My Online Alien Merfolk is Real novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Notice

Brent calls in her father's loan and shows her he leaked her chats. Sorcha faces him down while Velun hides under the floor. A drone hovers over the inlet.

"Stay under," I whispered. "Please. Whatever you hear."

Velun looked at me for one second, his eyes gold in the dark.

Then he slid beneath the surface with barely a ripple, and the pool went black and still.

I pulled the boathouse door shut behind me and walked up the path in my father's boots.

Brent stood on my porch in a quarter-zip fleece with the Pacific Reach Aquarium logo on the chest.

He had a coffee in one hand and a folder in the other.

He had the face of a man who thinks he's already won.

"Morning," he said. "You look rough."

"It's five a.m."

"I know. I couldn't sleep either. Guilty conscience."

He smiled, the same smile that had once talked me into dinner, a cat, and a year of my life.

"You posted my chats," I said.

"I didn't post anything."

"Somebody did, and you had my password."

"You gave me your password, Sorcha. Eighteen months ago. You never changed it."

"We broke up a year ago."

"And you never changed it," he said gently. "That's not my fault. That's a cry for help."

My nails dug into my palms.

He held up the folder.

"I came to be kind. I'd like you to hear this from a friend."

"We aren't friends."

"The loan."

He opened the folder.

"Thirty-eight thousand dollars. I lent it to you when your father was in hospice, and I was glad to."

"But the aquarium is restructuring, and I'm calling it in."

My ears began to ring.

"You can't do that. You said there was no deadline."

"There's a deadline on page two. You signed it."

"I signed it at a hospice. My father had four days left."

"I know," Brent said, in his sorry voice. "That's why I never brought it up. Until now."

He put the folder in my hand.

The paper was thick and cold.

"Fourteen days," he said.

"You can pay me in full, or you can sell me the inlet and the boathouse."

"We'll call it even, and a fresh start for you."

"The inlet is my father's."

"The inlet is a mortgage and a falling-down shed. The aquarium has plans, Sorcha. A seal pavilion. A boardwalk. Your dad's name on a plaque."

"You want my house for a gift shop."

"I want you to be taken care of."

His eyes went over my shoulder, to the kitchen window.

"Have you been sleeping? The town's worried, after the funeral, after those chats."

"People are saying you talk to yourself at night."

I stared at him.

He had just said it, in his soft voice, on my own porch.

He was building the story of me before I had a chance to tell mine.

"Who's people?" I said.

"Everyone, Sorcha. It's a small town."

"You posted it with a caption."

"I didn't write the caption."

"Then tell me who did."

He didn't answer, and that was the answer.

Behind me, very faintly, I heard the tidal pool slosh under the boathouse floor.

Brent's head turned.

"What's that?"

"The tide."

"Sounded big."

"It's an inlet. The tide's big."

He took a step off the porch toward the boathouse.

My body moved before I decided anything.

I stepped in front of him and put my flat palm on his fleece, right on the aquarium's silver dolphin.

"Don't," I said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't walk onto my father's property without a warrant, or a key, or an invitation. You don't have any of those."

He laughed, and then he looked down at my hand, and the laugh went out of him.

"You've gotten brave," he said.

"I've been brave for about forty-five seconds. Please leave before it wears off."

His jaw worked.

For one second I saw the real face behind the fleece, the one I had loved for three years before I learned its habits.

Then it smoothed over again.

"Fourteen days," he said, and his voice was like a pat on the head. "I'll bring the paperwork."

He walked back to his truck.

He took his time about it, the way he always did when he wanted me to watch him leave.

I didn't breathe until the taillights turned onto the county road.

My legs shook.

I went around the side of the cottage, down the path, and shoved the boathouse door open.

"He's gone," I said.

The pool stayed black.

"Velun?"

Then the surface broke, quiet as a thought.

He rose up to his chest in the water, and his face was very still.

"I heard everything," he said.

"Okay."

"The man who took your password."

"My ex."

"He wants to take the water where I sleep."

"Not if I can help it."

Velun's amber eyes dropped to my hand, still trembling around the folder.

"You put your hand on him," he said.

"I did."

"I would have come out of the water for that."

"Please don't. You'd have been seen."

"I know. I stayed. It was the hardest thing I've done on land."

"You were in the water."

"It was still on land." He almost smiled. "Close enough."

I sat down on the edge of the pool and laughed, a little wildly, with my head against my knees.

"Fourteen days," I said. "I have fourteen days and thirty-eight thousand dollars I don't have."

"And a merman."

"Yes. And a merman."

"I don't think he's the type to forgive that."

"He's not."

Velun tilted his head toward the roof.

"Sorcha," he said, in a voice gone sharp. "There is something over the inlet."

I heard it then, a thin mechanical whine.

I ran to the boathouse doorway and looked up.

A white drone hovered over the water, its little black eye turning slowly toward the pool.

Its side was stamped with a silver dolphin.

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