“No problem,” Daniel said, watching her as she got up.

“And I’ll see you around, I guess.”

He nodded and gave her a small wave. As she was walking out the door, she heard Pearl ask him if he wanted any pie. Harper went back across the street to the library, and it was very hard for her not to glance back over her shoulder at him.

13. Rebellion

THIRTEEN

Rebellion

Part of her penance was helping Harper clean. It actually wasn’t specifically dictated as part of her punishment, but it helped ease Gemma’s guilt over frightening both Harper and her father so badly.

Based on how much Harper complained about it, Gemma thought that cleaning the bathroom was her least favorite chore. So that was the one Gemma had offered to take over. Although, after spending five minutes scrubbing the inside of the toilet, she was really starting to regret it.

When she got to cleaning the tub, she realized that the toilet wasn’t even the worst part. The drain in the bathtub was disgusting. Harper always claimed it was mostly Gemma’s hair clogging things up, but Gemma hadn’t really believed her until now.

Fortunately, she wore thick yellow cleaning gloves, or else there would have been no way she could’ve handled it. As she pulled out a long wet rope of hair that looked all too much like a drowned rat, Gemma noticed something glinting in the light.

Carefully, she picked it out of the tangles, and when she saw what it was, she dropped the wet mass of hair. It was another one of those weird iridescent scales she’d found in her bath sponge. She’d nearly forgotten about the last one. Or at least she’d tried to.

Gemma sat in the tub, leaning her back against the rim, and stared down at the big scale in the palm of her gloved hand.

Something strange was definitely going on with her. Ever since she’d drunk from the flask, something had felt … off.

Not that it was all bad stuff. In fact, Gemma couldn’t actually think of anything bad about the changes at all.

Sure, she’d bitten Alex yesterday, but he hadn’t really been hurt. And while the making out had been different, it hadn’t been bad. Kissing him like that had been fun.

Her body healed crazy fast. All her bruises and cuts had disappeared in just over twenty-four hours.

At swim practice today, she’d had her best times. Coach Levi was totally blown away by her speed. The weirdest part was that she actually had to hold back. She was afraid if she went as fast as she could, he’d think she was on something.