So, I go.

It’s been a few years since I’ve ridden one of these, and even then I never actually drove one. I piggybacked with Chloe and only after she swore on her little brother’s life that she wouldn’t do anything reckless. I marvel at how far I’ve come since then. From scared to get in the water to chitchatting with fish on the ocean floor.

Luckily, my first scream of terror doesn’t come until I’m way out of earshot of Rachel, when I think I’ve grown bored with a lower speed and decide to gun it. The sudden jolt forward almost pitches me off the back end. While my heart rate recovers—along with my pride—I squint into the distance, into the reflection of the setting sun floating like an oil slick on top of the water.

I stare a long time, as if somehow Rayna will give me a sign of where she is if I just keep looking long enough. I let my foot dangle in the water, even as I admit that if Rayna is swimming with any kind of purpose, she’s long gone. Behind me the shore is just a flat line with no sign of Galen’s house. Not even a speck.

I could turn around.

I should turn around.

I twist the handles to turn around.

And out comes my second scream of terror.

The violent thrust of water in my face isn’t half as surprising as how loud it is leaving the huge blowhole that has appeared beside me. I cough and sputter and scream again, but this time in frustration. Goliath—my blue whale friend who first convinced me of my Gift of Poseidon—sends another gush of water toward me. “Oh, knock it off!” I tell him.

He makes a high-pitched clicking sound then dives under the surface. Goliath doesn’t speak English (or Spanish or French) but his whole demeanor begs, “Play with Me.” “I can’t play. I have to find Rayna. Have you seen her?” Yes, I really just did ask a whale that. And, no, he doesn’t answer.

Instead, half his body launches from the water and lands in a sideways belly flop. The resulting tsunami topples the jet ski.

I am in the water. Fan-flipping-tastic.

Goliath pauses and swims, pauses and swims, waiting for me to regain control over my initial shock and, if he’s lucky, my temper. “I told you I couldn’t play!”

As I chastise a ginormous whale, I catch the sudden glint of something below us. And I realize too late that it’s my car keys shimmering in the last of the dying sunlight as they make their way to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. I must have lost them out of my jeans pocket when I flipped over. The keys sink down, down, freaking down. And suddenly I know what it feels like to be a fish chasing a shiny lure.

I dive after them, and the deeper I go, the better my eyes adjust to the dark. Goliath thinks I’m playing with him after all, but he seems confused about the rules, so he keeps a distance and swims circles around me while I spiral down after the taunting set of keys. His growing wake disturbs the steady fall of them, and they swirl and cut through the water erratically.

I snag them right before they touch bottom, so I shouldn’t be as proud as I am when I say, “Ah ha!” It’s not like I saved them from any real danger, like a lava pit or something, but there’s still a tiny, pathetic sense of accomplishment that washes over me. I grin up at Goliath, triumphant.

That’s when the pulse hits me like a physical blow. It saturates the water around me, choking off my chance for escape. It’s so strong, so close. Too close. In fact, because of my Half-Breed status, if I can sense anyone, they’re too close. If a pulse is this strong, they’re way too close.

The scream, loud and terrified and desperate, comes from the direction of the pulse. I can tell it’s a female’s scream. A female Syrena.

I already know it’s something I can’t turn away from. I’m cursed with proximity. Close enough to help, too close to escape with a clean conscience. “Goliath. Take me toward that sound. Hurry.”

He swoops down. I grasp his fin. The fact that I’m being chauffeured by a whale is not entirely lost on me, but whoever has been screaming does it again and I decide to be impressed by this phenomenon later. Goliath seems to sense the urgency; we glide through the water faster than I realized he could travel. It helps that each swipe of his fin pushes us about three school buses ahead at a time.

But even at this speed, we’re too late. The pulse disappears as quickly as it came. Is she dead? Please no, please no, please no. I don’t even know this person, but I do recognize the sick feeling swirling in my stomach. It’s the same feeling I got when I realized that Chloe had been attacked by a shark. It’s the feeling I got when I knew she was dead.

Then I see it. The belly of a boat bobbing in the water ahead of us. A boat. Humans. The relief lasts for only a second. Sharks were not the worse-case scenario after all. Yes, sharks are an immediate threat and dangerous and deadly. But shark attacks only impact the person being attacked. They might maim, they might kill, and it would be sad and horrible. But when it’s over, it’s over. The shark leaves. Humans, if they capture a Syrena, will keep coming and coming until they harvest every inch of Syrena territory.

A human attack impacts all Syrena.

“Let’s go up, Goliath. But not all the way. You stay down here.” It’s silly for me to whisper, but it helps me feel stealthier.

Goliath eases me upward and I quietly break the surface, allowing only my eyes to peek over the waves. I hate what I see.

A young Syrena female, maybe nine or ten years old as far as I can tell, writhes in a net by the side of the boat. Two men. They could be twins with their matching camouflage overalls, sunburned faces, and curly hair escaping in all directions from under their sports caps. Except that one has gray hair and the other has black. Probably father and son.