Page 34 of Hot Summer's Prey

His hands come up over my head, and I feel beads roll down my face. When the necklace is settled, he pulls my hair from under it so it sits better.

“A necklace,” I scoff. “I’m not against taking bribes for you abandoning me, but I don’t see how that’s going to help me swim. Bad timing. What’s the real solution?”

“You remember me,” is all he says.

“Yeah, duh, you gave me the best orgasm of my life. I’m still trying to process that.”

“But you still remember me.”

“What world are you living in that people forget you after that?!”

“Same one as you,” he laughs. “I’m not… I’m not human.”

“Great, I’m going to die in this stupid cave with a crazy person. And it’s not even the sex cave.”

“What sex—there is no sex cave. That cave is where I keep my human things after I transform.”

“After you transform? What, are you a mermaid? A… what are those seal people called?”

“Selkies?”

“Yeah. So you’re one of those?”

“No. I’m Yacunayi. I am a creature of the sea like them, but different.”

He’s sounding incredibly serious right now about something that can’t possibly be true. Except… That image of his strange cock waves in my mind. Not to mention the fact that I’ve repeatedly found him naked on the beach—though he could just be a streaker. But above all—the weird way my memory couldn’t fully place him only ten minutes ago.

“No more jokes, Pacari,” I sigh, knowing I believe him way more than I should.

He shifts, pulling himself from the water. I hear the trickle of water gliding off of him and back into the hole. He walks towards the moonlight coming from the entrance to the cave. And—strangely—I can almost see him before he gets there. Spots of green and blue flash before they dissipate. In the outline of the moonlight, his shape almost seems to change from—was that a fin?—to human.

Except for his hands. I can’t quite make out if I’m seeing them as they are from this far back, so I carefully trail along the side of the cave til I’ve joined him at the entrance. His hands are full of water…

And they are green. Green with fins coming off of his wrists and arms where the water trickles down him. His nails are thick, long, and sharp.

Distinctly inhuman.

15

ASK ME ABOUT MY SIFON

TERESA

“What are you?” I whisper.

“Like I said. Yacunayi. The need in water. A creature of the depths who finds power and pleasure in the desires and wants of humans. We are shapeshifters so that we may walk amongst humankind and reap their magic.”

“Our magic…” I repeat.

I’ve always felt like everyone has their own magic within them. Or something. I’m agnostic, but I believe there’s something connecting all living things. Magic or spirit or whatever people want to call it. I’ve had too many strange experiences not to feel the interconnectedness of life.

“You’re… Does that mean you’re like a vampire? Except you suck out sex magic—whatever that is—and memory? Actually, I guess the memory thing makes you a lot more like a vampire.”

He pauses. “That is one way to put it, I suppose.”

“Why are your hands like that?” I ask.

“Water changes us.”

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