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that shitheel down? Fuck that!”
    “Fredrika,” her mom warned.
    “Mom, he banged you and then he forgot about you. If I do find him, I plan on kicking the fins out of him. Nobody treats my mother like that!”
    “Fredrika, Sam and I will not be here forever.”
    “Not the ‘you gotta find a man’ speech again, for crying out loud.”
    “I’m not implying you need a man to be happy. I’m saying your blood relatives are rare and wonderful things. Yours in particular,” she added, unconsciously eyeing Fred’s hair. “If you could find your biological father…Even if it’s true, even if he’s dead, maybe you have…I don’t know…aunts? Cousins?”
    “Forget it, Mom. It’s a Pelagic, not a family reunion.” Whatever that meant. “I’m going to this meeting and that’s it. Jonas thought we ought to stop by and let you know we’ll be out of town for a while.” And it was for just this sort of reason that she tended to avoid trips to the Cape. “Oh, and I gotta get something out of Sam’s office. And then we’re out of here.”
    “Will Prince Artur be there?”
    Fred groaned. “Yes.”
    “It’s a regular Hottie Convention,” Jonas said. “It’s just stupid how all the Undersea Folk are gorgeous.”
    “Hmmm,” her mother said.
    “What, ‘hmmm’?”
    “It’s amazing how a person such as myself, generally open and friendly, could have raised such a suspicious creature.”
    “Well, so what if you did?” Fred snapped. “Who cares if Artur’s there? Not me! I haven’t even thought about the guy since he said he wanted me to be a princess and then swam out of town. And I don’t want to think about him, and I’ll thank you two to stop cramming him down my throat!”
    Jonas and Moon blinked at her.
    Fred coughed and lowered her voice. “Also, I’d like to use Sam’s office for a minute. And also the bathroom. And then we’re out of here.”
    “Well, that’s fine, sweetie. Have fun at your Pelican.”
    “Oh, sure,” Fred muttered. “Tons of fun at the Pelican. Pelican, here I come.”
    “Here we come,” Jonas corrected her, cheerfully.
    Fred bit back several retorts, contented herself with a final baleful glare, and exited the kitchen.

Seven
    The van pulled up to the Pirate’s Cove Resort on Little Cayman Island with its engine laboring. It was painted serial killer green, and smelled like feet.
    “Finally!” Jonas said, peering out a dirty window. “I thought we’d never get here.”
    “And I thought you’d never shut up.” It had been an excruciating twelve hours, made more difficult by the fact that Fred was not a fan of flying. But she only had herself to blame for the long day. She had declined the Grim Duo’s offers to lead her to the meeting place via the ocean. She didn’t think she could swim all the way to the Caymans in less than four days. In fact, she’d never been farther south than Florida. And she sure as hell couldn’t keep up with a couple of full-blooded Undersea Folk. She’d pass on the humiliation, thanks.
    As he had promised, Jonas had fixed her time off with Dr. Barb. He’d even packed their bags and cleaned out their fridges. Fred just sat back and let him organize her life. It made things easier on her, and seemed to calm him down.
    She and Jonas climbed out of the van, fetched their luggage, then coughed as the driver roared off in a spume of dust.
    “Real friendly around here, aren’t they?” Jonas gasped, waving the cloud of dust away from his face.
    “Well, we were promised privacy. Can’t have mermaids beaching themselves on public property.”
    Jonas snickered and slung his bag over one shoulder. He was bizarrely attired in a yellow Hawaiian shirt, buttercup yellow shorts, and penny loafers without socks. He had forgotten his sunglasses, and so he squinted. His hair, as always, looked perfect.
    Fred, by contrast, felt as wrung out as an old washcloth. Her green hair was matted to her head, she needed a shower, and her shorts kept