Tangled Tides (The Sea Monster Memoirs) by Karen Amanda Hooper Page A

"You smoke seaweed? Gross."
    "Not regular ocean seaweed. It's a plant that grows in the Catacombs—where the gateway to our realm is." It looked like I would be partly educating Yara whether I wanted to or not. "Souls entombed in the Catacombs act as a conduit between this realm and ours. A new type of plant started growing there. We had the Violets examine it, and they discovered its purpose."
    "Violets?" she asked, setting two candles on the table.
    I pulled out my lighter and lit them. A strong scent of vanilla wafted through the air. "Violets are the wisest of our kind. They discovered that if we smoke the plants, we stay healthy. If not, we get sick. We would all be dead by now if the lost souls hadn't graced us with C-weed."
    "Let me get this straight. This weed grows in an underwater graveyard, and you all smoke it? Eww! How sick and twisted is that?"
    "C-weed has to be taken from the Catacombs and dried in the sun. The spirits of the lost souls seep through the plants growing on the tombs, supplying us with our realm's energy. Because C-weed grows in Earth's ocean water and dries in the Earth's sun, it provides us with a life force that lets us survive here for longer than we could otherwise."
    Candle flames flickered between us, causing shadows to dance along the walls. Yara should know the rest of the story. About all the people who died rushing to swim through the gate before it was sealed. How their stone statues form an ominous labyrinth along the ocean floor, reminding us of the consequences of broken promises. But none of our kind should have to live with such a depressing image. Every day I was grateful to be the only merperson who had to wander the Catacombs' eerie pathways.
    "Sounds creepy," she mumbled, curling into a ball.
    I couldn't deny it, so I remained silent and watched her eyelids drift closed. She looked peaceful—such a change from earlier. After her breathing became slow and steady I thought about carrying her back to the ocean, but instead I covered her with a quilt like Lloyd used to do when Yara was a child. I would make up for the missed harvesting time tomorrow night.
    Yara should be granted one last night of sleep. Once her transformation was complete, she would never sleep again. She had been through so much in her short life, and over the next few weeks she'd be burdened with an enormous responsibility. The future of our kind depended on her. And we only had seventeen sunsets left to teach her how to do her part.
     
     
    J ack Frost's was infested with the regular crowd. Walking through the door, I inhaled the minty smoke filling the bar. The drastic temperature drop was a comfort I had taken for granted over the years. Air conditioning was pumped in to make the bar twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. It wasn't anything like authentic cold weather, but it beat being outside in the heat.
    When the bar first opened humans swarmed our turf, but the novelty wore off as more ice bars cropped up around the world. Little did they know our bar wasn't some Eskimo gimmick—it was a key to selkie survival. With bar tops, tables, walls and chairs made of ice, it almost felt like home.
    Nah, scratch that. It felt nothing like home. And now that Yara was a mermaid we might never see home again.
    I slumped onto one of the ice thrones.
    "What'll it be, hon?" Dina shouted over the music. She absently twirled her leather wristband. "Stiff, or stiffer?"
    "Stiffest. The nightmare has begun."
    She narrowed her eyes quizzically and scurried off to the bar. Jack's bushy brows lifted when she told him my order. He poured a tall glass of Siku vodka and made his way across the room. Jack didn't come out from behind the bar often, but only hours had passed since my last drink and I needed another. That hadn't happened in years.
    He handed me the glass. "Hey, son, Dina said you've had a bad day."
    A god-awful metal rock song blasted over the sound system.
    "Bad is an understatement," I shouted before slamming my