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My mouth hung open as I stared down at my body. Clothes manifested themselves, as if they’d been there the entire time. A fitted, black jacket wrapped around me, dark pants, and a hood pulled low. Something sleek and predatory. Not anything I would have chosen, but then again, I wasn't the one choosing anymore, it seemed.

My hands reached for my neck, expecting the gills to be there, but paused as I stared down at my slender fingers. The obsidian claws were gone, replaced with delicate, soft skin, no scales to be seen.

So this was what Layne meant by the glamour, I thought, brushing my hands across the familiar softness of my skin. As the glamour fully settled, I still felt the claws—the monster I was now—sleeping just beneath the surface, waiting for its prey to wander too close.

I grimaced at the thought of Layne, his words echoing in my mind as I made my way to the shore.

Don’t ever fall in love, Evelyn Graymore. You belong to me.

Wrong. I didn’t belong to anyone. Not ever.

I huddled beneath the shadow of the dock, just blocks away from Dad’s shop.

The hunger hadn't fully returned yet, but I felt the slow gnawing teeth of it in my stomach. Only a whisper of the pain I’d felt before Layne had fed me that heart of darkness, although I had already started to feel it fading. Despite the ensuing hunger, it wasn’t so much the ache pulling me to the surface as much as the one in my own heart.

Dad.

The days had blurred together beneath the water. After Layne disappeared on me, I focused on learning to move underwater, my body still learning its new shape. I’d gotten here as soon as I could. Dad must be out of his mind worried. His only child, gone without a text, a note—nothing. I couldn't think of a single day in years that I hadn't seen or spoken to him.

What would I even do when I saw him? What would I say?

Sorry I was gone. Someone killed me, and a naked, smug asshole made of shadows brought me back to life.

I shook my head. I didn’t care. All that mattered was that I got back to him and made sure he was okay. I’d make up a lie and figure the rest out later.

My feet slapped against the wet concrete as I climbed the rusted ladder onto the dock, a few blocks down from our shop. The smells of the city were so familiar but also…different now.

I moved past the same storefronts I’d walked by thousands of times. The street lamps flickered just the same as they always did, and the smell of diesel fuel and salt filled the air.

But still, something wasn’t quite right. Everything felt different.

I felt different. I was different.

I kept my head down as I walked past people, worried that someone might recognize me.

As I neared the corner shop's entrance, I looked up at the window of Dad’s bedroom on the second floor. I searched for the usual sign of his presence: the faint glow of a TV or his bedside lamp, the same way I’d done my whole life.

But there was no glow.

No flickering light of the TV, just darkness.

Maybe he’s asleep. I mean, it’s late, right? I thought. He was never much of a night owl. That had always been me.

I didn’t know what time it was, my phone was long gone, and time had blurred into one big void ever since that night.

My pace quickened as I rounded the corner.

I froze, and my heart stopped.

The shop was dark—not closed for the day, dark—dead dark, lifeless. The kind of darkness that had slowly plagued this side of the pier for the past few years, businesses shuttering under the weight of rising costs.

I ran toward the shop, sure that the darkness was playing tricks on my eyes. But I knew that wasn't the case, not with the way my new eyes cut through the darkness as if it were nothing. I rounded the corner and froze.

No.

My arms went slack, falling to my sides. I stood in front of the shop—my home—legs threatening to give way beneath me.

Plywood boards covered the windows, splintering where they met the three generations of wood. The hand-painted sign above the shop—Graymore Fish Market, Est. 1962—the one Mom had spent an entire summer on before I died, was now discarded on the ground in front of me.