I spent six weeks creating a special mermaid performance for my brother’s bride, only to be publicly humiliated—then she asked why he’d accused me of trying to steal their money.

Maggie broke the surface of the flooded ballroom ten feet from the bar.

She spat her regulator from her mouth and tore the full-face mask off her head, shaking the stinging saltwater from her eyes.

“ELISE!”

The bride looked down from the mahogany counter, her face twisting from hopeless terror into pure, disbelieving shock.

“MAGGIE?!” Elise shrieked. “Maggie! Oh my God! Maggie!”

Little Leo looked up, his lips blue with hypothermia. “The mermaid!” the boy sobbed, pointing a shaking finger at her. “Aunt Elise, it’s the mermaid!”

“Arthur!” Maggie shouted, wading through the chest-deep, freezing water, shoving floating centerpieces and overturned chairs out of her path. “Can he walk?”

“No!” Elise cried, tears cutting clean lines through the salt grime on her cheeks. “His heart, Maggie! He had an attack when the water hit the floor! He can't stand!”

Maggie reached the edge of the bar. Her drysuit was buoyant, keeping her effortlessly upright, but she could feel the room vibrating beneath her boots.

*SCREEEEEECH.*

The sound of the acrylic window was getting louder. A second hairline fracture shot across the central pane like a fork of lightning. A spray of water thick as a firehose was blasting through the gasket at the bottom of the frame, churning the water around Maggie’s waist into an icy whirlpool.

“We have three minutes,” Maggie said, her voice hard, clear, cutting through the panic. “Listen to me! The emergency doors on the stairs are deadbolts—they’re never opening. The only way out is back through the intake conduit I just came through.”

Elise stared at the dark, three-foot hole in the decorative stone wall where water was violently swirling.

“Through *that*?” Elise gasped. “Maggie, it’s full of water! We can't breathe underwater!”

Maggie unbuckled the twin steel tanks from her back.

She had three hundred PSI left in the manifold—enough for about twenty deep breaths if they were shared carefully.

“Leo goes first,” Maggie said, looking directly into the seven-year-old’s wide, terrified eyes. She took the boy’s tiny hands in her cold, wet gloves. “Leo. Look at me. Do you remember when I taught you how to blow bubbles at the community pool last summer?”

The boy nodded once, his teeth chattering so hard they clicked.

“I am going to put this rubber mouthpiece in your mouth,” Maggie said calmly. “You bite down on the little tabs with your back teeth. You breathe through your mouth, not your nose. It’s going to taste like cold air, but it will give you all the air you need. Tessa is waiting at the top of the vertical shaft with a safety harness. I am going to push you through the pipe, and Tessa is going to pull you up into the sunshine. Do you understand?”

“Are... are there sharks?” the boy whispered.

“No sharks,” Maggie said with a fierce, brilliant smile that looked entirely confident. “Just me. And I’m the fastest swimmer in Cape May. Take a breath.”

Maggie fitted the secondary octopus regulator into the boy’s mouth and pinched his nose with her fingers. “Breathe.”

The boy took a breath. The regulator hissed: *HISS-CHOP.* Leo’s eyes went wide with wonder.

Maggie didn't wait. She scooped the boy off the bar, pulled him against her chest, and waded to the mouth of the conduit.

“Tessa!” Maggie yelled into the pipe.

Three sharp tugs came back along the guide rope Maggie had laid through the tunnel. Tessa was in position.

Maggie clipped the carabiner from Tessa’s guide line to the back of Leo’s tuxedo belt.

“Hold the mouthpiece with both hands, Leo,” Maggie commanded gently. “Don't let go. Kick your feet like a frog.”

She pushed the boy into the pipe.

The guide line snapped taut from the other end. Tessa hauled with everything she had from the surface of the well. Within ten seconds, Leo’s shiny patent-leather shoes disappeared into the darkness of the pipe.

Maggie turned back to the bar.

The water was at the level of the mahogany counter now. Arthur Sterling was submerged to his armpits, his head lolling backward against a crate of champagne.

*CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!*

The central acrylic panel groaned. The three-inch bow was now four inches. The concrete header above the window was beginning to flake off in heavy gray chunks, dropping into the water like mortar shells.