22. Chapter 22
Igroaned. Bronwyn would know where Kira was, and that took precedence, but I didn’t want to leave my mum.
“Go, my darling.” Mum squeezed my hand.
“I don’t want to.”
“Neither do I.” Her smile was tight. “Go on.”
It took all my strength, but I let go of Mum’s hand and joined Ben and Adrian as they hurried toward the parlour door.
“Oh, thank goodness!” Bronwyn cried as we ran toward her. She fell against me, still gasping for breath.
Mud stains streaked her dress, and tears zig-zagged up it from the hem.
“Bronwyn, where’s Kira?” I asked, winding an arm around her shoulders to help her stand.
“Pirates. We fell out of the portal with four of them and they held us hostage,” Bronwyn said. “Kira distracted them to let me get away.”
“So you know where the portal is?” Adrian asked.
“It’s on the beach along the south of the island. That’s where they’re keeping Kira.”
The idea of the pirates going crazy on Dusk and doing things like attacking members of the public and keeping people hostage gave me a sinking feeling so deep that I felt nauseous. We had agreed to free them when we had finished using the ship to travel. No matter what time we unleashed them on, they would pose a serious threat to anyone they encountered.
“Right. Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “Adrian, you go with Bronwyn to collect the pirate we left on the beach. Then you get the three of them to the portal.”
“And what will you two do?” Adrian asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Make out. Maybe even a little foreplay.”
“Ew!” Adrian grimaced and took a large step backward. “Do you have to be so gross?”
“Yeah, when you’re being an idiot. Ben and I will go to the portal and rescue Kira. We’ll all meet there afterwards, got it?”
“Will you be able to handle three of them?” Ben asked as Bronwyn staggered over to Adrian and leaned on him instead.
Adrian blinked at Bronwyn, but didn’t move as she continued to use him as a leaning post. “Yeah, I mean, I’ve got potions, but won’t you need some?”
“Nope.” Even if the beaches were full, the pirates wouldn’t have chosen somewhere busy to keep Kira. I could count on a little seclusion to use my brand new siren song power. “We’ll see you there.”
I linked my arm through Ben’s and steered him onto the pavement. We had to get to Kira and quickly. Who knew what those pirates had planned?
But as we bustled past the window, I looked in to glimpse my mum. Still in the booth watching her ice cream melt, she had her head in her hands, shaking with gentle sobs.
***
My thoughts dominated my consciousness once we were in the back of the taxi Ben hailed to get us back down to Celestia beach in a hurry. I had just met my mother. The woman I had made up conversations in my head with for as long as I could remember. The woman who Dad had put on a pedestal my entire life, yet I had only had other people’s memories to attribute to. For the first time in my life, I had a memory of my mum.
“You look like you’ve...” Ben trailed off as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
“Seen a ghost?” I asked, the back of the taxi blurring as my eyes glazed over.
I technically had.
Ben cleared his throat. “Wrong turn of phrase.”
“Or the right one.”
Ben leaned me in his direction, and I fell into his arms, squeezing him to me so tightly that he made a little “humph” sound as the air left his lungs.
“Why didn’t I ask her good questions?” I wondered aloud. “Like...are you proud of me? No, wait, how would she even know to be proud of me for anything? She doesn’t know anything about me. Or... maybe...?”
Instead, I had just asked her what I already knew; why she didn’t want to tell Dad about being a mermaid. But at least I had confirmed I was correct.
“Of course she’s proud of you.” Ben stroked my cheek and leaned his face against my forehead. “Nobody needs long to figure out you’re an amazing person.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“I was your worst enemy for years, and I fell for you like that.” He snapped his fingers.
A smile played at the corner of my lips. He had never used that kind of vocabulary before.
“Fell for me?” I asked.
“Oh, you know...” Ben cleared his throat again. “...in a sexy way. It’s not like I have feelings for you or anything.”
“Right.” I raised my head to press a kiss to his cheek. “Me too.”
Despite his lack of feelings for me and vice versa, Ben pulled me onto his lap and held me against his chest, and I let him.
“I’m proud of you,” he murmured against my forehead. “You took out that pirate like a pro.”
“You’re the one who held two of them off for so long before me and Adrian got there,” I said. “What happened with all that, anyway?”
“The portal booted me into town all by myself, so I wandered around trying to find you. I went to the park in case Ade thought to meet me there, and that’s when I saw two of our unwelcome hitch-hikers trying to mug your mum.” Ben exhaled with a whooshing noise. “When I looked at her for the first time, I knew it was her. And then I saw she was pregnant with you, so... gods, I went feral on them.”
I nuzzled into his neck. “For a guy who doesn’t have feelings for me, that’s an awfully brave thing to do.”
“As if I would ever let anything happen to you. Unborn baby or fully grown pain in the ass.”
“There it is. For a moment there, I thought you were getting soppy on me.”
“I’d need way more privacy for that,” Ben muttered, jutting his chin at the taxi driver, who kept peering into the rear-view mirror at us.
Nosey parker.
In the comfort of Ben’s embrace, I tried to reorganise my thoughts. We needed to focus on finding Kira. Of course she had done something heroic to save Bronwyn. She couldn’t live without drama. But if the pirates had put her in harm’s way, I had to prepare myself to give her any care she needed and kick those pirates’ sorry asses.
I would see my mum later. She had told me so.
When we arrived at the car park next to Celestia beach, Ben shoved a five-pound note over the taxi driver’s shoulder and we got out. I didn’t remember seeing anyone on the beach when Adrian and I swam out of the ocean, but since the sun had passed its peak, tourists had flocked to it. Colourful parasols and beach towels littered the sand, and kids ran around with swimming bands on.
“They must be further up the beach,” I said. “If they’re smart, they’ll have kept Kira out of sight.”
“Although,” Ben said as we jogged into the sand, “they haven’t exactly shown us they’re all that clever so far.”
“That might be true, but we don’t want to underestimate them.” Not when Kira’s life was on the line. “Now I think about it, Adrian and I couldn’t have landed too far from Kira and Bronwyn.”
“Where did you guys get spat out?”
“In the ocean, just off this beach.” If only we had stuck around to look for them on the beach before heading into Dawn. We would have been on an equal footing with the pirates.
Ben skidded on the sand as we ran along an incline. “Any idea what we’re going to do when we find them?”
“Yes, actually. And it’ll make them realise they messed with the wrong mermaid.”
Ben whistled. “You’ve started owning this mermaid thing then, huh?”
I shot him a mischievous look. “Well, it might be the end of Dusk. Why not?”
We hurried up the beach, where the tourists thinned out until we walked alone in the shadow of some of the tallest cliffs on the island.
“Hey, look at that.” Ben pointed to something shiny sticking out of the sand. “What is it?”
We picked up the pace, my steps dragging with the pull of the sand. The closer we got, the more the shiny object looked like a cutlass. We were on the right track.
“Halt!” a voice boomed around the cliffs, and one I unfortunately recognised.
Eyepatch strode from behind a pile of boulders that had tumbled off the cliff side long ago, and his three crewmates followed him. Between them, tied up in a fraying rope, Kira stumbled to keep up.