“We’ll tell Anthony that she threatened you,” Sidney announced. “Police can, um, do protective custody or something, right? Or…something?”

I shook my head a little, still trapped in Sidney’s arms, but I didn’t really mind so I didn’t try to get free. It was nice and warm and comforting there. “As long as I stay underwater, she can’t find me,” I pointed out.

Sidney sighed a little. “Maybe, but…I’d rather have her dealt with. Plus, to be honest, I’ve been very proud of you for going up on the surface lately. I know how big a deal that is for you and I liked it that you were willing to push yourself, within limits you felt safe still, to try to go back. Not to mention you have surface friends now, like Theo and Charlotte and maybe Anthony, and you can’t see them if you stay here all the time. I hate the idea of you getting stuck down here just because of someone else. If you just want to stay because you like the ocean, that’s one thing, but staying because you’re scared of a bully is…not okay.” He looked over at Jett. “Can’t we do something? Can Anthony arrest her just for threatening?”

Jett considered that. “I don’t know,” he said at last, his face troubled. “Under the circumstances, probably not, but I will talk to him. If he’s aware that her targeting you wasn’t accidental and she might continue, that’s an issue. But Sage,” he reached over to slide a finger under my chin and tip my face up so I was looking at him, “Sidney’s right. Please don’t be afraid to go back up just because of her. If you want to go, if you want to spend time with your friends up here, Sidney or I can accompany you, or Silas, or honestly almost anyone in the merfolk community would be glad to help. You don’t seem to realize it, but the entire community adores you. None of us will let anything happen to you if we can help it, and I’m pretty sure we can.”

Their words did actually help some. With them here, the fog of memories was starting to clear and I found myself able to focus more on the present. The present, which didn’t involve someone being brutally killed in front of me and didn’t involve threats from a sadistic centaur. Instead, it involved friends trying to offer comfort and protection.

I suddenly remembered something and frowned a bit. “If you’re both here, where’s Zoey?”

“Theo has her.” Sidney finally released me from his crushing hug, but gently tugged on my braid and didn’t quite drop contact from me, which I appreciated. He seemed to realize that physical touch was comforting right now.

“He likes babysitting her,” Jett explained. “He doesn’t even seem that bothered when she goes full kraken. She broke his tub and he seemed more entertained than bothered by it.”

“He was worried about you, too,” Sidney added. “And Charlotte, and Anthony. Selene even asked about you – I guess she’s not as cold as she seems? You have good friends on the surface as well as down here, Sage.” He kissed the top of my head. “Don’t give up on them just yet, okay? Let us figure out the centaur bitch’s problem and then you’ll be safe to visit them again. In areas you feel safe, at least. We’ll figure out something.”

I felt a lot more peaceful by the time they left a while later, promising me to talk to Anthony ASAP. Sidney also made me promise to come by the next day and play with Zoey, and Jett gave me a rare hug – well, a rare hug initiated by him – before leaving.

When they left, I felt that sensation again, like something was missing, but now I finally was able to pinpoint what the feeling was.

I was lonely.

It wasn’t like I didn’t have people in my life, people who cared a lot about me. I had great friends – Sidney and Jett topped that list – and caring family, like Silas, but…I didn’t have anyone of my own. No matter how long I spent helping people all day, I always came back to my house, alone. My siblings didn’t live with me because they either were in dolphin form when underwater or in human form on land, so they didn’t have the same needs as I did when it came to underwater housing. In theory, I could just live with them on the surface, but we all knew why that hadn’t happened.

I thought about it while I carefully began unbraiding my hair so I could brush it and re-braid it. I’d never put that much thought into the fact that I didn’t have an underwater family to live with and I’d never even noticed that I felt lonely. Seeing Jett and Sidney happy together, though, made me realize that might be what was missing in my life. Someone to share my life with.

At least that was a distracting enough thought that I actually forgot – for a while – about the rough-voiced female centaur and spent most of the evening instead puzzling over why I felt that way and what to do about it. A dolphin thing, probably, wanting family nearby? Just because I was an oceanid didn’t mean I didn’t have some dolphin genes to affect me. Or, well, most people wanted that, didn’t they? It didn’t have to be a dolphin thing. And now that I was more established in life, it was normal to start thinking of stuff like that, right? Still, it wasn’t like I had any idea how to go about fixing it. Dating people was…complicated. If they were surface dwellers, that was a whole mess, but if merfolk, well…despite what Jett claimed about the community loving me, no one had ever been interested in me that way. I figured it was like the plain cousin thing again – I was nice enough to hang around with and be friends with, but not someone people felt attracted to.

But if none of the merfolk were interested in me, that only left surface dwellers, and there were a couple of huge problems with that. First, that would require me to be on the surface a lot, which I really didn’t want to do, but second…well, there were few surface dwellers, human or supernatural, who wanted to be involved with an oceanid. Some of them found our ability to shift genders downright creepy or weird, and at best, most of them would only go along with the relationship if the oceanid agreed to stick to one gender. But we weren’t just one gender, so trying to force us to give up half of ourselves wasn’t great. Even oceanids like me and Sidney, who had our preferred forms, didn’t want to give up our other forms, either. They had their uses, and sometimes we just wanted to be different for a day. So it was really hard for an oceanid to get involved with anyone who wasn’t a merfolk and wasn’t more used to the idea of their partner switching genders at will.

I sighed and decided to shelve the whole topic. I’d finally figured out what was missing, and that was good, but I had no idea how to resolve the issue and, more importantly, I had other things I needed to focus on first. Mainly, how to deal with the nightmare that had returned to my life.

I really hoped that Anthony would figure out a way to help.

~~~~

“So here’s the deal.” Anthony was sitting at Theo’s dining room table with Theo, Jett, Sidney, Silas, Charlotte, Selene, and me – me being extremely jumpy but agreeing mostly because I was surrounded by family and friends and I really wanted to show Jett and Sidney that I was listening to what they wanted when they were encouraging me to not give up on the surface just yet. They even let me hold Zoey during this, which sounded counterintuitive, but having to be gentle with the baby sort of forced me to relax and gave me an easy distraction if I needed one. Plus, you know, she was cute, so there was that.

“We couldn’t find the centaur – her name is Kate, by the way. Anyway, we couldn’t find her. We checked on her address, but according to her landlord, she moved out.” Anthony frowned a bit. “So we had a little talk with one of the centaurs. Or, more accurately, the demons did. They wouldn’t recognize me in human form anyway.”

Selene picked up the story. “I brought a couple pandemonium members with me and the centaur freaked out. Never seen one looking that scared before – well, other than the other day, that was something.” She seemed awfully pleased by the fear, but that was the goal of the other day, so maybe it was a good thing?

“Anyway,” she went on, “we asked him about Kate. It turns out Kate and two others were the original centaurs living here, other than Charlotte.”

Charlotte nodded in agreement, her arms crossed over her chest. “Yeah, she seemed to always be the ringleader, though. I got the impression the herd mostly followed her ideas.”

“Good news, then, is that she appears to have left town.” Selene shrugged. “That was what the centaur told us, anyway, and that matches the fact that she moved out and we can’t find her anywhere. We’re guessing she didn’t take kindly to the rest of the herd’s concessions – which they can’t break, by the way.” She smirked a little as she glanced at Anthony.

He stirred from his seat. “Dragon magic,” he explained. “Dragon magic can make promises unbreakable. If people try, depending on what the promise is, the magic will literally stop them. Prevent them from saying something or actually freeze them in place, whatever is required under the circumstances. I wasn’t going to prevent them from defending themselves if they need to, but I can prevent them from causing unnecessary fights and injuries, so that’s the main part of their promise I used magic on. That and when they promised not to hurt you,” he added with a nod to me.

“Thing is,” Selene’s face grew a bit more serious, “this Kate girl didn’t make any promises. She was…otherwise engaged right then. We probably should have thought to get promises out of her before they left, but too late now. Point is, she seems to have realized her herd is effectively defanged, neutralized, whatever you want to call it – they won’t be what she wants them to be, at least not while they live here. They’ll probably be some of the best-behaved centaurs any city has ever had, which is kind of amusing.” She smiled a pointy-toothed smile. “But Kate may have also guessed that we might remember that she hadn’t promised anything and hunt her down to elicit the promises out of her, and just decided to leave before we did that. Whether it’s to avoid making the promises or because she’s upset that the herd is no longer useful, at the end of the day, we’re 99% sure she left town. We are trying to figure out where she went, for good measure, but so far none of the police departments in nearby cities have heard of a centaur showing up.”

Sidney tapped his fingertips together. “So we’re pretty sure she’s left, but how do we know she won’t come back? I don’t want Sage to think everything is fine and then this Kate bitch shows up out of the blue when our guard is down.”

I was kind of amused that Sidney kept calling her a “bitch.” Sidney wasn’t usually one for swearing, but apparently Kate brought it out.

“It’s a problem,” Anthony agreed. “But I think I have a solution. I’ve entered her into our system as a person of interest in the child’s death that Sage witnessed.” Jett had informed him and Selene about that particular situation so they’d understand the real threat here. “The kids who actually had a hand in murdering him were arrested back then, but Kate was never looked at and the police file was pretty clear that they thought there could have been a lot more kids involved, but the ones arrested never talked. From what Sage described, Kate was, at minimum, an accomplice to murder, and there’s no statute of limitations on that here, so we can charge her now even though it’s been almost 20 years. I’ve also made a notation that she’s potentially armed and dangerous currently. That way the entire police force will be keeping an eye out for her, but the humans should be cautious if she’s spotted. The supernaturals know what she really is, so we’ll be better prepared.” He frowned deeply, giving me a sympathetic look. “I saw the file from back then. I’m sorry you were forced to witness all that.”

I hugged Zoey close for a moment and tried to not hyperventilate. Oddly, I seemed to be getting better at that – maybe all the practice lately?

“I didn’t come back up to the surface for years after that,” I admitted. “I never gave a statement or anything. Dad and Mom didn’t even ask me to because they were afraid I was too traumatized.”

“You were too traumatized.” Silas rested his hand on my shoulder. “You barely spoke for a couple of weeks and were scared of even the smallest noises for a long time. Mom and Dad weren’t about to make you relive that. They might have if there’d been a possibility the killers wouldn’t have gotten caught,” he reluctantly allowed, “but there seemed to be plenty of evidence so they didn’t feel like you needed to be dragged through reliving what happened and maybe even testifying, since you were an eyewitness. I don’t think they realized that some of the people involved – like this Kate girl – might have gotten away.”

Maybe if I’d been braver and stronger back then, I could have told the police everything that happened and maybe Kate would be in jail now. But…I shuddered at the thought. I’d been a terribly traumatized kid who hadn’t even wanted to talk about what happened with my own family for more than a year. Even the idea of trying to make a statement back then was something of a new nightmare.

“Would you be willing to make a statement now?” Anthony asked hesitantly. “You don’t have to, and I know it’s been a long time and memories fade, but it might be helpful to deal with Kate, and maybe even let us know if anyone else has escaped justice all this time.”

I hesitated. I really, really didn’t want to, because I hated reliving those memories and having to specifically sit down and talk about them sounded awful, but…what about the kid who died? He did deserve justice, and while he’d gotten it mostly, Anthony was right. I hadn’t followed the trial at all – other than to know that the main kids involved had been arrested – so I had no idea if everyone involved was punished or some of them were off, well, murdering other people, for all I knew.

“Okay,” I said in a very small voice.

“Can we go with her?” Sidney piped up. “For moral support. And, um, Silas and I knew Sage back then, so we can maybe offer some supporting testimony as far as things she said back then or whatever.”

I got the impression Anthony didn’t really think that would be helpful, but he did agree to let Sidney and Silas accompany me whenever I went to the police station. I gave a tiny sigh of relief at that concession – at least I wouldn’t be alone. Even if I was having to deliberately remember as many details from the worst day of my life as I could, at least I would have my brother and one of my best friends there.

Maybe, I thought as we started to get up to head home for the day, it would also be cathartic. It would be a chance to tell what happened to someone who could actually do something about it. Scary though it was, maybe it would be a good thing in the end.