“So those pretty girls are some kind of shape-shifters?” Alex asked. “Because they turned into fish, right? Gemma and the girls turned into fish, then swam off?”

“Mermaids, I think,” Harper corrected him.

“This is so insane,” Alex said quietly, almost to himself, then he looked up at Harper, his dark brown eyes locking seriously on hers. “Stupid question time, but I have to ask. Gemma hasn’t, like … always been a mermaid, has she? This isn’t some family curse thing like on Teen Wolf?”

“No.” Harper smiled despite herself and shook her head. “No. There’s no history of mermaids or any other mythological beings in our family.”

“Okay. Good,” Alex said, then changed his mind and wagged his head back and forth. “Well, not really. If you knew what this was, it would be easier to deal with.”

“It certainly would,” she agreed.

“So you don’t have any idea what Gemma or Penn or the girls might be?” Alex asked.

“No,” Harper admitted regretfully.

“And you don’t know where they went?”

“Nope.”

“So. How are we gonna get her back?” Alex asked.

“Well…” Harper took a deep breath. “We figure out what they are and how to stop them, then we find them and we take Gemma back.”

2. Metamorphoses

TWO

Metamorphoses

Marcy had been talking for a while, but Harper hadn’t been listening. She sat at the desk, staring into space and trying to figure out what to do.

When Alex left the night before, they’d both agreed that they had to continue on with life like normal until they found Gemma. That meant going to work, even when Harper would rather be at home scouring the Internet for clues about what Gemma might have become.

She’d spent a lot of time on sites that claimed to be experts on Bigfoot and el chupacabra, but nobody had heard of a bizarre bird-monster that also turned into a fish-human hybrid and a beautiful teenage girl.

By the time she fell asleep very late last night, Harper had begun to believe that she’d made up the whole thing. It was some weird stress-induced hallucination. That was the only logical explanation for what she’d seen.

“But I was like, you can’t make a fur coat out of basset hounds,” Marcy was saying when Harper started tuning back in. “It’s not like I’m Cruella De Vil, you know?”

“No, it’s not,” Harper replied absently.

Marcy scoffed and stared at her above her dark-framed glasses. “You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said, have you, Harper?”

“You’re not Cruella De Vil.” Harper forced a thin smile at her.

Marcy rolled her eyes. “Lucky guess.”

“How is that lucky?” Harper asked.