Undead and Underwater

Page 19

“Oooh, I wish my friend could do that!” Betsy said, looking at Fred’s hair with renewed interest. “She just laughs at my home-dye errors. What color is it under all that?”
“Green,” Fred answered curtly. She did not want the discussion veering further toward her hair.
“Sorry, what? Green? Your natural hair color is—oh, right. Mermaid thing.”
“Ooooh, but all those who truly lurrrrrrv her see it as blue,” Jonas said, fluttering his eyelashes.
Fred longed to punch him. “Some people see it as blue,” she admitted. “I hate the ambiguity . . . Blue, green, who gives a shit? It just perpetuates the stereotype that the Folk are magical. We’re not.”
They looked at her.
“We’re not!” She shook off their stares. “Anyway, thanks to Jonas, I’m harder to recognize now. Case in point, Betsy: you had no idea who I was.”
“You should set the bar higher,” the vampire advised. “I’ve been dealing with a bunch of my own shit lately. Me not knowing who you were isn’t the same as the average gal on the street not knowing.”
The thought that Betsy would willfully ignore spectacular current events further irked Fred, who wasn’t blind to the irony. She hated the fuss and she got annoyed when someone didn’t know about the fuss. Jonas is right; he really is one of my few friends, and for years he was my only friend. This sort of thing is the reason why. Still . . . “This was an unprecedented event in history!”
“Hey, my shoe closet wasn’t gonna organize itself, okay? And that’s only one of the things I got stuck dealing with. I’ve got more on my plate than whatever the latest fad is.”
“Fad?”
“Anyway,” Jonas broke in, “Madison was nice enough to help you out with work you had no intention of doing. And then . . .”
“Then I met these guys—they sent lots of stuff to Fred’s page—”
Not my page! Fred closed her eyes but said nothing.
“And they seemed rilly nice and they, like, had all these great ideas to help the Folk—cool stuff like how to use legal precedent to show the world that anything abandoned in the ocean, y’know like ship wrecks and pirate booty and all that, they had a way to prove how it all legally belongs to the Undersea Folk.”
Ah. This was sensible. Though most of the planet (the ones who didn’t think the mermaid thing was a hoax) outwardly embraced the Undersea Folk, some countries had gotten touchy about the Folk’s vast treasure. A few of the dignitaries realized the Folk had in their possession, among other goodies: caches of Confederate gold, Blackbeard’s treasure (scooped from caves of the Cayman Islands), Incan gold from lakes in the Colombian Andes, King John’s crown jewels, fist-sized diamonds from the wreck of the Flor de la Mar, and other priceless artifacts (including the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi sword, the Aphrodite of Cnidus, Michelangelo’s Sleeping Cupid, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria) and began legal proceedings to get “their” property back.
The Folk’s response to this was simplicity itself: finders keepers. As King Mekkam said, “How can treasures that rested on the bottom of the seas for centuries, treasures gone so long no one living even remembers them much less requires them, how can such things belong to any lander now living?” The king had been too polite to point out that the Undersea Folk were well within lander laws regarding salvage: they took the risk, they got to keep the goodies. It was a growing problem; Fred acknowledged to herself that she would have looked into the strangers’ ideas just as Madison had.
“Anyway, they had other ideas, too, and so we agreed to meet and they thought I was you and then they tried to kill me.”
Betsy, who’d had a look of polite interest on her face, sat up straight, the better to look straight at Madison. “You’re kidding.”
Fred, who could feel her eyebrows arching (they were also red, thanks to Jonas’s tireless efforts to drive her mad with minutia), asked what, to her, was the obvious question: “How could they think you were me?”
Madison sucked in breath, then let it out. “CauseItoldthemIwas.”
Jonas cringed, waiting for the inevitable shit storm from Hurricane Fred. When no one said anything, Madison continued in a small voice: “I told them. I said I was you.”
It took Fred a moment to find her voice. “Why?”
“Yeah,” Betsy said, also puzzled. “Why would you ever say that? Of all the un-fun weirdos you could be, why would you ever—”
“I’m handling this, Betsy.”
“—ever—”
“Do you mind?”
“—ever want to be her?”
“Because that’s all I’ve ever wanted to be!” Madison flashed, anger chasing shame in her shout. “Why d’you think out of all the aquariums in the country—”
“How many can there be?” the vampire from Minnesota asked. “Six? Seven?”
“Sixty-three,” Fred and Madison said in unison. Madison continued alone. “Why d’you think I ended up here? I’ve been following your career since your research project at Woods Hole. People don’t really like you—”
“You are wise to see the truth,” Jonas noted.
“—but they fall all over themselves offering you fellowships and grant money. Then, boom! You’re a mermaid.”
“Boom?”
“And not just any mermaid—”
“A seriously grumpy one. With blue hair except when people think it’s green.”
“Betsy, shut up.”
“Okay, but you know I’m right.”
“I know what you think of me—another spoiled brat intern playing at marine bio on her mama’s money—”
“I didn’t think you were a brat, per se,” Fred mumbled. She could feel herself blushing but, unlike Madison’s rosy cheeks, it wasn’t from pleasure. Everything she’s said is right. So who’s the real dumbass, Fredrika Bimm?
“But that was fine! I figured if I was useful, you’d like me and we’d hang. You didn’t care that I was rich and you didn’t care who my mom was. I—I loved that. D’you know how many people I’ve met who don’t care about Mama’s money and connections? I could count them on one hand—I could count them on three fingers. You just weren’t interested and I thought—I thought if I really put myself out there . . .” She trailed off, shook her head at her own silliness, and continued. “So I started answering the really important e-mails as you. I figured I’d set up all this research funding and legal strategies to help your friend the prince, and when it’s all said and done, they’re pissed I lied, they’re pissed I’m not you. And like a pathetic fool I go along with it! And now we’re all in this mess.”
“It’s like an episode of Three’s Company, with the goofy misunderstandings. Plus attempted murder and the pretty high chance at least one of you will end up shot in the face.” Betsy grimaced and shook her head. “Hate getting shot. Stings like crazy.”
“Oh, wow, now I’ve got questions for you, Betsy.” Jonas turned his chair with a loud scrape, the better to face her. “When you say stings like crazy do you mean stupid mosquitoes or ouchie, that’s gonna need stitches?”
“How did you get away?” Betsy asked, ignoring Jonas.
“Well, they grabbed me and got my clutch, and then I played dumb long enough for them to let their guard down, and then I ran like hell, and I think, I think instead of coming after me they took off, because I never saw them outside the building. Mama got me a room at the Marriott. I was afraid to go home.”
Jonas’s eyes narrowed at Fred; she could pretty much read his thoughts: Let the playing-dumb thing go. It was good advice; she heeded it.
“Good for you,” Betsy said, nodding in approval. “That’s my rule of thumb, too: when in doubt, play dumb and then run like hell. But they’re still after you, right? They didn’t try to kill you because you weren’t Fred.”
Madison was reluctant to contradict the vampire, who’d been so nice to her, but had to correct the misunderstanding. “Well, sure they did. They were so mad.”
“Yes, because they were really there to kill me.” Fred kept her tone low and gentle. “When they found out you weren’t me, they knew they had to kill you, or you’d warn me. Which you’re doing.”
“Ohhhhh.”
“So Madison’s mom called Betsy, and Madison called Fred. And you all met inside the NEA. Fred let you in?” Jonas asked, turning to Madison.
She blinked, surprised. “No, I got there first. We agreed to meet but I only had to come a few hundred feet.”
“How’d you get in after hours?” Fred asked.
“Oh! They tossed my clutch and someone found it right outside the hotel and brought it inside and the manager recognized my name and brought it right up. No credit cards,” she added with a resigned shrug, “or money, which I figured, but they left my library card and my frequent flier—”
“Okay, okay. So who wants Fred dead?”
“Aw, man.” Jonas rubbed his eyes. “If we’re gonna make a list of Fred’s enemies, I’m gonna need a drink.”
Fred smiled sourly. Annoying and unpleasant as it was, Jonas was right: it would be a long, long list, and making said list wasn’t even half of it.
“We’ll all need drinks.” She sighed, and they got to it.
CHAPTER TEN
Jonas’s help compiling the list of Fred Haters was invaluable, as Betsy and Madison pointed out. Fred, meanwhile, had a headache that got worse with each name.
“Boo-hoo,” Jonas replied. “You’re just tired. You’d be the first to admit you’re not the victim here.”
“Not the victim,” she agreed, “but it’s still not much fun listening to you rattle off the names of those who loathe me.”