Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret - Liz Kessler [4]
Mr. Beeston flicked through the pages of names. “Well, I —” he began. “I mean, I —” He looked up at Archie. “This isn’t a joke?”
Archie shook his head.
“The people of the town want me back?”
Archie nodded.
“And Neptune needs me?”
“He does.”
Mr. Beeston pulled himself up straighter. “Well, then,” he said. “I cannot let them down. I must return to Brightport.”
Which was the exact moment I realized why I’d been having bad dreams every night and waking up sad every morning — and why my insides had ached at the mention of Brightport.
I was homesick. It was as simple as that.
Mom turned to Dad. “Jake,” she said. “I — I —”
Dad swam over to the side and reached up to take her hand. I looked at Mom’s face and I recognized the look in her eyes. It was saying the same thing as mine. It had been saying the same thing all along. These last few weeks when I’d caught her staring into the distance — I suddenly realized what it was that she was searching for, what she was missing.
“She wants to go home,” I said.
Dad glanced at me. “We are home, little ’un,” he said with a quick laugh. Then he turned to Mom. “Aren’t we?”
Before she could answer, Archie broke in. “There’s something else,” he said. “I didn’t know how to ask, but maybe this is a good time.”
Dad turned to him. “What is it?”
“Neptune wants a team. If there’s going to be trouble, he needs more than just one of us there. Beeston is a good choice for keeping Shiprock under control, and his contacts make him ideal for getting information on the Brightport side of things, especially using the lighthouse keeper cover again.”
Mr. Beeston shuffled and flattened his hair down. Before he could launch into another Oscar acceptance speech, Archie added, “I put your name forward as his assistant.”
“Me?” Dad asked. “Neptune would put me in a position of responsibility, after — well, after where I’ve been?”
Dad’s not a criminal or anything, but he was sent to prison for marrying my mom. Intermarriage between merpeople and humans used to be highly illegal. But not anymore. In fact, Neptune had now decided that he wanted to bridge the gap between humans and merpeople — and he’d decided we were the ones to help him.
He’d told us we had to bring the two worlds together, get humans and merpeople to live in peace. And that was another thing: how could we change the world so that humans and merpeople lived in peace together if we were living out here in the one bit of the world where they already did? Everything was pointing to the same conclusion: we had to go back to Brightport.
Archie was still talking to Dad. “Neptune doesn’t hold on to the past,” he was saying. “He knows you are loyal and dependable.”
“And married to a human,” Dad said.
“Exactly. That’s the whole point. One of you to find out more about what’s going on with the Brightport folks and one of you keeping an eye on things in Shiprock. Between you two and Beeston, we might just be able to avert a major disaster for the entire town.”
“You’re not asking me to spy on my old friends, are you?” Mom asked.
“Not at all! Beeston and Jake will do most of the work. Just keep your eyes and ears open, in case you hear anything that the others miss — anything that could be a problem for the mer community at Shiprock. If anyone else needs to be rehoused, we’d rather they know in advance, so they can get all their belongings and move of their own accord, rather than wake up one morning to a bulldozer in their front cave.”
“Do you think that could really happen?” Mom asked.
“Absolutely. And I’ll tell you something else: if another house is destroyed, merfolk there will really start to panic. Neptune doesn’t like being in a position like this, where he has no control over what’s going on. He’s not used to it. If these plans cause more problems, he might decide to exhibit his power by ordering a full-scale evacuation — and most merfolk are desperate to avoid that.”
Dad looked up at Mom. “What do you think?”
Mom chewed slowly on a thumbnail. “I think we’ve been told to find ways