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  Fish Out of Water

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  Fish Out of Water

  Ros Baxter

  Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum meets Splash in a sexy, smart-talking debut about a mermaid in a desert, a city under water, and the secret that no one is supposed to uncover.

  Dirtwater’s straight-talking Deputy Sheriff Rania Aqualina has a lot on her plate: a nicotine addiction that’s a serious liability for a mermaid, a soldier-of-fortune ex who’s hooked on her Mum’s brownies, a gorgeous, naked stranger in her shower, and a mysterious dead blonde with a fish tattoo on Main Street.

  Heading home to Aegira for a family wedding, Rania has a sinking feeling that’s got nothing to do with hydroporting seven miles under the sea and everything to do with the crazy situation. Now, if she can just steal a corpse, get a crazy Aegiran priest off her case, work out who the hell’s trying to kill her, and stop sleeping with the fishes, she might be able to unravel the mysteries. And maybe even save her own ass while she’s at it.

  Fish out of Water is Stephanie Plum meets Splash, and the first book in a trilogy about Aegira, an underwater kingdom based on the historical Norse legend of Aegir.

  About the Author

  Ros Baxter has been writing since she was eight and penned a whimsical series of short stories about a race of tiny people who lived on a rainbow. While a few things intervened – a career in social policy, four children – Ros started writing again in earnest three years ago.

  In that time, Ros has secured a two-book deal with Harper Collins Australia, published Sister Pact (a romantic comedy co-written with her sister Ali), been a contributing author to the e-anthology URL Love, and finaled in the STALI competition.

  Ros writes transporting stories about love, family, friendship and women in all their glorious strength and contrariness. She loves to turn up the sizzle, throwing heroes and heroines into screwy and sometimes fantastical situations and watching how they take the heat.

  Ros lives in Brisbane’s North with her husband Blair, four noisy children under eight, a neurotic dog and nine billion germs.

  Acknowledgements

  This book would never have happened without the support and encouragement of my wonderful sister Alison. She is a tireless cheerleader and unfailingly generous with help and praise. Thank you, sister mine.

  I would also like to thank all those who read the manuscript and offered suggestions. Special thanks go to Laurie Nealon, the gentlest and most thorough of critics.

  To Jem, for reminding me that we are born full of joy and magic.

  Contents

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One: The Beginning and The End of Days

  Chapter Two: Blondie and Favors

  Chapter Three: Kool Mints and Larceny

  Chapter Four: Sting-rays and Eight-ball

  Chapter Five: Rick Astley and Other Old Friends

  Chapter Six: Waltzing and Wondering

  Chapter Seven: Whirling And Silence

  Chapter Eight: Poison and Alliance

  Chapter Nine: A Link and a Hidden Thing

  Chapter Ten: Cookies and Visitors

  Chapter Eleven: Guilt and (More) Larceny

  Chapter Twelve: Love and Guilt

  Chapter Thirteen: Leaders and Listening

  Chapter Fourteen: Searching and Answers

  Chapter Fifteen: Sighs and Songs

  Chapter Sixteen: The End of The Beginning

  Also Available from Escape Publishing…

  Prologue

  In the beginning, before The Awakening, the earth was a place of rage and heat.

  Greed fanned murderous embers among the children of the land.

  Aegir, God of the Boundless Seas, looked on in fear and perplexity from his island paradise, Hlsey. He called for his nine daughters, the billow maidens, and commanded them to sing nine land-men to their sides. Nine seeds from whom a new world would grow.

  Then Aegir summoned a blood-song and rent a jagged scar upon the earth. The waters gushed in like tears and sent Hlsey, and all who dwelt upon it, to rest seven miles under the sea. There, in the deepest place on earth, he bestowed upon them the gift of water-breathing.

  And at last Aegir knew peace.

  For a millenium he and his goddess wife, Ran, stoked the tiny flame of their family into a nation. Aegira — a land of peace, hope and refuge for all who breathed water.

  But history knows that darkness is jealous of the light.

  A sorcerer born of the earth, Manos, looked on Aegira with avarice. When each of Aegir’s daughters refused him in contempt, he conjured an illness to call them to Reaper’s side.

  Mad with grief, Aegir declared war. In the bloody battle that followed, Manos butchered Aegir and Ran and made the seas run red with blood. With the last of his life force, Aegir spun a veil of secrecy so Aegira could never again be found by Manos or any who wished it harm.

  But even Manos had not been able to bring himself extinguish the billow maidens light. He spared Aegir’s eldest daughter, Angeyja, and imprisoned her. Then he cast a spell so that each of her eight murdered sisters would be reborn consecutively, living a millennium before giving birth to the next. But Angeyja escaped and returned to Aegira to become its Queen.

  As Manos raged and Aegira wept, the High Council of Dolphins brought forth a prophesy:

  At the end of Ran’s line

  only one world can be,

  and the bloodtide will only be stopped

  by the swellsong of the three.

  Chapter One

  The Beginning and The End of Days

  Day One

  Mermaids don’t wear nicotine patches. They don’t drink Southern Comfort from a hip flask, inhale Twinkies or watch Dr Phil. Mermaids don’t pack heat. And mermaids definitely don’t get their hearts broken by tattooed guys who look like pirates. In fact, mermaids have always been kinda down on pirates... but that’s another story. The cardinal rule is this: mermaids don’t live in bone-dry frontier towns. Ever.

  But here’s the thing. Me, I don’t leave home without my patches, hip flask and Glock. My last moment of true moderation was back in kindergarten, when I stopped myself from using my awesome strength to rip Jamie Kennedy’s pecker off when he waved it at Julie Casey in the bathroom and made her cry. And don’t even start me on my penchant for pirates.

  But I am, in fact, a mermaid. So go figure.

  Well, technically, Mom’s folks call themselves Aegirans, and they don’t sprout tails, but they’re the closest thing to mermaids under the sea. And, as much as it used to hurt, I’m what they call a dirt-dweller, seeing as Mom was a runaway, Dad’s Sicilian and we live on The Land.

  But not for long. You see, I’ve only got three weeks to live. Give or take.

  As Aldus and I pulled up on Main Street and started to separate the spectators from their lascivious interest in their first honest-to-goodness corpse, I reminded myself that there was a little wriggle room. The Seer said I’ll die on my thirtieth birthday unless I can “change the course of destiny and save the world entire”.

  Somehow I just don’t like my chances.

  I’ve seen some wild stuff in my time and I know there are some things in life that just can’t be avoided. Death. Decay. The sticky fingers of destiny. Believe me, even if you could disrupt destiny, I’m not going to be the one to do it. I never even managed an A in math.

  So, three weeks. And the countdown was ticking relentlessly in my brain.

  I might be a cop, but I’m no Rambo. I’ve seen enough bodies to know being dead sucks. Just the thought of it makes me feel all tingly and need to take some deep breaths so I don’t have some girly meltdown. You see, I don’t cry. Not
me. Too much depends on me being in control.

  As I stopped Craig Henshaw from taking photos of the corpse with his iPhone, I reminded myself my own problems were pretty much beside the point. You know, mer-stuff. Impending death. Saving the world (entire). Only three things mattered right now.

  One. I was staring at a spookily familiar dead blonde.

  Two. I’d just taken a God-sized swig from my hip flask.

  And three, I was wishing I’d worn a second nicotine patch for good measure, despite those warnings on the box about not double-patching.

  “You know what really sucks?”

  I could tell Aldus, the Sheriff and my boss, didn’t really care what I thought. He certainly didn’t care about the incessant ticking nagging at the back of my brain, counting down the seconds to my doom. Not because he was insensitive, but because he didn’t know. All Aldus knew was that it was Poker Night and it was as hot as death and he was wondering how the hell he was going to explain to the Dirtwater Beautification Committee why he had to put yellow tape around a dead blonde right at the “Welcome to Dirtwater” end of Main Street on the first night of the Dirt Wrestling Festival. My Mom, the Mayor, is also Chair of the Beautification Committee, and he’s been trying to get into her pants for twelve years.

  Ever since my Dad, his best friend, got locked up in the county jail.

  Some of which probably explains why he forced out a grunt of interest. “Wha’?”

  I looked again at the blonde, her perfect tresses the color of moonbeams, and shook my head. Clucked my tongue a couple of times. “Highlights like that don’t come cheap.”

  Aldus shot me a sidelong look that could’ve snap-chilled a beer. I knew what he was thinking: Chick cops, worrying more about hair stuff than the stiff. But he was wrong. My mouth was all gummy and my tummy was doing cartwheels. I looked again at the dead girl and realized I was going to dream about her for longer than Aldus would even remember her face, shocked and frozen in a moment of violence.

  Well, for three weeks, at least.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  I’d been thinking a lot lately. Was this my last cookie? Was this the last time I’d hear Livin’ on a Prayer? And looking at this beautiful blonde that someone cut down like a sapling, I was wondering if this was my last corpse. And whether I had enough time to work out who messed with her. And make them sorry. ’Cause no-one’s more powerless than dead people. It might sound crazy, but dead people make me feel, well… protective.

  Aldus crouched down again on the still-warm asphalt, poking lazily at the corpse. “Okay, so the find got rung in ‘bout twenty minutes ago. Coupla farm boys making their way over to the dirt wrestling. One of them stepped on her—”

  He pointed matter-of-factly to the muddy size nine imprint on the white denim of her jeans. As he did, a quick buzz of electricity pinged me, making the hair on my arms stand to attention and a shiver of something no good chase scratchy fingers down my spine.

  “Felt terrible, of course. Place is pretty busy tonight so she can’t have been here long.”

  I looked around at Main Street. It was nine pm on a Saturday and even though something about the blue-gray quality of the darkness was tap-dancing on my danger radar for reasons I couldn’t quite pin down, I could only see three people on the entire street now the scene was cleared. Two were weaving drunkenly in our direction from The Dirty Boar. One was taking a leak against a sign: Welcome to Dirtwater – lotsa dirt, not so much water.

  I tried to shake off the thick tendrils of trepidation that had stuck fast to my uniform and swivelled in a circle, raising an eyebrow at Aldus. Yeah, real busy.

  “Okay, smartass. Busy for Dirtwater.” Aldus scrunched his smooth, full-moon face unhappily as he looked our blonde up and down again. She was lying outside the Dirtwater Convenience Store, the one that never opens after 4:30 pm, and one door down from the laundromat: Dirty Deeds. For the five millionth time in my life, I wondered why everything in this godforsaken town was named after dirt. Great way to attract sightseers.

  The girl looked a few years younger than me, maybe 25. And she had the kind of beautiful, never-gonna-be-lined face used by anti-wrinkle cream companies to sell insecurity to fifty-year-old women. Her head lay slightly askew on her neck, an angle you’d never quite pull off alive. A trace of purple outlined her full lips. A pair of wild blue eyes stared upwards to infinity. And, because of what I am, I could smell it too. The smoky stench of death.

  I crouched down and laid a hand on her forearm, expecting the usual chill but registering that she was even colder than I’d expected. Must have been here longer than we’d thought.

  Looking at her, touching her, thinking about her deadness, my brain filled up, thinking about my responsibilities. I felt the sweat start to bead on my lip again and straightened up. Spots jangled in front of my eyes and the tendons at the back of my knees danced a mini hula. By the Goddess, only three weeks. Who was gonna take care of things when I was gone?

  I took a deep breath and said it internally like the yogi taught me:

  I embrace my fate and welcome each moment until my end.

  “You still doin’ that hippy crap?” Aldus is deeply suspicious of meditation.

  “You should try it sometime. Helps you find peace.”

  “Whadda I need with peace?” He snorted in disgust. “And whadda you need with peace? Will it help you find a man? Pretty girl like you, goin’ on thirty. Saw this Oprah thing ‘bout these poor girls waited so long they had to freeze their e—”

  “Aldus...”

  “I’m just sayin’…”

  “And I’m just not listening.”

  Aldus started muttering under his breath as he stalked around the blonde, his dirty brown point-toed cowboy boots making crunchy noises on the road. “If the good Lord had meantcha to be peaceful, he wouldn’a made you Sicilian.”

  He had a point. But you’ve got to find some way to manage the psychic burden of waiting to die. Young. And for me, stumbling into an Ashram in Goa after years of doing my best James Dean, meditation was it.

  Aldus took up my previous position crouching by the blonde and ran one dirty finger through the pool of clear liquid she was lying in. “Still can’t work out what the hell she died of, or what this shit is.”

  Jesus, talk about contaminating the crime scene. My boss in NYC would have relegated his ass to desk duty for a month for that kind of sloppiness.

  “Tastes kind of salty.” Eat your heart out, Agatha Christie.

  I joined him beside the girl and we spent a companionable moment sizing up the corpse, Aldus running his hands through his greased-back grey hair and me tearing at a fingernail with my teeth. I looked up at him from my notebook. “Hm. No obvious marks or wounds. ’Cept the shoe-print. No blood or other fluids. No weapon. Just a dead girl. Didn’t even take the hair.”

  Aldus frowned, huffily muttering something about “too much goddam NCIS.”

  He hated it when I did this. You know, police work.

  I looked at our dead blonde again. Something was so definitely wrong with this picture. I felt it low and deep, someplace between my stomach and my heart. I hadn’t been home to Aegira for thirteen years, since I found out I was a dead woman walking. But I still knew what the blonde looked like. My intuition was telling me what she was, clear as a bell. And my intuition’s just about the only thing on earth I trust. I may be only half-Sicilian, but I got the suspicious part. In fact, I avoid thinking about what Dr Phil would make of my trust issues. But tonight my logic was waging war with my intuition, and my logic was winning.

  First time for everything.

  “Better call it in,” I offered as we stood up, by way of making up with Aldus. “And don’t worry.” I squeezed his shoulder, feeling a warm rush in my tummy as I touched this man, who’d given me a job when I’d needed so bad to come back home. “I’ll take the late shift.”

  “Okay,” he agreed, with a relieved whoosh of spit and breath. “I’ll call Billy.”

&n
bsp; I crouched again to look at the blonde, out of sight of Aldus’ Buick. My eyes swept the scene, trying to work out why my arm-hairs were going crazy. I started making notes in the little spiral notebook I carry in my pocket. No signs of a scuffle. No hand-bag, or any other accessories. No wedding band. No jewelry of any kind.

  I stood back, sniffed the thick summer air, sized her up.

  Tall, slim but broad-shouldered. Like a supermodel. I checked the bottom of her white, no-brand trainers. Size 10. Big feet. Her eyes were wide, almost in shock. And ice blue. Don’t get excited, I warned myself, balancing my book on my knee and rubbing my patch in hopes of cajoling it into releasing some more nicotine. Most blondes have blue eyes. It didn’t mean…

  Something twitched in my consciousness again, and my hand slid off her face and down her shoulder to fall beside her, grazing the pool of liquid. Unconsciously, I brought a ragged fingernail to my mouth to chew and worry at. And then I tasted it. Aldus was right. Salty.

  Shee-yit.

  She was lying in a pool of saltwater.

  In the middle of Dirtwater. The only settlement in the recorded history of humans settling anyplace that lays claim to no naturally occurring water of any kind. Salt or fresh. Even the town fountain, once a semi-ironic feature piece, dried up two years ago and has since stood empty. A bone-dry reminder that this place really is a hellhole.

  So what was my beautiful blonde, clearly dead but with no apparent sign of injury, doing lying in a pool of seawater on its main street? I had a sick feeling it was a question to which I really needed to know the answer. And not just for the sake of the blonde.

  Apart from Mom, I hadn’t seen a mermaid for thirteen years. So why would one turn up now, when I’ve only got three weeks left? It was just too neat. Only one way to know for sure.

  My hand twitched nervously as it swept aside the white blonde hair on the left side of her cheek, and revealed her swan-like neck. Her skin was more golden than a Baywatch babe but cold as a popsicle on a summer day. And there it was. A tiny blue-green tattoo of a stylised fish.