Chapter 3

At dinner, Mikael and his sister were alone. His parents were often late from work, so that was not an unusual situation. He'd ordered pizza from Liam's Pizzeria with the money his parents had left on the table as usual. Suddenly he looked out the window and saw Mariah standing outside with an umbrella held over her head. For a moment, they locked eyes, and Mariah made a gesture that clearly meant "good-bye." Mikael returned the gesture. Then Mariah hurried away.
"Why did you do that?" his sister asked.
"Because," said Mikael. Strangely enough, he didn't want anyone to know about Mariah.

           *  *  *

Mariah wished, for what seemed like the billionth time, that she could go to the hotel pool.

It was supposed to be a cold day, but stuck inside her heated hotel room, Mariah was sweltering.

She stuck her head into the living room, where her mother and her older sister were doing a read-through of the script for the latest movie, The Angel Files. "Can I go to the pool?" she asked, forgetting all of her mother's grammar lessons.
Her mother sighed and, surprisingly, threw up her hands in defeat. "Okay, Mariah, you may go to the pool," she said, sounding tired, and, well, defeated. "Remember to be back by 7:00 for dinner."

"I will," promised Mariah, relieved.
She threw on her bathing suit, grabbed a random towel off the rack, and headed down in the elevator, which was completely transparent and light up. She watched the hotel floor swoosh closer and closer, faster and faster, thinking she was going to crash, but it stopped just in time, and Mariah stepped out on the cool glass floor and headed toward the pool.
Mariah felt safe in the pool. Her swimming strokes were clean and practiced, and even her butterfly had a sense of dignity to it. Today there was no one else in the pool. Mariah dove in the cool water, thinking if that if she was a child of Poseidon, she wouldn't be surprised.
When she finally came up for air, a sight made her screech and fall backwards into the water.
There was a man cloaked in purple sitting under one of the showers. In his hands were sixteen human bones.