Forbidden Waters (The Moonlight Mermaid Book 3)
1. Chapter 1
Islammed on the sticky brakes with both feet, and the rust bucket I drove screeched to a halt just inches from the rear bumper of the car in front. My breathing increased rapidly, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. Thankfully, the Volkswagen in front drove off, its owner tapping out the beat to his music on the car door from out the window, oblivious to the near collision.
I muttered expletives under my breath. Borrowing a neighbour’s car was supposed to be straightforward, but I hadn’t counted on our nearest neighbour, half a mile down the road, who lived in a multi-million dollar house, to have this death trap in his garage.
Driving any of my family’s cars was out of the question at that point. Almost everyone on the island knew what our cars looked like, and they were collectively so angry at us, we risked confrontation if anyone recognised us as Arrowoods. The police had too much on their plates ensuring the rations stayed guarded before distribution to really police anymore, and generally answered to disturbances hours after the fact. I was just lucky we had done our neighbour enough favours that he owed us one.
I followed the offending car along the queue to the drive through. Collecting the ration boxes apportioned by Dusk’s police force had turned into a sombre event. Ever since a bereaved phoenix had sealed us all on our magical island, Dusk, food supplies had dwindled. Confined to our cars, we lined up once a week to collect whatever we could have.
The fae and dryad covens on the island worked night and day to grow enough to keep everyone fed, using their magic to grow new crops much faster than they would have naturally. But every week the ration boxes shrank.
No pedestrians walked the streets, despite it being the middle of summer. The bereaved phoenix had unleashed a sickness on us a little over a month ago, days after it had created a veritable biodome around Dusk, preventing anyone from leaving the island. The sickness ravaged the population in waves, and at last count, half of the island had come down with it.
Hospital staff had quickly learned the illness wasn’t contagious and appeared to pick people at random. The worst part was, although it took weeks for people to die, nobody survived. No spell or potion could touch it, and given that the cause of the phoenix’s grief was the loss of its egg, we were fast running out of ideas to figure out how to undo the curse.
On top of the joint curse we shared with the Everhart family, the Arrowoods were turning into a veritable curse sandwich.
When I reached the drive-through window, I rolled down the car window and flashed the card that the town hall had issued us on the first day the local government had introduced rationing. A police officer wearing a surgical mask and latex gloves handed me three boxes through the window. I got a good feel of them by the third box. Yup, they were smaller. Dad was going to have a good moan about that.
I rolled up the window and drove back out onto the streets of Dawn, the island’s capital city. My heart sank lower and lower as I passed street upon street of closed businesses. To think, just a few weeks ago I had been going out with my friends to cafes and restaurants and spending carefree time out on the town.
It hadn’t felt carefree, but looking back, I had no idea how good we had it.
A crack made me flinch, and when I jerked my head around, my hood fell down. A kid, no older than ten, raised his hand back and launched a handful of mud at the car. It splatted against the window, next to the first splat they had thrown. Well, at least they had learned not to throw eggs this time.
The car’s engine whined as I pressed the accelerator, and it pootled me away down the street with my meagre rations juddering on the back seat.
I parked the car outside the garage of the Arrowood family home, which was three storeys of red brick and ivy and old, iron-framed windows that had seen every heartbreak that had happened within its walls.
Even with the centuries-long curse that had taken the life of a family member for every baby born, the Arrowoods had never sunk so low.
I grimaced at the muddy car as I grabbed the ration boxes. That would need a serious clean before I returned it.
The phoenix’s curses had only come about because of a spell my cousin Isadora had cast, which had bound our enemies together in death: the entire Everhart family. Out of desperation, since learning she was pregnant with twins, she had allowed the father of her children to manipulate her into casting the spell. But Frederick Windsor had only wanted the spell cast so he could kill all the Everharts and be free from our family curse.
The fallout from what they had done had decimated the island, and we were months away from starvation. But that was only if the phoenix’s magical illness didn’t kill us all first.
I took the boxes into the kitchen and dining room space, expecting it to be empty. The entire family had taken to isolating ourselves from each other since the police had arrested Isadora. Whether out of shame or despair, I didn’t know or care. I didn’t have time for either.
But my aunt Sandra paced around the gold inset dining table, chatting on the phone. I waved to her in greeting, and she nodded back.
The white blouse she wore had a red stain on it. We hadn’t had baked beans or ketchup since lunch a few days ago. In the last few weeks, her self-care had slipped more than any of ours.
I put the groceries away and was just breaking up the boxes to put into the recycling when Sandra hung up.
She put her mobile phone on the table and placed her hands on the back of a chair, her head bowed.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
The ease between us had vanished since Sandra had learned her daughter had left me to die in an underwater cave a few weeks ago. In fact, this was the first time we had managed as long as five minutes in the same room together since.
“Just catching up at the hospital to see if... well... if they need me back,” Sandra said.
Since her daughter’s arrest, the hospital had suspended her without pay due to the turmoil her presence created among incoming patients. That they were prepared to surrender a medical professional while half the island was sick spoke volumes.
“Any luck?” I asked.
“They’d rather I kept my distance.”
I cracked a box in half with force. It didn’t seem fair that Sandra had to pay such a heavy price after all that had happened. The hospital was her safe space, her escape after her husband died when Isadora was born. Somewhere she could forget about the curse and do some good in the world.
But ever since her suspension, Sandra had to face not only the imprisonment of her daughter but our collective impending doom with nothing to distract her.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It is what it is.” Sandra straightened up. “I’ve spoken to Izzy, too.”
“Oh?” I turned my back on her to shove a box into the recycling bin.
After everything Isadora had done to put us all in this position, she could rot in silence for all I cared.
“She’s asked that you visit her,” Sandra said.
I snorted and grabbed another box off the counter. “Sorry, Sandra, but that’s not happening.”
Isadora had cursed my boyfriend’s family, destroyed a phoenix egg, tried to kill me, Ben and one of my best friends, Allison. Then allowed the father of her children to blow up the Everhart home, nearly killing Ben. What made her think I would consider visiting her for even a moment?
“Izzy says you’re keeping secrets from us,” Sandra said. “Big secrets.”
I froze and turned around with the box in my hands. Sandra stared at me with a furrowed brow that darkened her eyes in a way I had never seen before.
“Is that what she said?” I asked.
Isadora had learned when she cast her dastardly spell that I was secretly a mermaid, plus that I was seeing Ben Everhart.
I had kept the first to protect my dad from the fact that my late mother had neglected to tell him she was a mermaid and the second to keep all hell from breaking loose between the Arrowoods and the Everharts.
Sandra released her grip on the chair and folded her arms. “She also said she will reveal them to me if you don’t see her.”