Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
The boat stopped, and Angie slid her flippers over her booties and pulled her dive hood over her head. She stood and waddled to the dive exit point, and with a giant stride, splashed into the ocean.
The icy waters pricked and stung her exposed cheeks, and her teeth chattered.
Her ears and sinuses filled with pressure after descending two feet, and she equalized.
She certainly missed how graceful, quick, and smooth she felt with the mer magic. As she kicked her feet, her body bobbed up and down with her inhales and exhales.
Angie didn’t have the first clue where the other divers were. If they were looking for mer, they’d likely be going deep, and wearing silent, bubble-free rebreathers. She kept moving toward the direction of the palace.
Without the mer magic, she wouldn’t be able to spot the mer queendom, but she would see the mer coming in and out of there.
Crippling darkness surrounded her, and she turned on her flashlight to help her see. Red illumination shone before her. It wouldn’t startle nearby deep-sea creatures, who couldn’t see red colors.
Twenty more kicks led her to where the palace should be. Only a plain, empty seafloor lay before her, and shining her flashlight into the area revealed small groups of mer swimming and floating around, some armed, some not.
Angie kicked her way to the tall stone formation on the other side, keeping watch, using her hands and heels to grab onto the stones’ uneven edges, looking for Kaden, or even Adrielle or Cyrus.
Ahead of her, across the seafloor, four white lights appeared.
The divers were here, but Angie couldn’t pinpoint where exactly they were.
The sentinels made a dash for the lights. Spears flew from ahead of her and from her right side, spearing both sentinels.
More sentinels followed, all making for the bright white lights the divers waved around to distract them. The speargun group began firing, and Angie’s stomach dropped further and further toward her feet with each shot.
She kept moving, crawling across the rocks, looking for a maroon or white tail. Going into the palace area would be too dangerous.
Where was Kaden where she actually needed to talk to him?
Angie had made it to the next rock over, where, if she remembered correctly, the princes’ quarters were. She froze.
From the darkness, Mer-King Aqilus emerged, flanked by two sentinels. They moved toward the white lights in front of them.
No. Angie couldn’t let him go down. She had to distract him, get him to turn around and go back inside the palace.
So she did the first thing she could think of.
Shut off her red flashlight and pulled out her white-light one, which she kept stored in her BCD.
Fumbling through her dive gloves to turn it to the brightest setting, she crawled sideways on the rock until she could get a closer view of his front side, and flashed the light directly into his eyes.
He turned and blinked, and she directed the light toward the palace.
To her relief, he followed it.
Her plan worked. She turned her flashlight off, stuffing it back into her vest pocket. Thank her ancestors.
Until two spears sailed through the water, moving in slow motion, in front of her eyes.
They struck Aqilus through his side and back. His hands flew to where the spearguns wedged into his skin for a split second, before falling limp.
Angie sucked in a sharp breath. Helium and oxygen from her regulator blasted to the back of her throat, and she gagged.
More sentinels emerged, going for the divers with the lights. In the midst of the ensuing madness, two of the divers sneaked their way in and grabbed the mer-king’s corpse, returning to the surface with their prize, leaving her behind.
She caught a glimpse of Kaden and Cyrus and the mer-queen, right before they disappeared again into the darkness. Seeing Kaden was sweet relief, knowing he hadn’t been the captured merman being studied.
Her breaths came out short and shallow, and she forced herself to slow down, or else she would burn through her air.
After her breathing slowed, Angie moved toward the surface. The boat which brought her here was gone. Open sea crowded her, waves churning and punching her face.
A Coast Guard ship sailed toward her, and Angie threw her arms up, waving them in the S.O.S. signal.
It didn’t stop, and brushed past.
Damn it!
Then she remembered what Beau and Emily had said: that the Coast Guard was prioritizing larger ports’ problems.
Is that where this ship was going? Responding to a call from a bigger, clearly more important port?
Cursing in her head, Angie removed her rebreather and replaced it with her snorkel mouthpiece.
She unstrapped the neon pink inflatable safety sausage from her BCD, inflating it and letting it hang next to her.
She fiddled with her audible signaling device, her last resort in case the loud noise drew the mer’s attention.
The dive boat appeared from the fog and sailed toward her. Her eyes shone as she locked in on the approaching vessel, tension seeping from her body. Fortunately, this wasn’t the boat carrying Aqilus’ speared body. She didn’t know if she could handle seeing him until they reached land.
When they docked, she unburdened herself from her weighted BCD and halfway depleted Heliox tank.
Angie fast-walked to the dressing room, and finding her locker, changed out of the wetsuit, dried herself and donned her work outfit.
She bunched her wet hair up into a hat to prevent suspicion that she’d been in the water in case Nick or Bàba saw her, recoiling at the chill piercing her scalp when she piled her hair and secured it with a waterproof, phone cord hair tie.
She returned to see a group of divers stuffing Mer-King Aqilus’ limp body into a fishing net like he was nothing more than their daily catch. Back when they had a daily catch.
The divers, dressed in their wetsuits and booties and holding their fins, congratulated each other, some shaking with glee, musing over his assumed status because of the pearls and undersea treasures he wore.
Their spearguns lay in a row, pointed downward near the small pavilion where they geared up.
One diver looked over to them with an appraising nod.
“The camo outfits were key, man,” a male diver said, lifting his arm to admire the patterns on his wetsuit. “Never saw us coming.”
“They’ll probably catch on soon. We’ll have to change the colors and patterns for next time,” a female diver chimed in.
Angie strained her neck to get a better glimpse of the female diver, whose back was still turned to her. She knew that voice. Celia? She took part in killing Kaden’s father?
“By the way, good job with getting those two bodyguards. Beat me to it.” She puckered her lips. “I had a clean shot, too.”
“You’ll get them next time.” A different female diver patted her shoulder.
“Yup,” Celia said. “I’ll make Mom proud. She deserved better than to die by their hands.”
Angie’s stomach churned and felt like it was folding into itself.
She took another step back so they wouldn’t spot her eavesdropping, but stayed close enough to hear them.
Angie wanted to see Aqilus, but wasn’t sure she could bear the sight of his speared, lifeless body.
Instead, she trained her gaze on Celia, her sandy hair tied into a wet ponytail, and tanned skin glistening under the sunlight.
There was a sadness in Celia’s hazel eyes that belied her proud smile, and Angie’s heart dropped for her.
As it did in the photos on Eva’s phone, the sunlight created a bright flash off Celia’s nose ring, and her wide smile was identical to the picture.
On instinct, Angie moved to comfort her, but the divers surrounded her to secure the net.
They walked away, still talking amongst themselves.
Angie shuffled her feet on the concrete. Celia approached, carrying two armfuls of empty spearguns. The young woman looked like she was struggling, so Angie held out a hand. “Need help?”
Celia flashed her a grateful smile and shared the spearguns with her.
“How are you doing?” The volume of Angie’s voice dropped a notch.
Celia’s smile vanished as they pushed open the doors to the storehouse. “It’s difficult. Some days, I’m okay. Others, not so much. But I’ll make sure Mom doesn’t die for nothing.”
“I know. It took me a long time to process that my mom wasn’t going to be there when I returned from college.
” Angie held back a sniffle, remembering the first time Māma wasn’t in the kitchen when she woke in the morning or in the yard on the rare days the weather was warm enough.
Her absence had been stifling and overwhelming, and the Māma-shaped hole in Angie’s heart had expanded.
“I know you understand,” Celia replied. They dropped off the spearguns, and she took her leave after saying goodbye and thanking Angie again.
“You know.” Celia stopped short from opening the storehouse door. “Mom talked about having you over for dinner. You could still come, if you want.” Her voice grew thick with emotion. “I mean, so we can talk some more. And the house might not feel so empty. Now that I’m back alone there.”
Her last sentence hit Angie like a hard slap. On instinct, she took a step closer, but Celia hung her head and left, the door clicking as it shut.
Angie wet her lips, gaze falling on empty buckets labeled with fish species names and folded fish cleaning tables lined against the walls, unused for over a month.
They were too polished. Too clean. Where the storehouse once carried a light fishy stench, now a stale smell permeated the space.
The heavy hollowness in her chest expanded.