Fathom by L. Standage (spanish books to read .TXT) 📕

“No, you won’t.” She turned on him. “We will not sell our secrets to save the life of one human. We will not let them have you or any of us. And even if you did do it, your tail will not have fully developed by then.”

“We can’t let them kill her,” Seidon continued, his eyes beseeching.

“Better her than us!”

“No,” I cried. It took all the restraint I had to keep from beating Cordelia’s arrogant face. “If you would’ve just let me talk, maybe you’d see that not all of us humans are as stupid or disposable as you think. Samantha is like my sister. I am not going to just stand aside and do nothing. And I would never think about just handing one of you to that—that—”

“Everyone in the car now,” said Eamon. “Move first, talk later. They know where we are. We can’t waste another second in this place. Thank goodness we had everything packed already.”

We filed silently into the garage. I could feel the heat from Cordelia as she stared me down. Once the cars pulled away from the darkened house, Eamon spoke again.

“Now. Olivia, why did you tell Linnaeus we could give him a mermaid?” asked Eamon, his usual calm roughened by severity. All at once, Cordelia began an angry chorus, while Seidon tried to calm her and Calder agreed with Eamon.

“Because we can,” I said over everyone. “I still have the costume Samantha made for me.”

That shut them up for a moment.

“A costume?” Cordelia finally shouted. “You think a costume will fool Linnaeus?”

“It did once, didn’t it? I can do it! I can keep your secret safe and discredit Linnaeus at the same time.”

Cordelia made a noise as if she planned to argue, but Eamon held up a hand to silence her.

“What did you have in mind?” he asked.

I took a deep, ragged breath. “Linnaeus obviously invited a lot of p-people to meet a real mermaid. I f-fooled everyone once before, even Delfina. Why not do it again?”

“Because they know you’re human,” said Calder.

“No, they assume I’m human.”

“Didn’t they check for gills?” asked Walter.

“We can make fake ones. We can tell him I lied about being a human the first time and my gills were covered up or something. A-all we need to do is fool him one more time, then we can get him to leave you alone for good.”

“What if you’re discovered?” Calder asked, still frowning.

“That’s the point.” I struggled as my nerves kept me breathless and stuttering. “He’s going to r-reveal a mermaid to these people…what if I’m the mermaid? I can take off the tail j-just after he lets people see me. People will see it was all a f-fake. No one will ever believe him again, even if one day he does capture a real one.”

Cordelia sneered, but everyone else stared at me in wonder; even Eamon watched me through the rearview mirror.

“Olivia,” Natasha said, “I understand what you’re trying to do, but it’s impossible. Marinus will be there. You won’t be able to fool him too. And what if they put you in a tank of water?”

“I can handle that,” said Walter.

“I had Delfina convinced, didn’t I?” I said, calming down and gaining confidence. “Won’t I be able to trick Marinus too?”

“Delfina didn’t see you in a mermaid’s natural state at close quarters,” said Cordelia with disdain.

“I told you, we can fake everything. And we can make it all the more credible because we have the real thing to be the judge.” I looked at Seidon, hoping he’d take my side.

“Olivia, if we do this, there’s a chance you’ll be killed instead of Samantha,” said Eamon.

I swallowed in trepidation, but I didn’t relent.

“You guys can get me out.” I looked at Calder. “You’ve done it before.”

“If we can get them to do this by our terms, it may be possible,” he said. My heart lifted. Eamon sighed and looked at Walter, who nodded. He then looked at Calder, who looked back at me. I bit my lower lip, silently begging Eamon to agree. Please.

He nodded. Cordelia sniffed.

“We can tell them you let them have me as punishment for handing over the vessel. Captain.” I added the last part as an afterthought. A little brown-nosing never hurt anyone. She stared at me with a severe glare, her jaw so tight she could shatter her own teeth. But she jerked her head in assent and I could almost swear I saw a flicker of respect pass over her face.

“Let’s get started,” said Eamon.

We pulled into a motel and planning began. We started with my disguise. I showed everyone the tail Sam had made. Cordelia examined it, felt the texture in the fabric, held it up, shook it out, then dropped it on the bed.

“Flashy. But it’ll do. As long as Marinus doesn’t touch it. Or get too close to it.”

“It’s almost the right color,” said Seidon, scrutinizing the fabric of the tail in front of his face.

I also agreed to superglue the tail to the skin around my waist to keep it from shifting, until I had to take it off. I didn’t care about pulling away layers of skin at this point. I just wanted Samantha back.

“Some of us can go tomorrow morning to the nearest costume shop to see what you could dig up as far as gills go,” said Eamon, listing the items on a sheet of paper. “Anything else?”

“Um…” I began, wishing all the male members of the group would look away or at least stick their fingers in their ears and hum loudly to themselves. “Do I need some, um, seashells?”

“Seashells?” Cordelia raised her eyebrows as though she had never heard of any such thing.

Oh no, did mermaids go topless?

“Yeah. To—you know—cover me.” I gestured across my chest, my face reddening. Then of course, everyone in the room had to glance at my bosom. I wanted to vanish. At least the men had the decency to look