Promise Bound Read online

  ALSO BY ANNE GREENWOOD BROWN

  Lies Beneath

  Deep Betrayal

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Anne Greenwood Brown

  Jacket art copyright © 2014 by Elena Kalis

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brown, Anne Greenwood.

  Promise bound / Anne Greenwood Brown. — First edition.

  pages cm

  Sequel to: Deep betrayal.

  Summary: “The stakes are high, with many lives at risk, but Calder and Lily must confront the past as well as their darkest impulses if they want a chance at being together” — Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-385-74383-9 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-385-37129-2 (ebook)

  [1. Mermen—Fiction. 2. Mermaids—Fiction. 3. Love—Fiction. 4. Families—Fiction.

  5. Superior, Lake—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B812742Pr 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013028765

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For Sammy, Matt, and Sophie,

  who changed my world forever

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Two Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Part Three Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  CALDER

  Jack Pettit was dead but louder than ever. Pavati might have put an end to his obsessive mission to “out” the merpeople, but it wasn’t like we were rid of him. Lily—who had a knack for blaming herself for everything—would never forgive herself for his death, and Gabby Pettit’s incessant calls made sure she’d never forget.

  Still, Gabby hadn’t been the only one affecting Lily’s mood. Sometime last August, a slightly incoherent Daniel Catron stumbled back to Bayfield after taking off with Pavati. At the time, none of us knew how successful Pavati’s procreation plans had been with Daniel. Just in case our fears were realized, Lily befriended him—counseled him, really—to make sure he understood the consequences of agreeing to father a merchild: namely, the need to raise it for a year and then return the baby, without argument, as soon as it was walking. Lily didn’t want her family history to repeat itself. None of us wanted that.

  But more than Gabby’s persistent questions and Daniel’s perpetual obsessing, it was Lily’s newly acknowledged mergenetics that grated on my mind. “Tomorrow’s Friday,” she’d say, announcing the end of every week like an alarm clock going off, breaking my heart with the delicacy of a sledgehammer.

  Lily would have liked to swim every day, but the metamorphosis back to legs was still so excruciating for her that a weekly torture session was all she could stomach. Jason swam every day, but I waited out the dry week with Lily, unwilling to leave her behind anymore. When Jason’s Friday class was over, we’d all take to the water together, returning at sunrise on Saturday mornings. Lily would make me and Jason leave the water first and go back to the house without her. It wasn’t just for modesty; she didn’t want us to witness her straining and writhing on the beach.

  As soon as we reentered the house, Jason would put on Queen’s Greatest Hits and turn the volume up to ten. Neither of us confessed to Lily that it was never enough to drown out her screams.

  Mrs. Hancock—Carolyn, she wanted me to call her, but I just couldn’t do it, so we settled on Mrs. H—dealt with her anxiety over Lily by fussing over me. Each night she made me a comfortable bed on the family room couch, by the fire. Though I reveled in her motherly attentions, it was painful to watch as she maneuvered her wheelchair around the couch, ineffectively tugging at sheets and denying the need for help.

  Being part of the Hancock family was better than I could have ever hoped for. It made me eager to solidify my role in the family, and there was a ring in my duffel bag that gave testament to how ready I was to make the ultimate promise. If only I could find the right time. The right words.

  So I guess it was no surprise that, with all these distractions, I barely noticed when summer slipped away and was startled by a yellow leaf that floated past my face and settled gently on my toes. I wanted to leave for the Bahamas as soon as the last Labor Day vacationer had packed his station wagon and grabbed a coffee for the road trip home, but Lily had other ideas.

  She wanted to go. I was sure of it. Who wouldn’t want to explore that new world I described for her late at night as we whispered together in the hammock—a new world filled with turquoise water, red coral, and conch sandwiches on sugar-sand beaches?

  But we were all making sacrifices.

  Jason had to stay behind and teach at the college, so Lily and I agreed to suffer through the winter in solidarity. If she had known back in September how hard the winter would be, it might not have been such an obvious choice for her. But she’d never shied away from what was hard, so there was little use in pushing her.

  Or maybe I let her have her way because I secretly hoped she’d regain her humanity once winter’s brutality made the water easier to resist. I was wrong, of course. Winter’s ice didn’t take away the lure of the lake for any of us. It only sharpened the barb.

  Mrs. H’s generous acceptance of her family’s new “idiosyncrasies” made it easy for Jason to finally get his act together and stay close to home. For Christmas, she bought us an industrial-sized bubbler, which Jason ran on an extension cord to the end of the dock. It hung in the water and kept a twenty-foot circle from freezing. There, in that miserably frigid reprieve we came to call the Spa, Jason, Lily, and I escaped our drying bodies and burned off the pent-up energy that sizzled in our veins.

  This was the pattern of my and Lily’s lives: six days of drying, one day of freezing, and the steely gray of winter holding us all in its cold embrace. It felt like a never-ending waiting period. Me, impatiently waiting for Lily to change her mind and catch a red-eye to t
he Caribbean. Jason, stoically waiting for his class to end so he could escape his human legs. Lily’s little sister, Sophie, waiting in wonder to see what she’d become. Mrs. H, waiting anxiously to see who’d leave her first.

  And then, of course, we were all waiting for Maris and Pavati to return to Bayfield with the spring migration—and, most impatiently, for what Pavati might return with. If Daniel Catron had managed to father a merchild, none of us knew how a baby would factor into our lives, and none of us was really that eager to find out.

  Once Lily turned the calendar from April to May, we didn’t have much longer to wait.

  PART ONE

  Listen! you hear the grating roar

  Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

  At their return, up the high strand,

  Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

  With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

  The eternal note of sadness in.

  —Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”

  1

  LILY

  It was happening again. I could tell because everything was in color, as if I were Dorothy leaving Kansas and landing in Oz. My dreams used to be in black-and-white. Not so much lately.

  Ever since I started wearing the beach glass pendant once worn by Nadia White, my grandmother and Calder’s adopted mermaid mother, my dreams had purpose. I didn’t know how it worked, and Calder blamed it all on my overactive imagination, but Nadia directed my dreams.

  What was more irritating, she never let me be just a fly on the wall, watching events unfold. Rather, she made me the star—or herself the star, with me wearing her skin. I could barely tell where Nadia’s body left off and mine began. Tonight, as I drifted off to sleep, my body felt foreign once again, like a glove when you’re used to wearing mittens.…

  I am walking up the path to my front door. My grandfather, Tom Hancock, has left the door unlocked, but it’s not because he is expecting us … me … Nadia. Whatever.

  The lack of invitation does not prevent us from stealing into his warm and tidy house and standing outside his bedroom door. From our position in the hallway, we can hear the bedsprings groan as he turns over. We hear a woman’s sigh—like gravel on our heart. We close our eyes to shut off the urge to scream at them both, to rip all the hair from the woman’s head. Instead, we climb the narrow staircase, touching the pictures on the wall. At the top, we trail along the dark corridor to the nursery and step inside, inhaling the sweet baby smell. Vanilla and lavender.

  The moment is pure as sunlight, tickling our senses, but is interrupted by the creak of a loose floorboard on a stubborn nail. We scurry deeper into the room, holding tight to the wall like a startled crayfish.

  “What are you doing, Nadia?” Tom asks, his voice dangerously calm.

  My grandfather is just as perfect as Nadia remembered. Young. Broad-shouldered. A rough scruff around his jaw. Good hands.

  You should be mine, Nadia thinks. You should be with me. Not with that plain, mouse-colored woman asleep in your bed. Instead, we say, “Jason is a year old. He’s walking.”

  “I won’t let you take him,” Tom says.

  “Watch me,” we say, suddenly brave, louder than we planned.

  He reaches forward—both angry and terrified—and takes two steps closer. “Quiet. Diana is sleeping. She thinks I’m a widower.”

  We shudder at the thought. If Tom only knew how dead we feel. We say, “What do I care of her?” thankful that our words are strong and clear.

  Tom closes the nursery door and turns on a small lamp that barely casts a shadowed glow around the pale blue room. The smell of the lake drifts through the open window. It lends the effect of being underwater. Nadia hopes Jason likes it.

  Without planning to move, she and I are gliding across the floor. If the braided rug lies under our feet, we cannot feel it. Our hand, long and tapered, each finger like bleached driftwood, strokes the blond head dreaming in the crib.

  Jason. My father.

  Tom is close behind us. He winds his fingers through a lock of our hair. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, and for a second Nadia thinks he has changed his mind, that both he and the baby will be coming with us. Tom’s voice drops, low and soothing but still negotiating. We can hear the strategy behind the comfort. His warm hand cups our shoulder. “Find someone else, Nadia. Start another family. Leave Jason with me.”

  A rush of heat flashes through our body and sparks snap in the dry air. Tom jerks his hand back. He knows better than to touch Nadia now, but not enough to stop explaining. “Please don’t take my son,” he says.

  “Your son? Jason is mine,” we say.

  Tom’s face hardens. His pupils expand until his eyes are black, smoldering things. The anxious fear of defeat burns in our gut, but we do not let our feelings betray us.

  “He belongs with me,” we say.

  “Over my dead body,” says the man who used to love us, I mean her … Nadia.

  We keep the feeling of betrayal trapped under the heavy weight of our heart. “Tempting,” we say.

  He smirks. “You’ve told me too many of your secrets. I know how to avoid you, if I wish.”

  We lean into him, a molten and hypnotic pulse building steadily behind our eyes.

  He diverts his gaze and crosses the room. “Nice try,” he says.

  We would have pursued him, but the baby rolls over, cooing sweetly. His cherubic lips purse like the open end of a raspberry. Our heart lurches with longing for him. We lunge, but Tom is quick. He has us by the neck, and he throws us against the wall. The window beside our head rattles in its frame, and we feel the chain slip from our neck, snaking over our bare shoulders before the beach glass pendant hits the floor.

  “Don’t touch him,” Tom warns.

  “This isn’t over,” we say. “You made me a promise.”

  “Some promises were meant to be broken,” he says. “I can’t turn my son over to a murderer. I can’t let him become one.”

  “You didn’t have a problem with who I was before,” we say. “I am not the one who has changed.” The sky rumbles with thunder, and the floorboards quake. The tremor races up the wall studs, through the drywall, and along our spine.

  “Babies change every love story,” he says, and we have no answer because we know he is right. “Now go before I reveal you to the world. I should think that would put a terrible crimp in your hunting patterns.”

  Fear runs the length of our arms. If he made good on his threat, what would become of Maris? Of Pavati and Tallulah? “You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me.”

  We swallow hard and call his bluff. “No one would believe you.”

  “Is that a gamble you’re willing to take?” he asks.

  We straighten our shoulders. “I want my family to be together.”

  Tom’s face transforms with an expression we cannot read. His colors are sad and worried and laced with … hope? It is only a flash, but that brilliant gleam of optimism leaves an unmistakable glow. Hope that we will be together someday? We have to assume our eyes don’t deceive us, though Tom is quick to mask the emotion. Still, that glimmer of hope gives us the courage to leave and try again another night.

  “Your necklace,” Tom says, reaching for the floor.

  “Give it to our son,” says Nadia, slipping away from me like water through my fingers, leaving me alone in the dream, and then …

  I woke up in Sophie’s room (again), standing over her bed (again), while she released a banshee-like scream that rattled the glass in the windows. Again.

  “Oh, for the love of God.” I slapped my hand over my little sister’s mouth, but she peeled away my fingers and took a swing at me. A pile of books lay open on her bed and a few slipped to the floor. The corner of one just about impaled my foot.

  “What’s with all the books?” I asked.

  Sophie slapped my arm and said, “Lepidoptera.” Then she groaned at my blank expression. “I’m studying butterflies. Now would you please stop
sneaking up on me when I’m sleeping? You’re going to give me a heart attack.”

  “Shhh, you’re only eleven.”

  “I don’t think that’ll matter. What do you want?”

  What did I want? For one, I wanted these dreams to stop, because if living in Nadia’s head weren’t exhausting enough, the chronic sleepwalking was turning me into the walking dead. Calder had told me the legend last summer—that Nadia’s pendant held his family’s histories—but if Nadia was trying to tell me something with these nightly episodes, she was being way too subtle for me. Spell it out, Grandma. Then maybe we can both get some rest.

  “Sorry, Soph. Go back to sleep.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I said I was sorry. Go back to your butterfly dreams.”

  Sophie groaned and flipped over. She covered her head with her pillow, mumbling, “You are so weird.”

  I tiptoed back down the hall, hesitating in the spots where my grandparents’ ghosts still lingered along the walls and feeling the deep pit of loneliness that Nadia’s absence always left in my stomach.

  2

  CALDER

  Sophie’s scream woke me up sometime after midnight. I whipped off the covers and leapt over the back of the couch, heading for the ladderlike stairs that led from the Hancocks’ front door to Lily’s and Sophie’s bedrooms upstairs.

  “Trouble sleeping?” I whispered, crawling up the first three steps, careful not to wake Jason and Mrs. H, amazed that they too hadn’t heard the scream.

  Lily slowly descended the stairs, her feet uncertain. She’d fallen asleep in her clothes, and an oversized cardigan drooped off her right shoulder. “Sleeping fine,” she lied as the pallor of mustard-colored anxiety slowly drained from her face.

  “You could have fooled me,” I said. Maris had called during the day. She and Pavati would be arriving in less than twelve hours. I blamed them for Lily’s restlessness.

  “It’s just freezing up there,” she said.

  Her hair was a wild tangle of red that gave her a beautifully feral look. I didn’t say it out loud, though. She brushed off compliments like a nuisance fly. So instead I watched her finish her slow trip down the stairs.