an: sorry I've kept you all waiting for so long, but real life is catching up to me. thanks so much for all of the wonderful feedback that i've been getting. I wasn't so sure about this story when I started it, but your reviews have really inspired me to keep on going.

"Have you seen Nixie around?" Lyla asked Zac as her and Sirena entered the cafe. They shook off the pink raincoats that they borrowed from Zac's room, careful not to get each other wet.

"Are those my mother's raincoats?" Zac pointed at the two dripping wet plastic coats as they were laid on the seat of the booth so that they would not get anyone wet.

"That has nothing to do with where Nixie is," Lyla replied pointedly, smacking his accusing finger away. "Do you know where Nixie's gone? It's raining horribly outside and she wasn't at the moon pool when we went to go and search for her there."

"Well she hasn't been here," said Evie as she walked out from behind the counter with a somewhat worried look on her face. Evie had been surprisingly kind to all of them since she found out that they were all mermaids. "I've been here working all day and I haven't seen her come in at all. There actually haven't been a lot of people in here today because of the storm."

"We don't know where else she could have gone," stated Sirena, her voice becoming soft, like the way it did when she was becoming worried.

"Could she have been swept away by the storm?" asked Zac, rustling his dark hair with his hand.

"I don't think that this storm is that powerful just yet," replied Evie as she looked out the glass doors of the cafe. "But the wind's just about to pick up, according to the news channel. I even think that the cafe is closing up early today because of the storm."

"But we have to find Nixie! She'd most likely come here if she didn't return to Rita's, but we already checked there and we can't find her!" Sirena nearly cried. She abruptly sat in the chair that Zac vacated when her and Lyla entered the store and thrust her face into her hands. Lyla patted her gently on the back, knowing exactly how Sirena felt and wishing that she could be expressing the same kind of emotion.

"Is there anywhere else she would go?" asked Zac, grimacing at the sadness displayed by the girls. It was unsettling how closely the three mermaids were connected and it made Zac feel a little sad that there wasn't any other merman out there in the ocean that he could share that kind of sisterly bond with.

"Only by the docks or on Mako, but even Nixie wouldn't risk being out there all alone when she knows that a storm is coming and when it's raining like this," replied Lyla, her pink lips twitching downwards.

"Well you'd all better go and find a safe place to hole up, because I was just told that we're going to be closing shop in five minutes," said Evie as she walked back over to them after having spoken to Carly. "There aren't that many people here, but they'll still see you for what you really are if you don't all get going now. And that means you too, Zac."

Zac looked at his girlfriend wistful and picked her once on the cheek before he turned to Lyla.

"Did you pack any other raincoats?" he asked.

"No, we only just took these," replied Lyla, looking away from Zac and Evie's little scene. "I can swim back to your place since the water isn't so bad just yet and I'll meet you and Sirena there."

"No, that's okay," Zac replied, grimacing at the pinkness of the raincoats as he picked them out of the booth. "I'll swim back and you two can wear these because...well, they're a horribly bright shade of pink, aren't they?"

It was a rhetorical question, but Lyla responded nonetheless.

"Are you worried about your manhood?" she teased, a small smile forming on her lips as she punched his arm gently.

"Wha- no!" Zac almost shouted. "They're just really, really pink! And pink isn't really my color."

"Yeah, sure," Sirena almost laughed, thankful for the small distraction from Nixie being missing.

"C'mon, Sirena, let's go," Zac rolled his eyes as he grabbed both of the raincoats and headed for the door, Evie laughing in the background as she watched her boyfriend trying to throw the pink raincoat on over his head without messing up his hair or getting wet.

"I'll see you guys there," Lyla smiled as she dashed out the door and into the rain.

"Are you stalking me?" asked Cam as he donned his signature smirk, his eyes twinkling brightly despite the darkness of the shed.

"What?" Nixie narrowed her eyes at him. She crossed her arms with great significance and turned her nose up at him. "I wouldn't even dream of it!"

"Then why are you hiding out in my shed?" He did not mean to laugh, but he could not believe the situation that they were both being put in at the moment.

"Because it's wet outside!" Nixie sputtered, getting onto her feet. "It's wet and I can't get wet and this was the first thing that I saw! I wasn't stalking you, and what did you mean by asking if I had been reading your mind? Since when did you think that mermaids could read people's minds?"

Nixie was rather grumpy from that entire day. There was nothing more that she wanted to do then go back to Rita's and eat a nice meal or head back to the moon pool and just take a nice, long, warm nap and be away from the rest of the world, but she knew that it was a rather unlikely idea.

"Woah, woah, woah," Cam started, putting his hands up in a protest, "chill out there, Nixie. I just wanted to know what you were doing in my shed. Like how did you get here and why are you here? Why aren't you back at home with - with your other friends?"

It was odd that the three mermaids would ever be separated, really.

"Well we had a disagreement, that's all," Nixie replied, believing that compliance would be the only way that she would be able to get Cam to leave her to her own business in his tiny, little, blue shed.

The two of them stood there for a moment, unsure of how to continue. Cam and Nixie stared at each other, their eyes boring into the eyes of the other, almost as if they were challenging each other to break first. Cam found that it was rather odd that Nixie showed up in his little shed after he had been thinking about her and he was secretly hoping that she wouldn't have been able to read his mind because of the thoughts that he had been having about her lately.

"Why don't you come inside?" Cam breathed finally, breaking the silence and stepping out of the way so that she could leave the shed.

"I...I don't want to get wet," she replied, looking cautiously at both him and the rain.

"Well here," he said, taking out the umbrella that he had been using and thrusting it open so that he could hold it over her. "I'll save you once again if you grab me that can of broth behind you."

Reluctantly, Nixie agreed and allowed Cam to take her into his home, not even daring a risk back at the shed. She didn't want to see if she had left behind her dignity.

"Mum, I've brought some company," Cam said as he and Nixie entered his home.

"All I did was send you out for some broth, Cam," replied his mother as she rounded the corner and entered the entrance of the home as she dried her wet hands with a white rag. She extended her arm to Nixie. "Hello, I'm Cam's mother. And who might you be?"

"I'm Nixie," she replied, awkwardly taking Cam's mother's hand and shaking it in the odd, land-lover way.

"I found her caught in the rain without a ride and she lives all the way by Zac, so I figured she could just stay here with us until the storm's over," Cam said, throwing his mother a smile so that she knew that he meant well.

"Ah, it's fine, dear," his mother replied. "And she's just in time for dinner! Now, where's that broth, Cam?"

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