Lorelei stood in the doorway of the Number Three Music Room. She stared inside, holding the heavy door open with a hand covered in pale white scales. The webbing between her fingers was scarcely noticeable, but would grow when submerged in water. She had the long, golden hair of a siren, and cuts in her neck that could open into gills when needed. Having no wish at the moment to injure, she only used one set of vocal cords, keeping the most dangerous set mute. "You broke the sound system? How am I supposed to practice my vocals?"
Inside the room, Cindy sounded panicked, "I didn't do it!"
"Excuse me." The male voice came from behind Lorelei.
She turned in the doorway to see a tall, thin teen in street clothes. His narrow face was pretty, framed in dark, wavy blond hair. His eyes pulled at her soul. They were electric blue, not a hue she'd seen before in humans—or anyone else—before now.
"Maybe I can help," he said.
"And you would be?"
"Zane. I have an affinity for electronic systems."
"Sure." She moved back, giving him room to enter.
He went into the fourteen-by-fourteen-foot space. Foam acoustic panels layered the inner walls. A guitar tree held three guitars, one of them a bass. One corner held a three-level keyboard stand loaded down with assorted brands of synthesizers. A music stand held sheet music. MIDI cables connected synths to each other and another line ran to a mixing board. There were twin speakers in the room also connected to the master board.
Cindy operated the board, a girl geek in glasses with black hair and gray eyes. She looked up as Zane approached. Next to his towering lankiness, she appeared even smaller.
Lorelei followed Zane in, letting the door shut behind her. "If this isn't going to take long, I'll wait."
"Gracious of you," Zane muttered, reaching past Cindy to place a palm casually on the mixing board. "Board's fine. I think the problem is with the keyboards. MIDI ins and outs can be tricky." He moved over to the keyboards, studying the wires in back. His fingers reached out and brushed the keyboards as if touch told him more than his own eyes. He paused a moment, head cocked as if listening to a private voice in his head. The brief trance ended and he adjusted several connections.
Zane turned to Cindy. "Try it now."
Cindy scurried out from behind the soundboard and took position to play the synths.
Zane pulled back, taking a seat on a Marshall speaker. Lorelei felt his eyes on her as she approached a mic stand. Synth music unfurled into the space, a leaping, plunging spill of notes, not quite on time, a sour note in the middle of a chord.
"Sorry," Cindy said. "I'm nervous." She tried it again. And didn't get any better.
Lorelei hummed, warming up her second set of vocal cords.
Cindy winced, paling with fear. "I told you I wasn't that good."
The humming broke off. "Atrocious is more accurate."
Behind her very large glasses, Zane saw tears brimming Cindy's eyes. He stood and went around the keyboards, pulling her out of the way. "You handle the board. Leave this to me."
Lorelei's eyes shot to him. "You play?"
"Not really." He sent her a crooked smile, then scanned the sheet music briefly. Giving himself a nod, he reached out, hands on two separate keyboards. The trill of sound that followed adhered to a perfect time signature. There were no off notes, just a machine-like perfection pouring out moody, melancholy chords.
Hiding her surprise, Lorelei waited for the intro to end, and brought a second set of vocal cords into synch with her first set, keeping the dangerous tones dampened down. A rich, stereophonic sound emerged, drawing Zane's startled gaze to her face. Her voice resonated with wisps of longing and an echoing, ghostly keen of ancient pain.
"Atlantis ... Atlantis ... Atlantis ... Atlantis…
I fall into an alien sea, a crystal womb
of liquid shadow covers me.
In silent depths, I dare to dream.
Infinity passes laughingly, strangely."
Reaching the chorus, she added more power.
"I've come home to my mother's
disrespect and savage care.
A sea-bound soul in coral,
lost in time and blue despair."
Zane swerved from the printed music, adding a new pattern of bass arpeggios with his left hand dropping to the bottom tier synth. Cindy watched him play, her mouth hanging open, adoration on her face that should have been reserved for the singer. Seeing this, irritation flavored Lorelei's voice.
"Dancing with a cloud of silver, the cod escape.
They cannot use my company.
The ocean bed is torn by current.
There is no hope that I can ever capture sleep."
She sang through the chorus again and let her voice soar in crescendo.
"Once enclosed with iron gates, cold and strong,
heroic in my execution,
before the seas thund'ring song…!
"I've come home to my mother's
disrespect and savage care.
A sea-bound soul in coral,
lost in time and blue despair."
Her words sank into silence, the synth voice a sadness also falling silent. The room remained quiet—no one daring to speak and break the spell of the finished song—until Cindy whispered, "Wow."
Zane came around from behind the keyboards. Smiling, he nodded to Cindy. "Take it easy." His nod to Lorelei was less warm. "Later." He passed her, walking to the door, opening it.
The siren followed him into the hallway. "Wait a minute. I want to talk to you."
He never looked back. "It can wait. I just got here. I want to find my room and settle in."
"That is not acceptable," she announced.
"Tough," he muttered.
She followed him down the hall, trying not to notice how cute his butt was because that would diminish the aggravation she nurtured. "You apparently don't know who I am."
"I count myself lucky." As if to avoid her, he ducked into a side hallway.
She quickened her pace as the land-dweller accelerated away from her. "You really don't want to get on my bad side. Look, give me five minutes."
He turned and opened a door, not caring where he was going.
Lorelei didn't need to read the sign to know this was the Salt Pool. Her lips stretched to form an evil grin. "Oh, this is perfect." She went into a soft-lit space with lawn furniture, and a TV plasma screen—and an Olympic-sized swimming pool in the middle of a blue and green tiled floor. The air smelled of salt. Special equipment oxygenated the water. There were rocks on the bottom of the pool, beds of sea weed, and schools of tasty fish. This wasn't the athletic pool used by most of the students, but was maintained for the school's minority population of amphibians: sirens, silkies, grindylows, the nereid, and humans who were aquatic shape-shifters—were-otters and such.
And it had only one door.
Zane turned back and saw her blocking his escape. With a look of resignation, he came to her and stopped. "Just what is it you want, anyway?"
"I am so glad you asked. I need you."
"I'm flattered, really. But we just met, and—honestly—you're not my type."
"Leaving your poor judgment in women aside, it's your skill I require. I have a band. We're good, aiming for great. I want you to play synth for us and maybe handle some of the mixing board duties as well. It will be great for you, too, instant popularity. You're in, right?"
He shook his head no. "Sorry. I don't even know how long I'll be staying. You're better off not counting on me."
Lorelei's smile turned brittle and strained. She stepped forward and jabbed the human in the chest. "You act like I'm giving you a choice. I am destined for heights of glory. I need it like the salt in this pool, and you are going to help me—or suffer a tragic accident."
He dared smile at her, the land-born ape. "Yeah?"
She stamped her dainty foot, and cracked the tile with her Atlantean strength. "Yeah!"
He studied her, eyes roving with impudent indulgence. "What are you going to do if I say no yet again?"
Her face heated. She stepped into him and moved so that he was between her and the pool. She gave him a small taste of her killer vocals, singing a note, making a sword of sound out of it. He grabbed his ears and staggered back a couple steps, stopping at the edge of the pool. She broke off the note. His hands lowered. His ears were bleeding.
He laughed. "That's all you got?"
"The next note will kill you."
He met her gaze without fear, the electric blue of his eyes much brighter. "Like I care. Kill me, or get out of my way. I have better things to do than to indulge a spoiled brat."
She sputtered. Rage and imperial pride flared in her. She growled like some lander beast, baring teeth. "You. Dare. Defy. Me?" She stalked forward and reached out, delivering a high-pitched scream and a vicious shove that lifted him off his feet, carrying him a dozen feet out over the water. He fell in with a splash, spooking some white and orange clownfish and some purple-yellow royal gramma.
Zane sank to the bottom without a struggle, landing in a lawn chair. Underwater lights washed over him. He showed no distress over being submerged. Nor did he seem to need to breathe. His stare stayed on her.
His voice echoed in her memory: That's all you got?
She couldn't turn her eyes away, even when the door behind her opened. Footsteps echoed on the tiles as someone approached. The steps stopped immediately behind her. "Go away," she said. "I'm busy."
She gestured to the water, summoning her royal magic. Zane jerked in place as though an invisible hand had wrapped around him—which it had. The water obeyed her, even if Zane didn't. Her hand made a claw. She turned it palm up and made a swift lifting motion. Zane rose through the water, surfaced, and continued up into the air, supported by a hand made out of salt water.
"Do you really want me to crush you?" she asked sweetly.
He looked at her, his face bland, every emotion frozen beneath the surface. "There is no damage you can inflict that I can't heal. Haven't you figured it out yet? You can't kill someone who's already dead."
Dead? The word reverberated in her head.
With a last snarl of irritation, she flicked her wrist, turning her clawed hand to the side. The giant hand of water copied her motion, flinging Zane clear of the pool. He smacked into a far wall, slid down into a crumpled heap, and lay still.
She turned and froze. The person next to her was Vice-principal Vickers, and he looked less than happy. "Having fun, are we?" he asked.
She smiled quickly. "A minor dispute, but we've settled things."
"Rather violently. You—of all people—a princess of Atlantis, an heir to the throne, acting this way?"
Exactly!
She said, "You don't know many royals, do you? We're all tyrannical monsters under the thin veneer of civilization."
A female student came into the chamber, a seal skin over one shoulder, a beach towel wrapped around her swimsuit. Seeing the vice-principal and Lorelei, the silkie quietly backtracked into the hallway.
The vice-principal opened his mouth to say something, but motion to the side caught his attention. Lorelei looked as well. It was Zane. He was strolled, soggy clothes leaving a wet trail as he headed for the hallway door. He went out, silent except for the squish of sneakers, never glancing at them.
"Hey," Lorelei said, "no harm, no foul. What's the big deal?"
The vice-principal glared. "The big deal is that we have weaker students here who have a right not to be bullied. Someone else might well have been killed."
She stared at him, trying to figure out why that might be important.
He drew a heavy breath and sighed. "Security may look the other way because you are of the Atlantean peerage, but I will not."
"So, I'm getting detention again?"
"No, what you need is a deeper understanding of pain and suffering." He laughed in a most sinister manner, sending a chill up her spine. "You need empathy, a chance to work on your people skills."
She shot a glance at the water, thinking of diving in.
"Oh, no you don't." His hand shot out and gripped her wrist.
He was strong, but only human strong. She knew she could wrench free and probably snap his wrist in the process. He'd scream. She'd have to drown him. She could claim it was an accident. But the damn magic-users would know. They'd—what was the human expression—rat her out?
She'd been thrown out of so many schools already, Momma said that if this school didn't take, Lorelei would be forced home and made to marry some burley merman who'd beat her into submission and force her to have a whole school of children to proclaim his virility. Momma's letters of late had rambled incessantly on about how Lorelei's married sisters were already providing the royal nursery with grandchildren. Lorelei shuddered at the thought of a similar fate.
I will not abandon my music. Let others settle for ruling a sunken city; I will rule the world through my music.
She sighed with two sets of vocal cords, suppressing the killing tones of the third. "Okay, what do you want me to do?"