Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret - Liz Kessler [2]
Mom held the door open for him. “Why don’t you join us?” she said. “We’re just having a cup of tea.”
“Well, I — I mean, I don’t want to, you know — I wouldn’t like to be in your way,” he stammered, but came in anyway and sat down on the little sofa in the middle of the saloon.
“Hello, Emily,” he said, nodding at me and flattening his hair down.
“Hi,” I said, and turned to swim back down, but Dad gave me a nudge.
“Go on up, now; you need to be polite, remember,” he said under his breath.
With a sigh, I pulled myself up through the trapdoor. As I did, I felt the familiar tingling feeling in my tail. Sitting on the side, I watched it flap and wave in the water. The tingling grew stronger, the purply green shimmer faded, my tail stiffened — and then it melted away and my legs emerged. I rubbed the tingle away. It always gave me pins and needles changing back from being a mermaid.
“I believe Archieval is due back today,” Mr. Beeston was saying to Mom as I dangled my legs over the trapdoor. He’d obviously been listening to the grapevine, too. That didn’t surprise me. He always seemed to find out what was going on. Probably had spies working for him all over the place.
I knew we were meant to be friends now, but I still didn’t trust him, and I didn’t see how Mom and Dad could be so happy to forgive and forget.
“So I’ve heard,” Mom said. Millie had gotten up to check herself out in the mirror again. She pulled at her hair and straightened her dress and was getting her lipstick out of her bag again when there was a noise downstairs.
“That’s him!” Millie squeaked. “He’s back!”
We all raced over to the trapdoor and looked down. Sure enough, two seconds later Archie appeared in the large porthole that we use as the downstairs door. He looked up. Grinning broadly, he flicked his dark hair off his face and swam across to the trapdoor. “Hello, all,” he said, looking straight at Millie.
Mom laughed. “Come on,” she said to Mr. Beeston and me, “let’s get a cup of tea and leave the lovebirds to it,” she said.
Mr. Beeston gave Archie a quick nod. “Good to see you back, Archieval,” he said before following Mom into the kitchen.
“So let me get this straight,” Dad said as we gathered outside later that day. Archie and Dad were in the water next to the boat, the rest of us sitting on the front deck. “You’ve been in Brightport for the last two weeks?”
Brightport was my home. Well, I should say my old home. It’s where I’d spent all my life up until we moved to Allpoints Island — the only place in the world where humans live alongside merpeople. In other words, the only place in the world where my mom and dad could live together. It’s the swishiest place ever, and you couldn’t want to live anywhere more perfect — but when my dad said the word Brightport, I suddenly got a dull ache in my stomach.
“That’s right,” Archie replied. “I didn’t realize that was where the assignment was till we were almost there.”
Mr. Beeston nodded seriously. “Well, you know how important it is to Neptune to keep his assignments top secret. That’s how it’s always been in my experience of working alongside the king,” he said importantly.
Archie ignored him and continued. “Cranes and diggers had been spotted at the edge of the town, very close to our merfolk area just off the coast. Shiprock folk were getting scared, and Neptune sent us to find out what was going on.”
There it was again, the pain in my stomach, only it was even sharper this time. Shiprock was the merfolk town where Shona used to live. Where I’d first gone to mermaid school. Just the mention of the place was enough to give me a funny twinge; the fact that something might be going wrong there made it twice as bad.
“So what did you find?” Dad asked.
“Most of the activity is on land, so we were fairly limited. But we managed to discover that it’s the Brightport Council who’s behind it.”
“What are they doing?” asked Mom.
Archie looked at her. “Well, that depends