Emphasis on the tragic . And the dying.
    According to every website I went to, she’s supposed to be haunting whatever body of water is handy near wherever it is she died. Only right now, I think she just has to haunt me .
    “I know what you are,” I say quietly. I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one who sees her right now, but no sense gathering a crowd. My life is messy enough without everyone at the Aqua Creek Water Complex, including Ben and Tess, thinking that I talk to myself.
    My mermaid smiles and runs a thin hand through her long,