“Ohhh god.” Groaning at the headache prying him apart, he rose to his feet. He would clean up his house and think on this. Crash into bed. Pray she didn’t get out and come and drown him, somehow, in his bed. Maybe by sitting on his face.
Chuckling at his vile humor, he staggered toward the stairs that led down to the door, which then led past his main lounge room.
Wait. What was he going to feed her?
She must eat something more than people? A splash made him halt, and he turned. Raffaela had surfaced.
“What do you eat?” Then he saw the wriggling fish in her hands, the chunk missing from its middle, and the blood staining the water. “Okay. Right. Now I know. Hungry, were you?”
Narrow-eyed, she nodded then bit off more fish, chewed.
His pool filters could handle the blood and debris.
Blood smeared her lips.
Something induced him to return to the pool. Easier to talk with less distance. If she lunged from the other side he had, ohhh, about three seconds to get away? Wolfgang took one step back. Make that four.
“Was it you? Did you drown my lover, my Merrick?” Had to know. Had to. “He was—”
“Yes, it was me,” she snapped. “I remember his name. I heard it when you called to him, as he slipped under the sea with me. I remember the feel of him inside me. His kisses.” Then she halted, expression faltering.
She’d been taunting him. It had been working. He inhaled, stifled his need to hurt her. “Go on.”
Her mouth twisted, and she lowered the dead fish beneath the water. She spoke again, her voice softened, “I did try to save him. He was haunting, he was different from the others. Something about him made me try to make him come alive, again, even after. You know? I’m sorry.”
Water dripped.
“So very sorry.”
Not just because he’d aimed to knife her?
He grunted, off balance, anger simmering but not quite erupting. Sorry. What did you do when your lover’s murderer said sorry?
Spit on them? Scream? Knife them anyway? He was staring at her bobbing tits where they showed above the pool surface, with the stirred water sloshing over them. Fuck them hard, without remorse?
Get vengeance on them some other way?
His face would shatter if he stayed a second more, and so he turned away and jogged down the stairs. He spent the next hours cleaning the house, sorting things. He filled the trash can to overflowing, then put away the broom and vacuum, and went to Merrick’s room, which had become more of a storage and playroom when he moved into the main bedroom.
He hadn’t been in here since the day the man had gone missing.
The death certificate was still coming. They didn’t like issuing those without proof of death. Without a body.
Wolfgang lay down on the bed and stayed there, still, hollow, staring at the walls, at the ceiling.
The neat display of kink gear on the walls taunted him. The floggers and leather harnesses. The chains, clamps, dildos, arm restraints, shackles, and masks. An entire kink shop’s worth of BDSM accessories was going to waste.
“I need you man. I so fucking need you. What would you do with her?”
He’d probably say do anything you want to. Merrick had a wildness to him. That last night, the night before the day he vanish—
Stop thinking about him. Stop. Thinking.
No more memories. None.
He made himself do math in his head, wonder what the weather was like, and decide who would win the next election. Also why people counted sheep.
He fell into sleep at some point, a nightmarish running-away-from-everything, falling-off-a-cliff-into-a bottomless-sea sort of sleep.
When he woke, he hadn’t moved on the bed, and every part of his body felt as stiff as if he’d been working in a labor camp building the pyramids, or something even bigger.
Cursing, he dragged himself upright. At least he hadn’t been drowned by mermaid pussy.
His cellphone had messages, and the time, date. Strangely it was still Sunday.
Two in the afternoon? He could get into the lab and check her blood, package up the tissue to send it away for testing. They couldn’t do DNA properly at the Trantor Marine Institute.
Except that when he opened the fridge and checked, the specimens had turned to water and some sort of black sludge. Extract of seaweed was actually a distinct possibility.
Minuses – no DNA test could be performed. Pluses? He could kill her, dump her body in front of the cops, and nobody would ever find him guilty.
Wolfgang hesitated at the thought of going to see her. He’d leave her be, for a while.
Three days passed. Sitting on the sofa in the darkened living room, he drank beer, ate snacks, and watched her swim in his pool and consume all of his fish. The pool was brightly lit by sun in the daytime and the pool lights at night. She could not see him watching her.
He considered jerking off but didn’t. Thoughts revolved and evolved. No images would stay of her on any devices, but he could make notes of any discoveries.
Getting more living fish wasn’t easy. Or not that easy. As from tomorrow, he was on official leave for a month because of Merrick. Taking specimens from the facility would get him reprimanded, and he meant to return to work once he was done with mindfucking this mermaid. Something from the fishmonger would do.
He thought about that, about her food, for two days before he did something.
Found some ancient scotch whisky in his cellar, sat on the sofa, and then
