lived through a human-mermaid relationship talking or just my dad?”
He grinned. “Maybe a little of both?”
“That’s what I figured.”
Part of me knew he was right, that I had had some of the same thoughts up in my bedroom earlier that evening. Especially when my own future was so insecure—who knew if I’d even be around in six months to try to work on a relationship with Mark. I was determined to bring Tiamat down the next time we went against each other, no matter what. If I had to die to do it, then I was willing to pay that price. Worrying about what would or wouldn’t happen between Mark and me in a nebulous future that might not even exist was neither reasonable nor logical.
But then, reason and logic didn’t have much to do with how I was feeling, not when just the thought of Mark had my heart beating faster.
“So, since you’re not tired and I sincerely doubt I’m going toget any sleep tonight …” My dad nodded his head toward the dark, endless ocean outside our kitchen window. “You want to try your hand at night surfing?”
I stared at him in shock. “You never let me do that. You’ve been telling me it was too dangerous from the first time I asked to go.”
“Yeah, well, that was before you were mermaid,” he replied with a smirk. “If something happens, I’m pretty sure you can grow gills and get yourself out of it. Besides, you spend months at a time—nights included—in the ocean. What’s one more? But we have to get in and out—a storm is supposed to hit in a few hours and conditions will get rough.”
I almost asked about Sabrina again, but I didn’t want anything to ruin this night with my dad, so I headed for the stairs at a dead run, determined to get my swimsuit on and be out the door before my dad came to his senses.
It turned out, I needn’t have worried. By the time I had shimmied into a bathing suit, my father was already out the door, his surfboard under one arm and mine under the other.
Excitement welled up inside of me as I dashed after him. Between Mark, my friends, my dad … this was turning into the best night ever.
I should have known it was just the calm before the storm.
Chapter 6
As I caught up to my dad, I realized the surfboards he was carrying weren’t our regular ones. I mean, my dad has six or seven boards, though he usually switches between two. I have three, but the only one I’ve used since my sixteenth birthday is the purple-and-orange Brewer my dad had specially designed for me.
These boards were different. They were clear, with strings of something—I couldn’t quite see what, even in the light cast from the streetlamps—stretching from the tip of the boards to the very ends of them.
I started to ask him what was up with the board change—if I was going to risk night surfing, I wanted to do it on a board I was familiar with. But he shook his head before I said anything and told me, “Wait until we get to the water.”
I did, and was shocked to see the boards light up the second my dad laid them on the sand. “There are only a half dozen of these in existence right now,” he told me. “The guy who created them asked me and a couple other surfers to try them out, see how they worked.”
“They’re awesome!” I crouched down to run my hand over one. I’d seen pictures of boards tricked out with LED lights before—usually stunts pulled by surf companies and their prosurfers to get attention—but this was different. The boards weren’t merely lined with LEDs; the lights were actually inside the completely glassed-over board. It was brilliant, and beautiful.
“I know, right?” He held out a remote control. “And check this out.” With a few clicks, he turned the lights inside my board from green to red to blue to purple. He stopped there and handed me the remote. “I thought it would match your tattoos.”
I laughed. “That rocks.”
He switched his lights to white, then we grabbed our boards and started paddling
Anne Conley
Robert T. Jeschonek
Chris Lynch
Jessica Morrison
Sally Beauman
Debbie Macomber
Jeanne Bannon
Carla Kelly
Fiona Quinn
Paul Henke