This was different. This was the water fighting an invader like a disease.
I could feel it with my magic, a gritty buzz, even if the water appeared crystal clear. It was in the sand at the bottom of the pool. It was on the rocks. It was on the sea star I’d just moved. It was everywhere, now that I knew what to listen for.
I peered around the pool.
There, wedged under a lip of rock where the tide had shoved it, was half a bottle, pale green and half dissolved.
The label was mostly gone, but I could read the bottom half of the logo, the angular R and the holographic lightning bolt, and I didn’t need the rest.
RipTide.
Their newbiodegradablebottles. The ones that weresupposed to break down in ocean water in ten days. They’d been all over the beach these last few weeks, people thinking biodegradable meant it was just fine to skip taking them to the trash.
This one had broken down, all right. It had degraded into the water, into the sand, into the rocks, into every living thing in this tide pool.
But it had not disappeared. Instead, it had become something so much worse.
I pulled my hand out and the gritty buzz stayed on my skin.
I didn’t have an explanation for the feeling. But standing over that tide pool with the dead buzz on my fingers and half a green bottle staring up at me, I didn’t need one.
My magic knew.
The ocean knew.
Something was very, very wrong, and RipTide had put it there.
This was bigger than any competition or even a few turtle nests.
These bottles were about to go nationwide, where they would infect every beach—and then the ocean along with them.
I snatched the bottle out of the water and ran as fast as I could. I knew what I had to do.
It was as inevitable as the tide, and it would wash away everything just the same.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Selena
“Okay,”Chase said, staring down at the glass jars sitting on Shark Bite’s counter. “What am I looking at?”
“Pick it up.”
He held up the jar, and sand and water from the north beach swirled together inside. In the light, the grains caught and shimmered like tiny crystals beneath the surface.
“RipTide’s biodegradable bottles disappear,” I began, “that much is true. I went looking for intact ones, and most were at least half dissolved after only a day or two.” I took the jar out of his hand and shook it gently, and the shimmer spiraled like a tiny tornado. “But they don’t biodegrade, Chase. They just degrade, down past what the eye can see, into particles too small to easily detect—or clean up. The label says marine biodegradable, and the truth is marine soluble, dissolved into microplastics that we can’t get out.”
He set the jar down very carefully, like he was holding a bomb.
“You can’t see it, but I feel it—every grain from the dunes to the tide line. It’s always been mine.” I shook my head. “I should have felt it sooner. I was so focused on…” But that doesn’t matter now. “Do you know what it’s like now, on the north stretch? It’s like noise where there should be quiet. Like a cancer that’s spreading faster than we can fight it.” My voice cracked. “The hatchlings come up through it tonight or tomorrow. They’ll eat their first meal in water that’s filled with plastic too fine to spit out. And it’s not just them. It’s every creature on this coast. And I’m the only one who has noticed.”
“No,” Chase replied quietly. “You’re not.”
I froze.
He was looking at the jar, his lips tight. “I’ve been telling myself it’s the crowds, the competition noise. The water’s been…” He searched for the words, the first time I had ever seen him unsure. “Upset. Out past the break, there’s this interference. Noise, like you said. I’ve come in from every set feeling like I slept in a room with a TV on.” He glanced up at me. “It’s worse near the compound runoff. Diego feels it too.”
“Then you know I’m not?—”
