Running away from home was never Chloe’s plan. Neither was ending up the target of killers, or having her legs grow glittering scales. She only wanted a vacation, someplace far from her crazy parents and their irrational fear of water. She only wanted to do something normal for once, and maybe get to know her best friend’s hot stepbrother a bit better at the same time.

But the first day she goes out on the ocean, strange things start to happen. Dangerous things that should be impossible. Things to which ‘normal’ doesn’t even begin to apply.

Now madmen are hunting her. A mysterious guy with glowing blue eyes is following her. And her best friend’s stepbrother seems to be hiding secrets all his own.

It was supposed to be a vacation. Now it’s the fight of her life.

Discover the young adult mermaid romance series readers adore! Over 70,000 books sold! 

“So…” Noah started. “Anyone want to go for a swim?”

I smiled. My parents being so psychotic and all, we didn’t even have a bathtub in the house, just a stand-up shower the size of a broom closet. I’d never been able to teach myself how to hold my breath underwater, let alone swim.

But that was going to change, starting now.

“Well, um,” I began, feeling a bit reckless with excitement. “If you wouldn’t mind teaching me?”

His eyebrows climbed. “Uh, no. I mean, sure. I–”

The boat jumped.

“What the hell?” Maddox cried as the rest of us grabbed at the guardrails.

“Did we hit something?” Noah asked, scanning the water.

Maddox shook his head. “I don’t–”

The ocean around the boat began to bubble and roil.

Noah swore. “Get us out of here!” he called to Maddox.

His brother didn’t need the encouragement. Quickly, he scrambled back toward the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition.

The engine wouldn’t respond.

Shudders shook the boat, while all around, the ocean’s surface began to foam like the calm sea had suddenly become a boiling pot on a stove. Waves surged from every direction at once, growing more violent by the second, and on all sides the water darkened, as though a shadow was spreading below us.

“What’s happening?” Baylie cried.

No one could answer. As if shoved from beneath, the deck tipped up at a sharp angle and then just as quickly rocked back, wrenching us hard as we fought to hang onto the guardrails. The lurching came again, throwing us forward and back.

My grip broke. The metal rail hit me, knocking the air from my lungs.

And then came the water.

I didn’t even have time to scream. Waves closed over me, choking my instinctive gasp and tossing me so hard that, in only a heartbeat, I lost all sense of up and down. Flailing, I tried to reach out and find something, anything, to grab onto as the water pummeled me like it was a prize fighter and I was its punching bag.

Strong hands caught me. Steadied me. Pulled me from the maelstrom into a space of calm. I clutched at them, thinking Noah had managed to find me in the chaos.

Eyes like brilliant sapphires met mine.

“You’re okay,” a boy said, gripping my shoulders. “You’re fine.”

I stared at him. In the impossibly black water, I could see nothing but his face and his arms, both pale as though he’d spent his life out of the sun. He seemed only a year or two older than me, and his features were angular, carved like they came from stone, and strangely mesmerizing. In the darkness, his eyes shone like deep blue jewels, simultaneously seeming to reflect light and yet glow from within.

But we were underwater. We should be drowning. And instead, I could hear him as clearly as if we stood in the open air, and the oddest sense of peace was settling over me.

I wondered if I was dying.

His brow furrowed and he ran his gaze over me, as though he couldn’t figure out how I was there either. “Who–”

Suddenly, his eyes went wide and his hold on my shoulders vanished. Other hands grabbed me, snagging my arms, my hands. I struggled, confused and disoriented, as an arm wrapped around my chest and yanked me backward.

The stairway ended at the base of the bluffs, and as I left the stairs, my flip-flops sank into the cool sand. A few yards away, the tide slid up the beach and then pulled back, returning to the black water that stretched out until it blended with the sky. Stars glittered like diamonds overhead, their tiny lights pushing past the ambient glow of the city, while far in the distance, clouds gathered, their shapes picked out by the moonlight. For only a heartbeat, a flash of lightning shot down, illuminating the thunderheads and revealing the line of the horizon.

It was beautiful, and everything I’d hoped to see.

My gaze drifting up to the pinprick stars, I walked closer to the water. At the edge of the wet sand, I slipped out of my sandals and then stepped into the gently moving tide.

Tingles spread across my skin as the cool seawater slid around my feet. It felt so right here. So perfect and peaceful, yet filled with an energy so vast, I could only begin to perceive it.

And if I could, I’d have spent eternity here just to try.

“Incredible, isn’t it?”

Startled, I turned. Noah sat on a fallen rock at the base of the bluffs, his eyes on the horizon like he was reading something in the rolling water.

Frustration hit me, pushing back the edge of the calm that had encompassed me only a moment before. I couldn’t figure out how he’d gotten down the steps without me noticing, but I didn’t want anyone else here, taking this. Not understanding this. No one ever had, and now that I was standing here, on the edge of the deep, protecting how much it meant to me felt more important than ever.

I shrugged a shoulder. “It’s okay,” I said, the words so neutral compared to the shivers still running through me that they almost hurt.

He glanced to me, his brow furrowing slightly, as if that hadn’t been the answer he’d expected.

“Huh,” he replied, a touch coldly. He returned his attention to the ocean.

I bit my lip. My gaze twitched to the horizon and the distant storm there.

“I love it,” I admitted.

Looking back, I caught sight of a half-smile flickering across his face. He nodded.

I hesitated and then walked back through the water toward him. He motioned to the large rock, and said nothing as I climbed up next to him.

“Aren’t the others going to miss you?” I asked, nodding to the top of the bluffs and the glow from the volleyball court lights.

He shrugged. “They have enough players.”

The rush of water became the only sound. My gaze slid around, skirting over the ocean and the sand and trying to find somewhere to be with him only a few inches away. With natural ease, he sat on the rough stone, his feet braced on its side and his elbows propped on his knees. Moonlight traced the edge of his face, silvering his tanned skin and casting him partly into shadow.

I swallowed. He looked incredible. And earlier, he’d been creepy as anything, suddenly glancing up at the bedroom window like he had.

Though that’d just been a coincidence, I tried to remind myself. I was being ridiculous to let it freak me out.

“So you’re Baylie’s neighbor,” he said into the silence, a question twisting through the statement.

“Yeah.”

“Live near her long?”

“Since we were four.”

He paused, the timing clicking. “Oh.”

The awkward pause stretched.

“Yeah,” I filled in. “Her dad moved there before…”

I trailed off. Baylie’s mother had died of cancer that next year. It was part of why Baylie and I knew each other so well. She’d spent a lot of time at my house, after school while her dad worked, before he’d married Noah’s mom.

Noah nodded.

“You ever been to the ocean before?” he asked after a moment.

I shook my head. “I always wanted to see it, though.”

A heartbeat passed as he watched the water. “You could’ve come with Baylie to visit us sooner.”

I glanced at him. He didn’t look at me. “It’s complicated.”

Silence returned. I swallowed, still feeling awkward. It was just the two of us for as far as I could see in either direction, and from the way he was sitting there, he seemed like one of the stones, comfortable with the idea of remaining silently by the seashore for eternity.

Quieter, Baylie had said. I didn’t have much to go on for how he’d been before, but now… he was certainly that.

I looked down to my legs, absently noting the drying salt from the water glistening faintly on my skin. I probably should just go back up to the house. I wanted to stay, to get as close to the deep water as I dared, but with him here…

“I’m glad you came,” Noah said.

I blinked.

“Even if,” he acknowledged the words with a shrug, “it’s complicated.”

I hesitated. “Me too.”

He smiled and returned his attention to the water. “I always wondered what it would be like, growing up somewhere else. Somewhere away from the ocean. It’s just such a…”

“Force,” I filled in when he trailed off.

He looked back. “Yeah,” he replied, as though pleasantly surprised.

I could feel heat spreading like wildfire up my neck and I turned my face away, hoping the shadows hid the blush.

“And I can’t imagine what that’d be like,” he finished. “Not having it nearby.”

I hesitated. I didn’t know what to tell him. I’d always wanted to come here, and now that I was sitting only a few yards from the water…

It was like a sound you’d heard all your life, but so faintly you’d never noticed it. And now, being so close to the source, almost immersed in the amazing, overwhelming source, you suddenly realized what you’d been hearing.

And what you’d been missing.

“Not as nice as this,” I whispered.

He looked over at me. I could feel the blush coming back.

“You think everyone feels like that?” he asked.

My mind tossed up a few shining memories of my parents. They’d thrown away every picture of the ocean that I drew in school. They’d ripped pages from books that mentioned the sea. They’d punished me for asking them to paint my room blue.

“No,” I answered, certainty hardening my voice more than I intended.

He paused.

“I mean, I’m pretty sure some people don’t,” I amended, trying not to grimace and hoping he wouldn’t ask for more.

He turned to me, and my throat choked from the way his green eyes searched my face. “But you do.”