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I hesitated. I hadn’t planned on telling anyone except Kira and Allison what had happened that night to keep the peace between the Arrowoods and the Everharts. Or at least to prevent all-out war.
“Your secret is safe with me,” Janeira said.
That I could believe. For once, I actually felt grateful for the division between the merfolk and the land dwellers.
“You know about our family feud with the Everharts?” I asked.
“Everyone does.”
“Adrian Everhart cornered me after work the other day and I fell off a cliff trying to get away from him. When I woke up, I was… like that.”
I still couldn’t quite say the word ‘mermaid’ out loud.
Janeira squeezed my elbow. “That silly feud is going to get you all into trouble one of these days.”
Silly? That was the understatement of the century.
“Your mother must have been a mermaid,” Janeira asked. “Your father’s family are witches, no?”
“All of them. But if she was a mermaid, nobody in my family knew, not even my dad.”
“Your mother did have quite a lot of insight into our ways.” Janeira stared out across the sea, longing in her eyes.
How long did it take a mermaid on land to wish for the sea? Not long at all if the past few days were anything to go by.
“But she told you she was one?” I asked.
I already knew the answer before Janeira looked at me with sad eyes.
“No, Maeve. She never breathed a word.”
I rested my chin on my knees. So much for that.
“Why would she hide it?” I asked. “Being a mermaid isn’t something to be ashamed of, not on Dusk at least.”
“Merfolk only retreat to land when they are running from something,” Janeira said. “Perhaps she was… I had heard stories.”
“What stories?” I sat bolt upright.
Even if she had only whispers, I needed to hear them. I needed something to help me put this puzzle together.
“Years ago. Decades, in fact. I had heard of a mermaid coven out in the far reaches of Dusk’s waters who had one of their young mermaids disappear.” Janeira cast her gaze across the water again. “Around the same time your mother arrived on Dusk.”
Itensed up, my chin digging into my knees. If the timing worked out, maybe it was Mum who had disappeared from that mermaid coven.
But why? Had she gotten into trouble and separated from them involuntarily? No. If that was the case, she would have returned to them after she recovered.
Were they the reason she got hurt? Had she spent her life trying to avoid them by never going back into the water?
Of course, it might not have been her at all.
“Did this coven say what she looked like?” I asked.
“Actually, there was very little divulged about her,” Janeira said. “The coven’s efforts to find her seemed half-hearted.”
“Maybe I should speak with them.”
If Janeira wasn’t sure, this other merfolk coven would surely have more information.
