Tessa bent, lifting out a small box. "Everything we are as Mer is here." Opening the box, she turned it so everyone could look inside. An elaborate choker fashioned out of gold and diamonds glinted against the black felt lining the box.

Gwen's eyes almost popped out of her head. "Holy s.h.i.t, is that what I think it is?"

Tessa nodded. "They're not the kind of diamonds you think they are, Gwen," she said. "They're Herkimer diamond crystals, not very valuable at all."

Gwen frowned. "Then why hide them away?"

Jake pointed to the crystal hanging around Gwen's neck. "Crystal magic. Herkimer diamonds have the unique ability to convert one form of energy into another."

Addison raised her brows. "Is that so?"

Jake nodded. "As an example, when pressure is applied to a crystal, energy is released in the form of heat, light, and electrical voltage. This is what is known as *piezoelectricity.' "

Tessa slowly closed the box. "This crystal is very powerful. Herkimer can be used to enhance telepathy and out-of-body travel, as well as generate manifestation energy." She took out another box, opened it. A small clear crystal orb about the size of an orange nestled on black felt.

"This is what the necklaces we wear are made out of. Crystal quartz, which is the basic stone of all magic. It can be used as the amplifier of other stone energies. It also enhances psychic ability."

Addison reached for the stone around her neck. "Hot d.a.m.n! That's why we can do what we can do, right?"

Tessa nodded and picked up yet a third box. Opening it, she revealed a variety of gemstones and other crystals. "These stones each have a magical property. Using them can help enhance our own inherited abilities, which we use as shifters to adapt from land to water. It's the power we were all born with as Mer."

Thrusting her hands out in front of her body, Gwen staunchly shook her head. "Oh, no, no! I refuse to mess with that s.h.i.t."

Tessa looked at her middle sister. "I happen to know you have a very strong talent with this so-called s.h.i.t, Gwen."

Kenneth picked up one of the random stones, balancing it between thumb and forefinger. "How can a stone be magic?"

Jake scratched his chin. "I suspect it would be in the psi-kinetics, an ability all of us seem to have been born with but few can use."

Kenneth put the stone down. "You just flew over my head with that one."

Having an insider's edge, Jake chuckled wryly. "Try the ability to move things with just a thought. Energy is all around us, and using crystals is one of the ways to tap into that power. What we call magic, the Mers would actually call science."

Kenneth's brows shot up. He looked at Tessa, all wonder and surprise. "You can do that?"

Tessa sighed. "I can, in a limited fashion. So can Addison. Gwen's the best at it, though. She can really get things to jumping when she sets her mind to it."

Gwen stepped away from the hidden recess. "No, don't get me started. I don't do that s.h.i.t, you hear me."

Tessa looked at her younger sister, so obviously frightened and upset by the day's revelations. "It's a part of what we are, Gwen, a part of our power as Mer."

"And it's something Mom warned us to be careful with," Gwen shot back. "The first thing we learned was not to embrace our inner selves, the darker side of our minds."

Jake looked into the recess. "You said you recognized the artifact upstairs."

Tessa retrieved a larger piece. "This is it," she said, tugging at the silky material cushioning the object. "Except its whole. There were so many pieces missing on the other that I almost didn't make the connection." The wrapping fell away to reveal the complete relic, a glorious piece fashioned of gold and studded with several semiprecious stones.

Jake's blue eyes glittered with greed. "Jesus, it's in pristine condition."

Tessa lifted her brows. "And it's deadly as h.e.l.l."

It was Jake's turn to look surprised. "Deadly?"

Tessa slipped her arm through the spirals. A bar halted her hand's progress. Her fingers curled around the grip. A large clear-cut stone rested across the top of her knuckles. Other, smaller stones were woven into the gold braid.

Jake's face immediately paled. His eyes narrowed, and the fine lines around his mouth tightened. "Holy Christ, that's not a-" he started to say, ratcheting to his feet. Fear made his voice an octave higher than normal.

Catching Jake's worry, Kenneth also looked more than a little alarmed. "What is that thing?"

Tessa couldn't help grinning. She liked seeing Jake scared s.h.i.tless. Kenneth Randall had only just walked into the world of the Mer, so he had no idea of what she could do. Jake had a little more experience. Which was probably the reason he'd cut and left town as soon as possible. Simply put, he wasn't taking any chances.

"Mom said it's called a Ri'kah," she explained, identifying the deceptively designed, jewel-encrusted gauntlet. "In the old days it's how we defended ourselves."

Stretching her arm straight out in front of her, she closed her eyes and centered her energy. All she needed was one tiny little spark to activate the thing. Catching a glimmer in her mind's eye, she concentrated, pushing the force outward. For a moment sound and light fused, filling and engulfing her with a pulsing, bright static energy.

Feeling heat rise up from inside her, Tessa growled a soft spell, channeling the force she'd whipped up in her mind into the stones. The crystals around her arm began to glow. Almost simultaneously a shot of pure red-hot light beamed from the crystal across her knuckle. It struck the far wall, blasting a small hole into the plaster. Like a Fourth of July firework, sparks showered in a thousand different directions.

Everyone could only stare, thunderstruck.

Addison was the first to break the silence. "Holy s.h.i.t, I love that!" she said, close to dancing with delight. "How f.u.c.king awesome was that?" She headed toward Tessa. "I've got to try that thing."

Frowning severely, Gwen cut her off. "n.o.body's going to be playing with it anymore. We don't know what we've got there and it's too d.a.m.n dangerous." She turned toward Tessa, pointing a threatening finger. "You've got no right to be playing around with things you don't understand. Take it off. Right now."

Though her initial instinct was to buck Gwen's demands, Tessa decided caution was best. She'd only just begun to grasp the fundamentals of Mercraft. Right now a lot of it was pure guesswork. She could do some serious damage without intending to.

"You're right," she said, sliding the weapon off her arm. "I haven't really gotten the hang of it yet."

Face pale, Jake looked at her through eyes as wide as saucers. "You could have blown my f.u.c.king head off," he spat, wiping beads of sweat off his forehead.

Tessa tossed her head. "I wasn't even aiming at you, idiot." She slipped the weapon off her arm, rewrapping it, and tucked it back into its hiding place.

Jake's lips twisted with anger. "Bulls.h.i.t! I saw the look on your face . . ." For once words seemed to fail him.

Addison groaned. "Hey, I wanted to try it out."

Gwen frowned and shook her head. "No way am I letting you play with that, Addie. Knowing you, you'd find a way to blow the moon out of s.p.a.ce."

Addison's face lit up. "Oh, man, that would be f.u.c.king fantastic, wouldn't it?"

Tessa snuck a glance toward Kenneth, wondering what he'd thought of this little display of Mer-magic. He seemed to be the only one not caught up in the drama. He was a watcher, an observer, taking everything in its stride.

Hanging on the periphery of the group, he walked over to the wall, examining the damage. Scorched pieces of plaster crumbled into dust when he brushed curious fingers against the deep hole. "Going to take a lot of filler to repair this" was his only comment.

Tessa struggled to tamp down her smirk. Jake was definitely freaked-out, no doubt about it. Good. Let him wonder just what else she had up her sleeve. There was no way she'd ever admit her use of the Ri'kah was more luck than skill. She'd only just figured out what the thing was, and had yet to make it do more than sputter and spark.

Alarm spiked across Gwen's face. "How long have you been messing with this stuff?"

A shiver crawled down Tessa's spine. Inside she felt as if someone had turned up her body's temperature to blazing hot. On the outside, though, her skin felt strangely chilled. Her heart beat hollowly in her chest. Black spots still danced in front of her eyes, part of the aftereffect of focusing her psi-energies.

"I've been dabbling with it off and on for years," she finally admitted. "Mom always promised she'd teach us to use it, control it."

Addison's face lit up. "There's so much we could do if we knew how."

Dismay flashed across Gwen's face. "It's something best left alone."

Shivering harder, Tessa pressed her fingers against the pulse beating in her temple. Though the pressure was beginning to lessen behind her eyes, she could feel a new, sharper ache building. Her stomach clenched, bowels going liquid. She'd drawn out the energy too quickly and was going to pay the price.

She clenched her jaw and swallowed hard to keep the nausea at bay. "It's time we stop denying what we are, Gwen. Our magic is part of our heritage. If we deny it, we deny ourselves. And as long as we keep denying ourselves, we'll never be whole."

Listening to the conversation taking place behind him, Kenneth leaned closer to the damage. The hole Tessa had blasted into the wall was about the size of a fifty-cent piece. The edges were blackened, scorched.

When she'd slid on the arm piece, he'd physically felt her gathering energy, as if sucking it out of the bodies around her and pulling it into her own. The fine hairs on the back of his neck had risen and his skin had gone chilly with goose b.u.mps. Tessa was definitely a phenomenon and he'd experienced the power behind her will.

Curious, he poked his index finger into the blackened cavity. His hand didn't stop until he'd reached the knuckle. Even then he couldn't feel anything under the tip. Though the moment had pa.s.sed, energy still swirled around the affected area, snapping and crackling. Narrowing his eyes, he could almost catch a glimpse of the tiny charged particles.

Holy cow. If that thing had hit flesh, it would have burned right through it. At first he'd been worried about the idea of a woman living alone in a deserted place. No need for that. It looked like Tessa Lonike was more than capable of taking care of herself. With her fiery red hair and weapon at the ready, she had the appearance of a warrior G.o.ddess: fierce, determined, and ready to go to battle again her foes.

In short, she was awesome. f.u.c.king awesome.

And the men better look out.

Leaving the damage behind, he looked toward Tessa. He felt his heart skip a beat. She was still kneeling beside the alcove she'd uncovered. Arms wrapped across her chest, she rubbed her hands vigorously up and down over her skin.

Sensing her distress, Kenneth walked over to her. Bending down beside her, he settled a hand on her back. A strange vibration emanated from her, driven with so much pressure that he felt the force of untapped energy surging through her veins. She was literally trembling to keep it all contained inside.

Resisting the urge to pull his hand away, Kenneth held his palm in place. "Are you okay?"

Mouth tightening, Tessa cast an uneasy stare his way. Her eyes were huge as saucers, her face pale as wax. She looked a little dazed. "I just need to back it down." She blinked hard and drew a deep breath. "Put the leash back on the black dog."

He kept his hand in place. "The black dog?"

"It's what we call the darker side of our power," Gwen said quietly. "When you have a force, a presence living inside you, you have to be careful to keep it under control."

Kenneth looked at Gwen. Arms locked across her chest, her stance was tense, tight. She clearly didn't like talking about the Mer or their capabilities. "What do you mean, a presence living inside you?"

Jake glanced at the girls sharply. By the look on his face, his mind was working furiously. "You're not talking about some sort of symbiote, are you?"

Gwen nodded. "It happens in the womb, I think. Something in our genetic structure destroys the traits of our human fathers and reshapes us into Mer." One of her hands lifted to the crystal around her neck. "It may seem ghoulish, but Mer are born inanimate. It's at birth we receive the breofe, or the breath of life and our crystals."

A cold chill washed over Kenneth. "You mean Mer are born dead?" He didn't like the idea of dead babies. It creeped him out.

Reining in her inner energies, Tessa's skin began to return to a normal temperature. She lifted her chin. "Not dead," she corrected. "Just inert." She thrust out her arms, showing the pattern on her bare skin. "That's how you know something's inside you. It grows, from the inside out."

The other two girls showed their markings.

"When we're born, our skin is clear. But by the time a Mer turns eleven or twelve, her symbiote begins to emerge," Addison explained. "When human girls are getting their menstrual cycles, we're beginning to see our symbiote mature. It's about that time we begin to learn to control the energies necessary for the shift."

"And it's about that time you learn you'd better be careful with what you think," Gwen added through a deep frown. "It isn't funny when a stray thought manifests into something physical."

Jake nodded. "That's entirely feasible. Such paranormal activity has been noted in some adolescent girls. I can't help but wonder if those girls have a bit of diluted Mer in their bloodlines."

"A mermaid who isn't given her soul-stone at birth never fully develops," Gwen said. "The symbiote inside just shrivels up and dies because it hasn't got any energy to feed on. It could be part of the reason we've become so endangered. It seems like, over the years, most Mers wanted their daughters to be plain old humans."

"n.o.body wants to be plain old human," Jake grumbled. "It's boring. You have such a gift, yet you choose not to use it."

Gwen's eyes narrowed with anger. "It's a not a gift if people treat you like a freak, Jake. Don't forget how good you humans are at destroying anything you find frightening or different."

Addison nodded her agreement. "Yeah. Don't forget, they were still burning witches until the nineteenth century. Just because we're in the twenty-first century doesn't mean people are more civilized. It just means they have more ways to exploit us."

"Kind of like you, Jake," Tessa pointed out. "Admit it. You'd love to bask in the glow of revealing a lost species to the world."

Kenneth inwardly winced. He didn't want to imagine where that sort of revelation would put Tessa and her sisters if their kind were exposed. One only had to turn on the nightly news or open a scandal sheet to see how the media ran any subject it deemed newsworthy straight into the ground. The press was relentless, ferocious in their pursuit of anything that would drive ratings and revenue higher. Like jackals scenting blood, they ran their prey to exhaustion before devouring all-blood, flesh, and bone.

The girls wouldn't have a chance.

"Maybe it would be better if this stuff stays at the bottom of the ocean," he suggested.

Jake immediately shook his head. "Whether the girls like it or not, this stuff is starting to come up. It won't stay hidden forever. There are a lot of treasure hunters on the high seas, and as the technology for deep-sea exploration improves, more will be found."

Pressing a hand to her forehead, Tessa closed her eyes. "He's right, d.a.m.n it. If Ishaldi is there, it's going to be found."

Gwen shrugged. "So what? It's not like they can point at us and say there's a Mer just because they drag a few mermaid statues and coins out of the water."

Tessa let her hand drop. Face drawn, her green eyes snapped with raw will. "You're not getting it, Gwen. I'm tired of hiding and I'm tired of worrying if we're the last few Mer on the face of the earth. Maybe if we came out, others would, too. Who knows how many more Mer may be out there?"

Gwen threw up her hands in horror. "We are most certainly not going to do anything like that."

Frustration rolling through him, Kenneth stepped between the bickering sisters. "What about a compromise, then," he suggested. "n.o.body has to know you as Mer. But they can know you as the discoverers of a lost world."

Jake rocked back on his heels. "That's something to consider," he allowed. "Both Tessa and Addison have worked with me on archaeological surveys of the state's underwater maritime resources. Bringing them back onto my team might be just what I need to reestablish my legitimacy with the state's sea grant program."

"Why would you need the state's involvement for something in the Mediterranean Sea?" Kenneth asked. "If I remember correctly, you work with a salvage and rescue outfit."

A slight look of embarra.s.sment skittered across Jake's face. "Worked." He cleared his throat. "Unfortunately, all operations have recently ceased due to a little mismanagement."

Though he might know nothing about the Mer, Kenneth understood the hard realities of business. The one thing he'd learned as a business owner was that you didn't spend more than you earned and you didn't overextend your line of credit. "How much mismanagement?"

Silence filled the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Shoving his hands in his pockets, Jake's golden brows furrowed. "We've run out of money to continue our excavation of the site," he admitted after a long pause. "Between getting the equipment, paying the crew, and fighting off the bill collectors, we've flat run out of funds."

Kenneth nodded. "I see. But aren't there are always investors in this sort of thing?"

One expensive leather boot scuffing the bare floor, Jake snorted. "Try getting investors when your reputation among your colleagues is shot to h.e.l.l. No one takes me at my word because no one believes Ishaldi or the Mer ever existed. It's like Atlantis, Shangri- la, El Dorado, or even the Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine. There're lots of stories, but everyone thinks they're myths. And with today's economy hitting rock bottom, people want a solid investment for their money."

"So what were you planning to do?" Kenneth asked.

Jake fidgeted, rocking his weight from foot to foot. "I'm trying to arrange for a museum to purchase the artifacts. The immensity of the find is staggering, so I'm hoping such an organization would grant the necessary funds to return to the location before another outfit moves into the area."