Chapter 3

Almost as if Nina sensed Esther’s discourse, her fear, she craned her neck in Esther’s direction and gave her that death-ray stare. Esther clamped her mouth shut as fast as she’d opened it—because that woman was terrifying.

And then she went about self-soothing.

If she looked logically at what had happened to her, if she gave realistic credence to her new tail and fins, how could she discount werewolves and vampires?

Yet, how was she going to live with the idea this was all real? Were there more of them? How could she tell? Were there more of her? Was she really a mermaid? Forever?

She didn’t have time to think much more on the notion as Nina grabbed hold of her tail and pulled her from the SUV, tucking her back under her arm like she was no heavier than Wanda’s purse.

The wind howled as the ocean water she so loved to look at from her wood-framed windows rushed to the shore. It was so much cooler here, especially now that fall was on the way. The taste of the salt in the air was different, the tang in her nose sharper somehow.

In the distance, Mooky, her half wire-haired terrier, half Doberman, barked at the unfamiliar voices and noise from behind the front door.

“Mook! Knock it off, bud!” she yelled as Wanda jammed her key in the door and popped it open, running her hand over the wall to find the light switch.

She heard Mook’s nails on the bleached hardwood floors as he ran for the kitchen, where he’d try to make himself as small as he could under the kitchen’s dark gray quartz peninsula until she reassured him it was safe, but she only caught a glimpse of Marsha, curled up on her favorite chair, fast asleep on a red-checked throw.

As the room became enveloped in the soft lighting from the recessed bulbs in the ceiling she’d personally chosen when she’d remodeled, Esther almost sighed in relief.

She loved her little cottage on the beach, with its comfortable seating and bits of red and turquoise accents for color, her reclaimed dark wood coffee table, and a big fireplace done in white brick with a rustic wood mantle.

It made her happy, swell with pride that she’d picked everything out, and done a lot of the renovations herself.

But then she shivered. Now she had to find an explanation for these women as to how this had happened, and sound like a complete moron when she revealed she had no idea how she’d gone from limbs to fins.

“Ohhhh,” Wanda breathed, her eyes scanning the living room, open to the small dining room and kitchen. “It’s beautiful, Esther! How warm and inviting. I love, love, love the fireplace and that bleached-wood clock over it. I’d kill to have that over my mantle. Beautiful!”

That’s when she stiffened in Nina’s arms and attempted to crane her neck upward. Were they scoping out her house so they could dump her and steal all her worldly possessions?

Wanda bent down and looked her in the eye with a hint of laughter on her face. “We’re not here to steal your things, Esther. I promise. I’m just commenting on how lovely it is because I’m a decorator at heart, too. There isn’t a Home Goods store I haven’t tapped every corner of. Please relax. Oh, and I love the pops of red and turquoise in the pillows, and the watercolor painting. Beautiful.”

“Hey! DIY Diva, she’s no lightweight,” Nina complained, hoisting her higher against her waist. “Where do you want her?”

“Put her on the couch, Nina. It looks like she’ll fit,” Marty ordered, pointing to her beige sectional with fluffy red and turquoise pillows in various textures and sizes.

As Nina unceremoniously dumped her in the midst of her throw pillows and cushions, she brushed her hands together. “So, what’s next? Do we blow-dry her?”

“Blow-dry me?” Esther squealed, trying to sit up.

“Yeah, dude. If we dry you out, you’ll get your legs back. Like Ariel. Didn’t you ever see The Little Mermaid?”

Oh my God! She hadn’t even thought about that. “My blow-dryer! It’s under the sink in the bathroom. Let’s try!”

Marty ran a hand through her hair and frowned. “You don’t think that’ll really work, do you? It seems a little farfetched and fairytale-ish.”

Nina threw up her hands and said, “Well, Splash was the same damn way. Remember Daryl Hannah in a tub? Fuck if I know, but what else you got, Blondie?”

Wanda crossed the room and went down the short hall to her master bathroom. Esther heard another vague “Ooooh,” probably stemming from her new white-and-gray-marble bathroom, before she reappeared with the blow-dryer and handed it to Nina, who plugged it in and began running it back and forth over her tail.

Marty sat on the chest of drawers Esther used as a coffee table, moving her candleholders and a pot of succulents out of the way, and said, “So explain how this happened, Esther? Just tell me about the incident—who, if anyone, was present, and we’ll go from there, okay? Why were you at a Mommy and Me class anyway if you don’t have children?”

Speaking of children. Damn, she’d forgotten about Mooky and Marsha. “Mook? C’mere, buddy. It’s okay. C’mon, pooky!” she called, watching him poke his Doberman-like head with the crazy mix of wiry hair from beneath the peninsula, but he hesitated.

Nina handed the blow-dryer to Wanda and sat on her haunches to peer under the peninsula, patting her thigh, her tone soft and sweetly pitched for someone so crusty. “Who’s so handsome?” she asked, as Mooky cocked his head. “I’m Nina, Mooky. Cool to meet you. Come say hello, dude.” She patted her thigh once more and waited.

Mook considered, much in the way he always did when he met someone new, and then he was in Nina’s lap, licking her face like he’d always known her, his excited whimpers drawing Marsha’s interest. Nina scratched the unusually long length of Mooky’s neck and whispered encouraging words that made Marsha curious enough to hop off her favorite chair and saunter toward them with a cautious stride.

Nina took one look into her green, marble-like eyes, and like magic, Esther’s caramel and white cat jumped into this strange woman’s lap and purred, rubbing her face against her arm.

As Nina gathered them into her lap, petting and cooing, and Wanda diligently blow-dried her tail, which wasn’t going away at all, Marty asked again, “Esther? We need to know how this happened? I really need you to talk to me. Some things you might not find terribly concerning could actually be of great concern. So, let’s do this, please?”

That was the million-dollar question. How had this happened? One minute, she’d been in the pool with Maurizio, her sexy Italian Mommy and Me swim instructor. The next, everyone had cleared the pool and she was lingering on the steps, marveling over her bravery for actually attending the class and getting in the water all the way up to her waist—when wham!

She had a tail with fins. And it was beautiful; so magnificent, she almost couldn’t believe it was attached to her. When she was done accepting the reality that this tail wasn’t budging, she’d panicked, afraid to call out…afraid to move…afraid.

And she relayed as much to Marty, who’d taken over the blow-dryer while Wanda went off to the kitchen in search of tea bags.

“I swear, I was just sitting on the steps of the pool in the shallow end, being one with the water and all that jazz Maurizio taught us today, and kaboom! I almost drowned trying to get out of the pool. Between my Rapunzel-like hair and my tail, I gained what feels like fifty pounds. Thank God for upper-arm workouts, because I hauled myself out of the pool and managed to pull myself to the diving board before I realized I had no idea what to do. Who to call. Like, who do you call when you have a tail? Sam and Dean? Mulder and Scully?”

Marty worried her lower lip as she paused, pinching the bridge of her nose before she asked, “Did anything unusual happen in the pool? Did you feel anything strange? See anything strange?”

Esther shook her head, pushing her flowing locks away from her face as more of that panic swelled in her gut again. “No! Nothing. Though, I admit, I was terrified to get in the pool—really terrified. I can’t…well, I can’t swim. I know, that sounds ridiculous at my age, but I can’t. I took the class at the urging of my friend, who’s good friends with the instructor. I did it because I want to go on a cruise with some of my girlfriends this winter, and I didn’t want to be odd man out again. It just happened it was the only class they could fit me into. I figured, who better to take swim class with than a bunch of kids, right? At least I could keep up.”

“You live on the beach and you can’t swim?” Wanda asked, moving around her kitchen and opening cabinet doors.

Esther cringed at the question, even though she heard no condemnation in Wanda’s tone. But the reasons behind her reaction were still as raw as they’d always been. Twisting a lock of her hair, she began to fiddle with it, wondering how she’d ever get it into a ponytail and still be able to hold her head up. “I know it sounds silly, but I love the water. I grew up around it. I love looking at it, hearing it at night as it rocks me to sleep. I love the smell of salt in the air, and I love a good storm. I even love to build sandcastles. In fact, I won a competition here two years ago during the summer for one of my sand castles. I’m just afraid to get into it.”

But she’d done it tonight. Okay, she’d only gone to her waist, but she’d done it, and she’d like to think her grandfather, Salvador, would be proud she’d at least partially conquered her fear—a fear he’d often soothed as he’d rocked her to sleep after a nightmare of that horrible night.

Wanda rifled through her antique-white kitchen cabinets and found some tea bags, then set about filling her teakettle. “So, you can’t remember anything unusual happening before you suddenly had a tail? You’re sure?”

Now she felt like the accused. Why would she lie about something like that? Suddenly, it was all too much—too overwhelming. She struggled to sit up straight, pushing the pillows on the couch out of the way. She decided to divert the spotlight off her, something she did often with couples in mediation.

“Here’s a question for you guys—who are you? And why do you care what happens to me? Why are you here right now, helping me at all?”

They all stopped what they were doing and looked up before Nina sighed and muttered, “Here we fucking go. Wanda? Find some hooch in those cabinets. She’s gonna need it.”

* * * *

A half hour, two shots of tequila and the absolute most terror she’d ever experienced in her life later—barring one incident—and Esther had to admit, Nina was right.

She did need the hooch. She needed all the hooch.

As she stared at these three women, two of them now redressed in their “people” clothes, as they plucked each other free of hair, as Mooky and Marsha stared stoically at them, Esther tried desperately to untie her tongue.

Putting a knuckle in her mouth, she prepared to bite down hard to check and make sure she was really awake. As her teeth hit skin, and she bit, everything remained the same except her finger hurt.

She still had an effin’ tail, and Nina had fangs, and both Wanda and Marty had patches of hair sprouting from various parts of their bodies.

She held up a hand and inhaled as Wanda set a steaming cup of tea down next to her on the end table. “Let me get this straight. You, Wanda, are half werewolf, half vampire. Nina, you’re half vampire, half witch…and Marty’s just plain old werewolf. Am I correct? Because when it comes time to identify you, I don’t want to be an insensitive shlub and mislabel. With society the way it is these days, you can never be too careful.”

Marty looked at her thoughtfully, deeply gazing into her eyes as she placed her scarf on the arm of the couch. “Are you sure you’re okay, Esther? I know it’s a lot when you first see all the commotion and snarling and hair and teeth. There’s lots and lots of hair and teeth, but we’re really no different than you.”

But Nina swatted her on the back, jolting Esther forward with her strength. “Aw, she’s fucking fine, Marty. Right, Esther? Took that shit like a total champ. If we gave out awards, I’d give you one for best non-freak-the-fuck-out in a real-life performance.”

Rather than fill the shot glass again, Esther grabbed for the whole bottle of Cuervo and took a long slug, letting the heat of the alcohol warm her from the inside. “Do I get a trophy?”

Nina cackled, tucking her fangs back into her mouth and slapping her on the back again. “See? She’s fucking fine. She’s got chops. That’s good. You’ll need ’em.”

Wanda took Esther’s hand and began rubbing it to warm her cold fingers, while taking the tequila away from her, handing it to Nina, and replacing it with the warm tea. “Esther, you can tell us if you’re not okay. You can also ask us questions, if you’d like. Nothing’s too risqué or off-limits.”

“How?” She squeaked the word out. How had all these women come to be?

Marty stretched her arms up toward the ceiling. “Long story short, an accident. Probably something similar to yours.”

“So, chemical spill, nuclear power plant explosion, bad pharmaceuticals?” she joked.

Wanda chuckled softly and smiled warmly. “No, but we can tell you the stories, if you’d like. It happens in all sorts of ways. An accidental biting, a scratch, you name it, it’s happened. But that’s why we do what we do. Because we had something life-altering happen to us and we didn’t know where to turn. Now we help people with the same sensitive issues.”

Now Esther, her mouth falling open, breathed, “There are other people like you? Like me?”

Nina cracked her neck by rolling it from side to side. “If you only fucking knew. Listen, let’s get on with this shit already. We need to find your people so we can hand your ass off to them and they can take care of you so we don’t fucking have to. We have enough of you crazies running amok to last more than ten eternities. I don’t think we’re going to be able to rent a fucking hall big enough to hold all of us for barbecues and bullshit if we add someone new. Especially if the dragons come. Shit gets real when the dragons come. Something’s always goddamn on fire.”

She was just going to flat-out ignore the reference to dragons for now. Vampires and werewolves were plenty to process, thank you very much. “My people? I don’t have any people. I mean, my parents and grandparents are gone, and my uncle Gomez, my father’s brother, died a few days ago. I have no one…”

When she said those words out loud, she realized for the first time just how alone she really was. There was no one left but Mooky and Marsha and her.

Just her.

Not that her uncle’s passing had made a big difference in her life, unfortunately. He’d never been interested in communicating with her. She’d hardly known him.

Emptiness settled deep in her chest, poking at her vulnerability and making her swallow hard. She had friends, and Mooky and Marsha. That was plenty, and she’d damn well be grateful.

Noting her hand trembled, Wanda squeezed it tight. “I’m so sorry about your uncle, Esther.”

She shook off the despair threatening to take over and squared her shoulders. “No, no. It’s okay. We were never very close. He was a little kooky. A nice enough guy, from what I understand, but very introverted with his work. He was a scientist we hardly ever saw.” Apparently, according to his suicide note, a very depressed scientist. But she couldn’t dwell on that now, and she didn’t want to offer TMI.

After her grandparents’ deaths, she’d tried to get her uncle to meet her for lunch or maybe even just some coffee or a drink. The hope was, they’d at least connect on some level and neither of them would be all alone in the world. But he’d been as introverted as her family had always said he was. He’d never returned any of her calls, and aside from the few colleagues from the lab he’d worked for and herself in attendance, his funeral had been a desolate one.

Her perspective on losing her uncle felt more as though she were on the outside looking in. It was almost as if she’d come across his death by overdose in a newspaper article, and she had fleeting feelings of sympathy in the way she would if he were a complete stranger.

In fact, she’d only actually been in his presence three times in her life. At her parents’ and grandparents’ funerals, and once at a family barbecue. But her grandfather had always spoken of Gomez with such pride, she’d attended his funeral out of respect for him.

When his attorney had notified her of his death, he’d told her Uncle Gomez had left instructions to notify his closest living relative, whoever that was at the time, and that he’d left his worldly goods to science and his funeral arrangements were all pre-planned. All she’d had to do was show up.

She hadn’t asked many questions because, in her mind, there wasn’t much to ask. But now she was vaguely curious about how he’d come to that point in his life.

Nina sat at the edge of the coffee table, scooping a bewildered Marsha off the floor and rubbing her chin on the feline’s head. “But you do have people, dude. You must. Otherwise, how the fuck did this happen?”

Esther shook her head. “Maybe I’m just tired, but how could my people be the ones responsible for this?” She waved a hand down the length of her tail. “I don’t have people who are mermaids. I have people who were immigrants from Venezuela who came to this country for a better life and ran a shoe store for almost fifty years before they retired.”

Nina shook a finger at her, waving it under her nose. “I mean your new people, Esther Williams Sanchez. Your mermaid fucking people. Believe me, they’re out there, and I don’t GD well know how or when, but you can bet your sweet, slimy ass, they’re gonna show up sometime soon. They always damn well show up. Now, they could be good people or they could be bad—”

“Nina!” Wanda chastised with a stern tone—just like the ones the nuns from Catholic school used. “Don’t frighten her. For the love of Pete, let her adjust.”

But Nina scoffed, now scooping up a stiff Mooky, too, easing her magic hands along his back until he relaxed. “Please. Adjust. Hah! We all know how that fucking goes, Wanda. Let’s just tell her the truth and stop easing her into it. It’s better than fucking sprinkling that shit with sugar all the time. Her life’s going to change in a big damn way. Some good. Some bad. Probably a whole lot of bad before it gets good. So lay off the bowl of sunshine with whipped cream on top and—”

Her doorbell rang, interrupting Nina’s tirade about sunshine and sugar and shit and a lot of words Esther couldn’t process for the tequila she’d consumed.

“I hope that’s Arch,” Marty murmured as she rose to answer the door. “I texted him about an hour ago now. Darnell, too. We need to find some information on merpeople and who can help us get Esther’s legs back.”

But Esther, suddenly petrified it could be a neighbor, cringed, pulling the blanket from the back of the couch and attempting to cover her tail with it.

Which was rather like trying to cover a beached whale with a hand towel, but whatever. “What if it’s not the people you texted?” she asked, terrified.

Nina smiled at her with confidence, rolling her shoulders as she set Mooky and Marsha down on the floor. “Then we’ll fucking handle it, of course.”

As the door swung open, and the cold wind rushed in, a very large, very good-looking man literally pushed past Marty until he was almost inside the cottage.

But Marty, clearly offended, shoved a hand into his shoulder and frowned disapprovingly. “Excuse me, but who the hell are you and how dare you push your way in here like you own the joint?”

“Is this where Esther Sanchez lives?” he asked in a very distinct but light Australian accent that, under normal circumstances, would have sent shivers along her spine—because sexy. Very sexy.

Instead, it wrought panic and fear in her.

“Who the fuck are you and why the fuck do you want to know?” Nina asked, bouncing from foot to foot like a jazzed-for-fight-night boxer.

“I’m Tucker Pearce, and I need to speak to Esther Sanchez immediately,” he insisted, his square jaw clenching.

Nina instantly went into attack mode, sidling up to him and giving him a wild-eyed stare. “Yeah? Well, I’m Hits First Asks Questions Later, and if you don’t back the fuck off, mate, your intestines are gonna be the shrimp on my barbie.”

And then he saw Esther, her fins draping over the end of the sofa, her hair falling down along her lap, and his eyes—his beautiful hazel eyes, with just a fleck of gold in them—went wide.

That’s when he said, “Well, fuck all.”