“Thanks for your help,” Gemma told Thea and got up. “Sorry I messed up your house.”
“It’s fine. I’ll make Lexi clean it when she gets back.” Thea smiled at her, but Gemma couldn’t muster up a return smile. She lowered her eyes and was walking to the door when Thea spoke again. “It’s not here, Gemma.”
“What?” Gemma turned back to her.
“The scroll. I won’t tell you where it is, but I can tell you that it’s not here,” Thea said, sounding almost irritated to be admitting it to Gemma.
“Why are you telling me this?” Gemma asked. “And how do I know that I can trust you?”
“You can’t.” Thea shrugged. “I’m telling you because…” She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know why I am. I just know that you don’t have much time left before Penn replaces you, and … I don’t want you wasting your time looking for something you’ll never find.”
FIFTEEN
Proxy
“Oh, my gawd, everything about this town is horrible,” Lexi groaned as she flipped through the radio stations in Penn’s convertible. “Why did you have to get a stupid classic car? We could’ve had satellite radio.”
“You know me,” Penn said. “I love the classics.”
They were far enough out of Capri that the radio stations decided to just give up and turn into full-on static. Lexi flicked the radio off, then leaned back in her seat, sulking.
“At least we’re getting out for the day,” Penn said. “That ought to make you happy.”
“No, it only makes me sadder because I get to be reminded of how awesome the rest of the world is compared to that stupid little crap fish town,” Lexi ranted. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared straight ahead at the highway in front of them.
“Fish town?” Penn asked. “What does that even mean?”
“It means it sucks, and you know it.” She turned to Penn, imploring her. “When we first got there, you said we’d only be there a few days. We were just supposed to look real quick and get out. Then we were supposed to go to Buenos Aires—”
“If we didn’t find anything,” Penn amended.
“Right, but we totally didn’t find anything,” Lexi said, then corrected herself. “Well, we didn’t find what we were looking for. So we should move on.”
“Lexi, I’m trying here,” Penn said, trying hard to keep her tone even. “We’re going to meet Gemma’s possible replacement right now. I don’t know what else you expect me to do.”
“I know, but why do we have to wait at all?” Lexi whined. “Why can’t you just kill Gemma and go grab this new girl?”
“Because I don’t want to get stuck with another Gemma again,” Penn explained as if she were talking to a small child. “I want to make sure that Liv is a perfect fit for us.”
“I thought you already decided that she was,” Lexi said. “I mean, that was the point of you going off by yourself to search the area for replacements. You were supposed to have already decided she was perfect.”
“She seems perfect, but I want all of us to approve of her.”
“So if I like her, we can turn her tonight?” Lexi asked.
“No, Thea still needs to meet her,” Penn said.
“Ugh.” Lexi groaned and leaned back in the seat. “Thea will never approve. She’s so dumb.”
“You’re upset, and I understand that, but you really need to watch your tone.” Penn glared over at her.
“Why don’t we just kill Gemma tonight?” Lexi asked. “It was just a full moon the other day, so we have almost a month to find a replacement.”
“No, that’s what happened with Aggie,” Penn said. “And the only reason I killed Aggie when I did was because she was going to kill us if I didn’t. I had no choice, and I’m not doing it again.”
“But if we just killed Gemma, we could get out of this town, and I’m sure outside of Capri there are, like, a million girls way better than her,” Lexi whined.
“Lexi, we will kill Gemma,” Penn assured her. “Soon. Very soon. Just not until I’m certain about the replacement.”
“When we kill her, can I eat her heart?” Lexi asked.
“No.”
“I never get to eat anybody’s heart,” Lexi pouted. “Every time we’ve killed a siren or another immortal, you get to eat their heart, and it makes you all extra hot and feel extra good. It’s not fair. I never get to do anything.”
“Yep. I get it, Lexi,” Penn snapped. “I know how you feel. Now you’re starting to get on my nerves.”
Lexi tried to be quiet, but it only lasted about a minute before she turned to Penn. “Can I eat Daniel’s heart, at least?”
Penn nearly slammed on the brakes but managed to just ask, “What?”
“Well, you were saying that you think he might be related to that Bastian guy or whatever,” Lexi said. “The immortal you dated before I was a siren. If Daniel is related to him, then he probably has a better heart.”
“No, you cannot eat Daniel’s heart,” Penn replied icily.
“Why not?” Lexi asked. “Yeah, he’s cute, but who cares? You get to eat Gemma’s heart, can’t you just leave me your scraps?”
“No.” Penn gripped the steering wheel tightly, and her words came out through her clenched teeth, which were slowly shifting into fangs. “He’s mine.”
“He’s yours?” Lexi scoffed. “You’re being ridiculous. I would expect this kind of sentimental bullshit from Aggie or maybe Thea. But never you.”
“Lexi!” Penn growled. “You are annoying! I’m gonna pull this car over if you don’t shut the hell up!”
“No! I will not shut up!” Lexi shouted at her. “You are annoying me! You and your stupid crush on an idiot human! You’re being a total—”
Penn jerked the car to the shoulder and slammed on the brakes. Lexi finally shut up and grabbed on to the door to brace herself. Without saying anything, Penn turned and attacked Lexi.
She climbed on top of her, grabbing Lexi’s silky hair to keep her from pulling away, and she hit her in the face over and over again. Lexi squealed and clawed at Penn’s hand, but she never really fought back.
When she’d finished, Penn sat back down in the driver’s seat. As she’d been hitting Lexi, her eyes had changed into a bird’s. But she began to calm herself, and her eyes returned to normal.
What really worked was licking the blood off her hands. Siren blood tasted sweeter and was far more powerful than mortal hearts. In a few minutes her voice would be more enchanting and she’d be even more radiant.
Lexi sat up slowly, and out of the corner of her eye Penn could see that her face was smashed up. Within the hour, Lexi’s broken face would be back to its normal beauty. Until then, she’d be in pain, and that made Penn smile.
“Now, then,” Penn said as she pulled back out on the road. “I think we’ll both agree that I will kill who I want, when I want.”
“Yes,” Lexi mumbled, her words slurred because both of her lips were busted open.
“Now clean yourself up,” Penn continued in the same cheerful, calm voice. “You want to make a good impression on the new girl, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Lexi repeated, probably afraid that if she didn’t say anything, Penn would attack her again. This was a fair guess, because Penn had tasted the siren blood, and she was eager to have more.
By the time they reached Auburnton, Lexi had begun to heal, but she wasn’t completely cleaned. She wiped the dried blood from her face while Penn hummed along with the radio, when it finally found a station.
“There she is,” Penn said as she pulled over on the side of the road beneath a maple tree.
“Where?” Lexi asked, and Penn pointed to a girl sitting at an outside café across the street.
Penn had told her they would meet her there, and the girl kept looking around, presumably checking for Penn. Her wavy blond hair was kept shoulder-length, and she chewed her lip as she waited. She couldn’t be more than eighteen, and there was something wide-eyed
and innocent about her.
“Shall we go meet her?” Penn asked, and without waiting for Lexi to answer, she got out of the car.
“Wait.” Lexi rushed around the car and caught up to Penn as she walked across the street. “Why her? Why do you like her?”
“I chose Gemma because I thought she had siren traits—her beauty, her love of water, her strength—and I thought we could work with her stubbornness,” Penn said. “Gemma didn’t like us from the start, but I thought we could overcome that once she saw the gift we’d given her.”
They were still half a block down from the café, but the girl had spotted them. She stood up and waved her arm wildly in the air. Penn gave her a small polite wave back.
“Now I realize my mistake,” Penn said, lowering her voice. “I realize that what will make a good siren is a good follower. This girl’s plain, but she’ll become beautiful. She can’t swim, but she’ll learn. But she’s the kind of girl that will do anything to fit in.”
Penn smiled at Lexi. “She’ll do whatever I say.”
The girl walked over to meet them at the edge of the café, nearly knocking over a table as she did, and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
“Sorry.” The girl smiled widely at them both. “I wasn’t sure if this was the right café, and I’ve been so worried I’ve been waiting at the wrong one. I’ve been here for a half hour, but now you’re here, so I’m glad that it is the right one.
“And now I’m rambling. Sorry,” the girl continued without taking a breath, and then she turned her attention to Lexi. “Oh, my gosh, you are so pretty! I can’t believe how beautiful you both are. Sorry. That’s probably weird for me to say, and I’m sure you get that all the time, but you really are just so pretty.”
“Thanks,” Lexi said, then leaned toward Penn and whispered, “I think you may have gone a little heavy on the siren song this time. She’s even more submissive than Sawyer was.”
“I haven’t even used the song on her,” Penn told her. “She’s just naturally this infatuated.”
“Wow.” Lexi stared at the girl. “She’s perfect.”
“I know,” Penn agreed. “Lexi, meet Olivia Olsen.”
“Liv,” the girl said as she extended her hand. “My friends call me Liv, and I’m hoping that we’ll all be good friends.”
“Oh, I’m certain we will be,” Lexi said with a wide smile.
SIXTEEN
Man-Eater
Gemma had snuck behind the dark velvet curtains to inspect Daniel’s work on the sets backstage. She thought it might help take her mind off of her growing hunger.
Planks of wood were stacked, and a skeleton of two-by-fours was the only part really put together. Daniel obviously tried to keep his work space somewhat orderly, but not all of his equipment seemed to fit in the oversized toolbox, so some tools were lying about.
His blueprints were stacked together on top of a table. Gemma bent over them and tried to get an idea of the set. It had to be easily turned, so it could serve double duty as two sets. He also planned to create walls that could slide in to create the illusion of more private quarters, like bedrooms.
“Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented,” Aiden said, his voice low as he recited his lines, “that you shall be my wife, your dowry ’greed on, and you will…” He trailed off and muttered the beginnings of his speech over again.
Practice had finished up about ten minutes ago, with everyone dispersing, but Aiden had lingered behind to go over his lines again. He’d wandered backstage, his brow creased in thought, and continued to mumble to himself.
It was dimly lit backstage, so apparently he hadn’t seen Gemma yet. She stayed where she was, leaning on the table, and watched him struggle. The concern in his brown eyes, as if he worried he’d never be able to learn his part, endeared him a bit more to Gemma.
So far, all she’d really seen of Aiden had been overly confident attempts at flirting with an uninterested Thea, or blundering through a scene and completely butchering his lines. It had never occurred to Gemma that he actually cared about the part or that he was even trying.
She’d assumed that he’d skated through life on his good looks and his father’s name. He’d graduated from college last year, and the town had all but hailed it as the return of the Golden Boy and given him a key to the city.
But seeing him rub his temple with his battered script rolled up in his hand humanized him. For the first time, Aiden actually looked attractive to Gemma. Her stomach seemed to growl in agreement, and she swallowed back her hunger.
“Need some help?” Gemma asked, and he jumped a bit, startled by her presence. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No, you didn’t scare me,” he assured her with a grin. He walked closer to where she was standing, but the table was still between them. “I thought I was the only one here. What are you doing?”
She shrugged and looked back down at the plans. “I didn’t really have anywhere else to go.”
The truth was that she didn’t know how much longer she could keep her appetite in control, and Aiden was looking very tempting right now.
Anxiety only seemed to make her hunger worse, and after her conversation with Thea the day before, she’d been rather dejected. She didn’t know where else to look for the scroll, and wasn’t sure how much good it would do her even if she found it.
On top of that she’d had something of a run-in with Alex today. Her car wasn’t working, so Gemma’d been outside looking under the hood of the car, attempting to make sense of it, when Alex had come home. She’d lifted her head just in time to see him getting out of his own car, wearing his dirty work clothes.
Just the sight of him was enough to make her heart drop to her stomach. Even as much as he’d changed over the last month, she could still see the boy she’d fallen in love with, but wrapped in an even sexier package. His sleeve pulled taut on his arm, and she remembered the way he’d held her and promised to love her forever.
Then, as he was walking up to his house, he’d glanced over at her. She’d lifted her hand to offer a small wave, but he glared with such intense hate that it felt as if her heart had literally been ripped in two. It was all she’d been able to do to keep herself from bursting into tears on the spot.
She reminded herself that this was what she wanted, that this was what was best for Alex. The sirens didn’t care about him at all now that he hated her.
This was the only way to keep Alex safe, and even if it meant that he’d never be able to love her again, Gemma knew that she’d made the right choice. No matter what else happened between the two of them, she could always remember the times that they’d shared together, and that had to be enough.
“Now, I don’t believe that for a second,” Aiden said, and Gemma looked up at him. “I’m sure you have plenty of places where you could be on a Wednesday night.”
“Sadly, no,” she said with a thin smile. “At least none that I’d rather go to than the dusty backstage of the theater.”
“You really love the theater, then?” Aiden asked.
“I love pretending to be someone else for an hour or two,” she admitted.
“Well, would you want to help me pretend to be someone else for a little while?” Aiden asked with an alluring smile.
“I’ll be happy to help with the play, if that’s what you’re asking,” Gemma said, returning his expression with a coy one of her own.
He laughed and tapped the script in his hand. “I guess I can settle for that for now.”
“You seemed to be having trouble with the same bit. Do you want to try again and I’ll see if I can give you hints if you get stuck?” Gemma suggested.
“Sure.” Aiden handed her the script. She had her own, but his was already out. “The page is folded down. I’ve been getting stuck with it a lot.”
She hopped up on the table, crossing her legs so he wouldn’t be able to see up her skirt, and opened the book to the dog-eared page. His passages were highlighted, s
o she found the spot easily, and then nodded to him.
“Okay.” Aiden shook his body, mentally preparing himself for the scene. “Okay.” He cleared this throat, then began, “Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented that you shall be my wife, your dowry ’greed on, and I will…” He stumbled again. “I will…”
“It’s not I will,” Gemma said. “It’s and will you, if that helps at all.”
“Your dowry ’greed on, and will you…” Aiden tried again, then shook his head. “I have no idea what you’ll do.”
She laughed lightly. “And will you, nill you, I will marry you.”
“Wow, Gemma, that’s a pretty bold proposition,” Aiden said with a broad smile. “We hardly even know each other. We should probably go on a few dates before you start making declarations of marriage.”
Gemma laughed, but before she could come up with an equally flirty response, the back door to the theater slammed shut. Both she and Aiden turned to see who it was, and they heard the clack of wedge sandals on the stairs a few seconds before Lexi appeared.
“This is play rehearsal?” Lexi asked with a disparaging look around the stage. “It looks more like somebody’s dirty basement and two horny teenagers.”
“I’m not a teenager,” Aiden said, doing his best to stand up for them, but Gemma couldn’t tell if he was annoyed by Lexi’s interruption or pleased by the appearance of the leggy blonde.
“This isn’t play rehearsal,” Gemma said. “That’s over.”
“Are you serious?” Lexi groaned. “Where the hell is Thea, then?”
Gemma shook her head. “I don’t know. I thought Penn picked her up.”
“No, Penn was busy…”—Lexi stopped to choose her words carefully, smiling wickedly as she did—“entertaining a guest. So I came down to get Thea.”
“She probably started walking home,” Gemma said and set Aiden’s script aside.
“Great. Now I have to go track her down,” Lexi said.
Gemma hopped down off the table, almost bumping into Aiden, who’d moved closer to her as she’d been talking.
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