Read Submerging (Swans Landing) for Free Online

idea where you’d gone, you were here one minute and the next—”
    “Wait a minute,” I said, holding up my hands and brushing off his grip on my arm. “Who’s Fiona?”
    He blinked for a moment. “Fiona.” He gestured at the door of the hostel. “The woman who runs the front desk. Fiona McIntyre.”
    “So you’re on a first name basis with her now? What, did the two of you get all cozy while you were supposedly so worried about me?”
    Josh shot me a dark glare. “I had time to talk with her while I was waiting on you to get back from wherever you’d wandered off to.”
    I smirked. “I’ll bet Mara would be interested in hearing all about your new friendship with this Fiona.”
    I’d meant it as a joke—Fiona had to be at least twenty years older than us—but Josh’s eyes flashed and his nostrils flared. He was too sensitive when it came to Mara Westray.
    “Mind your own damn business, Sailor,” he growled. Josh stomped through the door of the hostel without waiting to see if I would follow.
    The woman, apparently Josh’s new best friend Fiona, stood behind the desk sorting papers. She raised her eyebrows when we entered.
    “There she is,” she drawled, eying me up and down. “Your brother had a right good fit waiting on you.”
    “Well, now he’s being a right good ass,” I snapped.
    Josh glared at me and then stomped toward our room. I took that as my invitation to follow. Once in our room, Josh unfolded a map he’d bought at the general store and studied it.
    I sat down in the chair next to the window. I tried not to think about Callum and what had happened at the lighthouse, but the harder I tried not to think about it, the more I did. Should I tell Josh that this guy might know what we were? A gnawing feeling in my stomach warned me that I couldn’t brush him off.
    “So,” I said, clearing my throat, “what’s the plan?” I was chickening out, but I didn’t want to have that conversation with Josh right now.
    Josh didn’t look up from the map. “We need to look for clues.”
    “What kind of clues?” If I was lucky, we could leave this place behind before Callum spilled our secret to all his friends in the village.
    “I don’t know,” Josh said. “This was your idea. Didn’t you come up with a plan for once you got here in all those years you thought about this?”
    My plan had always been to find my mother. I’d never considered the work involved in getting to that point. I’d certainly never imagined months of swimming across an ocean.
    I’d always focused on the reunion between my mom and me. I’d thought about how she might look and what all the other finfolk she lived with were like. What would happen once I made it to Scotland hadn’t crossed my mind.
    “Well?” Josh asked.
    “We should go swimming tonight,” I said. “We’ll see if we can find something that will lead us to the finfolk homeland. A door, or I don’t know, a portal.”
    Josh rolled his eyes. “You’ve been watching too many movies. There has to be a logical way to get there. You need a concrete plan in mind before you decide to go wandering all over a place we aren’t familiar with. This isn’t Swans Landing. We don’t know anyone here and we don’t know who we can trust to help us.”
    I bit my lip. No way could I tell Josh about Callum. He’d freak and then blame me for wandering off on my own. It wasn’t like I’d gone out in search of someone to reveal our secret to. How was I supposed to know that some guy would sneak up on me during what was supposed to be a private moment?
    “Fine,” I said. “You make the plan, since you’re the one with the map.”
    After breakfast—Josh had a peanut butter sandwich and water, gag, while I had three candy bars—we headed down the main street of Pierowall. Now that I wasn’t in a rush to get away from everything, I could take some more time to look at the village, which was made up of mostly gray stone buildings and houses. I’d never