Hope ya'll had an awesome Christmas! I know I did! Sorry I didn't update yesterday but you know, I was busy playing with my new presents and whatnot.

Anyway, you're in for a real treat today.

Enjoy!

Chapter 14

The Pearl

Not wanting to take any chances with Vlad, Sam quickly put her cover-up over her swimsuit and dashed downstairs with Valerie in tow. When they reached the den only Tucker was there. No sign of Daniel or Mr. Masters anywhere.

"Tucker, where's Daniel?" Sam asked nervously.

"He went with Mr. Masters somewhere in the house," Tucker answered just as nervously.

Valerie noticed this sudden change in behavior. "You okay? You seem kind of nervous."

"Well…Daniel has had a bad experience with…Mr. Masters," Tucker explained carefully.

Sam lowered an eyebrow. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I don't know. He doesn't like to talk about it," Tucker fibbed.

Valerie wasn't buying it. "Spill. You're hiding something," she said.

Tucker raised his hands in defense. "It's not my place to say. If you want to get all the grisly details, you're gonna have to ask Danny." He slapped his hand over his mouth, realizing his mistake.

Sam caught that. "Why did you call him 'Danny'? No one calls him that."

Tucker mentally kicked himself for slipping. "It's nothing. A slip of the tongue, you know?" he fibbed.

"Why didn't you go with Daniel and Mr. Masters?" Valerie asked.

"He said that he wanted to speak with Daniel alone," said Tucker. "Probably to patch things up."

"Which way did they go?" asked Sam.

"Uh…uh…can I call a lawyer?" Tucker asked nervously. The way the girls were asking these questions reminded him of a police interrogation.

Having enough of Tucker's stalling, Sam lifted Tucker off the floor by the shirt collar. "I'm going to ask you one more time. Which way did they go?" she growled.

Tucker, trying to act tough, refused to back down. "I…I'm not going to tell you," he said defiantly.

Sam narrowed her eyes. "Valerie. Tucker's PDA is in his front pocket. Could you get it out for me?" she asked.

Valerie did so. "Okay. Now what?"

Sam let go of Tucker who got nervous again when he saw his precious PDA in someone else's hand. Valerie gave the PDA to her Gothic friend.

"Wh-What are you going to do with it?" asked Tucker.

"Val, as you know, PDAs and cell phones don't work well under water," Sam said as she walked to the kitchen. Her two friends followed. She turned on the sink. "Tucker, if you value your PDA you tell us where Daniel and Vlad went." She slowly inched the PDA closer to the running water. Valerie pulled Tucker into a full nelson to keep him from stopping Sam.

The closer Sam got the electronic to the water, the more nervous Tucker became until eventually he caved. "I don't know exactly where they went but they walked down the hallway closest to the dining room! That's all I know!"

Sam pulled the PDA away from the water and turned off the faucet. "See how easy that was?" she asked. She gave the PDA back to Tucker and went in the direction Tucker said Daniel and Vlad went. Valerie and Tucker were quick to follow her.

"Why are you so worried about Daniel?" asked Valerie. "I know you like him but this is turning into paranoia."

"You don't know Vlad like I do," said Sam. "He's manipulative, greedy, and has an ego bigger than Canada."

"What did he do to you that was so horrible?" asked Tucker even though he had a pretty good idea what happened. "Is he, like, a pedophile or something?"

Valerie stuffed Tucker's beret into his mouth. "You need to learn to control that mouth of yours," she told him.

Sam rolled her eyes. "Rest assured, you two, Vlad did not do anything like that to me. No, what he did that was so horrible was…" She stopped herself. Should she really tell them the real reason why she hated Vlad so much? She told Valerie but that was only the partial truth. Would they believe Sam if she told them that she hated Vlad because he almost captured Danny?

"What was it?" Tucker pressed.

Sam shook her head. "Forget it. Let's just say Vlad hurt a really good friend of mine when I was a kid. I'm not going to let Vlad hurt Daniel."

She opened a door that lead to the library. "No one here," she said to herself. She was about to close the door when something in her pocket started glowing.

All three of them gasped.

"What's in your pocket?" asked Tucker.

Sam put her hand in the pocket of her cover-up and pulled out her treasured pearl. It was glowing bright green. The light it was giving off was so bright, the three college students had to shield their eyes.

"What gives?" asked Valerie. "I thought it only reacted when it was in moonlight."

"I don't know what's going on," Sam insisted. She closed the library door. The pearl's light began to dim. "Now why is it getting dimmer?"

Valerie shrugged. "Maybe it's a warning," she suggested. She turned to Tucker who was surprisingly quiet. "You know, you can throw in a few ideas any time now."

"I've got nothing," Tucker fibbed. He had heard stories regarding merfolk's engagement pearls so he assumed that this was something similar to those stories.

Sam decided to experiment and opened the library door again. The glowing became brighter. When she walked in the pearl became even brighter. "I think it's detecting something," she said. She walked into the library with Tucker and Valerie close behind her.

"This is by far the weirdest thing I've ever seen," Tucker said truthfully.

"You and me both," agreed Valerie.

"Okay. So obviously there's something in here that doesn't belong," said Sam.

The three college students scattered around the library. They checked desk drawers, the furniture and every bookshelf but came up with nothing.

"You know, I was kind of hoping that we'd find a book with a button inside or something," said Tucker as his head popped out of a pile of discarded books.

Valerie scoffed. "Do you have any idea how cliché that sounds?" she asked.

Sam was staring at the fireplace. Each time she walked past the fireplace while turning the library upside-down the pearl would glow brighter. It was as if the pearl was telling her where to find Daniel. But that didn't make sense. Danny was the one who gave her the pearl, not Daniel. Maybe Danny put a spell on the pearl to make her feel her emotions or desires. It made sense that she didn't know until now. Sam rarely took any of the items out of her treasure bottle.

Sam took the pearl out of her pocket again and it reacted near the fireplace again. She knew there was something on or around this fireplace. "Guys! There's something off about the fireplace," she said.

Valerie poked her head inside it while Sam checked the bricks. Tucker checked the mantel. He moved the trophies displayed on it to find anything out of place. One trophy was stuck in place. He tugged on it and it moved from its place on a hinge.

The fireplace started to move, making Sam and Valerie jump away from it. In a matter of seconds, a doorway appeared.

"That's even more cliché," Valerie muttered.

Sam looked at the pearl and it stopped glowing. "Ten to one says that we were supposed to find this," she said.

"I don't know, guys," said Tucker. "It's bad enough that we trashed the library. Wouldn't Vlad get angry at us for snooping at something this private?"

Valerie rolled her eyes. "Oh my gosh! Don't you watch TV? Nothing says, 'I've got something to hide' like a secret passageway in the fireplace."

"Nancy Drew has seen more than one of these," Sam added.

Tucker put up his hands in defeat. "Okay, you've made your point. But if we get caught we get banned from this awesome place that means I'll never be able to see cute girls in bikinis again and I'll blame you."

"Fair enough," said Valerie.

The three went down the stairs as quietly as possible. As they turned a corner, they heard voices at the bottom.

"You mean you…" Daniel's voice trailed off.

The three friends went further down the stairs until they saw Daniel with his hand vainly trying to cover a patch of something black on his leg. Vlad walked over to a sink and ran his hand under the running water. Three pairs of eyes widened when they saw the man's hand become blue, webbed, and scaly.

"That's right," said Vlad as he walked over to Daniel. "The project I was working on was a way to become one of your kind."

Sam, Tucker and Valerie covered each other's mouths to keep the other from screaming at what they just witnessed. It was hard to tell who was the most shocked. Valerie for just being introduced to the world of merfolk, Tucker for realizing that he and his best friend were now dealing with a human-merman hybrid, or Sam for seeing that her father's friend had a bigger secret than she thought and that her friend was more than he appeared.

"You tried to become one of us?" asked Daniel.

"I wanted to be with your mother more than anything in the world. I figured if she didn't want to be with me on the surface, maybe she'll want to be with me in the sea," Vlad answered as he flexed his now blue scaly fingers. "When I was discharged from the hospital, I was initially shocked at what I've become. I spent the next several years controlling my new abilities. When I realized that you were Maddie's son, I discovered that I had an advantage."

"You wanted to use me to get to my mom?" Daniel asked angrily, his eyes glowing green. Sam gasped at what she saw. That was the same shade of green as Danny's eyes. It also explained what she saw at the aquarium last weekend. What she saw with Daniel's eyes, it couldn't be a coincidence.

"Well, if it meant a chance to see your mother again, I'll do whatever it takes to see her again," Vlad said.

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Daniel growled. His eyes glowed brighter and the pipes on the walls began shaking.

Vlad smiled evilly. "Better control that temper of yours, Daniel. You don't want your friends to get hurt in all this."

The pipes stopped shaking. Daniel glared daggers at the man. "You keep them out of this," he hissed. "This is not about them."

"I know how fond you are with Samantha," said Vlad. "I saw how close you were with her since your arrival here. It reminded me of how close you were with her when you were children."

'What is Mr. Masters talking about? I didn't meet Daniel until the beginning of the semester.'

"I knew it," said Daniel. "I knew the moment I saw you that you were the one who tried to abduct me when I was a child eleven years ago." Sam's eye widened. She met Danny eleven years ago. This was starting to become spooky. "If it hadn't been for Sam that day I would most likely be dead. And that is something that I will forever be grateful for."

Vlad laughed. "You sound like you're in love with Samantha," he accused.

Daniel faltered. "I… I…" he hesitated.

Sam leaned forward to hear better but she leaned too far and fell down the stairs. Valerie and Tucker winced when she landed at the bottom. She wasn't seriously hurt but bruises were sure to surface.

Daniel and Vlad turned and saw Sam on the floor.

"Sam?"

"Samantha?"

"Shit," Sam cursed.

Man, I'm good!

I figured that Sam's pearl should play a more significant role in the story. It will be explained in due time, let me assure you.

More will come! Stay on your toes!

You're welcome to do fanart if you wish. I'm no artist so I'd suck.