Page 6

The short drive to the pier from the village gave Sam time to cool his temper. Calm his nerves.

Sam replayed the words shared in the apartment and quelled the unhappiness at his own reaction. Did he feel like he’d just kicked a puppy? Somewhat. Eric’s expression had Sam suspecting his older brother was going to cry when he left, and despite everything, that thought weighed heavily on his mind. But at the same time, it wasn’t fair of them to expect Sam to sit there as they talked crap about his dad.

Sam parked in his usual spot by Archie’s workshop and climbed out of the car, snagging the bag of paints Eric had gifted him. The sky had faded to a clear twilight blue, cloudless, with the stars beginning to emerge high above. Without a breeze, the ocean was as calm as it ever got, hardly even the smallest wave disturbing the flat surface. Sam had to paint it. The Atlantic rarely showed off its tame side.

The pier was deserted as Sam drew near, the walkway clear, with the only sign of life far off in the distance at Sally’s bar.

A bark of laughter drew Sam to a stop. His boat was at the very end of the pier, and next to it were two mermen that Sam had seen regularly over the past few months, though he wasn’t as familiar with them as he was with Devil. Thanks to Laurence, he knew their names. Bee, with his copper scales and dark-brown hair, and Dew, with his pale blue tail and light-brown hair, circled in the water, splashing and loud. A teenager stood at the end of the dock, watching. Sam stumbled. What the hell? Were they not even hiding themselves anymore?

“Ugly, ugly, ugly,” Bee chanted, swimming in circles.

“I’m not ugly!” the teenager snapped.

Dew and Bee laughed.

“Ugly, ugly, ugly,” Dew chanted next.

“Just answer me,” the teenager growled at them. “What does your golden friend like?”

“Not you.”

“Not you!”

Wow. Dew and Bee were kind of assholes.

The teenager stooped down, picking up a discarded shell by his foot. He rose up swinging and fired it at the mermen. They vanished beneath the waves with a flourish and a tail smack and didn’t resurface. The teenager sneered at the water and whirled on his heels, only to immediately stop, face jerking up to look at Sam.

His hair was silvery, his features delicate, nose narrow, lips plump. He was pretty. Really, really pretty.

Sam recognised Connor’s ex at once, and from the way Austin’s eyes darkened to fury, he was certain that he’d been recognised right back. Not that there was any reason for his presence to make Austin mad. Sam was the one who got dumped by Connor because he couldn’t stop thinking about Austin. If anyone had the right to be upset or angry, surely it was him.

“Eavesdropping a hobby of yours?” Austin asked, his voice, his eyes, even the way his lips twitched, felt like a threat.

“I just got here. I didn’t hear anything,” Sam lied. He preferred to stay honest, but this moment felt like it called for a lie.

“Hah, right. ” Austin was suddenly in Sam’s space, pushing him back with one hand flat on his chest.

Sam yielded a step to kill some of that fire in Austin’s eyes. “Are you looking for Connor? Because he usually docks by the bar—”

“Still hanging around him?” Austin cut him off. “You’re pathetic. He dumped you. Why don’t you get that into your thick head?”

Wow.

Laurence had told Sam that Austin was a lot to handle and that even though Connor had forgiven him for the part he played in his abduction, Trevor had been firm that he wasn’t allowed into the house afterwards. Trevor seemed like a forgiving person, so Sam suspected there was more to the story. From what he’d heard, Austin didn’t have any say in what happened any more than Connor had, merely a bit more awareness and a lot less freedom because of that.

“And he didn’t dump you?” Sam asked. Just because he felt bad for the guy didn’t mean he was going to stand there and take the hurled insults lying down.

Austin shoved him again. Sam didn’t pretend to get pushed back this time.

“Move.”

“It’s a wide path. You can walk around me.” Sam met Austin’s fury head-on. Austin’s eyes flashed an unnaturally bright silver.

“Move.” His voice was low and dangerous.

Sam felt kind of bad for not getting intimidated. He was obviously trying very hard to push Sam around. It honestly felt like Austin was putting on a show. Maybe he was embarrassed that Sam overheard him getting mocked? Maybe he felt exposed and vulnerable and was now lashing out even though that wasn’t really what he wanted. Sam lifted his hands and stepped aside. “Moved.”

Austin purposefully shoulder-checked Sam as he stalked past, and Sam went with the movement so Austin didn’t hurt himself. A niggling feeling stirred in Sam’s stomach. Memories of Connor from before bloomed inside, and how he had transformed from jagged and dangerous to relaxed and at ease. Austin had that jagged and dangerous form to him, and Sam never saw him hanging out or talking with anybody. The only conversation he’d seen was the one with the mermen just now, and he hadn’t been treated nicely.

“You can come out on the boat with me if you want,” Sam said to his back. “The golden-tailed merman usually comes to hang out, so if you’re curious about him, you can tag along.”

Austin slowed his march. His shoulders were a rigid line of tension when he twisted to fix a narrow-eyed look of suspicion on Sam.

Sam answered that suspicious look with a shrug. “I usually head out for a few hours, bringing my books to study while I’m out there. I can do a shorter trip if you—”

“So you did eavesdrop,” Austin interrupted flatly.

Sam winced. “Sorry,” he apologised. “You were having a loud conversation in a public place.”

Austin’s scowl worsened. “What do you mean, he hangs out?”

“He hangs out. Swims around the boat.” Waits with very little patience for Sam to draw him.

Austin’s gaze darted to Sam’s boat, skittering across the painted hull – which had begun to wear away along the water line – and then his silver eyes fixed on the ocean. His expression hardened. Sam wondered if Austin was afraid of the water. He wondered if the last time he’d been out on the sea was when the Infinite tanker sank.

“I have pots laid just the next bay over in Curlew. I could do a trip to them and back. It would probably be about an hour, tops.”

Austin’s nose twitched, and his face jerked suddenly away from the ocean. “Fuck off,” he said, but a waver in his voice eroded the venom of his tone. He turned on his heels and marched away from Sam, lifting trembling hands to bury in his pockets.

Sam watched him walk away, knowing better than to chase after him. Clearly, he wasn’t someone Austin had any interest in talking with, and if he was set against him, then Sam wouldn’t do any good trying to calm him down.

He only wondered as he reached his boat why Austin knew what he looked like or knew who he was.

Sam climbed onto his boat and switched on a lantern as he opened the main cabin. He found his folder of paintings on the ground right behind the door, and he snorted when he picked it up and saw that the unfinished one was on top. Sam put it aside and went back outside to untie from the dock. He drove out into the flat ocean, cutting through the midnight-black sheet as the brisk Baltic air rushed inside the cabin.

Sam waited until the village was a mere blip before easing off the throttle. He dug through his trunk and found another sweater to pull on and then switched off the engine, the lights, everything, and dropped anchor. A three-quarter moon hung in the sky, providing enough light for Sam to go without the lantern.

By the time Sam dug out his fold-out chair and table, there was a stirring in the water. A ripple that grew closer on a direct path to Sam’s boat. Devil’s approach had never before been so obvious.

His face appeared through the railings. His shining eyes of gold narrowed, and his top lip quivered as if ready to sneer. That top lip went still, and his eyes relaxed as he saw that rather than the schoolbooks Devil usually found Sam setting up, it was his sketchbook instead.

Sam grinned. “My brother got me paints. Golden ones.” He showed the top page, the one he’d been dissatisfied to leave unfinished yesterday. “Would you model for me?” he asked.

Devil chirped, and with nimble ease, he hauled himself from the water and perched on his railing. Water ran down his bare shoulders, and he raised a hand to his wet hair. His cherubic curls always turned to waves when damp, and despite Devil clearly not liking that, Sam thought it looked just as good as when his hair was dry.

“It’s okay,” Sam said, seeing the merman frown. “I’m finishing this painting, so I only need to see your tail. Can you pose the way you did here?”

Devil peered at the sketch and then arranged himself, right down to the same arch in his back and the position of every individual finger.

“Perfect.” Sam already had his table and chair in the spot he wanted, so he sat and began.

In a mere hour, Sam had the stars above him and the unfinished painting that had been nagging at his mind completed. It was better now than it could have been yesterday. Moonlight illuminated the scene, and Sam ended up painting over the completed parts with washes of blue and dark hues to match the new image before him. Sam kept the painting to himself as it dried, immensely pleased with the result.

Once it dried, he approached Devil and leaned against the railing with him, offering out the painting. Offered out another hour of admiration right into the merman’s hands. “I could probably paint you blind at this stage,” Sam noted, watching Devil’s expression carefully as he took the sheet.

Devil chuffed. Huffed again a few moments later and finally released a pleased hum. Sam grinned. He liked it too.

“Moonlight suits you,” Sam said.

Devil handed Sam back the painting, and, surprising Sam, he bent down. When he straightened, he held a box. Devil rested it on his tail and jutted his chin at Sam, indicating toward the box.

Sam tilted his head, scanning the foreign object. It was ebony-coloured wood, polished and shining, about the size of the sheet in his hand and twice that in depth. “What’s this?” Sam asked. It definitely didn’t belong to him. It also didn’t look like Devil had dredged it from a shipwreck or the bottom of the ocean; it was far too clean.

Devil jutted his chin again.

“Is it for me?” Sam replaced his painting on the table and ran his fingers along the smooth wood. It wasn’t even wet…How did Devil get it onto the boat dry? A simple metal latch secured the round lid. Sam unclipped it and lifted the lid.

Cold radiated from the box, and the moonlight illuminated a sea-glass-green bottle resting upon large, uneven chunks of cut ice. Surrounding the bottle was a mountain of scrubbed, unopened oysters, and nestled away was one over-large lemon sliced in two pieces.

Sam examined the spread. “Are you sharing with me?” The oysters were a speckled grey. Large for Irish varieties, but the right colour. Sam picked up one of them and tapped the shell with his fingernail; the two halves snapped shut, the centimetre of space between the edges disappearing. “I should have a knife here somewhere I can use to shuck them.”

Devil reached inside the box and, from beneath the ice, tucked flat to the edge of the wood, pulled free a knife. The blade shone like silver steel, dead straight for the length of Sam’s pointer finger before tapering into a uniform point. All the edges were sharp. The handle seemed to be made of the same wood as the box, and it was smoothed down except for regular grooves in the wood for fingers to fit. It was the perfect size for Devil’s hand.

“Would you like to eat them now? Let me just get this set up.” Sam hooked his foot around the leg of his folding table and dragged it across the deck. He let the box balance on Devil’s lap long enough to clear away his supplies and then placed it there. “I should have two cups inside we can use.” He lifted out the bottle to examine it. Through the glass, he could just about make out carbon dioxide bubbles rising, so he assumed that, at the very least, Devil hadn’t brought him a bottle of seawater. There was no writing of any kind on the glass, and it was only when he turned it at an angle that an embossed engraving on the rim caught his eye. Even if it had been English, chances were Sam would have greatly struggled to figure out the words, but he was reasonably sure that it wasn’t lettering he was familiar with. The curves intermixed with harsh lines vaguely reminded him of the lettering from his classes on Roman architecture, but even in the height of his stubbornness, Sam hadn’t been stupid enough to actually sign himself up for any classes on ancient languages.

“What does this say?” Sam ran his thumb over the engraving.

A low growl grumbled from Devil. Sam’s gaze lifted from the bottle to see Devil rubbing his throat with an expression of vexed irritation.

“Wait,” Sam said quickly. “You don’t need to try to speak. Connor told me it took Adonis a while to adjust and that it could hurt. Don’t force yourself.”

Devil’s grumbles ceased, and all that was left in their aftermath was a put-out expression of discontent. Sam waited long enough to make sure he didn’t try to speak again, then replaced the bottle in the ice and went to fetch the cups. Two cups lived on the boat with Sam. They were old and chipped, but a glaze had kept the painted image on them intact even after years of use. Sam picked out his one, which had S-A-M written in the messy scrawl of a ten-year-old trying to paint on the curved surface of a cup. His had a paintbrush painted on it. The second one hadD-A-D in the same terrible brushmanship and was illustrated with a blob of brown and red, a tiny black dot and two thick brown lines that Sam had declared a robin when he’d given it to his dad. As Sam wiped them clean, his gaze snagged on a third cup nestled in the back of the drawer.

The third cup wasn’t chipped, and its white polish was still white. Sam set the two cups he’d been using for years aside and took out the third. Written in the same messy child-scrawl was E-R-I-C. The painting on this one was of two stick figures with red flames for hair and green blobs for eyes. The stick figures’ arms were conjoined, probably meant to look like they were holding hands, and there was writing beneath the figures. Not Sam’s messy child writing, but the neat and uniform lettering of a teacher.

Sam blinked several times and angled the cup toward the window to bathe it in moonlight to help decipher the lettering.

A soft crack drifted in through the open door. Sam twisted toward the doorway, recognising the sound of a crunching shell. He replaced the cup on the shelf and took the two older ones and a clean tea towel. “Wait for me. I’ll shuck them,” Sam said as he left the cabin. “I don’t want you to cut yourself.”

Devil held a separated shell in his hand. Sam approached and saw one of the oysters halved. Sam leaned forward to peer at the oyster and saw the body rested perfectly intact. Devil held the shell level, keeping all the liquid inside the bottom bowl as he carefully severed the muscle, holding it to the shell. Devil had perfectly shucked the oyster.

“You’re better at it than me,” Sam said, a hint of admiration in his voice. His dad had taught him how to shuck, and any other fisherman would have cried to see how many oysters were ruined before he’d mastered it. Oisín had shown his usual patience; he never made learning stressful for Sam.

Sam placed the two cups down and picked up the bottle. “You don’t have a cork opener in that box, do you?”

Devil set the knife down and held out his hand, looking at Sam expectantly. Sam handed him the bottle, and while his hand was still hanging in the air between them, Devil fit the shucked oyster into his palm.

“Thanks.” Sam raised it to his nose, smelling, and checked to be sure there were no bits of shell or mud. He was aware of Devil’s intense stare on him as he finally raised the shell and swallowed the oyster in one go. Briny, soft, and tasting of the ocean, the oyster was definitely Irish. Oysters were one of the sea creatures Connor would never eat when they dated, and Sam had taken special care not to ever accept them from other fishermen when they were together. But they weren’t dating anymore, and Sam was more than happy to partake. Though even if he didn’t like oysters, he’d probably still tell the waiting merman they were his favourite food ever.

“It’s good,” Sam said, meeting Devil’s eyes. “Thank you.”

A satisfied look transformed Devil’s face. For once, his top lip didn’t twitch as if ready to become a snarl at a moment’s notice. His eyes softened, and the sound that hummed from his throat, leaving the gills just beneath his jaw flaring out, was one of contentment.

And while making that pleased sound, he pulled the cork out of the bottle with his bare hands and poured the liquid into Sam’s cup. It smelled like a fruity champagne, and under Devil’s watchful eye, Sam took a sip and discovered it tasted much better than any champagne he’d had before. Not that he’d ever experimented much with champagne, but this hit his tongue with a fruity burst, and his expression clearly gave him away because Devil’s pleased hum reignited.

Devil hummed to himself the entire time as he shucked oysters and made Sam eat them all, making sure he drank champagne all the while. At the end of the feast and drink, Sam was giggling at Devil’s tail swishing in the water in irritation and his little grunt of a garbled ‘no’ every time Sam tried to make him have an oyster as well. Devil fled when Sam determinedly tried to make him eat the last one; he watched Sam from the water at a safe distance. He watched patiently – far, far more patiently than Sam – until Sam relented and ate it. Devil released a pleased chuff before he dipped below the flat ocean.

Sam waited only a short while to be sure Devil wasn’t returning before he stumbled to his cabin and got his bed laid out with clumsy fingers.

Sam lay out in the cabin when drowsiness weighed down his limbs, and as his head buzzed and his body glowed, the letters of the cup, which his mind had apparently been decoding during the feast, came to him.

Best big brother!