struggling to sing, to bring the men back to safety. She’s like the

sun trying to shine when the moon is pushing for darkness, like the

sky right above us.

“Who?” But I don’t even have to ask. Out in the gray sea is a

swirl of water. She holds her arms out and lifts her face to the

eclipse.

Gwenivere sings.

Her voice is mingled into the wind that rushes in and out of the

shore like a riptide, like the hands of the sea desperately grabbing

the men. I felt those hands the first time the wave crashed over Coney

Island and I got carried out to sea.

Too many of the men are waist deep in water. The waves swallow

them, and when they’re washed out far enough, the waiting clawed hands

of Nieve’s merrows snatch them up and take them back home.

I dive into the waves, flicking my tail as fast as I can until I

reach Gwen. She doesn’t see me coming at first. Then she loses

concentration and her song stops. She teeters on the spiral of water

that serves as her tower. I knock her off it and she splashes down. I

grab her around the waist and hold her arms down.

“Stop it!” I say. “I know you don’t want to do this. I know you’re

tired of this.”

She splashes hard, but I hold on tighter. She screams and the

beautiful song she was singing before is a terrible shriek.

“How can you know what I want?”

“Because I saw your face, Gwen. I saw your face when Archer wanted

to hurt Layla. You saved her. I know you did.” I brush her white-blond

hair out of her eyes. She stops struggling against me.

“You can help me stop her,” I say. “If you don’t, all of the lives

she takes will be on your hands.”

She grits her teeth and screams once again. We float out in the

water, and I wait for her to make the right choice.

“If I do, my brother and sisters-their lives will be on my hands

as well.”

“Gwen, please,” I say, holding her by her shoulders.

She looks back to where yellow eyes lie waiting behind us. There

are a few more splashes, and I know if I turn around, I’ll see more

men drowning.

I keep thinking that if I try hard enough, I’ll get her to be the

same girl who sailed alongside me, fought alongside me. I have to

remind myself that girl never existed. That Gwen was playing me, and I

fell right into her stormy gray eyes. I see her make up her mind, a

shark ready to strike. She places her hands on my chest and snarls,

“You smell like her.”

I can feel my heart stop and start as a shock of current hits my

chest. From Gwen. I shake as she leaves me in the water. I gasp for

air. Try to swim back to the shore, but my muscles are as strong as

loose rubber bands.

I push against the weakness and start to swim after her, but

someone catches my attention on the shore. Layla’s on the sand again,

Thalia holding her back from getting into the surf. She’s chasing

after a guy our age.

Oh fuck.

I put my energy into swimming with the waves toward the shore. The

waves take me in, crashing over his head. Angelo, in his stained white

underwear.

I loop my arms around his chest and drag him out. He takes a swing

at me, but the next wave flips us both over. “Hey, man. It’s me. Wake

up, wake up.”

I grab on to him and he makes it difficult by flailing around.

When I get him on land, I smack him across the face. “Remember when we

took the Triborough championship last year? How we competed over girls

but never let it get in our way? How you beat up a kid from our rival

high school for pissing in the pool while I was swimming?”

Something happens to him. Without Gwen, my mom’s song is stronger.

His eyes are bright again, like he’s coming out of a long sleep.

“Tristan?”

“Come on.” I pull him toward shore. “We have to get out of the

water!”

He hangs on to me, trying to take stock of what’s happening around

him. But all he can say is, “Bro, you have a fucking tail!”

I want to laugh, but I can taste blood in the water. When we’re

near the shore, I let my fins dissolve and go back into a half-shift.

“You’re sleepwalking.”

Layla runs to him and grabs him in a tight hug. “Oh, thank God.”

“What’s happening?” Angelo yells.

“Shark attacks,” Layla and I say at the same time.

“Are you on duty? I thought the beach was evacuated. Where are my

clothes?” He goes on with questions we don’t answer until we get to

the boardwalk.

The Alliance and the landlocked are making sure the human men make

their way up onto the boardwalk and head home.

“Tristan,” Angelo says. He grabs my wrist. His brown eyes are

wide, and fat beads of water cling to his eyelashes. “I’m not stupid.

You’re strapped on like fucking Clash of the Titans minus that fly

Pegasus. Don’t lie to me. I know what I saw. I could hear a voice

calling out to me, and all I wanted to do was jump into the water. It

was that girl-that Gwen girl. I know she’s not your cousin. Those

things that got Ryan. Don’t lie to me. What the fuck’s going on?”

“More than I could tell you and not sound crazy,” I tell him.

Because I don’t deny him, he relaxes. I can see him fill in the

blanks for himself. Then he reaches for the dagger on my chest all,

“Cool, can I play with it?”

I smack his hand away. “No!”

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll get my own.”

“Look, something bad is going down tonight. Whatever you do, don’t

go in the water.”

He looks from me to Layla, to the mix of people on the boardwalk.

“I want to help.”

“You can help me by making sure people don’t go into sea. Not

tonight. Tell your brother-he’s a cop. Tell him that you heard about

some crazy-ass party that’s going down in the middle of the hurricane.

Whatever you do, you can’t mention me.”

“Hurricane party. Block off beach access. Don’t tell him about

your sparkly tail. I’m on it.” He holds out his hand and I take it.

Shake, pound, slap, slap-our Thorne Hill Knights handshake.

I turn to Layla. “Where are our dads?”

“Dazed and sleeping. Your mom and I put them in the backseat of

her car.”

I grab her face and kiss her mouth, then her forehead. I remember

that was the last thing I did the last time, when the wave was coming

in and I ran right in. Now I’m doing it again.

“I’m going to help the others,” she says and pulls herself from

me.

“I’ll be right there.” I hold on to her, right down to the tips of

our fingers, and then she’s gone. I can see my mom standing at the

boardwalk. I fight every impulse to run to her, to go home and let

Kurt have at it. A scream is caught in my chest and I push it back

down because I have to be strong for her. She’s singing one last song,

a melody that I know as well as the lines of my face. A sailor getting

lost at sea and finding a beautiful castle with riches and a love that

is magical and impossible but true, but in the end he comes home.

This is not her world anymore. It’s mine.

“Tristan,” Frederik says from behind me. “A word?”

I turn to where he stands. “It was Gwenivere. She was calling out

to them.”

“I saw. Where is she now?”

“Gone.” I press my hand over my chest where my skin is red from

her handprint. My scabs are bleeding. “I thought she was going to

burst my heart out of my chest.”

Frederik shakes his head. “She wouldn’t.”

“I was sure she would come back with me, but I was wrong.”

“We lost at least a dozen humans,” Frederik says, walking back up

the beach to regroup with the others. “Thanks to your mother, we can