Mike started the car, and soon they were on their way out of the metropolitan area, heading for the peninsula of Bacoli where the Gennari family lived. Alberto didn't get sick in the car, but over and over he had to push memories of last September out of his head. Several of the worst experiences of his life had happened on that awful road trip from Barcellona to Portlligat where the stolen money was hidden.

He shut his eyes, and told himself that the next two weeks were not going to be like that. Sofia Scorfano had promised that Giancarlo was busy with his work, and wouldn't be allowed to come visit unless Alberto himself requested it. He didn't need to worry about that. He needed to worry about making a good impression.

Luca prodded him in the shoulder, bringing him out of the thoughts. "Look!" he said, pointing out the window. They were approaching a tunnel that went right through a hill, with buildings on top of it. Darkness fell as they passed underneath, and Alberto craned his neck to look up the ceiling. What was it like to live in a house where you knew cars were going under your feet all day?

The tunnel went on and on, with lights in the ceiling and shiny arrows on the wall so the cars would know which way to go. Alberto began to wonder if they were going to make the entire rest of the trip underground. Then there was a brilliant light up ahead, and they emerged back into blinding sunshine, driving along a hillside with trees on both sides.

"Wow!" said Luca.

Mike chuckled. "Never been through one before?"

"Never one that big," Luca said, "or one with houses above it!" His face was shining. Alberto remembered some of their phone calls during the school year, and how excited Luca always was by the things humans built to take them places they shouldn't be able to go. There were submarines to let them dive deep into the sea, airplanes to fly through the sky, and now there must be something else that burrowed through the earth, because there was no way they'd dug that with just shovels. It would have taken ages.

Celia, meanwhile, tugged on Alberto's shirtsleeve. "Nobody's looking now?" she said. "Can I see you Change?"

"He doesn't want to do it in the car," said Carlotta from the front seat. "The seats aren't designed for tails. I'm sure he'll show you as soon as we get home."

Celia sighed theatrically.

"I promise," Alberto assured her.

The child seemed to decide she could wait that long. "It was your Mom, right?" she asked Alberto. "Your Mom's a human? Were you born like them, or did you hatch from an egg like a sea monster?"

This question had never actually occurred to Alberto before. "I... don't know," he admitted. For most of his life he hadn't known his mother was human, and while they'd talked about it a bit during his week with Giancarlo, the subject of Alberto's actual birth had not come up. He was actually only vaguely aware of how humans reproduced at all. "How are humans born?"

"Like dolphins," said Luca. "Although they come out head-first instead of tail. There was a chapter about it in our anatomy textbook."

"But you had an egg," Alberto said to Celia, who nodded.

"Mamma kept the shells," she told him.

"My Mom did that." Luca grimaced, embarrassed. "She keeps them in a clam shell with my baby teeth."

"It wasn't exactly what I had in mind when Lottie told me she was expecting," Mike said with a soft laugh. "I imagine if your mother was human, you were probably born live, but it's hard to say." He looked at his wife sitting beside him. "We honestly didn't expect we'd be able to have children at all, so we didn't know how it was going to work."

"That's why I was a miracle," said Celia proudly.

Alberto swallowed. "Did you want her? I mean... did you want to have kids?" He hadn't even finished the question before he realized it might be a bad idea. Was it too personal? Were they going to hate him now?

"We hadn't been planning on it," Mike admitted.

"But once we knew she was coming, we were delighted to have her and determined to do our best for her, no matter which of us she took after," Carlotta finished for him.

Alberto nodded. He'd never forget what he'd overheard his father say to Signor Aranque in Blanes: we didn't want children. We didn't think we were going to have to worry about it. And then Alberto had come along anyway, and ruined all their plans. Celia didn't know how lucky she was that her parents weren't like that.

He would have to be more careful with his questions in the future, and not just blurt stuff out like that. The Gennaris seemed to be okay so far, but next time they might not be.

Luca had plenty of questions of his own. "Alberto told me that the sea monsters here spend more time on land with humans," he said. "Is that true?"

"It depends on the person," Carlotta said. "I've heard you have to be more careful in small towns. Napoli gets a lot of tourists and you can blend in with the crowd, but I imagine it's harder in places where they don't see many strangers."

"I never care out of the water at all until I was almost thirteen," Luca said.

"Really?" Carlotta was astonished. "You must have had a time learning to walk."

"I fell down a lot," Luca admitted, "but Alberto helped me."

"When we visited South Africa we met sea monsters there who said it was unnatural, or not their element," Mike recalled.

Carlotta snickered. "So he sat down on the rocks below the cape, and tried to explain to them why we are clearly amphibious."

"You are," Mike insisted. "Even aside from that transforming thing, if you were meant to be fully aquatic you wouldn't have legs capable of supporting your weight on land. Nature doesn't give you parts you're not meant to use."

"You've been to South Africa?" Luca asked in awe.

"To study sharks," Mike nodded. "That's what I do. I'm a marine biologist."

"We have sharks near our house!" Celia said. "We feed them."

"They're angel sharks," Carlotta explained. "They're not pets, exactly, it's more like how some humans like to feed wild birds."

"Cool!" Luca looked at Alberto with a grin on his face.

Alberto grinned back. "You might not need that book," he said. It sounded as if this family were anything but boring.

The Gennaris lived in a house by the water at the southern end of the peninsula of Bacoli, within view of the island of Procida. It had once been a fancy villa, but had fallen into disrepair over the years. They'd had to fix it up quite a bit, but they'd clearly chosen it on account of the beach. The land dipped behind the house, leading down to a little patch of the coast covered with yellow sand, hidden from the neighbours below a short cliff, some boulders, and a very impressive prickly pear cactus. People living in the surrounding apartments would not be able to see Carlotta and Celia getting into and out of the water.

Celia herself was buzzing with impatience as they collected their things and headed in the front door. As soon as it closed behind them, she grabbed Alberto's hand.

"Show me!" she insisted.

"Show you what?" Alberto pretended not to understand.

"You know what!" she pouted.

"This?" He smiled and transformed. Doing it at will had been very difficult the first few times Alberto had managed it, but after nearly a year of practice had become easy. His suntanned skin rippled and turned to silvery-purple scales, fins grew in where his hair had been, and while it did take a bit of focus to maintain it, Alberto had learned to keep a back portion of his mind thinking about that while the rest was doing something else. In this case, appreciating Celia's glee as she jumped up and down.

"Teach me how!" she said, tugging on his arm. Then she remembered her manners and added, "please?"

"It's really easy," Alberto assured her. "You know the way it feels when you do the Change, kind of like your skin is all crawly?"

"Yeah?" she asked eagerly.

"You just gotta feel that," he said, letting himself change back to human. "Go for it."

Celia balled her fists and closed her eyes, making a face of intense concentration. She held her breath as long as she could, then let it out in a long sigh and looked down at her hands. They had not changed, and she slumped with disappointment.

"I can't do it," she complained.

"You're thinking about it too hard," said Alberto. "You gotta do it without thinking, like walking or breathing."

The little girl frowned, puzzled.

"I don't know how to not think about things, either," Luca told her.

"Can we do this after dinner, maybe?" Mike interrupted. "I'm starving."

"I want to learn now!" Celia protested.

"Alberto and Luca will be here for a fortnight," Carlotta reminded her daughter. "You have plenty of time."

"That's only two weeks," said Celia.

"Two weeks was forever when you were waiting for them to arrive," Mike said. "You wanted us to make your favourite timballo for him, remember?"

Celia acquiesced to that with another heavy sigh, and followed her mother into the kitchen while Mike showed the boys to the spare room where they would be staying. It had one big bed and a window that faced out to sea, where the lights of Procida were reflected, twinkling, on the water. The sky in the west was pink and gold with sunset.

"I understand you're both used to sleeping on land," said Mike.

"Yes, Sir," Luca nodded. "I stay with a friend in Genova while I'm at school, and Alberto lives with his human uncle."

Mike set their bags down beside the bed. "All right, but if either of you would be more comfortable in the water, just say so. Lottie's mother lives right out in the bay here, and she goes there sometimes when she's having trouble sleeping. It took her ages to get used to a bed," he added, with a smile at the memory. "She would toss and turn all night, and half the time she ended up filling the bathtub and sleeping in there."

"We'll be fine, Sir," Luca promised. "Right, Alberto?"

"Absolutely," said Alberto, and this time it was entirely true. This looked like the most comfortable bed in the world. He's thought of Giulia's bed as a luxury, but this one was three times the size.

"If you need anything, let us know," said Mike. "Dinner will be about half an hour, so you've got some time to unpack and settle in."

"Thank you, Sir," said Luca.

"Yeah, thank you, Sir," Alberto echoed.

Their host left the room, and Luca put his bag on the bed and opened it to start getting his stuff out. "Your family seems really nice so far," he said. "Don't you think?"

"Yeah," Alberto agreed, wandering towards the window to take in the home-like smell of the breeze off the ocean. It seemed like he had nothing to worry about... if everybody here were like Mike and Carlotta, it would be no problem to impress them.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"Huh?" Alberto turned away from the window to look at Luca's face. "Of course I'm okay! Why do people keep asking me that?"

This was the first time Luca himself had asked, so he was a bit startled by the question. "You didn't talk much in the car," he said. "You usually talk more."

So Luca had noticed – Alberto had hoped he wouldn't. "You were talking enough for both of us," Alberto replied.

"Oh." Luca paused. "Sorry. Next time I'll let you."

"No, no, no," Alberto said quickly. The last thing he wanted was for Luca to think he was mad at him! "I just... I don't like cars. They remind me of travelling with my father."

Luca nodded, relieved. "Maybe you should tell them that. Then they won't want to make you ride in them."

That might work, but riding in cars was perfectly normal for the Genarri family and he was determined not to cause them problems. Nor did he want them thinking he got sick, like Sofia said she did. "No, I'm fine," he decided. "I can handle it."

When Mike called them for supper twenty minutes later, the boys hurried downstairs to wash up. Luca's hands transformed in the water again, as did Celia's, which turned brilliant turquoise blue. Alberto made a show for Celia of maintaining his in human form as he rubbed the soap between them, which she watched with big eyes. Then they all sat down to eat.

Mindful of Luca's observation, Alberto planned to talk more – but first he had to concentrate on using his knife and fork properly. It was a good thing he'd learned how, because the timballo turned out to be similar to Signora Bruzzone's lasagne: a sort of cake made from layers of meat, cheese, vegetables, and pastry. Using fingers would have been extremely messy. Celia had cutlery of her own, but she was clumsy with them and still managed to get food on herself, dropping a forkful right on the front of her dress.

"Uh-oh," she said, and looked apologetically at her mother.

Carlotta picked up a napkin. "This is why I didn't want you wearing your fancy dress for dinner," she said.

"Alberto," Mike spoke up, "Sofia said you work for your uncle. What does he do?"

"He's a fisherman, Sir," Alberto replied, minding his manners. "Sometimes I help him on the boat, or I make deliveries, or when Pietrina can't make it I mind the shop and take people's money for the fish."

"So you're very busy then," Mike observed.

"Yeah." Alberto nodded and quickly swallowed his mouthful so he could keep talking. "Massimo says I'm the best employee he's ever had!"

The words slipped out, and Alberto's stomach rolled over as he realized belatedly that he'd just done one of the things he'd decided not to do – that was a lie, and even if it hadn't been, it would still be a boast. Should he correct it, like he did when he realized he'd told Luca or Giulia something that wasn't quite true? No, because then they would know it was a lie. For the moment they didn't seem to... Mike was nodding.

"I'm sure he's not biased at all," the man said.

"Mamma and Papà work at the university," said Celia proudly. "Papà teaches classes about the ocean, and Mamma is the administrative assistant for the department!" She seemed particularly pleased that she'd rattled off the phrase l'assistente amministrativa del dipartimento without a mistake.

"What's that mean?" asked Luca.

"It means I do all the organizing nobody else wants to do," said Carlotta. "Academics are terrible at keeping their things in order."

"I stay with Nonna Rita while she's at work," Celia said.

"My mother," Carlotta explained. "Mike's parents live in Lido di Ostia."

"Mostly we stay in the water," Celia said, "but sometimes we visit Zia Sofia and sometimes she takes me to Procida for shopping." She then brought the conversation back to her favourite topic. "How did you learn to do the Change on purpose?"

"Well... I..." Alberto hesitated. Had anyone told the Gennaris that Alberto had helped his father escape from prison? Probably not. They wouldn't have been so friendly if they knew. "I just noticed I'd always been able to get the water off faster than other people could. I just kinda shake and it's gone."

"He tried to teach me, but I could never do it as quick," said Luca.

"So I tried to imagine I was shaking it back on, and I went from there," Alberto finished.

Celia closed her eyes and shook her head hard, her pigtails flapping. When she looked at her hands again, she was once more disappointed.

"Don't worry, you have plenty of time to learn," Carlotta assured her once again. For a moment her brow furrowed and she seemed to stare off into the distance as if she were thinking of something else entirely, but then she shrugged and returned to her meal.

"If you want, we might take my boat out one day," Mike suggested. "Lottie's got her little anemone garden, and I have some places out in the gulf where I like to collect specimens. Do you enjoy boating?"

"Yes, Sir!" said Alberto with enthusiasm. Boating was where the two worlds of humans and sea monsters met, and it was fun being able to see both but not really be a part of either, able to look back at the land or down at the water while hanging out in between.

"Just don't let him do it after dark!" Luca added with a grin.

Alberto smiled, too, but then sucked in his breath as he realized what Luca was referring to.

"No? I thought you could see in the dark," said Mike.

Luca opened his mouth to explain the statement, but Alberto kicked him under the table. Luca twitched in surprise, and looked to his friend for an explanation. Alberto shook his head hard to tell him no. He couldn't tell them about the time Alberto had accidentally set Massimo's boat on fire! That had become sort of a joke back in Portorosso, but nobody here would like him if they found out about it!

Mike, Carlotta, and Celia were looking at the boys expectantly, waiting for the rest of the story.

"Uh..." said Luca.

"One sec," said Alberto. He grabbed his friend's arm and dragged him into the stairwell.

"What's wrong?" Luca whispered.

"I told you, I want them to like me!" Alberto hissed back. "You can't tell them about that kind of stuff!"

"Nobody's mad about it anymore at home," Luca said. "You and Massimo fixed it."

"That's different. People there know me and they know I screw up," Alberto pointed out. "Just... no stories about that kind of stuff here, okay?"

"Got it." Luca nodded.

They returned to the dinner table, and offered the Gennaris their best innocent smiles.

"Is everything all right?" asked Carlotta.

"Everything's cool," Alberto promised her.

"Everything's great!" said Luca. "The food is delicious, Madame."

She smiled. "You don't need to be so formal, Luca. Just Carlotta is fine."

"Yes, Ma... okay," said Luca.

Alberto breathed out and took anther forkful of food. As long as they could avoid any more close calls like that, it ought to be fine.

Both boys were tired from their day spent running from train to train, and even though he'd napped on the way, Luca fell asleep within minutes of climbing into the big bed. Alberto probably should have been able to do the same, but instead he found himself lying there awake and listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the place. The sound of the surf was different here, as were the birds, and he could hear something he never did at home, which was voices downstairs. Mike and Carlotta were talking about something, though Alberto couldn't make out the words.

The Gennari family seemed really happy, he thought. They all loved each other very much, and both parents were affectionate with Celia. It was so perfect, and that made part of Alberto happy while another part felt that it was monstrously unfair. Having Celia seemed to have made Mike and Carlotta even happier, while to judge from what Alberto had heard from his father, his arrival had just made Giancarlo and Maria miserable. What was the difference?

Giancarlo had said that they'd wanted to travel but couldn't when they had a baby with them... yet the Gennaris had gone all the way to South Africa! Was that before or after they'd had Celia? Could he ask, or would that be rude? Was it something to do somehow with Alberto being born while Celia had hatched? Or was it just because Alberto's parents had never wanted him in the first place?

Alberto knew it was dumb to think like that. Stuff just happened, there weren't always reasons for it. Yet it was hard not to feel like he must have done something wrong, because it was clearly possible for humans and sea monsters to have happy families together. Alberto just didn't deserve it for whatever reason.

He shoved his head under the pillow as if to hide from that feeling. It wasn't going to be that way anymore, he told himself. The problem wasn't Alberto, the problem was that Giancarlo Scorfano was a big jerk. He wasn't allowed to come visit, and the rest of the family was going to like Alberto, and he wouldn't have to feel like he wasn't good enough.

"Silenzio Bruno," he said under his breath, and shut his eyes.

The next morning, they were awakened bright and early by Celia, who came running into the room and leaped on the bed, dressed in a frilly pink and white swimsuit with strawberries on it.

"Wake up! Wake up!" she said delightedly, shaking first Alberto, then Luca. "We're going to feed the sharks, and Zia Sofia's going to meet us there!"

"Celia!" Carlotta said from the hallway. "I told you to wake them up gently!"

"I was gentle!" Celia protested, as the boys sat up blinking sleepily. "But they gotta hurry!"

Carlotta, also in her swimsuit and wearing a broad-brimmed sunhat, came in and collected her daughter. "Breakfast is ready," she told Luca and Alberto, "and yes, then we're going to meet Sofia out in the bay and feed our sharks. Celia is very eager to show you."

Luca sat up, yawning, and spent a moment staring blankly at the wall before seeming to come to life. He hopped out of bed and opened the drawer where he'd stowed his luggage. "You think it's okay if we wear our swim trunks to breakfast?" he asked, pulling out his pair.

"I guess... they're obviously going to," said Alberto. They couldn't object if they were the ones who'd set the example, could they?

Swim trunks were not an item of clothing that either Luca or Alberto would have thought to acquire on their own. All humans appeared to own several sets of clothes, and they hadn't noticed that there was a particular outfit Giulia only wore when swimming until Ercole had mocked Luca for not having a proper swimsuit at the race. Luca, living with Giulia and her mother in Genova, had accepted the idea quite quickly, but Alberto, who was in and out of the water all day, had found the idea of having to change his clothes every time very tiresome. The only reason he'd accepted it was because Massimo had told him if he ruined his clothes with salt water, he would have to pay to buy new ones.

They went downstairs in their trunks and t-shirts, and Carlotta served them cream-filled cornettos and cups of coffee with lots of milk. Mike took one of the pastries and kissed his wife's cheek, then bid everybody good day and set off for the university where he worked. Once everybody had eaten, Carlotta rinsed the cups and put the plates in the sink, and then they all headed down to the water.

Celia ran in and belly-flopped into the surf, giggling the whole time. She vanished as a wave rolled over her, then popped up again in her sea monster form, turquoise blue with frilly edges on her deep blue fins. Carlotta went after her and scooped her up to blow a raspberry into the crook of her neck, then dropped under the water herself. She turned out to have similar sea monster colouring to her daughter, except for the white patches on her face and hands, which apparently remained in both forms. The fin at the end of her tail was kite-shaped.

"Come on!" Celia called to the boys. "Dai!"

They hurried down to join her in the ocean, and soon all four were swimming out towards the gulf. The weather was beautiful, with bright sunshine glinting on the surface overhead and casting dancing knots of light across the bottom. The waters of the Gulf of Napoli were generally quite shallow, lined with rolling dunes and broad meadows of sea grass swaying gently in the current, while silvery fish darted in and out. Even better, as far as Alberto was concerned, there were several shipwrecks in various stages of disrepair mouldering on the bottom, and even what looked like the wing of a crashed airplane. He'd have to investigate those later.

It was on one of the wrecks, the rusting remains of a battleship already half-buried in sediment, where Carlotta stopped and settled herself on a barnacle-crusted railing.

"Here, sharks! It's breakfast time!" Celia called out. Her mother held up the netted bag of chum she was carrying, and waved it to spread the scent.

Sure enough, it didn't take the sharks long to smell it, and they rose out of the shadow of the ship to circle. The angel sharks were flat, kite-shaped animals a little less than two metres long, with pale, spotted skins and short, moustache-like barbels. They looked almost like rays, but they swam as sharks did, gliding gently with graceful flicks of their tails, and preferred to stay close to a horizontal surface like the bottom or the deck of the sunken ship.

At first the fish were wary of Luca and Alberto, but they didn't mind Carlotta and Celia at all. Carlotta held up chunks of fish for the sharks to snatch from her fingers, while Celia stroked their backs and scratched their shins, and laughed as their barbels tickled her arms and shoulders.

"Here you go." Carlotta handed a fish to Alberto. "They make friends fast."

Alberto held the fish out towards the nearest shark. It drifted closer, and then its jaws darted out from under its head to snatch the bait. Celia squealed in delight.

"You can pat them!" she told the boys, "Just make sure you do it front to back."

"Like the dogfish at home," Luca nodded. "If you do it the other way, it's rough, like sandpaper."

As Carlotta had promised, it didn't take long. Once one shark had realized that Luca and Alberto were not a threat and indeed were a source of food and affection, the rest of the shoal soon followed, Luca scratched one behind the gills while Alberto fed it chunks of fish, then felt another one rub against his leg like a cat, asking for a turn. Soon they were surrounded, and Alberto was starting to have a hard time remembering who'd been fed and who hadn't. They all looked alike to him... although it seemed like Celia could tell which was which, since she was scolding an individual who'd tried to take extra.

"Is there any more?" Luca asked, holding out his empty hands.

Carlotta showed him the empty bag. "Sorry, that's all."

"All gone." Luca let the nearest shark sniff his fingers. It lingered a moment as if hoping something would appear, then turned up its blunt snout and swam away. As quickly as they had appeared, the sharks vanished back into the water. The last one could be seen lying down on the bottom, where it stirred up the sand with its pectoral fins until it was covered, merging with the seafloor.

"They're all gone," said Luca, disappointed.

"I'm afraid their love is very conditional," Carlotta told him.

"We can come again tomorrow," said Celia. "Mamma has this whole week off work." She took Alberto's hand. "Will you teach me to change now?"

"Not out here, Guppy," said Carlotta.

"Why not?" asked Celia, clearly impatient with being told no.

"Because we're a hundred feet under the water," Carlotta pointed out. "If you turn back to human out here, you won't be able to breathe."

"Then we'll go to the top," said Celia. She pulled on Alberto's arm. "Come on, come on."

"Why do you wanna learn this so bad?" Alberto asked her.

"Because," she began, but then her eyes refocused on something behind him. "Zia Sofia!"

"Are you leaving already?" Sofia Scorfano's voice called out. "I didn't think I was that late!"

Alberto turned around. Sofia was now dressed in a traditional tunic of woven seagrass, with a basket-like hat tied under her chin, but she was also wearing pearls around her neck and the hat was decorated with crinoids in a way that would have been reserved for very fancy occasions in the sea off Portorosso. Alberto was surprised, but pleasantly so, to see that her colouring was much like his, in various shades of purple with sharp rays in her fins. He'd been wondering since last year who his sea monster form took after, since he didn't resemble his father's blue and gold and his human mother couldn't have had anything to do with it. Now he knew.

"We weren't leaving, Madame," said Luca.

"I just wanted Alberto to teach me to Change," Celia added, swimming up to give Sofia a hug.

"I'm sure he will in good time, darling," said Sofia. "Are you boys settling in all right?"

"Yes, Ma... Nonna Sofia," said Alberto. Luca said Madame, but Sofia had said in her letters that Alberto could call her Nonna, so she'd probably consider that more polite. "The Gennaris are great."

Sofia nodded. "Any of your aunts and uncles would have been happy to have you," she said, "but I thought the mixed family would be the best place. And you, Luca?"

"I'm doing very well, Madame," Luca assured her.

"Wonderful," she said. "Are you ready to meet the rest of the family, Alberto?"

He nodded eagerly. "Yeah! I mean... yes, please."

"Right this way. We're having a picnic in your honour," Sofia told him.

Alberto took a deep breath, and swam after her as she led the way. This was it... he was finally going to meet his family. Part of him was excited while another was absolutely terrified. He looked over at Luca.

Luca gave him an encouraging smile. "Silenzio, Bruno!" he mouthed.

"Yeah... silenzio, Bruno," Alberto muttered again. Between how nice the Gennaris were and what Giulia had said about family not caring, surely he had nothing to worry about.