bow, which looks light as a feather as he weighs it against his palms.

“He made this for me.”

Thalia doesn’t join them and instead stays sitting between me and

Layla. “You’re not going to try?” I ask.

“I find that it might hurt Ryan’s human ego if I were to best

him.” She leans back on her palms. Even knowing what she is, she is a

wondrous sight. Her hair is free and flowing around her face with a

life of its own. She crosses her legs and wiggles her ankles so that

the glitter of her slippers catches the stadium lights. I wonder if

she misses her fins. I’ve only changed a few times, and already

something deep inside me is urging me to find a river, or even a

bathtub, and sink in.

“I very much miss Atticus,” Thalia sighs. “But I like it here.

Don’t tell Kurt.”

“He looks like he’s having more fun than he’d like to admit,”

Layla says. I follow her eyes to where Kurt is taking aim.

“Kurtomathetis wouldn’t know how to have fun if it were pulling on

his fishtails.”

I laugh hard at that. I bet Kurt can hear what we’ve said, because

when he lets his arrow go, it misses Principal Quinn’s picture and

hits the outer ring.

Ryan gets a bull’s-eye on the picture of Mr. Van Oppen. Thalia

shrieks and claps her hands. The other guys go, one by one. Some of

them get close, but none of them are as accurate.

Jerry throws his arms up, letting the school’s bow and arrow fall

to the ground. “This is whack! I’m going to check on the freshman

lunch period, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, all your little boyfriends are waiting,” Angelo calls out

after him, and is answered by Jerry’s middle finger. Bertie isn’t too

far behind Jerry after he fails for the umpteenth time at getting his

arrow to go anywhere other than the grass.

“Know what?” Layla goes, pushing herself up, her arm brushing

against mine and sending pinpricks down my spine. “I’m gonna go play

with sharp objects too.” She runs up to Kurt, who shows her how to

stand, his hand carefully guiding her hands into position. He whispers

something to her, and she smiles. She lets go and hits Ms. Pippen

right at the center of her third eye. Layla jumps up and down and

throws her arms around Kurt’s neck.

“She’s lovely, you know.” Thalia nods at her.

“Who?”

“You know who. Layla. Duh? ”

“Yeah, well.” I grab a handful of the fake grass and pull hard on

it. “This whole Maddy thing isn’t going to make me look like Champion

of the Year in her eyes.”

“If I’ve learned anything by watching human interaction, it’s that

they’re always angry at the person they feel they love. It’s easier to

feel anger than love. Love makes people sick. Anger just consumes you

so you think you’re not feeling anything.”

“What about mermaid love?”

“Mer-kin, maybe all immortals, don’t necessarily fall in love.

Forever is awfully long, and the oceans are vast. You never know who

will, how do you say, rock your boat?”

“Maybe that’s why I have the reputation of being a man-slut.”

“Surely, it has nothing to do with the fact that you’re also a

sixteen-year-old foot-fin.”

She cups her hands around her mouth and hollers when Ryan gets

another bull’s-eye. He drops his bow and arrow. He runs over to us,

gets down on his knees, and kisses Thalia on her sweet full mouth. At

first she’s surprised. Hell, I’m surprised. So is everyone who’s

looking at them from the bleachers. A camera flash goes off somewhere.

Layla giggles behind her hands, and some of the guys whistle with

their fingers. All except for Kurt, who shakes his head

disapprovingly.

Thalia rests her hands around Ryan’s face, bringing him in, and

neither of them seems to notice the crowds. I want to look away, but

it’s not like anyone’s been kissing me lately. I glance at Layla to

see if maybe she’s looking at me, but her face is tilted to the sky,

where a gray patch of clouds is floating over us. When I relax my

eyes, the clouds look like grizzly bears. I shut my eyes to get

Elias’s face out of my head.

Just then Ryan stumbles out of their kiss. “Cool. Okay. Good.” He

jogs back to the targets with a new strut.

“Tristan.” Thalia bites her bottom lip. “Will you make me a

promise?”

“What is it?”

“Will you let me stay? If you’re king? Would you let me stay here

like Aunt Maia did? I could never ask anyone else.”

A king keeps his promises , my grandfather told me. I guess I

should be careful of the promises I make.

A fat drop of rain hits me right in the eye. The knot in my

stomach that started in homeroom is growing with the darkening gray

clouds. I point at the sky. “I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen

anymore.”

She stands with her hands over her eyes like visors. “It isn’t.

Something is wrong.” She breathes in long and deep. “Do you smell it?”

I smell damp air. Mist rises around us. Clouds roll in front of

the sun, and everything inside me turns. Just like before the first

storm, the first wave.

Angelo is the first to run past me, yelling something about his

hair and how he’ll see us losers back in the lunchroom. Ryan holds out

his hands and cries out with excitement. It’s something that comes

from deep inside him, as if he’s waking up for the first time.

The sky turns black, the wind pushing the clouds fast across the

sky. The only light comes from the stadium lights and the lightning

cracking open the sky. Car alarms go off all along the block. For a

moment, it feels like the earth is shaking around us, but it’s

actually the metal fence around the field that’s shaking.

I grab Layla by the shoulders. “Please go inside. Please.”

“What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

Thalia’s glamour is fading slightly, or maybe she’s just green

with sickness as her yellow-green eyes widen at what they see. She

points at the other end of the field. “There!”

Three of the ugliest creatures I’ve ever seen are ripping the

fence open. Damp air mingles with the scent of sea sludge, like a

manhole just threw them up into the street. The tallest one has the

head of a hammerhead shark on the body of a human. Yellow eyes glow on

either side of his head. His gills open at the touch of rain, and a

smile like crushed glass grins right at me. Beside him is a creature

that is blue from head to webbed feet. His elbows end in long red

spikes, and his mouth opens to rows of canines. The smallest one of

the three is round with the head of a blowfish whose cheeks constantly

puff in and out.

Kurt takes aim with his arrow and shoots before I can even blink.

The creatures are fast, and Kurt only grazes the blue one in the arm.

They jump high and scatter around us.

“Layla, please do as I say!” I fumble to unzip my backpack for my

dagger.

“No!” Kurt shouts over me.

“What do you mean no?”

“They’ll follow her. Chase her. They’re fast, whatever they are.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

The round one shows himself in front of us. He breathes hard and

puffs his body out. Shit.

“Get behind the targets!”

I pull Layla down, shielding her with my body behind the wooden

target. The needles hit like darts into the wood.

“Lord Sea, stay down,” Kurt says. “Thalia, aim!”

She reaches for a bow, stands quickly, and lets the arrow fly.

Ryan has his back against the target. “What the hell! What the

hell are they?”

I peek around the target ring. They’re just standing in the

shadows waiting, like this is a game.