Dorian gazed at her for a second. Maybe he’d sound like an asshole, but she needed to know the truth. It was horrible, he thought, that the girls who made that choice didn’t know what they were getting into. Proteus tricked all of them, made them think that they were going to be safe and free when really they were trapped into becoming murderers; even worse, they were trapped that way forever, cold and lost and lonely. But maybe, just maybe, he could protect Zoe from that. If her stepfather came back . . .“A mermaid. The girls where that happens to them. They become mermaids. And . . . they kill a lot of people, Zoe.”

What did it matter if it sounded ridiculous? Dorian thought angrily. It was true. He was telling Zoe the truth, and there was one thing certain: nobody else would. At least she’d know what she was facing.

“Mermaids. Like your girlfriend? That’s what she is?” Zoe was obviously trying to make fun of him, but she couldn’t quite manage it. Dorian stared flatly into her awkward smirk. She was struggling not to accept the truth, he thought, but she couldn’t keep herself from partly believing him. “She’s the one you’re always drawing?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s her name?”

Dorian hesitated. But it was a harmless enough question, really. “Luce.”

“Is that short for Hallucination?” Zoe asked, deadpan. Then her lips curled into a sly smile.

Dorian couldn’t help it: he cracked up laughing and soon Zoe was laughing, too. They were both leaning forward, their laughter wild with a strange kind of shared relief, tears brightening Zoe’s round hazel eyes. Dorian felt like he was being a little disloyal to Luce, laughing at a joke about her. But it was funny—funny, he thought, in the way of things that are just a bit too true. Luce herself was real, of course, but her life in the sea sometimes seemed to Dorian like some kind of acted-out fantasy, with its queens and battles and shipwrecks. Not a hallucination exactly, but a willful waking dream that never ended. As if Luce was avoiding something.

“Actually,” Dorian said when he could finally talk again, “it’s short for Lucette. I don’t know what her last name was, though . . .”

Something about that brought Zoe up short. She stopped giggling abruptly and wiped her eyes with her sleeve, staring at him. “Lucette? That’s a pretty unusual name.”

“It is unusual, yeah. But it’s totally beautiful.”

Zoe’s eyes sparked with annoyance for a moment, then turned cautious and darkly curious. “I’ve only ever heard that name one time before, actually.” She was examining Dorian’s face, checking for his reaction. “Have you heard about that girl Lucette Korchak? From Pittley?”