Into the Drowning Deep (Rolling in the Deep, #1)

by Mira Grant

all sent out to sea with the Atargatis in order to record a documentary on the reality of mermaids. They weren’t supposed to find anything. Mermaids aren’t real.

If she couldn’t see it, it wouldn’t be real. That was the way the world worked, wasn’t it?

Do I think they found mermaids? Yes. Of course I do. And I think the mermaids ate them all.

This is when you should be planning for your future, not chasing the ghosts of your childhood.”

and a whale-watching expedition was by its very nature a substantial time commitment.

But there was no explaining that to someone who didn’t want to hear it.

“You still chasing mermaids, Vic?” he asked. “I’ve never been chasing mermaids,” she said. “I’ve only ever been chasing Anne.” Jay nodded solemnly. “Well, then. I hope you find her.”

Nothing that reminded them, as a family, of Anne was allowed to be forgotten; she was the ghost at every table, and they’d keep her with them forever if they could.

But they inflect them differently. They have tones of voice, rising notes for excitement, falling notes for sorrow … Nothing in the sea is ever identical to what it was five minutes ago.”

“But baby, if it’s not an answer, if it’s not the piece you’ve been looking for, don’t let it break you.”

“I’m already broken,”

Her answers were waiting in the Mariana Trench. She knew it.

“You’re making the scary face again.” “Which one?” “The one that says you’re going to burn down the world if that’s what it takes to get what you want.” “It’s good to know I’m easy to read.”

She’d died because Imagine had discovered mermaids, and, upon finding them, hadn’t been able to control them.

He was handsome, in an expensive way: everything about him looked more designed than natural, as if he’d been refined in a factory for creating lovely, forgettable men. His teeth were white; his jaw was strong; his hair was dark and thick;

The footage is dismissed as false; the tragedy becomes an unavoidable accident. The word hoax overtakes the much less pleasant slaughter. There was no hoax. The footage is real.”

The best predators always learned how to masquerade as things that wouldn’t seem threatening. That was how they got close enough to strike.

“You did all those things when you still loved me more than you loved your work. I forgave you then, because my love for you was stronger than my sense of self-preservation. I grew up.”

Prove that mermaids were real and the conspiracy theorists would swarm out of the woodwork to paint the lost voyage as a sacrifice in the name of greater ratings, holding up the old footage and screaming about how it had been buried under the label of “hoax” and “special effect,” conveniently ignoring the fact that their hands had been the ones to hold the shovel. Prove that mermaids weren’t real, and well … That simply didn’t bear thinking about.

No matter how hard you tried to run, it always caught up with you in the end.

studied mermaids because she knew they existed, that they were going to be brought to the surface in her lifetime, and that she was probably not going to be the one to discover them.

“Something being mean doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

Sometimes loving each other isn’t enough to make up for all the things you know about another person.”

This is proof that even smart people can be wrong.”

ASL was a beautiful language.

Mermaids were one thing. Norovirus was something entirely different, and far more believably dangerous.

They had already used some baby sign with her, taking advantage of the fact that in most infants, hand dexterity developed faster than vocal acuity.

People were strange. People were also wonderful.

“It started as a therapy thing, believe it or not. Debilitating social anxiety and self-image issues.

“It’s just that people make assumptions, and sometimes it’s easier on me if I can … skip past them and get to what comes next.”