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A wo the waves, her hair braided with seaweed, her skin glistening with jewels and scales Her face was i in its inhuman beauty Her shoulders dripped with seawater as her body and her ared from the waves

Her tentacles followed shortly after

Chapter 2

That sure as hell wasn’t a mermaid I sprinted over the jetty, then across the shore, hardly caring that ht offthe spaces between my toes

The boys calledWho knehat I was even trying to acco Scylla of the Great Beasts wasa public and literally splashy appearance on Lucero Beach, and I had to find out why

“Mortal,” she boo as if it called from somewhere in the depths of an ancient ocean “The speck of dust The one called Dustin Graves”

I ran harder The boys, Herald most of all, screamed even harder I was pretty sure he called me an idiot But Scylla clearly came for me – I mean, she just namedropped me, after all – and the sooner that I could deal with her, the sooner she could sink back aet on the phone with Royce to beg him to deal with the inevitable fallout

But it was far, far too late for that This was the beach in broad daylight, on a weekend, no less People already had their phones out, pointing andat the specter from out of the sea Sure, ht have looked like a marvel of special effects, like an ani replica of a Hollywood shark

This was California, after all You could still convince most of them that this was just ato notice how Scylla’s tentacles were just a little too realistic, how her gills worked a little too well for siht up to her out of curiosity, and probably get torn limb from limb for the effort

I ading through the waves by then, the seawater warh clumps of wet sand, er, her eyes rolling impatiently as I approached If she had feet, she would have been tapping them

“Godda down odda on my bedroom door like the rest of them, has to be this whole production, can’t just – Scylla, hi” I forced a smile onto my lips, because this was still an entity, after all, someone who could ripway “Now’s not a good time Can we postpone this, maybe? I have a really nice bathtub at home We can talk there”

One of Scylla’s tentacles whipped at the water, scything through it and sending neaves rippling and crashing against h the water as I tried et knocked on my ass

“It does not pleaseas she forced the word out of her er, to be put on this errand for the sake of e for you”

“And?” I tiltedevery i sarcastic

Scylla raised her hands, her tentaclesaround her like spines, like the pillars supporting a teun”