Claimed by the Mer-Shifter Prince I Made Cry novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Gus Knows

I opened the door a crack, and Gus Dolan pushed it open the rest of the way with his shoulder.

He was sixty-eight and built like a fire hydrant, and he'd been my father's best friend for forty years.

He had a paper sack in one hand and an unlit pipe in his teeth.

"The whole slip smells like your dad's dead fish," he said. "I saw the door open and thought you'd finally lost your mind."

"Gus, you can't."

"I can't what?"

He walked past me, took three steps into the boathouse and stopped.

The tarp was off.

Soren lay in the tub with his hair floating around him, his silver-blue tail curled against the iron.

His gray eyes were on Gus, and they were very still.

I waited for the scream.

Gus took the pipe out of his mouth, looked at the tail for a good ten seconds, and said, "Huh."

"Gus."

"He's smaller than I figured."

"What do you mean, smaller than you figured?"

"The one Walt pulled up in the nineties was bigger."

I sat down on the crate.

"The one my father what?"

"Pulled up. In the net. Off the Gate." Gus put his sack on the workbench, very calmly. "A woman, that time. Walt cut the net and let her go. She left something on the dock for him, and he never told me what. He kept this tub filled for a week afterward, in case she came back."

My hands were shaking.

"You never told me that."

"You were nine. Then you were twenty. Then the sea took him, and you wouldn't hear the word." He looked at me, and for a second he was just a tired old man. "I figured you knew there was something out there. Everyone's father down at the slip knew."

"I did not know."

"Well." He turned to the tub and took off his cap. "Sir. Gus Dolan. I knew your kind's name for this place once, but I forget it."

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