Chapter 15: The Tank

I didn't breathe until the station boat's engine had faded around the point.

The Red Mother sank without a ripple.

I pulled off my headphones with shaking hands.

Margie was already coming down the rock with the flashlight off.

"I saw her," she said. "Beside his boat. Tell me she was selling cookies."

"She was selling the pod."

I played it back for her on the laptop, crouched in the lee of the ledge.

There was more after the part I'd heard.

"Why should I believe you?" Barrows said on the recording.

"I'll give you one at dawn," the Red Mother answered. "So you know I can. The black one."

"What do I do with him?"

"Keep him in a box," she said. "Until the tide. Then he's mine again."

Margie went pale under her sunburn.

"The black one," she said.

I was already at the edge of the water.

I didn't have a light.

I didn't have a radio.

I knelt on the lowest ledge, put my mouth close to the water, and sang his name.

Three notes, badly.

I sang it again.

The water in front of me rose and broke, and Jet came up with his hair streaming, breathing hard.

"You called," he said, amazed. "You called me with it."

"She sold you," I said. "She sold all of you."

I played it for him.

He listened with his face close to the laptop, on his elbows in the shallows.

When the Red Mother said "the black one," he didn't even flinch.

"She's angry," he said. "I wouldn't sing her name on the tide. So she's giving me away until I will."

"Then go. Get out of the cove. Get past the islands."

"The pod doesn't know. Minnow doesn't know."

"Jet."

"If I don't tell them, they'll come on the tide and swim into his net singing." He took my face in both his wet hands. "I'll be back by dark."

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Taught a Siren to Court... Then Became His Mate from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.