A dark retelling of The Little Mermaid from the author of HUNTING MONSTERS I suppose if this is going to be recorded somewhere for posterity, I should set the record straight. The ghostwriter will probably cut it all, but hey, it’s the principle of the thing. Dr. Cadence Mbella is the world's most celebrated scholar of the atargati: sentient, intelligent deep-water beings who are most definitely not mermaids. When Cadence decides to release a captive atargati from scientific experimentation and interrogation, she knows her career and her life is forfeit. But she still yearns for the atargati—there is still so much to know about their physiology, their society, their culture. And Cadence would do anything to more fully understand the atargati... no matter what the cost.