As the sun inched across the horizon, the ghouls quarreled among themselves, which was a lot more unnerving than it sounds. On the surface it looked like any ordinary argument, but there were power plays I couldn’t entirely fathom going on in the hidden depths beneath the words, contests of will going back and forth, all of it fueled by an ever-rising hunger that was barely held in check, on the verge of ravening.

I’m pretty sure Rosie, or whatever the mermaid’s real name was, bore the brunt of their emotional ardor. Hour by hour, I could almost see her being drained. But I could feel it, too—feel the shifting tides of power, feel the avid hunger that crawled over my skin like the psychic equivalent of drool.

Ew. Just . . . ew.

I leaned my cheek against the warm glass of the aquarium. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I really, really wanted to rescue you.”

The mermaid flattened one webbed hand against the other side of the glass, sympathy in her anguished gaze.

“Daisy and Rosie,” Jerry Dunham said in his flat voice. “Ain’t that just too precious for words?”

I stared at him with pure hatred.

He chuckled. “You want to do it? Go on, do it. Call your daddy. Let the world burn.”

Daughter . . .

I closed my eyes, picturing my mother’s face. I clamped down on my emotions, wrapping my will around them like a garrote.

Darkness was beginning to fall when the sound of motorcycles rumbling into the driveway silenced the bickering. Stefan and his posse had arrived. Someone shut off the lights, and the ghouls hunkered down in anticipation of the battle to come. Only Rosie’s algae-covered tank glowed, green and murky in the dimness.

One by one, the engines outside cut out.

“It’s go time,” Johnny murmured, aiming the barrels of his shotgun at the front door. “Let bygones be bygones. Let’s do this.”

I drew a breath to shout a warning.

The muzzle of Dunham’s pistol pressed against my temple. “Scream and I’ll shoot you,” he said with calm assurance. “You first, and the fish second. Is that the way you want to die, blondie?”

“No,” I whispered.

The moment dragged on endlessly. I was acutely aware of the silence, of the breath moving in and out of my lungs, of the circle of Dunham’s pistol hard against my temple, of the mermaid undulating helplessly in her tank, her gills fluttering.

The knob of the front door of the Locksley family’s summer home rotated an inch . . . and went still.

“What the fuck?” someone said in frustration.

In the woods outside, a wolf howled, one, and then another and another.

Johnny turned slightly. “Shit—”

The front door burst inward with a great, splintering crash of wood and glass, lashed by the impossible force of vast, muscular, rainbow-hued serpentine coils moving at lightning speed.

Oh, crap!