And a second after that she’d told him that they had to dive. She’d wanted to get out of sight. It all made sense now. She didn’t want any of the other mermaids to know what she’d done. She was afraid of getting in trouble with them. Dorian couldn’t help laughing nastily when he realized it. He had something on her. He could use it. Now that the plan was forming in his mind, he couldn’t sit still. His eyes roamed around the bedroom they’d given him, one wall completely covered in an incongruous photographic mural of koalas and bamboo. Everything else in the room was lacy or floral; his few scattered belongings were clearly intrusive, disturbers of the peace. Lindy’s sewing machine and knitting supplies took up a large corner. Dorian kept jumping off the bed, pacing twitchily back and forth, even though it was after two in the morning and he definitely didn’t want Lindy waking up.

He was going to blackmail a mermaid. Excitement jumped in his muscles at the prospect, speeded his breath. He wrenched open the bottom drawer of the hideously ornate, baby blue dresser with its painted wreaths of bloated purple roses. He’d finished well over a hundred drawings in the months since he’d first seen her, and now he pulled thick messy stacks of them out from under the tangle of jeans and hoodies. Not all of them would work—there were dozens that showed cresting waves crowded with staring eyes, or sometimes with one huge eye all alone. Cyclops waves. But there were others where he’d made a painstaking effort to capture her face, drawn her framed in peaked slopes of water. A number of those portraits showed a decent likeness, though somehow getting her features right didn’t begin to convey how phenomenally beautiful she was. When Dorian drew her, she was never more than very pretty. But one thing was obvious about her: she didn’t look anything like mermaids were supposed to, with her short, spiky, almost punk, dark hair and long, shadowy eyes. He felt confident that if any other mermaid found one of the drawings, they’d recognize that face right away.

They’d realize the truth, too. Probably she wasn’t supposed to let anybody see her. If the mermaids weren’t all seriously careful to keep out of sight, he wouldn’t be the only person in the world who knew they were more than an old myth.

It was lucky that he’d used black permanent marker on glossy paper. The images wouldn’t bleed in the sea. Dorian began sorting through the stack with his hands trembling, pulling out the best ones and setting them to the side on the matted carpet. He’d just do one or two to start with. If she still wouldn’t cooperate, well, he could draw as many more as he needed.