Chapter 2
Troy
I STARED AT YET ANOTHER report. It had sounded so promising—a twenty-two-year-old selkie spotted on the West coast. Her seal skin had been stolen, and after getting it back, she still had a hard time remembering who she was—a common problem for half-selkies. Even the description of her beauty mark matched. But no, she wasn’t the girl I had been searching for.
How many half-selkies were there in the world? Couldn’t be that many.
Six years and I still had nothing on my best friend’s missing daughter. Not that I should give up on her. Hell, Dylan had found his wife after she had been missing for seventeen years, and his wife was a full-blown selkie. Their memories usually returned the moment they got their seal skins back, unlike half-selkies.
I got up from my corner table to order another cup of coffee. Maybe this time, I should get a magical boost to help me think because caffeine alone wasn’t cutting it.
“You look like you could use some pixie dust in your drink,” the barista said.
“That bad, huh?” Yeah, my mood was in the trash pile, but pixie dust would only be a temporary fix. What I needed was to find the girl. A woman, really. Kiora had only been sixteen when she went missing, but she was twenty-two now.
“You look tense,” the barista answered, then smiled coyly and added, “but that broody look suits you.”
The barista was pretty enough. She had that whole bubbly blond thing going for her, which was usually my type. She also looked like she was in her late teens, and that wasn’t my type at all.
“I’ll take a caramel latte with a clarity potion and a dash of luck,” I said.
“Coming right up,” she answered.
As I waited for my order, I scrolled through my phone. The ad for Love Bites popped up, saying, “Looking for someone special?”
Yes, I was, but not like that. That would be even creepier than hooking up with a teenage barista. First, there was the age gap. Second, Dylan was like a brother to me.
Although Love Bites had helped Dylan find his missing wife...
No, that was out of the question. I was not going to look for Dylan’s daughter, a girl half my age, on a dating app.
“Here’s your latte,” the barista said and handed me a napkin along with my drink. Of course, it had her number on it.
I went back to my table and opened my laptop. Now, what hadn’t I checked yet?
I took the first sip of coffee, letting the magic do its thing. It settled in my stomach, then started to spread.
Where hadn’t I looked yet? Or hadn’t looked recently?
Eirlys, Dylan’s wife, was a selkie, a common target for anyone who wanted to kidnap a supernatural girl. Naturally, selkies were my first priority, but there were no guarantees the selkie half of Kiora’s genes even manifested, especially considering Eirlys delivered away from any large bodies of water. There were never any guarantees a child with only one selkie parent would get the sealskin, and being away from water could further decrease those chances.
Dylan was a merman. They didn’t get napped as often, thanks to the mermaid’s vicious nature, but it happened. She had only been sixteen when she disappeared. Young mers tended to flee rather than fight.
I closed my eyes, remembering all those terrified faces. Men, women, children. Some of them had been so young. Kiora hadn’t been among them. She must’ve run. I really fucking hoped she had run, because if she hadn’t, then the only reason we hadn’t found her on that boat would be that she had fought and been killed.
I downed half the cup and looked at my computer again. Kiora had run. Teenage mers did that. I wouldn’t accept any other option. So, where would she run?
Not home. That had been the first place we had checked. Where then?
No, that was the wrong question. What would she run from, other than the mob?
From her nature. Had she been a human, she never would’ve been targeted. So, I needed to start looking for humans matching her description.
Unfortunately for me, that wasn’t a new idea, and I already knew what that would look like. There were way too many human sixteen-year-olds going missing and too many of them popping up. Sometimes, they popped up alive and well. Other times...
My phone lit up with a pop-up ad. How they managed to do that was beyond me, but those ads needed to quit.
Oh, look at that, another one from Love Bites. Well, that explained how they pushed their ad through, even though I wasn’t using my phone. Technomages.
This time, the ad read, “Your journey ends here. Find The One through Love Bites.”
The whole your journey ends here sounded ominous. Like they might match me with a witch specializing in poisons.
As soon as I turned off the ad, another one popped up. “Love Bites—We bring people together.”
Talk about an aggressive advertising campaign. Couldn’t they get a hint that I wasn’t looking for my one true love? I had more important things to do.
The next ad didn’t even wait for me to close the previous one. “No more games. Find your match. Right now!”
Yeah, that was getting even more aggressive.
“Don’t wait. Love demands you.”
Seriously? Did some technomage have it out for me or did their ad campaign break?
“Look, we can’t do all the work for you. Fill out the moon-blasted questionnaire now.”
Ah, crap, that wasn’t a technomage having it out for me—it was the crones and judging by the energy wafting from this last ad, it had to be Agatha.
I scanned the coffee shop for any dangers in the form of a mean old lady. She wasn’t here, not that it meant anything. No one knew what exactly the crones were, but rumor had it they might be fates, and if that were the case, I could neither hide from them nor risk pissing them off.
So, fine, I’d get on the love bites dating train just to keep the crones happy.
Why did it have to be Agatha? If I had to catch the attention of any of the three crones, I’d rather it was sweet old Cleo.
I finished my coffee, hoping the good luck potion in it would help me not end up with a crazed vampire, like that one girl had ways back. The asshole actually attacked her when she told him she wasn’t interested. Not that I couldn’t hold my own against a vampire, but I’d rather not have to.
After uploading my photo to the app, I started on the questionnaire. Most of it was pretty normal, and the app did a great job eliminating questions about hoofs and horns after I said I was in the market for mermaids.
And then I got to the question about her age. I definitely didn’t want to date anyone under thirty. What would I, a forty-three-year-old merman have in common with a woman half my age? Nothing. So, I chose the thirty and over option. The app beeped like I gave it the wrong answer and changed it to twenty and over. I changed it back. It beeped even louder.
The bear shifter at the table to my left gave me a death glare, like it was my fault the app was glitching.
Fine, I could leave it alone for now and change the age when I got home. I would just do everything else right now to keep Agatha off my back.
I served in the navy, protected the water folk, and faced mobsters. I had managed all that just fine, but this one old lady made me feel like a little kid looking under the coral reef for bukovak monsters.
Finally, I got to the last question. My favorite breakfast food. Well, if we were going for favorites, then nothing could beat blini with caviar and smoked salmon. How long had it been since I had it, anyway? I should invest in some proper seafood.
The app informed me I was almost done. The only thing left was giving it a pheromone sample. It gave me a few options, and I immediately rejected the idea of licking the screen. That was disgusting, especially since I knew for a fact the app still tasted like oranges, and everyone at the coffee shop would know I was on Love Bites if they saw me licking the screen.
Careful not to draw attention to myself, I pulled a hair off my arm and placed it on the screen. It sucked the follicle in, then informed me that my matches will be given to me shortly.
Great. Instead of doing what I was supposed to do, like oh, I don’t know, looking for my best friend’s missing daughter, I was on a dating app.
A few minutes later, the app gave me my first set of matches. At the very top was the person who matched almost nothing I wrote in the questionnaire. She was over thirty, I could give her that, but Myrtle, the horny crone, was not a mermaid. She got points for trying, though.
The next option, Mira White, was twenty-five, which should be an automatic no from me, except that hair. Shell-shucking seaweed, her hair looked almost exactly like the little mermaid’s, except it was blond with just a hint of red where the sun hit it. The way it was styled, though, was spot on.
Nope. She was too young for me. Young enough to be my daughter. Those big green eyes, though...
Her blue and black plaid shirt made me feel a little less creepy. It concealed her curves, so at least I wasn’t drooling over her tits. There was absolutely no way I could go out with her. Even Agatha couldn’t make me do it.
The third match was my next-door neighbor who couldn’t shut up about how a grown man shouldn’t be watching cartoons, especially cartoons that grossly misrepresented his own species. Another hard no from me.
The list went on. Living in a small town meant I already knew almost everyone the app matched me with. I’ve even dated some of them. The only two new faces were that little-mermaid lookalike and a mermaid named Selena from the town of Because.
For a moment there, I contemplated rejecting Selena as well, but Agatha would probably take offense if I didn’t pick at least one person. So, fine, I agreed to this one potential match and even made an appointment with the agency so they could arrange our date.