Debbie Herbert - Siren's Treasure

Clearly, she was no delicate aquatic flower like Lily.

A hush swept over the crowd as Lily swam to the front of the rock and took her place. Lily raised a hand and the crowd hushed again.

It was hard to call what came out mere singing. It was a symphony of sound, the epitome of tone meeting strength. Judges swam a hundred yards away, measuring the distance of the sound vibrations.

Jet closed her eyes and let the notes wash over her. Even though Lily could charm humans above, her voice was at its purest undersea with the crystal notes melding in the currents.

Jet gave a little shake and studied the seascape. All the hard training had been for naught. No one cared that she’d won the Undines’ Challenge. She scanned the crowd, all in awe of Lily.

At least she had the trident. She would return home, and when Mom arrived later, she would use the trident’s onetime wish. Jet tried to catch her mother’s eye to wave goodbye, but Adriana’s gaze was locked on the fair Lily. Typical.

She pictured Orpheous’s leering face. You are one of us.

Was this why most merfolk shunned her? Why she felt like an outcast even among her own family? Could it be that her bloodline was mixed with the shunned Blue Clan?

Soon, she would demand the answer.

Chapter 1

P erry’s back . Two words that shook Jet’s world, but not in a good way. She’d returned home from the Poseidon Games two nights ago, exhausted, when her cousin Shelly had broken the news.

Jet sighed as she scanned the bored, impatient crowd packed inside the government-services waiting room, its ambience a curious mixture of sterility and shabbiness. The old building was painted an institutional green and smelled faintly of disinfectant, mold and stale coffee. In the lobby, cheap metal folding chairs were set up in rows.

Outside, the morning rain beat down in gusting sheets. Jet eyed the few people roaming Main Street, searching for a certain build, that certain shock of brown hair and chiseled profile.

Stop it. You’ll see Perry soon enough. And oh, how she’d make him pay. That rat would get on his knees, by Poseidon, and beg her forgiveness before she sent him on his way.

Oh, no. Huge mistake. She shouldn’t have pictured him in that position, those brown eyes staring up at her naked body with hunger. Jet squirmed. Think of something else. She closed her eyes, imagined swimming the warm waters of the Florida Keys and scooping up antique cuff links and coins sunk in ships hundreds of years ago, like a child picking up dropped marbles on a school playground.

It wasn’t helping. Jet placed a hand over her stomach. Sexual need fierce as a knife wound seared and twisted her guts. Damn, she hated that part of her mermaid nature that intensified sexual hunger. It could be a hindrance if she saw Perry after this meeting as she’d planned. But she had to face him eventually and see what he wanted. She would have to keep her sexual need under control and send him away with the tongue-lashing of the century.

Ugh, tongues lashing. Now she could taste his lips and tongue in her mouth, his long, slow, languid kisses that made her frantic with desire in nanoseconds.

There she went again. She was the biggest fool on the planet to pine for Perry’s kisses. He’d been out of prison for weeks. If he’d been languishing in a jail cell for the past three years, missing her and regretting his betrayal, he’d have shown up long before now. Forget him—he’d done the unforgivable.

“Jet Bosarge,” the receptionist called out.

She grabbed her backpack, and the man seated across from her frowned. “I’ve been here longer than you,” he grumbled.

She shrugged. “Take it up with them.” Jet marched down the labyrinthine hallway until she found a door marked IRS. No one answered her knock, so she opened it and stuck her head in.

The office was tiny and contained an old wooden desk. A metal folding chair, identical to those in the waiting area, was positioned across from it. The IRS could have sprung for better accommodations; it collected enough money to do better than this bare cubbyhole. A cheap, utilitarian clock hung on the wall; its secondhand clicked inconsistently—slow, fast, fast, slow—as if it were spitting out Morse code. She paused, wondering if she were in the right place, until she spotted the nameplate that read Landry Fields.

She dropped her backpack by the chair and stood at the lone rectangular window. Quite a show played outside with the swirling rain pounding the parking-lot pavement.

Jet pressed her face against the cool, damp pane. She loved the rain. Loved every pore on her body drenched in raindrops. The only thing better than land-walking on days like this was swimming undersea during a thunderstorm. She’d swim close to the ocean surface, watching raindrops bounce on top of the water and meld into a white, bubbling cauldron of energy while underneath, the pull of the tide crested and heaved in response to the wind. And if a rain shower coincided with the night of a full moon, the energy was electric with intensity.

She closed her eyes and touched her palms to the glass, imagined swimming under the rain’s onslaught right now. Her body came alive, prickling with sensation—

“It’s a mess out there, isn’t it?” came a voice, low, rumbling and way too close.

Jet jumped and spun around. Her eyes bored into a pin-striped suit covering a broad chest. Her gaze traveled upward, taking in a strong jaw and ice-blue eyes that pinned her as if she were a trapped butterfly the man wanted to dissect.

“Mr. Fields?” she guessed. Her voice came out a touch squeaky and she cleared her throat.

He extended a hand. “Miss Bosarge?”

His grip was firm and brief, but far from impersonal, at least on her end. Her palm tingled from the contact and she had a wild urge to curl her fingers over his hand and never let go.

Insane. Jet hastily withdrew her hand and crossed her arms over her stomach. Fields gestured to the folding chair, his face reflecting no sign that their contact had affected him at all. “Have a seat.”

She sank into the chair, feeling underdressed. She usually sported black yoga pants, a T-shirt and sneakers, perfectly fine for helping Lily at the salon or working out at the gym. In honor of this visit, she had slightly altered her normal attire by wearing jeans, a purple long-sleeved top and a purple-and-red scarf. Jet wished she’d taken more time with her appearance and played with Lily’s boxes of lotions and potions. At the very least, she could have styled her asymmetrical bob. Oh, well, she had remembered earrings. Maybe her five-carat diamond studs would deflect attention from her plain, unadorned face. Humans seemed to care inordinately about such things.

Under his probing gaze, Jet readjusted the scarf to ensure it completely covered her three-inch gills, which extended from the top of the collarbone to her windpipe on each side of her neck. Although the slotted marks in her flesh were faint, she was careful to keep them covered to avoid questions by any observant human. And this guy looked way too sharp. Jet mentally noted to grow her hair out a few more inches so it would be long enough to cover the gills by the time summer arrived, when scarves and turtlenecks would appear odd. Since her hair grew an inch a week, it should be plenty long enough at summer’s advent.

Fields pulled out a single file from the front drawer and placed it on the desk’s otherwise bare surface. He opened the file and glanced through it, as if refreshing his memory.

“Your letter stated you only found an irregularity in my tax records,” Jet volunteered.

“Mmm-hmm.” He kept reading, never looking up, even when the printer kicked up an odd whirring sound, as if a hive of angry hornets had swarmed to life. The noise ended as suddenly as it had started.