Chapter 7
Mira
AN IMAGE FLASHED BEFORE me, and I would’ve blamed it on the potion if it weren’t so unrealistic. In it, Mom sat in an unfamiliar house with a throw on her legs and a cup of coffee in her hands. And she was smiling. Not one of those sad smiles she used to squeeze out just for me, but a real one, the one full of joy and love and life.
Her agoraphobia was so bad she never left the house. Literally, never. Not even to go to the backyard. For her to be in a new place and looking happy about it? No way. For her to be happy in general was an impossibility.
She was never happy. I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’d seen her laugh without it sounding bitter.
Not that I blamed her. Dad was a piece of work, to put it mildly. He made everyone miserable as if his own happiness depended on it. Maybe it did.
“You look disturbed,” Troy pointed out. “Anything I can do to help?”
“No, it’s nothing.” Definitely wasn’t a premonition. Maybe they mixed up my order and gave me wishful thinking or something because no way could this be real. “What were you working on?”
Troy glanced at his backpack where he had hidden his laptop because he was a rational human being who used backpacks instead of those laptop bags. What kind of weird, perverted being would even use a laptop bag, anyway?
“Just the usual cheating husband thing.”
I narrowed my eyes on him. “You’re the cheating husband?”
He let out a laugh. “No, I’m a private investigator.”
“Oh, so you’re one of those people who knows everything about everyone, even the things they don’t know about themselves? Nice.” I looked around the coffee shop. Frank was sulking at the table by the window where I was supposed to meet him. With my own drink, thank you very much. “Give me all the dirt you have on Frank.”
Troy’s eyes remained on me, as if Frank didn’t even exist. “Wealthy family that gave him anything he wanted. Thinks he’s the center of the universe because no one ever informed him he wasn’t. Until you did, of course. Nicely done.”
“Why would he need to use a dating agency? You’d think he’d have no problem getting laid if he were loaded. Plenty of girls would overlook his personality.”
Troy nodded. “They do for a while, but a couple of months into the relationship, you can’t pay them enough to stay with him. Now, his parents want him to settle down or they’ll cut him off.”
“Wow. You’re like a tourist guide, but instead of knowing everything about the places in town, you know everything about the people. Which, come to think of it, makes you better than a regular guide. An old building wouldn’t attack me, but a person would.” And I said too much. Damn me and my big mouth.
The look in Troy's eyes changed. The twinkle he had before turned into the shine of a sharp diamond ready to cut through anything.
“Did you get the tower room?” he asked instead of oh, I don’t know, asking me why I thought people might want to attack me.
“I did. And I think I saw the dragon shifter.”
Troy pointed at the register with his chin. “If you get him that apple charlotte and drop in a casual conversation what flowers you like, he’ll put those flowers in your room, as long as they’re in bloom. But don’t make it too obvious. He wants to feel like it was his idea.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about, you’re better than a regular guide.”
The easy smile returned to his face. “Finish your coffee and let’s go have that tour.”
Really? “I didn’t mean to force you to give me a tour.”
He gave my hands an arched look. “I don’t see you holding a gun to my head.”
I gulped down the last of my latte and returned the cup to the counter. This place had the option of using ceramic cups, like civilized people, and as much as I appreciated paper to-go cups, I always used ceramic when there was a choice. It made me feel a little less like I was living in a truck.
As we walked out onto the Main street, I spotted two familiar faces. Myrtle and Agatha stood in front of Love Bite’s front door, chatting. The moment they spotted us, Agathe put out her hand and Myrtle slapped money on it.
“You’ve met Myrtle and Agatha. Those two and Cleo are the three crones that have been around forever. I don’t know anyone who can remember this town or Love Bites without them. They like to meddle a lot, and I guess they now bet on who’s going to be your blind date,” Troy said.
“They’re kinda scary,” I admitted.
Troy nodded, then in a low voice said, “I never heard of them actually hurting someone, but I suspect if they had, no one would even know it was them.”
I wanted to have that superpower. Dad would be long gone if I had, and so would his mobster buddies.
“I see you two finally found each other,” Myrtle said pleasantly as we got closer.
“Just showing Mira around. Don’t get your hopes up,” Troy answered.
“Mira?” Myrtle looked disturbed at the sound of my name.
“He’s not very bright, is he?” Agatha said. “Can’t see what’s right in front of him.”
“I can see, but I’m still not interested.” Troy’s words stung a little. Just a little.
So, what if he wasn’t interested in me? No big deal. I wasn’t sticking around in Whynot anyway.
Myrtle mumbled something about messes, but we walked past them with a polite farewell-don’t-kidnap-anymore-future-clients nod, and I no longer had to worry about that concerned look she was giving me.
“Well, that was weird,” I said because I was definitely not concerned at all. Not in the slightest. Not even a little bit.
Whatever Myrtle’s powers were, I had a feeling she knew my real name. As did the other two crones. So, when she was disturbed by Troy calling me by my fake name, it set off all sorts of alarms.
“I saw on the map that you have a river here. Do you have any secluded beaches?” I asked because a swim might help me clear my head—it always did. It might also cool Kitty down. She’s been giving a lot of cat in heat vibes ever since I spotted Troy at the coffee shop.
“There is one. It’s rocky, so not a lot of people go there when they can go to the sandy side,” Troy confirmed.
“Can you show me? I haven’t gotten my fluke wet in ages.”
Troy gave an exaggerated shudder. “Chronic dry fluke syndrome is the worst.”
That better not be a real thing.
I might be a mermaid, but most of what I knew about my species came from the internet. My parents never talked about it. Ever. I got my mer genes from Mom, but she was afraid of large bodies of water, something that never made sense to me.
Sure, I knew she was in some awful accident that gave her amnesia and a whole lot of phobias, but that was like a human suddenly being scared of the ground because they had a really bad fall. It just wouldn’t happen.
“Have you ever heard or merfolks being scared of water?” I asked.
Troy gave me a funny look. “No. Why?”
“I just know someone like that.” No reason to give any details. For all I knew, Mom was the only mer with that problem, so identifying myself as her daughter would give me away.
“I know a selkie who had her seal skin stolen. Her kidnapper told her she was afraid of the water, but she always knew she wasn’t,” Troy said and gave me that odd look again, like he was trying to puzzle me out.
I suppressed a shudder. Any time I heard about the things being done to selkies, I couldn’t help remembering the day I’d escaped a similar fate. If I were a selkie, and Dad had my skin, I would’ve been sold off and likely dead by now.
Life was simpler when I could leave anything and everything behind to escape. Having something physical like a seal skin would be awful.
Kitty huffed at the thought, clearly disagreeing with me. It was a rare occurrence for us not to be in agreement on literally everything, but my imaginary friend had a mind of her own.
Troy opened the passenger side door for me, that same troubled look still on his face as he let me get inside.
“Did she ever get her seal skin back?” I asked when we were both in.
“Yeah. Not without help, but she was able to come home.”
Home. The word was supposed to conjure up warm and fuzzy feelings, especially when home included a pastry shop with the smell of cupcakes and donuts all around. In reality, one of the reasons I loved apple pie was because we didn’t have it at the shop. Fuck home and everything that went with it. I never wanted to return home.
“That sounds terrible in every way. Being kidnapped and not even understanding what’s happening, you wouldn’t know you needed to save yourself, so the only way to get out is to have someone else help you.” Just the thought made me sick, and Kitty felt more than a little homicidal at my description.
Troy hummed but didn’t look away from the road for even a fraction of a second. Good driver. I could appreciate people not acting like complete idiots on the road. It kept them and everyone around them alive.
“The part where someone else has to save you really got to you, huh?” he asked.
“Well, yeah. You can’t rely on someone else to save you. What if they fail, or just don’t feel like getting out of bed that day?”
“You’re the princess in shining armor.” He smirked and nodded to himself, then mumbled, “My favorite kind of princess.”
“What do you mean, princess in shining armor?”
“You know, there are princesses who sit in their towers and wait for their prince in shining armor to come rescue them, and then there are princesses who put their own shining armor on and save themselves.”
Well, that was telling.
Driving a truck gave me a lot of time to listen to audio books, mostly fiction, so I had a good idea what it looked like when books were written for men. Too many had the main character play the hero, kick ass, and take all the ass he had rescued to bed. And then there were books where the guy would meet a kick ass heroine and fight with her by his side.
I preferred books with a badass heroine right after to remind myself there was still hope for mankind. After all, if books written for men with strong heroines were still being written, published, and even gained some popularity, then surely there were a lot of decent men out there. Troy just proved that theory right.
He was also not interested in me. At that sobering thought, Kitty went to sulk in the corner. We were back to being in agreement at least on that front.