Sirens Unbound

by Laura Engelhardt

  She waved her hand as if flicking away a cobweb, “But it’s dissipating as I speak. Soon, you won’t even know it was there. Amazing. I wonder how it was done. All that magick, now released. Where will it go?” Titania’s voice trailed off.

  But Cordelia’s silence must have worried her, because Titania quickly continued, “This is a good thing, I think. Cordelia, I swear no faerie did this. I’d be amazed if Num himself could even crack it. I’d like to meet the mage with the skill to break Morgan’s death binding.”

  Cordelia was starting to feel more centered, though she still felt unbearably light. She cautiously let go of the chair, wondering if she would float to the sky or if Titania would catch her before she went too far. But Cordelia’s feet remained on the ground and her sense of being lighter than air faded into a mild euphoria. She opened her mouth, but swallowed before she could speak.

  “I feel so … different,” Cordelia said finally, and her voice rang out with a resonance that caused the tea cups to rattle on their saucers. She tried again, more softly. “I am different. You say the curse has been lifted? Morgan le Fay’s blood-geas?”

  “I think so,” Titania said. “I could feel it before, a light webbing of sound echoing around you. But it’s gone now.”

  Cordelia laughed. She was overcome with the conviction that she had done the right thing. She didn’t know how or why the curse had been lifted, but felt certain the timing was no accident. She felt almost drunk on the sense of euphoria, and she called out in her new voice that hummed with the ocean’s vitality: “Titania, First and Last Queen of the Aos Sí, I will bring your people out. This I swear by the grace of God and all the power of the sea. I will bring you out!”

  There is no known counter-spell to the siren spell; thus the spell cannot be ‘deactivated’ once active. Indeed, despite substantial study, counter-mages have not been able to develop a counter-spell for any of the construct spells. Notably, during the early part of the nineteenth century, Chinese mages devoted enormous resources to developing a counter for Chía’s were-spell in their effort to restore his vampire victims. They were ultimately unsuccessful, and the current consensus among counter-mages is that all construct spells are invulnerable to counter-spelling. While some experts believe that construct spells might be removed through “breaking” magick, such techniques were lost around the time the Gobi Desert was destroyed.

  – Sirens: An Overview for the Newly-Transitioned, 3rd ed. (2015), by Mira Bant de Atlantic, p. 137.

  Chapter 30

  “Are you all right?” Mira asked Amy, her ears ringing. She felt wrecked, forcing the words out while struggling to draw in sufficient air to speak.

  “I’m not sure,” Amy replied after a long moment. All the air had been knocked out of her. “That was … intense. Are you all right?” Amy looked down at Mira, who was still on the ground.

  Now that Mira had caught her breath, she felt nothing but relief — like taking off your high heels at the end of a long day. The ringing became more distant, almost as if there were a brass band playing across town. “My butt feels a little bruised, but otherwise, I actually feel better than I did before.” Mira’s sudden sense of exhilaration caught her by surprise, and she slowly sat up. She had been standing next to the table, and was glad she hadn’t picked up Amy’s cup before she’d been struck down.

  “I’m relieved that you felt it, too. For a moment, I thought something had gone terribly wrong with the surgery,” Amy admitted. “I felt like someone had stomped on my chest and tried to rip it open. Then it was gone.”

  “Maybe I should turn on the news. Something could be going on. I saw this Dateline report once where soldiers set off a sonic bomb. It flattened the camp, and that’s how it felt,” Mira said.

  Mira fumbled with the remote. Eventually she handed it to Amy, who turned on the TV. It was almost 9:30, and most of the morning shows were national programs, with no breaking stories. Amy found one with a local news segment, but nothing was reported. They watched intently, flipping through the channels. The sense of lightness was distracting. After almost an hour, they had seen nothing to explain what they experienced. Mira stood up and started looking for her cell phone. “I need to call Devin,” she said belatedly.

  Amy looked at her quizzically, but simply went to get her laptop from the bedroom. Perhaps there would be something mentioned online.

  “Devin,” Mira said when he picked up. “Did you feel something odd a little while ago?”

  “No. What’s going on?” he replied.

  “I don’t know, but both Amy and I were flattened by — something. It was only for a minute, but it was extreme. There’s nothing being reported on TV.”

  “Are you all right?” Devin asked.

  “We’re fine now.”

  “Better than fine,” Amy called out, as she walked back with her computer open. She was clearly listening to the conversation.

  “We both feel better than we did,” Mira clarified.

  “I didn’t feel anything,” Devin said, his voice tense.

  “We’re trying to look into it.”

  “Don’t leave the apartment until I get there.” Devin hung up before Mira could respond.

  “There’s nothing on the Internet,” Amy reported as she hit the refresh button again.

  “I don’t get it,” Mira finally said. “We both felt something. I still feel different.”

  “But it’s a good different, right?” Amy asked, and Mira nodded her agreement. “I know what I would tell a patient who came in telling me he suddenly felt a lot better than he used to and wanted to get it checked out,” Amy snorted. “But given that both of us felt similar things at the same time, I don’t think this can be explained by a regular diagnosis.”

  Mira looked anxious. “I remember reading about a Russian assassin using poison gas to kill a British guy and his daughter.”

  The doorbell rang, and Mira went to the door. “Yes?”

  “It’s me, Devin.”

  Mira opened the door; Devin strode purposefully into the apartment, sweeping his gaze over every inch of the room.

  “Amy, this is Devin. He’s my—”

  “Bodyguard. Thomas wanted to make sure nothing happened to you after the attack on his home. He didn’t want to worry you before, but given the fact that unknown perpetrators assaulted him this severely, he wanted to make sure you had protection as well.”

  Mira was a bit astonished by Devin’s explanation. It was so reasonable, she wished they had come up with it before.

  Amy stared at Devin. It looked like he was wearing a priest’s cassock until she blinked and the entire garment shifted, its black color dissolving into a golden glow. She squinted, and it appeared as though he were wearing a robe made of gold mesh, with tiny red pinpricks of light weaving through it. As he turned, the red lights seemed to swim through the fabric in sinuous, synchronized strokes.

  Devin stalked around the room, stopping to look more closely at the HVAC unit under the window. Amy shifted her focus back to the problem at hand with some difficulty. “Do you think this could be some kind of attack on me because of Thomas?” Amy asked.

  “I don’t know. What happened?” Devin asked.

  “We both had the wind knocked out of us. I literally fell flat on the floor. And then, in a moment, it was gone. I feel amazing, now.”

  “Like when you go to the hair salon, and chop six inches off your hair. Your head suddenly feels too light for your body,” Amy added.

  “Yes. Like I’m suddenly ten pounds lighter,” Mira agreed.

  “I don’t think this is the same as that poison gas attack,” Amy said, responding to Mira’s earlier suggestion. “But it could be some form of neurotoxin that’s inducing euphoria.”

  “We need to get you out of here,” Devin said swiftly. “Do you have those robes I gave you?” he asked Mira. Mira hurried to her bedroom to get the enchanted cassocks Devin had brought for them both.

  “I’m not sure this is a gas, though.
It doesn’t have the same—” Amy’s cellphone on the table buzzed and she answered it reflexively. “Hello?”

  “Amy, it’s Thomas.”

  “Hey, Thomas, it’s actually not a great time—” Amy began.

  “I know what happened to you. I just hung up with Mary. Um, are you sitting down?”

  Amy’s phone started buzzing with a second call from Mary. She sent it to voicemail. “Yes. What’s going on?”

  “Amy, a friend of mine was just able to lift a — a curse that was on our family line for generations. I know this sounds crazy, but it’s true. Our ancestors were put under a blood-geas at the end of the Third Mage War, and until now, it bound all of us.”

  Thomas spoke rapidly, and Amy, disconcerted by Devin’s looming presence right behind her, wasn’t sure she understood. Amy turned to look at Devin, while she repeated back Thomas’ explanation in an effort to make sense of it. “You’re saying that a mage you know just removed some spell that’s been on me and you and anyone related to whichever of our ancestors fought in the Third Mage War.”

  “More or less. Yes.”

  Devin’s mouth gaped open in surprise.

  “So, the reason I now feel so much lighter is because a restriction that’s been on me my entire life, but which I somehow wasn’t aware of, has been removed.” Amy had always been good in a crisis, but it was Thomas’ obvious understanding of what had happened that enabled her to focus so keenly on the essential facts.

  “Yes. At least, I feel almost drunk,” Thomas replied. “That one moment was pretty rough — but I don’t think there will be any other effects.”

  “How do you know?” Amy asked.

  “I trust her,” Thomas said, taken aback by the challenge in Amy’s voice. “Anyway, you can see magick now, right? Look at yourself in the mirror and see if you notice anything different. My mage friend said she could see the binding before, but I couldn’t. Maybe you’ll see a change. There are other people I had better call. I’ve got to go.”

  Amy started walking towards her bedroom, where she had a full-length mirror on the back of her closet door. “But Thomas, Kiera had the same reaction I did. Does that mean she’s related to us? Did you know that before you sent her?”

  “Amy, there’s a lot you don’t know — mainly because of the geas. I’m not really sure how to explain it. I tried to tell Mary, but honestly, it didn’t go very well.”

  “Why didn’t it go well with Mary?” Amy asked. Perhaps she should have picked up Mary’s call and asked her to hold on.

  “I’m not sure Mary believed me,” Thomas admitted. “Listen, there are a lot of people I have to call, and I don’t know everyone’s number by heart. I couldn’t even reach Mo — hey, actually, is Kiera still there? Can you put her on the line for a second?”

  Amy turned back to Devin. “Can you hand this to Kiera? Thomas wants to talk to her.” She wanted to look at herself in the mirror to see if she noticed a difference.

  Devin took the phone as Amy opened her bedroom door, pulling it partially shut behind her. She turned on the overheads along with the closet light so she could see better. Her mundane sight was still somewhat blurry when it was too bright, but given that she wanted to see through mage sight, more light would probably help. Amy really wished Ted or another mage were around to help her interpret what she was seeing. Now that their initial bout of scans and tests were done, finding a mage was the most important next step. At least Elder Simon had begun returning Eli’s calls.

  She couldn’t see much of a difference in herself from what she remembered before. Since the surgery, she had learned that auras were real — or at least everyone seemed to have a glow around them, an odd kind of shifting mirage that looked like colored steam, or perhaps more like multi-colored heat waves rising off hot pavement.

  Some people’s auras (at least, that’s what she decided to term the ambient glow) looked like a kaleidoscope turning, with colors and patterns writhing in a seamless flow, while others stayed fairly consistent in their pattern and only changed color. Hers had been a pale pink with streaks of green that reminded her of a cathedral in Florence she had visited once. She had thought her aura’s pattern looked a little like the headband she wore every day when she struggled to fit in at St. Paul’s and started using the Preppy Handbook as a guide.

  Now, her aura was no longer plaid or striped. The shades of green and pink were undulating in waves of color that alternated in an almost hypnotic flow. Perhaps this new, relaxed pattern was why she felt so free. Amy stared at herself in her mirror for a moment. Was this an acid trip gone wrong? Maybe all she had accomplished with her surgery was to recreate the same psychedelic visions researchers had caused with their LSD experiments in the 1970s.

  “Amy?” Devin’s knock startled her; she wasn’t used to hearing a man’s voice in her apartment, especially one so deep and gravelly.

  “Coming,” Amy replied, hurrying out of the bedroom.

  Devin held out her cellphone. “It’s Thomas, still.”

  Amy took the phone. “What has Mary so upset?”

  “Let me try to explain this better. I couldn’t tell you or Mary this before because of the curse. Please don’t hang up on me.”

  Amy was impatient with Thomas’ warning. Of course, she wasn’t going to hang up; she wanted answers and didn’t share Mary’s inability to handle conflict.

  “Cordelia and I are something called sirens. You probably never have heard the word — I know I almost flunked World Lit because I couldn’t actually understand the essay question on the Odyssey. But sirens do still exist, and it’s a weird process to become one. But we are.”

  “You’re what? A siren? What is that?”

  “Sirens are mage constructs like the weres. Except created by Aphrodite, not Chía. We’ve got some magical powers. We’re part fae, like Mike, but our ancestry is from the sea nymphs so it’s different—”

  Amy interrupted. “Okay, so what does that have to do with the geas that just broke? You were what, bound to secrecy?” Amy didn’t understand exactly why this kind of revelation would be so upsetting or shocking to Mary. Thomas and Cordelia had always been a little more free-spirited than she and Mary were, so the fact that they had biological differences as well wasn’t too much of a stretch. It wasn’t like Thomas was telling Mary she was a mage construct.

  “Yeah, kind of. Listen, it’s a shock to be having this conversation. I mean, I’ve tried before. But I just couldn’t. I physically couldn’t get the words out. Couldn’t explain anything to anyone who was descended from a siren. And its effect on you meant that you couldn’t actually hear or understand any discussion of sirens.”

  Thomas’ voice had a new resonance that came through despite the static on the sea-to-land long-distance call. It was causing Amy to see flashes of color as his voice echoed through the line. She had to close her eyes. Devin took her arm just as her legs started to wobble, and he helped her to the couch.

  Amy tried to focus on Thomas. She put him on speakerphone so Devin could hear in case she missed something. “All right. So, I understand that you’ve been hiding this fact — through no fault of your own. But why is Mary having difficulty? Did this change hit her harder?”

  Amy wanted to call Mary, but figured it would be best to know what she was getting into. Mary could get so set in her views that it was hard to talk her around. So far, this was odd, but it didn’t seem odd enough to have Mary angry.

  “I don’t quite know how to say it. I said it all wrong with Mary.”

  “Thomas, just spit it out.” Amy’s head had begun to ache a little listening to him, but she needed to get more information.

  “Mom’s alive.”

  “Thomas, you aren’t making sense. No wonder Mary’s annoyed with you.” Amy felt her heart start to pound. This was an off-limit kind of discussion. They didn’t talk about Mom and Dad, except when alcohol was involved. There were charlatans out there — or maybe real mages, though the enclaves swore it couldn’t be done �
� who promised to hold séances and contact your loved ones from beyond the grave. Mary had insisted on trying it, but Mike had met the various mediums and said they were lying.

  “Mom isn’t dead.”

  Amy didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. It was fairly unbelievable, like the dreams where your deepest wish was somehow fulfilled, but then you woke up with tears leaking into your pillow because it was just a dream. “Thomas, stop messing with me. This isn’t fair.” Amy could feel the pounding in her chest like a hammer and was glad she was sitting down.

  “I’m not messing with you. Mom’s alive, and not in the guardian angel sense. I mean, she never died, she just … changed.” Thomas must have realized how weak he sounded, because he started talking fast again.

  “Amy, I transitioned into a siren just before I dropped out of college. I mean, that’s why I dropped out. Because of all the changes. But the main thing is that when I became a siren, it really affected Mom. I mean, changed her. She was, like, out of control. Or really, overpowered is maybe the better word for it. Oh my God, it’s too much to try to explain all of this. There’s a book I could send you—”

  “Mom’s alive? Is she in some kind of trouble?”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s just that when the boys were born and I changed, her power increased exponentially. She couldn’t handle the changes, couldn’t maintain her appearance anymore. And then we had to find the children and we couldn’t tell you anything about any of it because of the Goddamn geas. You wouldn’t have recognized her, believed she was Mom—”

  “What are you saying? That Mom’s been around all this time and I just didn’t know it?” Amy knew she sounded rough. Sharp maybe.

  “Yes.”

  “So, where is she?” Amy demanded.

  “Here.” Mira walked back into the room.

  “Kiera?” Amy looked at Mira.

  “Yes,” Thomas answered. “I know she doesn’t look like Mom, but she is. Amy, I—” Amy hit end on her phone, and looked at Mira. “I don’t believe you,” Amy said flatly.