“No sweat.”

As soon as Galen hangs up, Grom is pelting him with questions. “Why aren’t they here? What did Rachel say? Is Nalia okay?”

It’s weird for Grom to be asking about Rachel. Those were two worlds Galen thought would never have anything in common. But they had something in common all along. Him.

“Whoa,” Toraf says. “When’d he start talking?”

“I have to relieve myself,” Rayna says. “Right now. This place looks nasty. Find a clean gas thingy.”

Galen eyes his sister in the rearview. “Since when do you need a human toilet to relieve yourself?” She can—and certainly does when the notion strikes her—squat anywhere for that kind of thing. As much as she loves all things human, some of their customs do not appeal to her impatient side.

She shrugs. “I want some cookies, too. Seems more efficient to just make one stop.”

Galen pinches the bridge of his nose. Nalia owes me. Huge.

5

THE TOWNS start to look alike. Dilapidated fences, ghostly barns, tiny grocery stores whose one car in the parking lot might belong to the owner. And not a single pay phone. You’d think, with how much other ancient stuff these towns keep around, they’d at least have rescued one obsolete pay phone from extinction.

I’m not even sure why I want to use a pay phone. I still don’t have a plan B for how I can get my mom and Galen one-on-one without risking our safety; if Galen is the one lying and he did bring a Syrena party with him, I’d be putting Mom at risk for arrest and me for … I don’t want to think about what they’d do to a Half-Breed like me. And even if I had a plan B for escape, executing plan A—getting them face-to-face—is pretty stinking difficult since Mom knows I already tried to stall her once. There’s no way she’d let me get away with it again.

Still, the bigger part of me is not convinced that Galen is lying. Maybe I’m in denial or whatever, but he seems too real, too open with me to be lying. Not that I think Mom’s lying, either. I could tell that she truly believes that she killed Grom and that our lives are in real danger. But it could be that she’s mistaken somehow. Maybe Grom really is alive and maybe they really did leave to go get him. Maybe there is another crazy explanation for why they each thought the other was dead for half the century.

The thing is, I can’t take the chance. I can’t just stand around and keep my mom prisoner with lies when I’m the only one she can really trust. I feel bad about calling Galen. But I feel bad about ditching him, too.

I’ve just got to figure out how to get to the truth without endangering anyone. And until I do, there’s no point in even calling Galen.

Which is good, because obviously it’s more important to these townsfolk to salvage things like fire-hazard gas pumps that still have the rolling-dial numbers instead of preserving something more useful, like pay phones.

And at least the interstate had decent fast-food choices. In the backwoods route Mom opted for, we’ve got to choose between mom-and-pop diners with mismatched tables and hot sauce bottles for toothpick holders, or fast-food chain knockoffs with questionable health standards.

My stomach growls for the eleventeenth time. With Mom’s urgency to put as much distance between us and Galen as possible, I’ve now skipped breakfast and lunch.

“I’m hungry, too,” Mom says without looking at me. “I think we’re just going to have to tough it out at one of these little hole-in-the-wall places.” When I roll my eyes, she says, “Remember when we took that road trip to Atlanta, and we found that dumpy little diner right outside the city? You said they had the best peach cobbler in the world. Maybe we could get lucky here.” But her expression doesn’t look quite as hopeful as she scans the roadside for options.

She chooses a stucco building that boasts “We Serve Breakfast All Day” with a huge sign in the front window. When we open the door, a velvet sash tied to the handle and overwhelmed with jingle bells alerts the five patrons that we’ve arrived. We take a booth by the front window and Mom orders coffee.

I peer over my menu, watching as she dumps sugar into the steaming cup. It’s something I’ve seen a million times; she’s always had a little coffee with her sugar. But I’ve never seen it knowing who and what she is. Before, she was just Mom with a caffeine addiction. Now, she’s Nalia, the Poseidon princess. There is no sugar in the Syrena world. There is no coffee. Galen dry heaves at the first taste of either.

Mom notices me noticing her. “You might as well ask,” she says, as if any amount of stirring could dissolve the pound of sugar she’s dumped in her cup.

I unroll my silverware. “I was just wondering how long it took you to get used to human food.” I eye her cup for emphasis.

“Ah.” Just then, the waitress, whose name tag says “Agnes,” returns for our order. As if to promote irony, Mom orders pancakes with extra syrup. I get a burger. Restaurants like these usually build a decent burger.

When Agnes leaves, Mom corrals the mug with both hands as if trying to keep it warm. “I don’t drink coffee for the taste. But what’s not to like about sugar, right?”

“Galen gags on anything sweet. Mostly, he gags on anything not seafood.”

Mom smiles, as if she’s only tolerating the sound of Galen’s name for the sake of talking about sugar. “It takes some time. I’ve been on land quite a while, Emma.” She leans closer, lowers her voice. “Since World War II. If you think about it, that means I’ve been human longer than I was ever Syrena.”