She ventured deeper, letting her senses expand until the ocean around her transformed into a constellation of electrical impulses. The glitter of distant fish, the slow pulse of crustaceans and sea bugs on the rocky floor… Like this, the ocean showed so much more than could be seen from the surface.
Even if it did swim or scuttle out of sight the moment it noticed her looming up.
The aftermath of the storm was everywhere. Dead things didn’t glow like living ones did, so it took more effort to see them. Kelp forests torn from their moorings, the corpses of fish tangled in its ropes. And—
Something strange. Not a change in the water temperature or pressure, not the sudden appearance of another living creature worth paying attention to down here in the deep, but… something. Carol swam on, a human’s mind in a shark’s bodybut without its instincts, knowing that whatever she saw would only be a fraction of what there was to see.
Depth loomed at her. The ocean floor fell away sharply, the softness of muck-covered rock disappearing into gloomy black. There was more life down there—distant—but strangely, none here, at the edge of the chasm.
This wasn’t the direction she was meant to go, anyway. She swam to the surface, rolling to one side to gauge the direction of the sun and compare it to where Maggie had been insistent that Lance and Keeley were waiting.
The ocean went on forever. Distant whalesong echoed in the depths, and the prickling heartbeats of countless marine creatures. Carol called out at intervals, broadcasting her thoughts to anyone who could hear them.
But no one did.
At least, nobody responded.
Where were they? How far did Maggie’s tracking magic go? She couldn’t sense any land masses ahead—nowhere for Lance and Keeley to have landed after the plane went down.
But if Maggie could track her uncle across a whole continent…
She couldn’t swim that far in one day. And—panic beat through the human part of her as her shark loomed emotionless in the water. What if she went too far? What if she couldn’t find Moss and Maggie again?
What if—
A strange warmth suffused her. Like a door opening and letting in the full heat of the afternoon sun.
*Carol?*
Oh god, it was Moss. That was what his mind felt like to her, even before she knew it was him.
Like someone coming home to her.
*Hey,*she replied, as though the world wasn’t crumbling all around her.
*Maggie’s waking up.*
Oh, shit. *I’ll come back now. Though—I’m far away, it’ll take me a while—*
*I’ll keep her entertained.*
She turned back, disappointment clinging to her conscience. It had been a slim hope, but not reaching Lance and Keeley, not finding any trace of land or coast that she recognized—something in her had really been holding on to that hope, no matter how slim it was.
Which was ridiculous. Had she really expected that there would be an underwater road sign sayingCivilization, Just A Few Miles Over There,Friends and Family Included? Or—no.
No. That wasn’t why the little candleflame of hope had flickered out. Despite everything, part of her had hoped her shark might rise to the occasion.
Instead, there was only her, and the stumbling sensation of steering her shark’s body all by herself.
And Moss, who felt like sunlight reaching her soul.
It must have been hours later that she reached the shallows and staggered back into her human body. Her clothes were still dry, above the high-tide line, and she pulled them on haphazardly, reaching towards the cave with her mind.
*Moss? Maggie?*
“Pree-ee!” Maggie trilled back. Happily. A tightness in her chest eased. She might not have found out where they were, or solved her personal problems with her shark, but no crying baby dragons still counted as a win.
She rounded the boulders that hid their little cave, and her heart leapt into her throat.
