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I insisted thatthat I had done--start fro that had happened since I had left the island

When they had finally finished, I felt overwhelrown during recent events, especially ht?

"I wonder whether I possess hidden fire powers as a human," I said

"It’s possible You can try to summon them after you take the cure," my father said

"And what about these tattoos?" River asked, rolling up the sleeve of her robe "And this weird echoing in our ears? Will we just have to learn to live with it, or could your witches do soet Corrine and Ibrahi,"a cure for you, and also see if they have any ideas on what could have happened to you and Ben in The Oasis--"

"What the--" Eli exclaimed as his eyes fixed on the sub out of the hatch The mermaid and merman Their scaly faces looked dry and shriveled as they placed one hand after another on the slippery roof of the sub and squelched out

"Merfolk!" asped at once

Before any of us could stop them, they’d slid off the side of the submarine and plopped into the ocean

"Damn it!" My father looked furious as he stared down into the water "What were you doing with those in your sub?"

I realized I’d forgotten to tell him that we still had them in the vessel

"I didn’t knohat else to do with them If I let them back into the water while ere still outside The Shade, I orried they were going to try to sain"

"They had better not try to har anxiously down at the waves After their adventures in The Cove, she had experienced firsthand that merfolk were not the cuddliest of creatures

As we stood watching the two green shadoim further up the shore and fade beneath the water, Eli :

"This place is turning into a zoo"

Chapter 24: Ben

My father said that he would ask one of our witches--or perhaps even Micah--to track down the merfolk tomorrow and expel them outside of the boundary We had absolutely no reason to show mercy to them, certainly not when it came with a risk to our humans We already had the occasional shark proble we needed was a couple of nastysome more as each of us re of our stories, and then et some rest They said that they would co around 9am

That left River and me with so place to sleep that night, to say the least, thanks to the fishy s free fro inside the submarine where the smell of human blood would be less, we decided to lie on the roof of the sub as I kept River close to ht We dried the flattest part of the submarine’s roof with towels, then spread out spare blankets to make it comfortable and lay down beneath the stars