He closes the door and I can only guess he’s going to see if he has to let me in or if he can send me away. I don’t bother counting this time. The palace is huge—it could take him an hour to swim to the back. Instead, I amuse myself by studying the weird sculptures covering the palace. There are a lot of bulls and horses—another one of Poseidon’s sacred symbols—and plenty of half-naked mermaids. Typical.

But there are also lots of serpents and sea monsters, creatures with mixed-up features like the front half of a horse and the tail of a fish. There are about a million actual seashells inlaid into the palace walls. Not one of them is silver.

I float over to the statue of a beautiful woman, her mouth open like she’s singing an opera. A siren, one of the evil women who uses song to lure sailors to their deaths.

The sculpture is so realistic I can almost hear the—

“Be careful.”

Heart pounding, I spin around at the sound of the guard’s voice.

“You do not wish to wake the sleeping siren.”

I glance back at the sculpture—lifelike for a reason, apparently—and kick myself slowly away. I’m not a sailor and at the moment I can’t drown, but I’m not about to tempt fate.

“Sorry,” I mutter as I swim back over to the guard.

“The sea god will see you now,” the guard says, as if I hadn’t almost roused a murderous creature.

“Good,” I say, trying to act like I knew he would.

Inside, my heart and my mind are racing. Great, I’ve got an audience with Poseidon. Now what?

“I need a silver seashell.”

Did that just come out of my mouth? Seriously?

As the guard led me to the throne room, I tried to think of some reasonable way to ask for the seashell without having to explain why. I could pretend I was a jeweler who wanted to make a necklace in his honor. Or that I was trying to win a merman’s love. But never once did I think to blurt out my request without preamble until, well, it blurted out of me without preamble.

I feel my eyes widen as Poseidon studies me from the other side of his massive desk. It’s at least as big as Zeus’s and covered with as much clutter.

Sometimes I really need to think twice before speaking. Or at least once. I should try it someday. I’m going to get myself smoted.

“I mean, I was wondering if there’s any way I could—”