Deep Betrayal

away.”
    She sighed and looked at Sophie. “I’m trying to make good on my promise. I need to make good on that promise. But the timing is out of my hands,” she said. She moved her arms gently across the surface of the water, bringing her hands together, palms up.
    “Whose hands is it in?”
    She stared intently at Sophie in a way that made me squirm. Instinctively, I positioned my body between my sister and the emaciated mermaid. “Easy,” Pavati said. “I’ve always had a soft spot for your sister. She knows I would never hurt her.”
    “Why was it so easy for you to leave Jack?” I asked. It was a question that had bothered me for months—ever since Jackfirst told me his history with Pavati. It was the question that had allowed me to doubt Calder’s feelings for me.
    “I don’t understand what you’re asking,” she said, her gaze moving from Sophie to me. The water rippled softly across her shoulders.
    Her confusion made me more uneasy than the expected answer. “You loved him.”
    “If you’d like to call it that,” she said, shrugging. Her eyes burned like the aurora borealis.
    I wondered how she’d feel if she knew it was Jack who killed Tallulah. Would she want to kill him just as they’d wanted to kill Dad? Was there enough love between Pavati and Jack that she’d feel at least a little bit bad when she dragged him under?
    Pavati dropped lower, the water now grazing her chin. “I understand you went looking for Maighdean Mara today.”
    “How did you know that?” I hadn’t made any attempt to hide my thoughts yesterday. Calder had never asked that I “blank canvas” my mind. Had it been Maris and Pavati watching us? Had they watched ambivalently as we risked our lives?
    “Did you find her?” she asked.
    “We did not,” I said, my face and voice like stone.
    “Hmmm. Maybe Coyote has a better idea.”
    “Coyote?”
    “Go see Jack’s dad. He knows him,” she said, her Cheshire-cat smirk disappearing in the darkness.

MY SCRIBBLINGS
I do not need to breathe
to write these lines because air
is a luxury for the weak
and if I haven’t mentioned it ,
that’s not me .
MERMAID STATS
     
Best Swim Time:
5 Min. 52 secs
Voices:
Able to Project and Receive
Tail:
None

32
COYOTE
    T he Pettits’ house was a two-story farmhouse close to the lake. Calder wouldn’t go to the door, but he got out of the car and listened from the woods. I’d been here only once before—the night Calder attacked Jack—and it looked different in the daylight. I found the door, but I was too short to look through the three small square panes at the top. On the other side of the glass, the lights were off, although I could hear that the TV was on. I looked for a doorbell but, finding none, knocked several times. The sound was low and heavy against the solid oak door. No one came, and I knocked again.I was about to leave when the panes vibrated with approaching steps.
    The door opened slowly, and Mr. Pettit peered out. “If you’re here to cause trouble …”
    “Mr. Pettit? It’s me, Lily Hancock.”
    “Oh. Oh, I’m sorry. Come on in, Lily. I’m afraid Gabrielle’s not here and Jack, well … who knows where he is these days.”
    “I don’t want to bother you, but I was wondering if you knew a … a coyote .” The question sounded more ridiculous out of my mouth than it did in my head.
    “Are you talking about Everett Coyote?”
    “Oh!” This whole time I’d been picturing an animal. This wasn’t going to be as embarrassing as I thought.
    “He’s my dentist. Let me go look in the kitchen. I think he has an ad in the phone book. I’ll be right back.”
    I’d never been inside the Pettits’ house before. Dark brown shag carpeting led from the front door down a long hallway. The TV blared from a room on the left.
    “Your dad told me about your Minneapolis friend,” called Mr. Pettit from the kitchen. “I hope he’s okay.”
    “Yeah, he’s okay. You saw my dad?”
    “Ran into him at the IGA. He was in a really good mood.”
    “Oh.” I was already clinging to Calder’s Maighdean Mara theory by a thinning thread. A happy merman meant one of two things, and since Dad hadn’t been spending any time with Mom, that didn’t bode well for my exercise in denial.
    While Mr. Pettit fumbled in drawers in the kitchen, I wandered farther down the hallway, pulled by the childhood pictures of Gabby and Jack hanging on the wall, an eight-by-tenglossy marking each year of school.