Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
Iwatched Richie saunter away slowly, calling out greetings to my team in an overly casual way. My heart was beating too quickly. I couldn’t slow it down.
Cress leaned in close. I could tell it was her; her energy was less terrifying than Donovan’s. “I do not understand,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper. “Are you not offended? He insulted your honor. Why did you not run him through with your blade?”
“I don't have a blade.” The words came out in a mumble.
“I see. We will rectify that immediately. But… Chosen… You didn’t even strike his face with your hand. Please do not tell me that you allow men to speak to you like that? To say such horrible things?”
“He’s wrong.” I swallowed. “I’m not a murderer.” My lips felt numb. Damn it, I let him get to me. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
“That’s even worse. Why not?” Cress hissed, outraged. “You should have. You should have taken that weasel man’s life. You are lucky that Donovan has insisted that I obey your command to stay hidden, or I would have carved a cross into that man’s face myself.”
Her words gave me an unexpectedly warm feeling. My hallucinations were very supportive. “Thanks, Cress. That’s really lovely of you.”
Richie finally disappeared from my line of sight, heading around to the other side of the floor, probably to schmooze with one of the other Client Experience and Support Representative teams. There were five teams in total, but out of all the team leaders, only Richie and I were in the running to take Yvette’s job as department manager when she left to join the executive team.
I took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. “Unfortunately, we can’t kill Richie Curran, Cress.”
“Nonsense. It would take me less than three seconds with a quick thrust to his carotid. If you wanted him to suffer first, I’d hit his kidneys.
It would still be silent,” she added. “Fast, and very painful, but silent. Death by kidney strike is so excruciating, he’d be in too much pain to even scream. ”
“Thanks for the offer, but no. Murder is illegal in this realm. Even attempted murder is frowned upon.”
I knew that better than anyone.
“That is ridiculous,” she snorted. “How do you resolve anything in this realm? How do you rid yourselves of your enemies?”
“I’ll come up with something. He’s given me until the end of the day to withdraw my application for the promotion.
” I chewed on my lip for a second. “Maybe I should go and throw myself on the mercy of the Human Resources ogres now. I won’t get the promotion, but if I confess, at least I won’t get fired.
Maybe…” I added gloomily. Bart was right; I didn’t exactly lie in my interview.
I didn’t have a criminal record. Not guilty by reason of insanity was still not guilty.
The back of my neck tingled. “You must not take any other quests today, Chosen,” Donovan growled in my ear.
“We do not need to see the ogres. I believe the ogre stone is still deep in the center of their realm, and it is very well guarded. No, we must leave soon to try to pursue the mermaid’s siren stone. Make haste with your arrangements.”
“Donovan,” I groaned. “I can’t leave work. I’ve got a team to manage. And just to clarify, the women in HR aren’t actual ogres. They just act like ogres.”
“Regardless. We must go soon.” His voice lowered. “My brother’s mind works in the same way as mine. If he cannot get to the scribe stone, he will be searching for a Mer to trick. He will need one to take him to their realm. We must beat him to it.”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but I don’t know any mermaids, Donovan.” My fingers tapped my keyboard listlessly, trying to concoct a reply to a customer complaint that was more diplomatic than go fuck yourself.
“Of course you do. You must know some mer. The mer infest the mortal realm like ants on a sugar lump,” he said. “Their own realm is too small to hold them all, and their lust for praise and admiration consumes them. They cannot keep themselves away from humans.”
“Well, I don’t,” I murmured, tapping out a reply to the complaint email.
I’m sorry my team’s service did not reach your expectations today.
We’re always looking at ways to improve, and I would like to thank you for your valuable feedback.
If you call to speak with any of my team again, you can rest assured we will not end the call before a resolution is reached.
Even if you scream the most disgusting, vile abuse at my team like you did last time, please ask to be transferred to the manager, and I will be happy to call you a cunt and hang up on you myself.
“I honestly can’t think of any.” I deleted the last line of my email, signed off, and moved to the next one. “I know for a fact that I haven't seen any half-fish people around lately.”
He scoffed. “They have magic, Chosen. They wear charmed necklaces to change their tails into legs so they can walk among humans, and always return to their own home before night falls.”
“Why before nightfall?”
“Their charms are solar-powered.”
“Ah. Well, if they look like us, how would I know who is a mermaid?”
He let out an exasperated grunt. “Molinere should have taught you how to expand your vision so you can see the magic in front of you.”
“Well, he didn’t,” I murmured, tapping out another gracious reply to a customer who was outraged that he couldn’t get insurance coverage without actually paying for it. “Molinere got ratfaced drunk and disappeared with my dad.”
Donovan moved closer. I couldn’t help it; I shivered. “You will be able to sense them,” he murmured. “You are the One of Every Blood; you have a trace of Mer heritage. You will know your own kin. Think well, Chosen.” His lips were so close to my ear. Too close.
I slumped over my keyboard. Suddenly, I wondered why the hell I was answering my emails when I was probably going to get fired before the end of the day, anyway. The only thing in my future was me, hitting the streets, looking for a minimum wage job that wouldn’t ask too many questions.
I might as well have some fun before I get fired. “Fine,” I sighed. “I’ll think… er… well, as you so poetically put it.” I reached for a marker and a scrap piece of paper and wrote mermaid on it. Underneath that, I wrote only here during the daytime.
“What else? You said they’re vain, right?”
“Yes. Physical beauty is very important to them.”
I wrote vain on the paper. “You said they love to be admired. Do you mean for their beauty, or something else? Am I looking for a model, or an actress, or—”
Cress snorted. “They sing, of course, Chosen. The Mer love to beguile with their voices.”
A weird tingle raised the hair on the back of my neck—a strange sense of the familiar. I tapped the page and wrote down singers. “And they have to wear a necklace?”
“Yes. It will not be a small trinket. Transformation magic requires a large vessel, so the pendant will be quite conspicuous.”
I scribbled chunky statement jewelry underneath vain, and pursed my lips. I could already think of the perfect person who matched this description.
It figured. “Of course.” I should have already seen where this was going. “Hyacinth,” I muttered. “That bitch is just about as insane as I am.” She’d even referred to herself as a siren on stage a handful of times.
This was crazy.
Cress bristled. “A water flower?”
“Hyacinth is not a flower. She’s my nemesis,” I said.
There was a pause. “You will have to elaborate on that further, Chosen.”
“As part of my treatment, I was encouraged to find a creative outlet to express myself, to try and channel the overwhelming…” I hesitated and sighed heavily.
“You know what, I’m not going to go into it.
To cut a long story short, I found that I enjoyed singing, especially to a little crowd.
My therapist Bronwyn said that it was understandable—I always found it cathartic to bring my audience on an emotional journey through song. ”
“Obviously,” Cress muttered. “You have mer blood.”
“You crave to be understood,” Donovan corrected her. “Go on, Chosen.”
I shifted in my chair uncomfortably. It’s not shameful to admit when you need help, I told myself firmly. “When I started here at Base Budget Insurance, I knew I needed an emotional outlet, just in case I got overwhelmed. I found a K-bar in a basement only a block away.”
“K bar?”
“Karaoke bar,” I explained. “It’s like… a tavern.
An alehouse, where you can drink, but you can also get up on stage and sing a song.
There’s usually a half-dozen or so people like me down there, acting out their rock-star fantasies.
It’s actually really sad,” I said, a huff of laughter escaping me.
“Why is it sad?” Cress sounded confused. “I have accompanied many a lute player with a lusty tune in an alehouse. It is a wildly enjoyable way to release tension after battle.”
I suppressed a smile. “That’s a good point, Cress.
Anyway, I started going there on my lunch breaks.
Hyacinth is always there. I don’t even think she has a job.
She’s a stuck-up bitch, she hogs the microphone, and she acts like she’s the hottest thing to ever grace a stage.
The others seem to like her more than I do. ”
“Well, if she is a mermaid, then she will not be employed,” Donovan said. “And her magic will weave through her song, so she would appear to mortals as a beautiful creature. You would be immune to her siren magic, as you carry mer blood.”
The musty-smelling drunks in Karaoke Cove did seem entranced when she sang.
And she didn’t have a very good voice. I was no Mariah Carey, but I thought I had a better voice than she did, yet Hyacinth always got a higher score on the applause-o-meter than I did.
Maybe she was a mermaid. It would explain a lot.
Reality smacked me in the back of the head. No. This was insane. I was delusional.
“We will go now,” Donovan put his hand on my shoulder again, and all my resolve disappeared immediately. “We must find this Hyacinth.”
What the hell. I might as well make time for my creative outlet. “Fine. I guess we’re heading into the Karaoke Cove for my lunch break.”
“Good. Make haste, woman. Gather your things.”