Page 9 of Midnightsong
She would touch base with him in a few days, when he should be home, if he hadn’t updated her by then. After checking her calendar, she could take the upcoming long weekend for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to fly to Alaska, console him, and pay her respects to the late Mer-Queen.
Angie opened her contact list with one hand, her other rubbing Lulu’s head when the cat sidled up to her. Her purrs sent vibrations through Angie’s thigh and hip. A check of her phone revealed it was four o’clock in the afternoon. Which meant it was three o’clock in Creston, and Bàba would still be at work and have Wi-Fi.
With a heavy heart, she dialed Mia and Bàba and put them on a three-way video call.
Bàba answered after the first ring and Mia answered two rings later.
“Hi, mèimei!” Mia chirped, clad in a wooly sweatshirt and comfortable leggings. She was on the couch in her living room, her fireplace lit and roaring behind her; she must have been off work.
“Beibei? Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” Bàba furrowed his brow and looked down. “And Doudou? What’s going on?”
His phone shook as he walked and stopped briefly to call out an order to someone nearby.
“Kaden told me Serapha was murdered.” The words shook as they left her lips.
“What?” Mia burst out, hand flying to cover her mouth.
Bàba stopped where he was. A frosty silence befell them.
Angie gripped her phone so hard, the tips of her fingers became bloodless. “Bàba? Do you know something about this?”
“Stefan called me. After talking to you, he said. Told me about the suspicious divers.” His voice quavered.
“Have you heard from him since then?”
“No. Ken told me he went out of town for a few days trying to find out more about those divers.”
That explained Stefan’s silence then. Reception around their town was questionable.
“Did you ever find out who the divers were?” Mia cut in. Her seven-year-old daughter, Rosie, popped into the room and waved at the phone, and muting her microphone, mouthed something at her. Rosie bound out of the room.
Angie wanted the answer to that too.
“No. Nobody saw them come back up. We suspected they exited the sea somewhere else.”
Of course. There were multiple entry and exit ways from and around the Creston Docks, and it wasn’t atypical for divers to enter one way and exit another depending on the conditions of the sea, especially if they were drift diving. “So, that’s it. They’re gone. Nobody knows who they are, or where they went to even ask them.” Angie released her grip from her phone, her shoulders dropping as the tension left her system.
“For now. They might not even be Crestoners. Those divers could have come from any town, any city nearby.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when you found out? This happened a few days ago.” Angie gritted her teeth. Bàba’s penchant for withholding important information from her ground on her nerves.
“I didn’t know until today either,” Mia muttered.
“We don’t know if they had anything to do with Serapha’s death. It’s suspicious, yes, but not factual. I wasn’t going to come to you on mere suspicions,” Bàba replied, his tone matter of fact.
Angie exchanged a wary glance with Mia. It was why Bàba withheld the reason for Mama’s passing so long ago. Because he wanted to be sure. She took a shaky breath.
“It’s too much of a coincidence though.” Mia spoke Angie’s thoughts into existence.
“Yeah,” Angie echoed, hollow. What betrayals had those divers committed? Did they know who they had killed? Her station? Did they assume her to be a mer commoner? Her gaze flickered briefly to Mia, whose face had become even whiter than her usual snowy skin. The telltale beep of Bàba unlocking his car blared in Angie’s ears, and he stepped into his Toyota Tundra, slamming the door shut.
Angie’s heart sank and planted itself in her stomach. Their collective silence deafened her.
Bàba rested his head on the steering wheel, closing his eyes and opening them after a moment.
Shit, shit, shit. Angie’s chest grew tight, her breathing shallow.
Mia removed her hand covering her mouth, a tremor in her voice when she spoke. “Wh-what’s going to happen? With the Mer-Queen gone, does the treaty still stand?”
