The Twice Lost

afternoon, Secretary Moreland.”

He didn’t sound at all respectful, though. And he was pouting with unconcealed jealousy. Moreland could barely control his amusement.

“That will be all for now, Mr. . . .”

“Hackett, sir. Charles Hackett.”

“Oh, yes, Anais calls you Charlie. I’d like a private word with our little princess, if you don’t mind.”

Charles Hackett grimaced with open contempt. It was another sign of Anais’s power, Moreland thought, that this flunky was so blatantly rude toward someone so vastly his superior. He couldn’t actually disobey Moreland’s orders, though. He jerked toward the exit, hunching angrily. Behind him Anais swirled, her fins twitching, and knocked silently on the glass.

“Or actually, Mr. Hackett . . .”

Hackett turned back, his eyes narrowing sharply as they reached the secretary of defense.

“I have a present for our little mermaid, Mr. Hackett. Please give it to her after I leave.” Moreland pulled from his breast pocket a slim box wrapped in pink paper with a golden ribbon and handed it over while Hackett scowled. Moreland smiled in anticipation; it was a pleasure to speak all the lies he’d rehearsed that morning. “Also, we’re going to have to play that mermaid recording for her again. We have a few more questions about the singers. Tonight when you go, I’d like you to turn off the electroshock system so that she can listen to the recording as many times as she needs to. Understood?”

“Sir . . .” Hackett visibly worked up his courage. “It’s not healthy for Anais to be reminded of all that. Her friends, her . . . her difficult past. She needs sensitive, caring treatment; she needs to be allowed to heal.”

“She needs to earn her keep, Hackett. And she needs to pay us back for letting her live.” Moreland aimed a smirk at Anais, who looked wonderfully alarmed at the sight of him. Aqua light roiled across her arms and throat. “She’ll heal when it suits my convenience.”

Hackett opened his mouth and closed it again and made a kind of undecided movement with his shoulders. Moreland kept glowering at him, and after a few more flutters of silent protest he shuffled out.

Moreland’s hand shuddered a little with eagerness as it reached to turn the speakers back on. Anais retreated a short distance from the glass, her long tail snaking and her eyes bright and plaintive. “Why, tadpole,” Moreland crooned. “I brought you a present. Something I think you’ll enjoy very much. You could at least make small talk with me for a while.”

Anais rippled a little closer. “Hi,” she muttered faintly.

“Hi, sir,” Moreland corrected, then broke into a smile so wide it made his face ache. “I’ve been thinking about you, tadpole. I’ve been wondering if there are ways we can make your time with us more pleasant. You must get so bored all alone in here all day.”

Anais stared at him, simultaneously wary and petulant. “Of course I’m bored.”

“Of course you are,” Moreland simpered. Anais only looked more frightened in response. “That’s why I’m going to give you the opportunity to do a new, exciting job for me. Broaden your horizons, help your country, and”—he leered—“have fun doing it.”

Anais swished with ill-concealed dismay. “What do you want me to do now? I’ve told you everything I know, and you still won’t let me go home!”

“Charlie is going to give you my present later. It’s a cell phone.”

Anais suddenly brightened. “Really? Then I can call my friends in Miami! I can—”

“For the moment, little tadpole, it’s been programmed so that it can only dial a single number.” He felt a restless thrill below his heart as Anais’s happiness collapsed again. “You’ll make a call this evening, say around nine o’clock. Your first job is to collect some information. If a man answers or if you get voice mail, you should hang up. But if a woman answers, you’ll follow the instructions we’re about to go over together.”

Anais considered this, her head bowed so that waves of hair obscured her face. “Then will you let me go?”

“No.” Moreland smiled at her. “You’ll do this for the sheer pleasure of it, my dear. Because asking a few questions is only the first of your responsibilities.”

“I don’t want to do anything for you, then! I’d rather be bored. I don’t even care if you turn my TV off! I’ll just stare at the walls.”

Moreland had to admit it to himself: he adored Anais like this: childish and surly and deeply depressed. It was a shame, in a way, that she would genuinely enjoy her new assignment. “Oh, tadpole,” Moreland whispered, “don’t be silly. This will be fun for the whole family.”

“I don’t care anymore! I—”

“Tell me something, Anais. Don’t you miss your singing?”

16 Joining Voices

Seb watched from the pier as Luce waved good night to him, a little awkwardly, and headed out into the wild night. She had a long swim ahead of her before she would reach the spot where the Twice Lost gathered to practice. As their numbers grew, they all worried more about the risk that someone would spot them from a boat or a plane. Every night they traveled a bit farther from the coast, settling into remote waves and yet still feeling terribly, helplessly exposed. They put as much loneliness around them as they could, as if the night itself could be their shelter.

Even from a distance Luce could hear the music: long, thrumming, sustained tones, scatterings of brighter notes along the surface. The voices had the distinctive, oddly smooth sound that mermaid voices took on when they called to the water, coaxing and caressing. All around Luce the water shivered, and she whipped along in excitement, ducking below hunting sea lions and spinning silver balls of frightened fish.

Soon the water above her head was thick with swinging, glimmering fins, and Luce surfaced. On the dark sea the Twice Lost Army floated. Luce caught sight of Yuan, busy organizing the newer members into small groups under the command of former queens; of Imani, working with a few of the girls who’d been having trouble. As Luce watched, one of them—a mermaid with thick light brown curls and an anxious expression on her china-doll face—lost control of her voice completely. All at once the night throbbed with savage enchantment as the mermaid’s death song took over and leaped higher and brighter. The curly-haired mermaid flung herself backwards in a panic, gasping and thrashing as she struggled to regain mastery of the notes tearing from her throat. If any humans had been unlucky enough to be within earshot, Luce knew they would have had no chance at all of surviving.

Luce was about to race over to her when she saw that she wasn’t needed. Imani was already hovering just behind the frightened mermaid, her dark hands lightly resting on those heaving shoulders. The vehement music calmed a little, and the doll-faced mermaid’s spasmodic movements slowed. Imani was singing in her ear, a soothing, whispering resonance, luring the maddened song back down into a single note, soft and peaceful. A docile little wave curled up in front of them. And then . . .

Then Imani’s voice changed again, bending into a low, bubbling harmony. Her song caught the frightened mermaid’s voice in a way Luce had never heard before. It was as if Imani’s song had entered into that other song and opened it like a flower opening in the core of another flower, forming a concentric swell of music that was somehow greater and sweeter than the sound of any mermaid singing alone.

And the wave in front of them doubled, trebled in size, then abruptly shot skyward and wavered in a gleaming wall with gracefully fluted sides. The moon’s light refracted in each curve until a hundred long golden eyes winked out at them. Everyone stopped practicing and watched in silence. The china-doll mermaid stared in disbelief at the result of her strange duet with Imani, then let out a little shriek. The spell broke, the water tumbled . . .

And Luce’s voice entered the night and caught the falling wave again. Imani glanced over at her, eyes shining with a kind of serene exaltation. Luce could feel Imani’s voice singing into hers and feel her own song blossoming in Imani’s. The sensation was entirely new to her, and also entirely wonderful.