Page 16 of Ensnaring the Siren

For all intents and purposes, his body wasn’t designed for the sea. In fact, it was locked in a constant battle not to drown, and yet, he looked so at home among the waves. Almost at home with them as she.

An odd feeling washed over her. It was true she’d meant to prove a point, but watching his legs sway back and forth, muscles clenching, then unclenching, his dual fins waving at her from above, she wanted to touch him. To bring him into the water with her so she could look into his eyes without having to squint against the sun’s too bright light. Eyes a shade of brown like the land he walked. Such a color didn’t exist in the ocean, among her kind.

“I don’t want to be your enemy.”

Hope ticked in her chest. He’d said it so softly, and his shocked expression afterward told her his words were genuine. He hadn’t meant to say them and that made them more believable.

Aersila doubted her judgment, and that stung more than salt in an open wound, but this affirmed what Nireed felt in her gut—that he could be won over. They needed answers. They needed proof. And they needed Surface Dweller leadership to act.

Reid was their way in.

Nireed squeezed the water from her hair, then shrugged into the dress she kept wedged between two rocks on shore. It felt weird and itchy and constricting, but blending in was more important than comfort, so she’d hidden several such dresses, scattering them along the coast. It was good to have options, multiple entry points to the Land Above the Water.

But this one was the safest.

Nakedness concealed, she hiked up the private cove’s sandy beach to the abode her friend shared with her mate and knocked on the front door. Heavy footsteps approached. A moment later, the door opened, a tall man with wavy, silver-flecked brown hair standing on the other side.

“Nireed,” he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiled. “Come in. She’s just upstairs.”

After quickly brushing sand from the soles of her feet outside, Nireed ducked in.

“Lorelei!” Killian called up a spiraling set of stairs. “You’ve got a visitor.” Then to Nireed, he said, “Hungry?”

Her stomach growled on cue.

“One can of Spam coming right up.”

Nireed sat down at their kitchen table while Killian rooted around the pantry. The Merry Mariner’s fishermen had been enough to feed the whole pod for a day. Now she was hungry enough to take on a whole haunch of thigh meat all by herself, but her friends didn’t need to know that.

Lorelei bounded down the steps. “I just got off the phone with Jackie.”

“What did she find?”

“The Merry Mariner, and the factory ship it supplies, is owned by a company called Nautic Select Seafoods.”

Killian retreated from the pantry, cracking open a can. “Those assholes?” He slid the delicacy across the table into Nireed’s awaiting hands and offered her a fork. She accepted it and promptly dug in. It wasn’t her preferred manner of eating, but it was good practice for her more public outings among the Surface Dwellers.

“You’ve run into them?” Lorelei asked, taking a chair across from Nireed.

“No one’s been able to prove it, but they pull some shady shit. They blaze in and out of the harbor, plowing over lobster pots, cutting the lines, and the owner loses all that equipment. That’s $500 to $600 a pop inshore, figuring traps, buoy, line, and the catch. But offshore, when there’s twenty-five traps to a trawl line, it’s easily $6,000, and there’s plenty of those stories.” Killian slipped into the seat next to his mate, joints creaking as he sat. “A captain I know swears they bribe the fisheries official too. He’s a bit of a government conspiracy theorist, so I’d take what he says with a grain of salt, but if it’s true, that means they’re catching things they shouldn’t, or in quantities above regulation. Either way it shakes out, Nautic’s pushing out what’s left of the small, independent fishing companies.”

Nireed narrowed her eyes. “Have they hurt you?”

“We don’t fish in the same area. At least, not anymore. But they do have a foot in lobster, and another in everything else.”

Killian’s trawling boat, The Lovely Lorelei, fell into the “everything else” category.

Lorelei nodded along. “Jackie got a hold of the registry and says they moved their purse seiners into your old zone about a few months back.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed a hand behind his neck. “It’s a great fishing area. Never went home without a full hold, but ever since Lila began lobbying to have mermaid territory declared a marine sanctuary, we backed out of there.”

“We were willing to share,” Nireed interjected, fork hovering in front of her mouth. “But appreciate your support nonetheless.”

“Nautic wouldn’t have those moral reservations, which leads to Jackie’s theory.” Lorelei met Nireed’s eyes, expression grim. “She thinks they’re hunting merfolk, because without you, there’s no reason to have the area declared a marine sanctuary. And without a marine sanctuary, they can keep fishing where it’s most lucrative.”

Rage bubbled within. So her people were being killed for wasteful greed. It didn’t surprise her, but she’d still hoped for another reason.

Lorelei cleared her throat, staring pointedly at her hand.

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