Artur sighed, the quiet groan of a man picking up a heavy, chattering burden. “We pull air into our bodies when we are on land, and when we are under water we pull air from the water.”

“Okay, that was super helpful. Lemme just grab some clarification, ‘kay? So—like, you get oxygen from the water, how? The cells of your body somehow open up and grab the oxygen and bring it into your system? You’re, what, like starfish?”

Close, Fred thought. It really was difficult to explain. As people didn’t think about breathing, she didn’t think about water-breathing.

No, she didn’t have gills, and she wasn’t half girl, half fish, but a mammal that simply resembled such a creature. A large, hostile mammal whose baseline temp was eighty-eight degrees and whose resting heart rate was thirty.

She just—just never needed to come up for air when she was swimming. Interesting that even though she had a doctorate in marine biology she never gave much thought to her own biology. (Though it had been amusing, picturing her professors’ reactions if she had shown off her tail during a wet lab.) Very likely the pores in her skin were able to extract oxygen from the—

“This is useless,” she said, bored with the ‘how do you not drown’ talk, and annoyed with Pearson’s notes. “A bad idea. We should have come during business hours.”

“Oh, sure,” Jonas said snarkily. “That would have been easy to explain. ‘Hi, Dr. Barb, this is the Prince of the—”

Fred gave him a look. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“Sobbingly, no.”

“Well, let’s think about this. I’d like to try feeding the fish again, anyway, so I might as well do it while we’re here. You—what’s your plan?”

“For what?” Artur replied, looking startled when she pointed at him.

“For—you know. Waiting until tomorrow to meet the other guy who’s bugging me about your little problem.”

“I will return with you to your dwelling, of course.”

“What?” she cried. “I don’t have the room or the temperament for a royal roommate. And don’t wait for an invitation or anything.”

“You are my subject,” he said, looking even more wide-eyed. “Of course you will open your home to me.”

Jonas snickered. “Fred, meet Artur. Artur, meet Fred.”

“I do not know what you—”

“Fred doesn’t ‘of course’ do anything.”

“There’s a Marriott right next door,” she forced through a tense jaw. “We’ll get you a room. You might be in town for a while.”

“The Prince of the Black Sea has an American Express?” Jonas asked gleefully, being more annoying than usual. Then, before Artur could ask what he was talking about: “You got any money on you? Dough? Moolah? Treasure?”

Artur’s red eyes actually glowed with comprehension. “Ah! Treasure. Yes, of course. The sea is generous. But I—”

“No pockets, huh? Left all your doubloons at home?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll put the room on my Visa,” Fred gritted.

“You refuse your home to me?”

“Yes.”

“You may not.”