After her father left the room, Kelsea had been given two options: go back to school (late), or find something else to do, preferably outside the house. Her mom pushed for the school option.

"There's nothing here for you to do right now," her mom had said, patting her cheek affectionately. "Life is inevitably going to go back to normal. Go to school. Socialize, learn something, do whatever. It's your senior year; enjoy it."

"Don't treat me like a kid."

"Hate to break it to you, but you are a kid."

She honestly had considered going to school. It would be nice to see her friends and to confide in them in person. They would understand. Probably.

But then she considered everyone else. Going to high school would probably feel a lot like being put on a dissection table. She was normally the one asking the questions, not receiving them. The girl hated being the center of attention and anonymity is had to get when your father is all over the local news. Other students would just talk around her with varying degrees of subtlety.

She wouldn't subject herself to that.

Instead, Kelsea meandered into her room, tossed the memory chip her dad gave her into her backpack and then sorted through her clothes for something to wear. A moment later she had on shorts, a light hoodie, and sneakers. She grabbed her backpack on the way out, snatching her car keys off a table as she went.

Her destination of choice was a cafe next to the wharf, where all the boats were docked. There was, coincidentally, an ice cream parlor next door, but it was better suited for warm, Florida days. Today, Kelsea needed a hot chocolate and a Wi-Fi connection.

She sat in her favorite booth and pulled out her laptop. She went through the usual routine of checking social media and emails, which lasted for a whopping fifteen minutes before she opened up her blog, which she had been neglecting the past few days.

An unpublished draft reminded her why she had been offline. Anticipating her dad's pictures, she had written lists of things she could do with them. Interesting facts about caverns. Slap some stupid, inspirational quotes on them. An interview-style article with her dad.

Now she had the pictures her dad took and she didn't want to look at them, let alone use them.

At the same time, though, her fingers itched to grab the memory card from her backpack and to go through them. What if her dad was not lying? What if...?

No, no, no. Mermaids do not exist. Anything and anyone that says they do is wrong. End of question.

Without even thinking about it, she did an internet search on mermaids and clicked the first result. She skimmed through the page, slowing down on the sightings section. Apparently Christopher Columbus reported seeing mermaids during his travels at sea. Historians generally believe that if he had seen anything, it was likely manatees.

Kelsea rolled her eyes at the thought of her dad being rescued and kept prisoner by a manatee. Absolutely ridiculous.

Starting to feel a bit of a headache coming on, Kelsea closed her laptop and slipped it into her backpack. She gathered her materials, including her drink, and stepped outside. Drawn by the smell of wood and water, she made her way over to a sunny spot at the end of the dock.

She looked down at the murky water and couldn't help but wonder why her father insisted that she stay on dry land. While he definitely could not have seen a merman, maybe he had seen a large fish. Pair that with the bad experience in the caves, and Kelsea could understand what made her dad so scared of the water he normally loved.

Feeling a mix of curiosity and rebelliousness, Kelsea pulled off her shoes and socks and set them aside as she sat down at the edge. The girl submerged her feet, trepidation running though her as she did so.

A minute passed. Not a single thing happened.

Kelsea released a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. Her dad's irrationality was brushing off on her. There was nothing to be afraid of.

She let her guard down, and when a head popped up out of the water she just about had a heart attack. As it was, she cursed loudly. "What is wrong with you? Don't sneak up on people like that," she scolded.

The swimming man looked mildly surprised at her reaction but remained silent as she observed him. Kelsea couldn't help but think he was kind of good looking. He had an oval-shaped face with a prominent chin, all framed by long, dark hair. Deep-set golden eyes sparkled in the sunlight.

"You know," Kelsea said when she finally calmed down, "it might not be a good idea to swim here. A boat could hit you. Why don't you get out of the water?" What in the world was getting into her? This guy could be a complete psycho.

"I thank you for your concern, but it is unnecessary," he said. (Now that was a voice Kelsea could listen to all day long! Where was he from to get that accent?) "Besides, I am unable to join you due to my tail." He swam back and flicked up the tail so the fin could be seen just below the surface.

The fates must have been conspiring against her, Kelsea thought. First her dad insisted that he had encountered a merman, and now a cute guy was swimming around in a fake mermaid (merman?) tail.

From the quick glimpse she got, it looked like the tail was well made. It was one of the more convincing ones she had seen, and she had seen more than her fair share of them. She did not want to know how much he had to spend to get it made or why he was swimming where no one could see it.

"Why are you swimming around here?" Kelsea asked.

"Looking for you." He said it so matter-of-factly that Kelsea almost didn't register how creepy it was.

"Whoa, why me? Did my dad put you up to this? No, that doesn't seem like something he would do ..."

While Kelsea rambled on, the merman-wannabe took the opportunity to grab her leg. In the time it took her brain to register that a stranger was holding her leg – but not enough time to kick the living daylights out of him – he bit her leg.

Kelsea yelled and scrambled away from the water. "What the fuuu... Did you just bite me?" There were two puncture wounds on the side of her leg, already bleeding slightly, and the skin around the wounds was darkening into an angry red. Not only did he think he was a merman, he was a vampire too!

"Aye," he said with an infuriating smirk. "Tell your father his side of the agreement is complete. The rest is up to you. I will see you again soon."

What. In. The. World. Angrily, Kelsea said, "Don't you dare ever get near me again or I'll call the cops. Got it?"

"You ask too many questions," he said. The creep then had the gall to laugh. "And you will come to me." As soon as the last world came out of his mouth, his head sunk down and Kelsea assumed he swam away. Good riddance.

The injured girl picked up her things and walked away from the dock, barefoot and bleeding. When she felt sufficiently far from the dock, she sat down on a bench to pull on her shoes. Then, she slowly walked back into the cafe, thinking about what she would say to her father. Whatever joke he was trying to pull had clearly gone way too far, and she didn't want to go home.

Kelsea ordered another hot chocolate and a sandwich and got herself situated in her booth. She took a paper napkin and dabbed at the blood on her legs, hoping that the bleeding would stop before she stained her shoes.

Satisfied enough with her leg, she pulled out her laptop. It was time to rip off the (metaphorical) bandaid and look at her dad's pictures.

She waited for the photos to load, then started to scroll through them, starting at the beginning. Most of them were of rocks and the walls – nothing too surprising there.

Then she got to the second-to-last picture and hesitated. It was of a long, gray fish tail. She couldn't see any fins other than at the end of the tail, so its head and body must have been out of frame.

If she thought that one was interesting, the last one took her breath away.

She looked up the time-stamp on the picture, hoping it was a hoax, but the last two pictures were taken within minutes of the others.

But how?

The final picture was a blurry close-up of a person's face, but the face was not her father's. If anything, the man without a mask looked like the guy who bit her.