Of Poseidon

Rachel’s specialty? Finding out stuff ? She could investigate where I came from.”
    “She’s already done that.”
    “What do you mean? She did a background check or something? I’m talking about digging deep—”
    “Your birth certificate says you were born in a hospital. Both your parents signed it, and so did the attending physician. He happens to be a college professor now who teaches aspiring doctors how to birth humans. Rachel also found a picture in a newspaper of your father and mother celebrating an award he received. Your mother was pregnant in the picture. From the date of the article, it looked reasonable to assume she carried you in her womb.”
    My mouth hangs open but no words come out. Galen doesn’t notice. He says, “Your school records showed attendance since kindergarten to present, and your address never changed. Your medical records can pass as human, though you’ve never had the chicken pox. You broke your arm when you were four years old, you’ve never had surgery, and all your immunizations are up to date—”
    “Ohmysweetgoodness!” I yell, standing up. I kick as much sand on him as I can. “That’s none of her business! And none of yours! She had no right to—”
    “You just said you wanted her to dig deep,” he says, standing, too. “I thought you’d be pleased that we already did that.”
    “You invaded my privacy!” I say as I step into my flip-flops and stomp toward the hotel. Heat wraps around my wrist as he jerks me back.
    “Emma, calm down. I had to know—”
    I point my finger in his face, almost touching his eyeball. “It’s one thing for me to give you permission to look into it. But I’m pretty sure looking into it without my consent is illegal. In fact, I’m pretty sure everything that woman does is illegal. Do you even know what the Mafia is, Galen?”
    His eyebrows lift in surprise. “She told you who she is? I mean, who she used to be?”
    I nod. “While you were checking in with Grom. Once in the Mob, always in the Mob, if you ask me. How else would she get all her money? But I guess you wouldn’t care about that, since she buys you houses and cars and fake IDs.” I snatch my wrist away and turn back toward our hotel. At least, I hope it’s our hotel.
    Galen laughs. “Emma, it’s not Rachel’s money; it’s mine.”
    I whirl on him. “You are a fish. You don’t have a job. And I don’t think Syrena currency has any of our presidents on it.” Now “our” means I’m human again. I wish I could make up my mind.
    He crosses his arms. “I earn it another way. Walk to the Gulfarium with me, and I’ll tell you how.”
    The temptation divides me like a cleaver. I’m one part hissy fit and one part swoon. I have a right to be mad, to press charges, to cut Rachel’s hair while she’s sleeping. But do I really want to risk the chance that she keeps a gun under her pillow? Do I want to miss the opportunity to scrunch my toes in the sand and listen to Galen’s rich voice tell me how a fish came to be wealthy? Nope, I don’t.
    Taking care to ram my shoulder into him, I march past him and hopefully in the right direction. When he catches up to me, his grin threatens the rest of my hissy fit side, so I turn away, fixing my glare on the waves.
    “I sell stuff to humans,” he says.
    I glance at him. He’s looking at me, his expression every bit as expectant as I feel. I hate this little game of ours. Maybe because I’m no good at it. He won’t tell me more unless I ask. Curiosity is one of my most incurable flaws—and Galen knows it.
    Still, I already gave up a perfectly good tantrum for him, so I feel like he owes me. Never mind that he saved my life today. That was so two hours ago. I lift my chin.
    “Rachel says I’m a millionaire,” he says, his little knowing smirk scrubbing my nerves like a Brillo pad. “But for me, it’s not about the money. Like you, I have a soft spot for history.”
    Crap, crap, crap. How can he already know me this well? I must be as readable as the alphabet. What’s the use? He’s going to win, every time. “What stuff ? What history?”
    There he goes again, wielding his smile as a thought-preventative. “I recover things lost at sea and sell them to humans,” he says, folding his hands behind his back. “When it’s too big to handle myself, like old war submarines or planes, I give the human governments the location—for a price. Rachel handles the legal stuff, of course.”
    I blink at him.