SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!
Logan kicked his feet, trying to free the one that’d been caught, all the while paddling his arms towards the surface.
The creature, whatever it was, let go and Logan swam for all he was worth, managing to grab his knife. Now if only he had his mask on so he could see the thing coming.
He wasn’t waiting for it to attack again; the boat wasn’t that far away.
He cleared the surface and headed toward it, only to almost crash head-on into a—
Mermaid.
Right in front of him. Long, flowing red hair and a sparkling emerald green tail. Almost as beautiful as Angel.
No one was as beautiful as Angel.
“I’m Mariana Tritone. Angel’s sister.” The woman’s voice was almost as lyrical as Angel’s, but it didn’t af-fect him at all. “Do you really want to help her?”
It spoke to how far his reality had shifted when he entered into the conversation as if it were completely normal. “Yes. She saved my life and my son’s. I owe her.” Not to mention, loved her, but he wasn’t sure how they’d take his defense of her, let alone a declaration of love.
Hell, he wasn’t sure how Angel would take it. After what he’d said to her, he wouldn’t blame her if she never wanted to see him again.
The mermaid stared at him, then nodded. “What I’m about to do goes against every law we have. I want you to understand that. I can’t promise the outcome. If you come with me and The Council rules against you, you could very possibly be giving up your life for my sister. Still want to come?”
Logan had made his peace with that when he’d made his peace with his family. Michael would be cared for, but he could never live with himself if he didn’t do this for her.
“I’m in. They can’t prosecute her for this. There were mitigating circumstances.”
Angel’s sister shook her head. “You don’t know The Council. But I want to save my sister, so I’ll take you.” She reached for his hand and drew him closer. “Since Angel already turned you once, I just have to give you a quick kiss so you can come with me. Ready?”
He’d had a lot of practice pulling miracles out of a hat when he’d been on his own, and look how far he’d come. He wasn’t going to give up now.
“Hell yes, I’m ready. Let’s go.”
“THE COUNCIL WILL COME TO ORDER.”
Angel straightened her shoulders as Rod banged the whalebone gavel on the slate he’d recently had installed on the table. Some morbid part of her would say that he’d wanted it so his proclamations would toll like a death knell, but she was ignoring that part.
“If the Accused will approach The Council.”
Feeling like a condemned prisoner—which was what she was, actually—Angel swam forward. Protocol dictated that she approach in an upright fashion, but when one was fighting for one’s life, protocol could be damned.
“Angel Tritone?” Her brother looked incredibly im-posing behind that table. And also incredibly sad.
Another black mark on her conscience.
“Yes.” Proud of herself for betraying no emotion in her voice, Angel fluttered her flukes to be at eye level with him. With them. All of The Council. Rod, Valerie, Santos, Henri, and Thorsson. She hoped her two family members wouldn’t condemn her, but the other three… They’d been opposed to Rod’s plan from the beginning. She couldn’t see them helping her out.
But she only had to convince one to flip to have a majority. Just one.
And if she couldn’t… well, she wanted each one to look her in the eye before condemning her to death.
“You are charged with two counts of revealing your-self to Humans, one count of turning a Human, one count of disobeying Council orders, and one count of creating a natural disaster. How do you plead?”
This formality was a joke. They thought she’d fall in line.
Ha.
“I’m not pleading, Rod.”
“What?” Santos smacked his tail against one of the table supports. “What do you mean, you’re not plead-ing? This is a trial. You must make a plea.”
“Well I’m not. There were special circumstances, number one being that I didn’t get a fair shot at the Coalition director job due to prejudice and discrimina-tion on my brother’s part. If I’d been treated fairly, I wouldn’t be in this position.”
“That’s no guarantee you would have gotten the job, Angel.” Rod wiped a weary hand across his face. “Nor does that absolve you from what you did.”
Angel planted her hands on the table, a move so egregious that only a condemned Mer would try it. “True, but I shouldn’t have had the need to prove myself just for an interview, Rod. You can’t use your fear of losing the rest of us against me. If we fall in love with Humans, then we do. It’s a risk you’re going to have to take, no matter who you send on land with your Coalition. You can’t control people’s feelings.”
She backed off the table and crossed her arms. Still eye level with The Council, though. “So, no. I’m not pleading anything. If you want to hook me, you’re going to have to do it yourselves, but someone has to help
Humans see what they’re doing to the planet, and your way isn’t going to work.”
“I say we hook her.”
Well, she could kiss Santos’s help goodbye.
Henri nodded, and Thorsson was about to speak when Rod held up his hand. “Fine, Angel. Tell us your vision for the Coalition. Get it off your chest, then we’ll get back to the charges.”
That was a concession she hadn’t seen coming.
She brushed some hair off her forehead, then locked her hands behind her back.
“To start with, we need an Advisory Board—one that includes Humans.”
The collective gasp wasn’t unexpected. “You’ve made a start on the garbage cleanup, Rod, but there should be a Sewage Reclamation and Recycling Team.” She shared her idea about discarded tires as the foun-dation for small islands and reiterated the sad statistics everyone knew regarding sea creatures’ deaths by the ingested plastic particles that never broke down—so aptly named Mermaid’s tears by Humans themselves— as well as those infernal six-pack plastic rings that were equal-opportunity strangulation devices. Mammal, fish, fowl—those rings were deadly.
“I want to appoint an Alternate Energy Commission to examine other types of power. Eel and wave, for start-ers. Maybe something with migratory fish like salmon. Humans are doing things with solar and wind. We need to share our knowledge.
“We also need to start with the children, Rod. Not the adults as you’ve proposed. Adults don’t handle change well.” Current company included, but she figured it
wouldn’t be a good idea to antagonize them. “But we can begin now. That’s the beauty of this. Start with the children. Teach them. We’ve got how many representa-tives in those swim experiences and aquariums around the world? Let them take the initiative.
“Little by little, as those children grow to adulthood, their society’s consciousness will change. We’ll infil-trate instead of instigate. Subvert versus confront. Let them think they came up with the ideas. Then, when the thought of Mers is pervasive enough, accepted enough by those who’ve had actual encounters with us, then we implement your face-to-fin dialogue.”
Santos pressed his palms on the table and raised himself to full height. “This is exactly what we tried to tell you, High Councilman, when we first learned of your sister’s whereabouts. Mixing with Humans in their environment is not a good idea in any capacity—neither the occasional rogue Mer nor an organized Coalition. Humans aren’t ready for us, and freethinkers like the Accused will only stir up trouble. I say we put an end to this Coalition idea and focus on keeping the Humans out of the waters.”
“We aren’t letting sharks have representation, Santos,” Valerie said, the half-Human side of her obvi-ously taking offense.
“I agree with Santos.” Thorsson’s deep voice vibrated through the water. “This is why the Coalition is a danger to us, High Councilman. Dissention, disagreement… We have laws for a reason. They’ve governed us for the past two millennia and put to rights a system that had previously swum amok. The gods were not happy with Mer behavior and let us know in no uncertain terms. I
say we hook Angel as a violator of the laws and as a lesson to those who think differently.”
The debate carried over to the spectators. Angel tried to hear if the tide was running in her favor, but there were too many opinions and too many voices.
Until one rose above all the others.
“Or,” said that voice, “Angel could marry me.”