Total pages in book: 37
Estimated words: 35195 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 176(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35195 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 176(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
He shot her an amused look. “Haven’t we learned from the one Christmas? I need to indulge my demon side–”
“Demon?” I squawked. Mermaids. Now demons? Was the girl a demon too?
The girl sighed. “There you go. Playing again. These are humans. They’re meant to be protected.”
He snorted. “Says your Messenger side. That’s not my base, Shay.”
“Shay?” Kennedy squawked now, stepped around her Shay and looking between the two.
“Now they know our names. We really do need to wipe their memories.” The guy was back to being amused.
She Shay sighed, again. She turned and addressed us, “This is nothing personal. You guys are the only ones who left the bar before we could make you forget what you saw.”
“What’d we see?” Caden asked, his tone low and deadly.
A puff of pride bloomed in my chest. My man. Taking on a demon. Though, how dangerous was this demon? And I still couldn’t believe I was thinking about a demon in real life here. Not fantasy or the dark romance paranormal kind. I was pushing down my fear because if I indulged, I’d be doing something embarrassing. Like pissing myself. Or worse, and I didn’t want to go there.
“You saw a territorial interaction. The local Mers didn’t want Kellan and I to be vacationing here, but that’s all. And now, he’s going to wipe your memories and all will be good again.” There was an extra light beaming around her eyes, in the iris. And as she spoke, it glowed brighter, sending a warmth coating us. Coating me. I suddenly wanted to close my eyes and give in, but give in to what? I didn’t know. I just wanted to do it. It was similar to the feeling last night when the one performer mermaid began singing.
Wiping our memory. That’s what was going to happen.
“Wait.” I stuck my hand up in the air.
The warmth ceased, and the Kellan guy began chuckling before his girl smacked his arm. He cut it off as she asked, “You don’t have to raise your hand here.”
“Oh.” I looked at my hand, confused myself about why I’d done it. Then I shrugged. “If you’re going to wipe our memories, what will you put in its place?”
“What do you mean?” The Kellan guy’s head had tilted at his question.
I shrugged, before glancing around. “I don’t know. I mean, we had a great night. I enjoyed the bar, the show, and seeing my friends? It was a night I’d like to remember. We laughed. Kennedy interrogated her brother’s new girlfriend–”
“She did what?” from Gage.
“I just love you, that’s all.”
“–we stayed up all night, telling stories before we came down here. Gage burned the first round of pizzas, which took a whole hour so that made sense that he’d burned them. He took too long.”
Kennedy added, “Way too long.”
“Hey. You interrogated Bello.”
“—The night was beautiful, and I don’t want to forget any part of it. Not one bit.” I ignored the siblings, staring hard at She Shay.
She shared a look with her man before she gave a nod, stepping forward to me. “We’re going to replace the memories of what you saw in the bar.” As she began speaking, there was a wave coming from her man. Her Kellan. He wasn’t saying anything, but I knew somehow, they were working in conjunction together. She was laying the groundwork, and he was doing the erasing.
She came closer to me, touching my temples with her fingers, and her voice dropped to a crooning whisper, but it was the emotions I was feeling from her. They were beautiful, and warm, and loving, and it was something else I didn’t want to forget either. I didn’t know what she was, but I didn’t care at the moment. It was breathtaking.
Maybe we should’ve fought more? Maybe the guys could’ve threatened them, but the truth is that the whole night was surreal. It was like a page taken out of a storybook, and there was a part of me that almost didn’t believe any of this was happening. These were supernatural creatures. We as humans weren’t supposed to have witnessed them, known they existed. They were powerful and dangerous, so maybe wiping our memories was what needed to be done?
She kept murmuring, a song-like lyrical note joining with her voice, “You will remember everything until the moment you saw myself and Kellan. You will not remember anything about us except that we were there, and we sat at a table in the corner. We enjoyed the show with everyone else. You will remember everything after that point until you came down to this beach. Instead of seeing the Mer tails, you instead saw a group of friends going for a swim. You saw them rejoin on the beach, walking on two legs, and once they picked up their clothes and left, you and your friends continued on your walk of the beach. You will remember this night as a blessed night, a precious memory, and you’ll rethink on this night with loving fondness because as you said, it’s a night to be remembered. You will not remember Kellan and myself finding you on this beach. You will not remember anything we’ve spoken about here. With time, the memory of us being a normal couple enjoying the show in the bar with you will also fade. And now as your memories are taken, I fill in the gentle openings with laughter, love, and kindness. The magic will give us a pocket of time where we will leave, and once we are out of ear and eyesight, everything will be complete.”