Read Online Fathomless by Jackson Pearce - Free Book Online Page A

me, like she’s waiting for something.
    “You… you live in the water?” I finally manage. The words sound stupid when they fall from my mouth, clunky.
    “Yes. Now,” she says dismissively, and then her tone grows more serious. “But not before. Before I was this, I was Naida. You
knew
the name Naida.”
    She might be able to maintain eye contact with me, but I’m not as strong—I look down. The fact that she came from the water, that she’s
something
different, someone different, that doesn’t seem to matter. Am I going to admit my power to a stranger? It seems wrong, wrong in every way, and yet…“Yes,” I answer.
    “Did you know her?” she asks, and for the first time there’s the tiniest bit of inflection, of curiosity in her voice.
    I raise an eyebrow, a little confused. “No. I’ve never met you before. But…” I inhale. “Sometimes when I touch people, I know things they’ve lived through.” My voice falters, like it can’t bear the fact that I’m admitting my power—despite downplaying it quite a bit—aloud.
    Her eyes widen. “You know about her life?”
    “
Your
life,” I say, though it’s more of a question than a statement. “What… what are you? How do you live in the water?”
    She continues to stare at me, like this is something she’s never considered before. “The same way everything else lives in the water. We’re not like you. But I was, back when I was Naida.”
    “Wait, you
were
Naida? Who are you now?”
    “Lo. My name is Lo, for a while.”
    “I don’t understand.” The sky has turned purple, like there’s a haze over the beach. The scent of cotton candy drifts down from the Pavilion, but with the tail end of the pier closed off, there still aren’t any other people to see us. Naida—Lo, whoever she is, does the closest thing to a shrug I think she can manage.
    “I don’t, either. Something changed. I used to be a human named Naida. And now I’m not, and my name is Lo. We all used to be human, but now we’re not.”
    “We?”
    Her eyes darken a bit, an expression I recognize—it’s theway Anne looks if someone slights me or Jane. It’s protective, it’s cautious. She finally answers. “My sisters. They’re like me.”
    “How did you become… this, if you used to be human?”
    “We don’t know for certain. An angel brought us here.”
    “An angel?”
    “Yes,” she says dismissively, shakes when a gust of wind sweeps across us. “You know my human name because you touched me?”
    I tense a little, but nod.
    “Do you know anything else?”
    “Not very much,” I answer—it seems too early to mention the scream. “Your memories are strange; it’s like they’re hidden. What do you remember from being… Naida?”
    Her gaze becomes unfocused for a moment, but she shakes her head. She looks sad, mournful, like someone has died. “There was more last night, but I’ve forgotten it again. I can’t hold on to it.”
    “I can…” Am I really going to do this? I swallow. “I can help you. I have to touch you again, though,” I add quickly. What am I doing? First I tell her about my power; now I’m using it on her? I don’t want to see the pain in her head, I don’t want to hear the scream again, but…
    My power has only failed me before this. But now it’s worth something. Now it’s needed…. How could I walk away, especially from the girl who saved Jude’s life—the girl whose credit I stole?
    Lo looks at me, though I don’t think she’s debatingwhether or not to do it—I think she’s having trouble believing it’s possible. It seems odd, that a girl who claims to live underwater would find something like reading memories strange. She extends an arm; she wants me to come to her.
    “I promise not to drown you,” she says sincerely. The possibility hadn’t occurred to me, but it manages to entirely replace the fear of using my power. I cringe and creep closer. She watches me, intrigued, and I remember how effortlessly she