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I raised a curious eyebrow but stepped into the car anyway. We both took a seat on opposite benches facing each other, and the train began to move forward.

“Look, for what it’s worth,” Caesar began with an awkward expression. “I’m truly sorry about your mother. About all of this. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was supposed to come to your house and talk to you and your mother about the school, and ideally, you both would’ve come back with me. If we had any idea the vampires were targeting you, I would’ve come much sooner.”

“How did you find out about me?” I asked, choosing to avoid the subject of the night’s previous events. “If I really am what you say I am.”

“We have a seer,” he said. “She helps us locate and welcome shifters from all over the world. Yesterday, when she was doing a routine search, she saw you.”

“A seer?” I asked, trying not to sound as skeptical as I felt. I had to remind myself that this stuff wasn’t as crazy as it seemed—I mean, I did just see him transform into a gryphon.

“Yes. Her name is Celeste,” he replied, braiding his fingers and putting his hands on his lap. “She’s actually the head instructor of the mermaids at the school. You’ll meet her tonight.”

“Is she a mermaid, too?” I really couldn’t keep the skepticism from my tone.

Caesar nodded. “A rare talent among mermaids is the ability to see the future. She’s the most gifted seer I’ve ever met, and she’s been using that skill to find lost shifters like yourself since the school started seven years ago.”

I nodded, trying to wrap my head around all this. He thought I was a mermaid. But how could that be? I’d never experienced anything to suggest I was something other than human, and I’d certainly never sprouted a tail with a flashy flipper.

But, then again, I’d never really been in open water before, either. Mom hadn’t even allowed me to take baths. It’d been nothing but showers since before I could remember.

Could this have been the reason for the no-water rule? If I really was what he said, she’d kept me from all of it on purpose. But why?

“How does someone become a mermaid?” I asked. “Is it random?”

Caesar shook his head. “Mermaids are born mermaids. It’s hereditary.”

“So that would mean that my mom was a mermaid?”

“One of your parents would have to be, yes,” he answered. “Do you know anything about your father?”

I frowned and shook my head. “I guess my mom was hiding more than I thought.”

I leaned back and looked out the window, watching the darkness outside zoom by. I knew I should be taking this time to ask more questions, but I didn’t have it in me, not when the questions I really wanted to ask were ones he couldn’t answer for me.

How could Mom keep this from me? The no-swimming rule made so much sense now. Mom knew I was a mermaid and had intentionally kept it from me. Did that mean she had been a mermaid, too? Or was it my mysterious father whom Mom would never talk about? I didn’t even know his name.

A dirty, poisonous feeling began to bleed into my veins. Betrayal. All this time, Mom had known. She kept this massive secret, the very essence of my being, from me.

I tried to push away those thoughts, to will the poison out. I didn’t want to feel it, not when I was so shattered by hersudden loss. I’d never hear her voice again, never see that secretive smile again. Between the betrayal and the sorrow, I was being ripped apart from the inside out.

Tears brimmed again, and I blinked them away. My entire being was begging to cry, to shed the weight of all this anguish and regret, but now was not the time or place to give my body the release it needed.

According to Caesar, we’d be at the school soon, and the last thing I wanted was to be a wailing, soggy mess in front of so many strangers. I had to keep it together for just a little while longer.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Caesar move. He came to sit beside me.

“I know what you must be feeling,” he said in a low voice. “Seven years ago, my parents were killed by vampires.”

I looked at his face, which was tight with tension. I could now see the sadness behind his stoic eyes. Was this loss the reason for his roughness?

I had no words of comfort to offer. I was just as broken by the loss as he was.

Instead, I asked, “Why do vampires go after shifters?”

He sighed and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “They believe they are the superior species, and they want to rule over humans. Shifters believe that all races of humans are equal and should stand together. We’ve been fighting their advances for centuries. Venoms and bites from certain shifter species are fatal to vampires, so we are the only thing standing in the way of their dark dreams.”

A sudden hatred sparked inside me, focused on the demons that took my mom from me. Part of me hoped I really was a shifter, that I really did have some secret powers ready to beunleashed somewhere in me because I wanted to hurt them. All of them. I wanted revenge.

“Is there a way to beat them?” I asked, a new edge to my voice.