“Nice to see you lighten up, Betsy. You’ve been pretty grim lately. Well, grim for you.”
“Well, weird shit is happening. More so than usual, even. Perfect example: we’re hanging out on a dock waiting for a mermaid to swim up and say howdy.”
Sinclair glanced at me. “Undersea Folk, my queen.”
“Sometimes she’s got legs; sometimes she’s half fish.” At all times, she’s a grump. “Mermaid.”
“You can’t use that word!” Marc faux snapped. “That’s their word!”
“Oh my God.”
Hours. Hours we’d been waiting on a dock in the chill when I could be running Hell or doing something to ruin Laura’s life or sitting for another disastrous TV interview or reading chapter eight of Smoothie Nation: “All Things Citrus.”
It’s been eleven minutes, my own.
“Why are you talking like everyone doesn’t carry clocks?” I took out my phone and waved it at him.
“Oh, just another of my idiosyncrasies. But you need fret no longer, as Dr. Bimm approaches.”
“No.”
“Beg pardon?”
“That’s not Fred Bimm.” I pointed. “That is an angry coconut that has been steadily bobbing closer because of the current and not under its own power. And the reason it’s a coconut and not our out-of-town guest is because there’s no way in hell someone is swimming in the Mississippi River in March. There’s also no way she’s going to dog-paddle right up to this dock and either flop out of the Big Muddy on her own like a fish deciding to evolve or wait for us to haul her out like the world’s biggest smallmouth bass.”
“Now, there’s a mental image,” Marc said, equal parts disapproving and impressed. “A couple of them.”
“Indeed.”
“Although”—I nudged the bulging bag at my feet—“that would explain why the text she sent to let us know she’d arrived consisted of ‘bring towels.’”
“Unreal,” Marc breathed, watching the coconut. Then: “My God. I’m seeing it and I don’t believe it. That is definitely a person and she is definitely swimming this way. And she doesn’t appear to be in any sort of stress. Also she appears to be naked, because why the heck not?”
And a shameless exhibitionist on top of everything else! Mermaids: nature’s hussies.
She can hardly be expected to swim with a tail while fully clothed, Sinclair pointed out, which was just annoying.
I take issue with that. I absolutely can expect her to take a cab from the airport and not swim UP THE DAMNED RIVER LIKE AN UTTER WEIRDO.
“Where d’you think she went in?” Marc speculated, never taking his gaze from the angry coconut moving closer. “What, she took a cab from the airport to the Highway 5 bridge, stripped, and just dove in? ‘Here’s the fare, keep the change, see ya.’”
Actually, yes. I can see her doing exactly that. Fred wasn’t much for social conventions. Or long cab rides.
The coconut raised a pale arm and waved, so yeah, probably not a coconut, probably Fredrika Bimm waving at us and swimming closer. I’d seen her in action before, and I didn’t think I’d ever get used to how quickly her kind could move through water. I mean, you knew intellectually they were like sharks, but seeing it was always startling. And, to be honest, a little frightening.
Then she was at the dock reaching up, and Sinclair courteously bent, took her hand, and hauled her out of the river in one swift, easy motion. She had a waterproof bag on a string slung around her neck and was otherwise totally naked. Not even a ponytail holder in her hair.
“Welcome to St. Paul, Dr. Bimm.” Once both her feet were on the dock, Sinclair politely turned his back. Which was dumb. Not only had we both seen her naked before, Bimm didn’t give a shit about stuff like that. Because, again: nature’s exhibitionists.
“Thanks, Eric. And it’s Fred.” She accepted one of our giant towels and started drying off. And because she was a huge show-off, she wasn’t even shivering. Totally pretending it wasn’t cold just to spite me.
“Oh my God you’re real I can’t believe it your tail just disappeared retracted whatever and how are you not deep in the throes of hypothermia?” Marc rushed out in one breath. “Please don’t be offended I’m not staring because I’m a perv actually I’m gay so you don’t have to worry about me creeping on you my curiosity is strictly professional I used to be a doctor and how did you do that? Any of that? How? Dr. Bimm? Hi?”
“I don’t care if you look.” But she cracked a smile, and who could blame her? Fascinated Marc was fun Marc. “And I’m biologically engineered to withstand extremes of temperature as well as water pressure, so. That’s why I’m not dead. Or tired. Or frozen.”
“It is so nice to meet you! Can you stay until Christmas?”
Don’t even joke about that! My thought was so strong and horrified, Sinclair had to fake a cough to hide his chuckle.
Fred Bimm had unlooped the bag from around her neck and was rooting through it while smirking, because she was big on multitasking. “Hear that, Betsy? Your nice friend would like me to stay with you for nine months. Doesn’t that sound grand?”
I made a sound. Some sound. It wasn’t a word, unless “Ggrrbbl” meant something. Meanwhile Fred had towel-dried her hair and wrapped a towel around her head, spa-style, then used the other towel to rub herself dry.
The hair on her head was deepest, darkest auburn (from a box, I knew), and her pubic hair (which—ahem—could have used a trim) was green. Apparently Fred’s natural hair color was green. Or blue, depending on whether you were in love with her or not. I’m not making this up, by the way.* That’s her deal: hair color dictated by love, or the absence of same.
While I pondered the riddle of her pubes, Fred stepped into black hipster underwear, pulled on white athletic socks and a pair of battered jeans, and shrugged into a New England Aquarium sweatshirt. No bra, BTW. And no wonder—she didn’t need it. Neither did I, but only because I’d died with perky boobs; the twins would be thirty forever. Fred had tried to explain about gravity and water and pressure and centers of gravity, blah-blah . . . bottom line, mermaids had naturally perky boobs, because it wasn’t enough to be super strong and fast and blessed with unfathomable stamina, I guess; they also had to hog all the good boobs.
She finished by stepping into and tying sneakers that looked like they’d rolled off the assembly line the day Kennedy was shot.
“Ggrrbbl.” I’d forgotten about her horrible taste in clothes. The first time I saw her she was wearing flip-flops. And she denied it was punishment for losing a bet, which, let’s be honest, had to be a lie.
“Thanks for offering to come.”
“Thanks for taking me up on it.” Fully clothed save for a heavy jacket—which she clearly didn’t need—she balled up her now-empty bag and stuck it in her pocket. I saw she’d also brought a small battered purse, probably to hold cash and ID. “I wasn’t sure you would. We got off to a bit of a rocky start.”
“Still holding a grudge, huh?” I found out the hard way that vampire mojo didn’t hold mermaids very long. Fred had expressed her severe displeasure by hitting me hard enough to knock me out of my Alice + Olivia Devon floral pumps, then throwing me across the room, and that had been just the warm-up. What can I say? She got my attention. “How many times should I apologize?”
“The last time was the magic number,” she conceded. “I’m here, aren’t I? And I’ll bet the Wyndhams preceded me by . . . I’m going to guess twenty-four hours.”
Have I mentioned Fred’s a bright cookie? I didn’t even know she knew the Wyndhams existed—I sure hadn’t told her—and how could she guess they were in town? She was a little like Sherlock . . . stuff nobody else noticed was like a road flare to her.
“I saw you on the cover of Time and I know this is irrelevant but you’re much prettier in person.” This from Marc, who was still fangirling all over the place. My Go
d, man, where is your dignity? Or was I just jealous? He used to fangirl all over me. I had pretended it was annoying and oh my God, he was still burbling away. “They had a picture of your mom, too, in the article—you don’t look much like her so I guess you take after your dad? He was full-blooded USF, right? I’m sorry, I’m babbling.” Babbling, burbling. Tomato, toe-mah-toe.
He sure was. But it was good that he said what he did, because it reminded me that Fred Bimm was a busy woman. On top of her genius marine biologist duties, whatever those were, and giving talks at aquariums all over the world, and talking all things Undersea Folk on the news (CNN loved Fred), she was the liaison between the Undersea Folk and, er, all of humanity, apparently. Because as Marc had reminded me, her mom was human, and her late father had been all merman. Fred was half ’n’ half, though she preferred the term—
“I prefer the term hybrid.”
Bottom line: she had stuff to get done. But she’d come to town anyway. That counted for a lot with me. Especially since if our positions were reversed, I don’t know that I would have reached out and offered help. Not until I knew her a bit better.
Which made me wonder: what did Fred need from me? Probably nothing right now. So: what did Fred think she might need from me in the future?
No idea.
I whined about a lot of things in general, and (today) Dr. Bimm in particular, but if I have to be honest, I will always cut that bitch some slack because a slave trader used his ill-gotten gains to build a meeting hall in 1743, which resulted in the best food court ever: the Nathanial Hall Marketplace.*
That place. I can’t even tell you. So many food choices. It smelled like your grandma’s kitchen had a baby with Christmas. And they had not one, not two, but three smoothie bars. Three. Monkey Bar. Cocobeet. The Juicery. The best trinity ever.
The marketplace alone was worth the trip, which was a good thing since we’d almost died. The whole thing turned out to be super dangerous, not least because that was how I found out Fred Bimm didn’t like hippies. Also, a wheelchair-bound bad guy tried to kill a bunch of people, but that was after Fred tried to kill me. Fun weekend!*
“We have a car waiting, if you would come with us? Your room has been made ready if you’d like to”—a pause so teeny I was probably the only one who caught it—“freshen up.” Translation: wash some of the mud and crud from your leisurely spring swim through the Mississippi out of your hair and other, um, places.
Fred’s smirk just got wider. “That bad, huh?”
“Not really,” I replied, because Sinclair was too polite. “I told you when we met, you guys don’t smell bad to vampires. Just different. But you don’t have to shower. If you don’t mind smelling like mud, we don’t.”
“Well, then, lead on.” She fell into step behind Sinclair as he climbed the bank leading to the side road. Because—yay!—we weren’t taking the tunnel home. I’d decided a tunnel-free day was a good day.
Dr. Bimm probably wasn’t out to get us, but that didn’t mean we should make it easy for her if she—if any merjerks—were.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
Exactly the same. The house Jennifer had grown up in, and killed herself in, was unchanged. Even the Christmas lights were still there (her mother kept them up year-round).
The place had been painted every five or six years, she knew, or it would have looked a lot worse: white two-story house, green shutters and trim. Built in 1940, and when Jennifer lived there she and her mom had the run of the downstairs and rented out the upstairs, which had a separate kitchen, bathroom, and entrance.
The large yard—their house was on a corner lot—was still pretty dead; it’d be another month before everything was green. She didn’t recognize the car in the driveway, which was still gravel. And why was there a car in the driveway? It was Thursday afternoon. Why was Mom . . . ?
Stupid. She was retired, of course. Mom would be in her midsixties now.
Stop staring. Get moving.
She got moving: walked up the sidewalk, opened the porch door, and was instantly soothed by the sight of lawn chairs and a small table stacked for winter at the far end of the porch. The same chest freezer was still right by the door, no doubt stuffed with venison and trout and beef and pork and pudding pops and Klondike bars. They still made Klondike bars, right? Yes. They’d been her mom’s favorite when she’d been a kid; they both loved them. Klondike bars were eternal. She didn’t even have to look. She knew they’d be in there. No need to pause to check. She could keep going right into the house, see if the door off the porch still opened into the living room.
She wasn’t stalling. She was . . . reassuring herself. Not that there was any need for reassurance. Because they still made Klondike bars. Sure they did.
She popped open the freezer door and gasped. S’Mores Klondike Bars! Cookie Dough Swirl Klondike Bars! Oreo Klondike Bars! Rocky Road! Double Chocolate! Reese’s! Oh, what a glorious world the future was!
She closed the freezer—gently; her mom hated it when Jennifer would drop the lid with a bang that could be heard all through the house—then opened the front door and walked in, and cursed herself pretty much immediately.
Should have knocked. Stop acting like you belong here. Then: at least Cannon Falls is still a town where people don’t lock their doors 24/7. Rediscovering that was likely to be the best part of parole. And the many, many varieties of Klondike bars.
She heard steps in the kitchen and a familiar voice. A little rougher, but undoubtedly her mother. “Hello? Whoever you are, I have a ferocious guard dog I keep next to a loaded shotgun and they’re both here in the kitchen with me, so if you’re up to no good, prepare to embrace your violent death.”
She made a sound that was new to her, sort of a sob turned into a laugh, or vice versa. Mom’s habits hadn’t changed. Jennifer hurried through the living room as her mother came through the kitchen and they caught sight of each other at the same time.
She felt dizzy and realized she’d been holding her breath. I forgot what being short of breath felt like! Breathe, moron. The one thing that would make all of this worse is if you come back from the dead, then pass out at her feet. “Mom? I know this is going to—”
“Oh my God!”
“—seem incredible, like a dream—”
“Jennifer Bear!”
“—but I promise it’s—” Jennifer Bear, God, how could she have forgotten? Don’t cry. Don’t cry. “—really happening.”
Her mother took a step, stumbled, pitched to the floor. Jennifer lunged and missed, so they both collapsed in a heap together on the faded kitchen tile. She could feel her mother’s hands on her, touching her hair, her face.
“You’re real! You’re warm and—and here! You—oh Lord, I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it. This is really happening, this is actually taking place in our house right now and you’re back, how did you come back? Where have you been, oh my God, forgive me, forgive me, please, please say you forgive me.”
“What?” She jerked back, grabbed her mother’s wrists. “No, Mom, you’ve got it wrong, I’m the one who—”
“You couldn’t tell me. You were in the worst trouble of your life and you couldn’t come to me.” Her mom had put on about ten pounds but smelled the same: Crabtree & Evelyn’s Summer Hill perfume, and Cheer laundry detergent. “I did something, said something, to make you think death was the better option. I’m so sorry, Bear. Please, whatever it was, however I screwed you up, I swear it wasn’t out of malice, I—”
“No.” Jennifer climbed to her feet, helped her mother off the floor, marched her into the living room, gently pushed her into the easy chair. Hmm, that was new. The old one had been black. This one was navy blue. And her mom preferred slacks to skirts these days.
She knelt before her, took the older woman’s hands. Oh. Her hands. They got older, too. She looked up into small, dear, dark eyes o
verflowing with tears. “I was selfish, and cowardly. I let them punish Lars for what I did to Tammy. I didn’t say a word when they sent him to Stillwater. I couldn’t bear to tell you, but that was my failing, not yours. It was entirely on me and not even a little bit on you. Please forgive me.”
Her mother’s grip tightened. “You didn’t leave a note.”
“No.” The coup de grace of her cowardly act: she knew she wouldn’t be around to face the consequences of her actions and still couldn’t admit what she’d done, even in a suicide note. “No, too chickenshit, even at the end.”
“I knew. Not before. After. There was only one reason you would have . . . hurt yourself like that. Killed yourself.” Her mother’s grip hurt, felt like fleshy clamps grinding the frail bones of her fingers together. Jennifer didn’t say a word. “I spent the next few years blaming myself for not seeing—”
“No, Mom. You did nothing wrong. Nothing.”
“I—I can’t believe you’re here.”
Tell me about it. She shrugged and managed a smile.
“Are you a vampire?”
Her smile dropped away. “What? No.” Was her mother slipping into shock? “What in the world made you ask that?”
“They’re real, I guess. Vampires. It’s been all over the news the last few weeks. When I saw you standing there, looking exactly the way you looked on that last day, that was my first thought.”
“Well, I knew vampires were real, but no, I’m not one.” Was this a good time to mention that the queen of the vampires was running Hell, and Jennifer was on a first-name basis with her? No, her mother had never been impressed with name-dropping.
“Then where have you been all these years?”
“In Hell,” she replied without thinking, and her mom’s grip, which had been loosening, tightened, clamped down on hers again. “Youch!”
“Hell’s real?”
“Well, yes. You sound surprised. You’re the one who made me go to Sunday school,” she teased. “Sunday school, Easter, and Christmas: holiday Christians, that was our th— Oh. Oh, don’t. Mom. Don’t cry.”