"Treasure—Treasure Island?" Roxanne repeated.

A little frisson of fear went through her. Unconsciously, she sat up straighter in her chair.

"—Treasure Island," she said again. "Ah—certainly, I can find that for you. May I—may I inquire why— I mean, were you not satisfied with—?"

Lady Scott blinked wide, apparently guileless eyes at Roxanne, as if she did not quite understand what Roxanne was driving at—although surely no one could really be that slow on the uptake.

If she was acting, though, it was a terribly convincing performance.

"If you're not completely satisfied with the copy of Treasure Island that I sold to you," Roxanne said, putting the question into actual words, since the woman seemed either unwilling or unable to take the hint, "and you'd like to return it—"

"Oh! Oh, no!" Lady Scott gave a tinkling laugh. "I'd simply like to have another copy of the book—to compare the two volumes, you understand." She smiled. "I believe the copy you sold me might have some—interesting differences—from other editions."

Roxanne's heart gave a painful thump.

Did the woman—did she know Roxanne had taken the map? Surely she couldn't, and yet—

"Printing errors, do you mean?" Roxanne asked, hoping Lady Scott couldn't sense her sudden apprehension.

"—errors," Lady Scott repeated, still smiling. "Yes. Errors." She looked down at the top of Roxanne's desk. "Oh! You're studying mermaids, I see."

Terror swept through Roxanne, hot first, and then cold. Was she imagining the hard light in Lady Scott's eyes; was she imagining that the woman was—

"Just some folklore research," Roxanne said, and wondered if her voice sounded as artificial as it she suspected. "Various things, really. Sirens, especially—so interesting, don't you think, the way the descriptions of sirens differ? Many times they're not described as mermaids at all, but more like birds! Isn't that fascinating?"

She forced herself to stop babbling by dint of actually biting her tongue, her heart beating hard.

An expression flashed in Lady Scott's face—

—or perhaps it was her mind playing tricks on her, but Roxanne, watching Lady Scott's face, thought she saw the woman's expression go a little frozen, and then flinty, before resuming its former sweetness.

"What a diverting little project," Lady Scott said. "I suppose you became interested in it after hearing some of our—local mermaid legends?" She smiled. "People inventing romantic explanations for quite ordinary occurrences—to be expected, after all of the drownings, I suppose."

Roxanne swallowed.

"Drownings?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," Lady Scott said, her expression utterly pleasant, "it might look peaceful, but our lake can be very perilous, Miss Ritchi. There are—well. Dangerous currents. They pull one away from the shoreline, until suddenly you look around and realize how very far out from the shore you are. And then the waves pull you under."

Roxanne realized that she had stopped breathing.

"One should always remember to be careful," Lady Scott said, her eyes limpid and her smile charming. "Not to swim out too far. Don't you think, Miss Ritchi?"

Roxanne tried to respond, but the words stuck in her throat.

Lady Scott gave her sweet, light laugh.

"Goodness, I mustn't stay here talking and taking up all of your time, Miss Ritchi! Until we meet again."

Lady Scott turned and walked away, her high heels clicking across the library floor.

It was not until she disappeared through the library doors that Roxanne felt able to breathe again.

She took a shaky breath and, with a sudden motion, swept up the notecards, opened her desk drawer, shoved them inside it, and shut the drawer firmly.

Roxanne shivered.

Had she been imagining the strangeness of Lady Scott's manner, the—the threatening note to it?

Yes—yes, surely she must have imagined it. Lady Scott was a vapid, polite, and perfectly harmless woman.

Roxanne hadn't slept the night before; that accounted for the overwrought state of her nerves, that was why she'd thought Lady Scott was—

Lady Scott hadn't waited for her book.

Roxanne went very still.

Lady Scott hadn't waited for Roxanne to find the book she'd requested. She'd said she wanted a volume of Treasure Island, to check for differences between it and the copy Roxanne had sold to her, but she hadn't waited for Roxanne to actually find the book and bring it to her.

Almost as if she—as if she hadn't actually wanted the book at all, as if she had come to the library simply to speak to Roxanne.

And seen in that light, the conversation seemed very sinister indeed—

Did she know that there had been something hidden in that book Roxanne had sold to her? Did she somehow know Roxanne had taken the map? Had she been—testing Roxanne, testing to see if Roxanne looked guilty when she mentioned differences in the copy, and errors?

Did Lady Scott know about Syx? Know—or suspect? Her words about mermaids might have been innocuous, prompted only by the sight of Roxanne's notecards—or they might, again, have been a kind of test.

And then she'd spoken of drowning, and the dangers of the lake.

Dangerous currents—

Perhaps Lady Scott had just forgotten her book. Possibly she was just absentminded. That was certainly the most reasonable explanation.

But in the depths of her heart, Roxanne knew she did not believe it.

Dangerous currents…

Roxanne shivered.

"A little old, don't you think, dear?" Vera Blumenthal said.

Roxanne blinked, confused.

"Old?"

She looked down at the man in Syx's drawing, which she'd just shown to Vera Blumenthal—a man who looked, to Roxanne, to be about forty-five or fifty years old, with a mildly bulbous nose and a mustache. The same age, or perhaps even a bit younger, than Vera Blumenthal.

A little old? What on earth was the woman talking about?

"And not at all what I'd call a nice looking man," Vera Blumenthal continued. She patted Roxanne's hand. "I'm sure you can do much better; you're a very pretty girl. Don't you think so, Emily?" she added, to the other white-haired old lady standing next to her.

"Oh, certainly, Vera," Emily Blackthorn agreed. "Very pretty."

"I—no!" Roxanne said, horrified understanding dawning. "No, no! That's not—"

"And didn't young Wayne Scott ask you to the picnic this year? Quite a polite young man, I've always thought, although not, perhaps, precisely what one might call intellectual," Vera went on, seemingly oblivious to Roxanne's mortification, "which I'm sure would weigh with a clever girl like you. And older men do seem more sophisticated, I suppose, but honestly, dear—"

"I—really, Miss Blumenthal!" Roxanne said, finally succeeding in breaking in on the woman's flow of words. "You've—you've got the wrong idea entirely! I'm not—not personally interested in this man, whoever he is; I only wanted to return his son's drawing—"

"Oh," Miss Blumenthal said, with a maddeningly arch smile. "Of course dear; if you say so. Well, why don't I just take a little peek at that drawing again."

Roxanne, who was, by this time, wishing she'd never shown the woman the drawing in the first place, pushed it across the counter to Miss Blumenthal once more.

Miss Blumenthal took it, and looked at it closely, a slight frown between her eyebrows.

"Hmm," she said, "I'm—you know, I'm really not quite sure. He seems almost familiar, but I don't know—what do you think, Emily?"

She handed the drawing to her companion, who frowned at it as well.

"No," Emily said, "no, I don't think I can place him. You're right though, Vera; he does look familiar somehow."

"Of course, he is quite an ordinary type," Miss Blumenthal said, taking the drawing back, and looking at it again.

"Yes, quite ordinary," Roxanne said, coolly, hoping to head off another lecture about the man's romantic unsuitability. "I suppose that's why I can't remember his name. Really, it was the drawing that caught my attention more than anything; it's beautifully done, don't you think? That's why I thought he might want it returned."

"It is a very good sketch," Miss Blumenthal agreed. "His son's work, you said? What was his son like? Perhaps we know him."

"Oh—" Roxanne hesitated a moment, "I—I really doubt it, I think he was…from out of town. I don't think you'd know him."

"Oh!" Vera Blumenthal's face brightened. "From out of town, you say? A young man, then; not a child! Dear me, I have been confused; haven't I? Good looking, I suppose?"

An image of Syx appeared in Roxanne's mind—his smooth blue skin, the sinuously graceful curve of his tail, the bright, luminous green eyes.

Good looking—what a perfectly ludicrous thing to say. Syx certainly couldn't be described by any phrase so tepidly ordinary as 'good looking'. Inhumanly beautiful was more like it.

Miss Blumenthal exchanged a meaningful glance with her friend Emily and Roxanne felt herself flush with embarrassment.

"I—I can't really remember," she lied.

Miss Blumenthal gave her a disappointed look, and clicked her tongue. Then she handed the picture back to Roxanne.

"Dear, dear; how unfortunate that we can't seem to place him." she said. "Well, I'm sure I wish you luck finding them, Miss Ritchi. And if Emily and I happen to see the man, we'll be sure you let you know."

"Thank you, Miss Blumenthal, Miss Blackthorn," Roxanne said, smiling politely, mentally thinking her lucky stars that they were leaving. "Enjoy your books."

As the end of the week drew nearer, Roxanne found herself growing steadily more and more impatient and agitated. It was so very frustrating—there was a mermaid hidden in a secret cave down in Smugglers' Cove, and here she was, stamping library cards and re-shelving books!

And asking around about Syx's 'father'. She did, at least, feel as if she'd made some progress there.

She'd spent the week asking the older library patrons if they could identify the man in the sketch, thinking that the older people would be more likely to remember faces. And she had given each of them the story about wanting to return his son's drawing.

The result, Roxanne reflected grimly, was that a substantial portion of the elderly population of the city was probably now under the impression that Roxanne was a shameless hussy intent on romantically pursuing the unattractive man in the drawing, his mysterious son, or possibly both.

None of them had been able to definitely identify the man—or, at least, some of them had said they were quite definite as to who he was, but none of them had given her the same name for him.

Vera Blumenthal was right about him being a very ordinary looking man, of a common type found in Metro City. He looked like every other white male resident of Michigan between the ages of forty and sixty, really; Roxanne thought with dissatisfaction. That was the problem.

Still, she had a list of nine names, now, and she'd found the addresses of seven of the men in the library records. The other two she'd have to find another way. But there were the seven addresses to check up on. Yes, that was certainly something, and she'd be able to show Syx that she'd been looking, like he'd asked her.

Syx.

Sometimes she couldn't believe that he'd really been real. She'd never seen anything like him before. He shouldn't be possible. Countless times throughout the week, Roxanne had barely been able to stop herself from running down to Smugglers' Cove again, to reassure herself that he was real; that she hadn't just imagined him. The nights were especially difficult; every night Roxanne felt a wild impulse to slip into the darkness and race down to the water, and to the cave, to find him.

Unlike most of the people in Metro City, Roxanne's days off were Sunday and Monday, as opposed to Sunday and Saturday, so that the library could stay open during the first half of most people's weekends.

The library patrons seemed especially tiresome and irritating to Roxanne all of Saturday, and the day itself seemed to last for an eternity, but at last she was able to shut the doors behind the last customer, and lock up for the day.

She barely slept that night, and had restless dreams of caves and dark water, and a shoreline that retreated from her no matter how hard she swam towards it.

Luckily, Sunday was another cold day, and, as many of the people in Metro City were in church anyway, there was only a single man walking his dog along the shoreline when she got there. Roxanne wandered in a carefully casual way up and down the beach until they left. As soon as they were gone, she climbed up the boulders, and then down into Smugglers' Cove, where she moved towards the cliff face.

Suppose it isn't there, Roxanne's mind whispered, as it had whispered to her so many times during the last week. Suppose you made it all up. Suppose that there isn't any opening in the cliff, that there never was, that you just imagined the secret entrance and the hidden cave and Syx because you're sad and bored and lonely and never really properly grew up. Suppose—

But the opening was there, just where she remembered it being.

Roxanne slipped inside it, and disappeared into the dark of the passageway into the rock.

The little cave was there, too, at the end of the first passageway; the initials D.S. still marked the opening she wanted. Roxanne stepped through it, the light of her torch a small gleam in the darkness.

Her impatience and nervous anticipation made the journey seem longer than it had before, and the bag she carried made it seem narrower. When the tunnel walls drew inwards and she had to crawl, she had to fight against the apprehensive feeling that it would never end, that it would go on and on forever, getting narrower and narrower, until she was stuck, until she'd gone too far to go back.

Eventually, though, the passage widened again, and she was able to walk once more.

Walking, she heard the sounds of water, and her steps and heartbeat quickened—soon, soon she would reach—

Roxanne rounded a bend in the passageway and stepped into the cavern with the lake.

The bioluminescent walls and ceiling glowed softly, still, as did the waters of the lake. The little room was there, too, the rugs and bookshelves and divans and clever metal devices.

But the room was empty, and the water of the lake was still, and Roxanne's heart twisted with apprehension.

"Syx?" she called. Her voice echoed in the cavern.

She dropped her bag and her torch on one of the divans and moved quickly down to the water's edge.

"Syx?"

There was no answer. Roxanne bit her lip and knelt down beside the water, trailed her fingertips in it. The water was surprisingly warm, much warmer than she'd expected, nothing like the frigid water of the lake.

"Syx?" she said uncertainly.

Was he—was he gone? He'd said he couldn't leave, and she hadn't thought he was lying, but perhaps he hadn't trusted her enough to tell her the truth. Or was he…hiding from her?

Or maybe she just hadn't been quick enough to find the man he called father, maybe he'd come back and taken Syx away somehow. Or—

(isn't that what people like you do to things like me?)

Roxanne swallowed hard. No. No, that couldn't—

There was a sound like a wave breaking, and Syx appeared, his head and shoulders bursting up suddenly through the surface of the water in a spray of droplets.

"You came back!" he cried, sharp teeth showing in a brilliant smile, "Oh, I'm so glad!"

Roxanne laughed in relief.

"I told you I would," she said, smiling at him as he swam closer. "I'm glad you're still here."

Syx made a face as he stopped in the shallows in front of her. His tail gave a little flick.

"I told you," he said, "I can't leave."

"I—yes, I know," Roxanne said awkwardly. Of course she shouldn't have brought that up. "I—ah—I've been working on trying to find your father. I haven't, yet, but I've got a list of names. And I brought some things for you," she added.

Syx tilted his head curiously, neck frill flaring slightly.

"Things?" he asked. "What kind of things?"

Roxanne grinned at him. Syx had spent the last visit entertaining her with his inventions—she might not have any of that kind of thing to show him, but she still thought he'd enjoy what she'd brought with her.

"Come up to the sitting room," she said, "and I'll show you."

...to be continued.

Thank you all for continuing to read and review! I really appreciate your support.