Free The Twice Lost by Sarah Porter Page A

survive—”
    “Mr. Korchak . . . I’m afraid it’s worse than that. You say you’ve seen Luce quite recently. How much did she tell you about her life after she changed form?”
    Not much,
Andrew thought. “Enough.”
    “She was a member of a particularly vicious mermaid tribe. It’s possible that she’s had a change of heart since that time, but it’s extremely likely that she was at least complicit in far more deaths than the ones I’ve told you about.”
    “Like . . .”
    “Hundreds. Probably hundreds. More. One ship last year had almost nine hundred passengers on board when it sank. And Luce was there. That I know for certain.”
    “Luce wouldn’t . . . No way I’ll believe . . .”
    “Tell her to turn herself in, Mr. Korchak. It’s the best I can do for her. Special Ops are out to avenge their own. If I’m there first, there’s a chance I can get her into some form of safe custody before anyone blasts her to ribbons.”
    “Don’t you
talk
about my girl like that! My God, after everything she’s been through . . . me and her mom both gone, my loser brother beating her and— You’re talking about just slashing up a teenage girl like it means
nothing.
”
    “I’m trying to prevent precisely that from happening. I sincerely want to help her. Luce rescued someone I care about, and I don’t believe she deserves . . . Can you find her?”
    “I
want
to find her. She fished me off that island where I was stranded, but then she just zoomed off and vanished.”
    “And? Do you know where to look for her?”
    Andrew groaned. He was doing his best not to break down, but it kept getting harder. “I’ve got no clue where to even start.”

6
Dead Zones
    Now that J’aime had taken over the mission Luce had assigned herself, there wasn’t the same desperate need to rush south as quickly as possible.
    But now that she understood how hunted she truly was, there was an acute need for stealth. The black-suited divers probably knew that mermaids tended to cling to the coasts and that they needed air periodically as they swam. Slipping her head out of the water anywhere near the shore would be wildly risky; she’d have to travel uncomfortably far out to sea. Luce didn’t even want to think about how impossible it would be to find anywhere she could sleep.
    For a whole day she lingered in J’aime’s narrow hiding place, letting her damaged body start to mend itself, singing low, melting songs to that piece of broken sky high above her. It was the first time in weeks she’d stayed so still and let herself succumb to everything she felt in the quiet. Her song curled around fragments of Dorian’s voice:
If you want to kill me for this, you can. I won’t sing back.
He’d given her a chance to stop him before he’d started trying to make sure the divers disposed of
her.
Maybe he’d decided only one of them could continue to live.
    And already so many other mermaids had been slaughtered because of what Dorian had done. Girls lay in rotting heaps deep in their caves while the one in particular Dorian wanted dead somehow lived on, carrying the images of the lost with her. Dreamily Luce pictured herself trailed by ghostly faces, all glowing like jellyfish, all warping with the loft of the waves . . .
    Was she sorry, then, that she
hadn’t
drowned him? She’d come so close; she’d forced herself to stop just in time.
    But no, she couldn’t regret it. He’d wanted her to kill him, even tried to manipulate her into it, and the only vengeance left to her, feeble and fragile as it was, was to make him live with the knowledge that she was living, too.
    ***
    Luce slept for many hours that night, awkwardly balanced against the cave’s wall on a rocky shelf that wasn’t really long enough for her body. She woke with the heavy conviction that she had to keep heading south no matter the danger. As far as she could tell, Nausicaa had passed this way, and finding her friend was the only real hope she