“No, it’s okay, Dad. I’ve got it.” She tried to smile reassuringly at him.
Brian hesitated before nodding. “All right. I’ll go check on Harper. But we do have to get going soon.”
“Okay. Thanks, Dad,” Gemma said.
They stood in silence until after Brian had gone into the house. Alex finally lifted his head and looked at her. She wanted to brush his brown hair back from his forehead, so she could search his eyes for the warmth that had once been there.
But she didn’t. Not so much because she was afraid of how he would react if she touched him—but because she was afraid that she might not find any warmth left inside him.
“I need you to be honest with me,” Alex told her.
“Okay. I’ll try.”
“No, Gemma,” he snapped. “Not try. Completely honest. If you ever loved me, I need you to be honest.”
She swallowed. “Okay.”
“I loved you,” Alex said, and she couldn’t look at him. “And I think I loved you for a long time. Well, maybe I really liked you for a long time, but once we started dating, I was head over heels for you.”
“I don’t know why you’re telling me this. I have nothing to be honest—”
“Because I loved you with everything in me, and now I can’t stand you,” Alex said. “Except that’s not even true. It’s like I’m supposed to hate you. But I don’t think I ever really can.”
“I’m sorry,” Gemma whispered.
“I’ve thought about it and thought about it. But I can’t think of a single reason why my love turned into hate. I don’t even remember breaking up with you. Do you?”
“Of course I do,” she said, but that was sort of a lie.
Alex hadn’t broken up with her. What she remembered—and she did remember it vividly—was her using the siren song to cast a spell on Alex and convince him that he didn’t love her. She thought about it every day, and even though she knew it kept him safe, she wished she could take it back.
“What did I say? What were my reasons?” Alex demanded.
“You … you said…” Gemma stumbled, trying to come up with a reason for their breakup.
Until a few days ago, Alex had never asked why. He hadn’t even spoken to her in a month. So she’d never had to make up an excuse for why their relationship had ended.
“I didn’t break up with you, did I?” Alex asked. “None of this was my idea. You used your song on me.”
“No, I—”
“Gemma!” Alex yelled, sounding exasperated. “I know you did. I just want to hear you say it.”
She stared down at the driveway, but she felt his eyes burning into her. “It was for your own good.”
“For my own good?” He laughed darkly. “You had no right to do that. No right! To control my feelings, to mess with my heart and my head. Do you understand what you’ve done to me? I can’t enjoy anything. I’m miserable all the time. You took away all of the love I had inside me.”
“I didn’t mean to.” She looked up at him, blinking back tears. “I only wanted you to stop caring about me so you’d be safe, so the sirens wouldn’t go after you anymore. I never meant to hurt you.”
“It doesn’t matter what you meant!” he shouted, and she flinched. “Did you ask me if I wanted this? Did you even talk with me about this before you did it?”
“No, I knew what you would say.”
He scoffed. “You knew what I would say, and you did it anyway?”
“I couldn’t let you get hurt or killed over me!”
“Gemma, I would rather die than feel the way I do now. Do you understand that?” He leaned toward her, his face inches from hers, and his dark eyes burned with rage. “Death would be far better than being unable to love ever again.”
“I didn’t know it would be like that,” she said. “I thought you’d just forget about me. Alex, I never wanted to hurt you.”
“What am I supposed to do now?” Alex asked. “How am I supposed to live the rest of my life?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Maybe I can sing to you and undo it.”
“No.” His eyes widened. “That’s what broke me in the first place! Don’t come anywhere near me with that song. You have no idea how to control or use it. You could end up killing me next.”
She nodded, secretly feeling relieved. Alex was right. She didn’t completely know how to use the song, and after the way she’d accidentally hurt Nathalie before, she didn’t want to try with Alex. If she hurt him more, she’d never be able to forgive herself.
“I know, I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Gemma!” Unable to control his anger any longer, Alex lashed out, and punched the garage door right next to Gemma’s face. She flinched but didn’t move. “Are you scared of me?”
“No.” She stared into his deep brown eyes, and behind the anguish and confusion there was a flicker of warmth—a hint of the Alex she still loved desperately. “Should I be?”
“The worst part of all this is that as pissed off as I am, as much as I hate you, somehow I’m still in love with you, too,” he admitted softly. “There’s parts of me that even your siren song can’t touch.”
He leaned in and kissed her. Gemma had expected this new, angry Alex to be rough and forceful, but he wasn’t. While he wasn’t as gentle as he’d once been, it was because there was a sense of urgency to his kiss. Like he understood that he only had a few precious seconds when the wall could come down, when he could really love her and hold her again.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, but that snapped him out of it. He grabbed her arms and pinned them back against the door. His breath came out raggedly, and he stared at her with a mixture of yearning and contempt.
“I can’t do this,” Alex said finally. He let go of her and stepped back.
“I’ll find a way to help you,” Gemma said. She moved away from the garage door but didn’t go after him. “I’ll fix this mess that I made.”
Alex turned and jogged back to his house, and she let out a deep breath and leaned back against the door. She didn’t know how she’d do it, but she’d do everything in her power to fix what had happened to him.
Harper, Daniel, and Brian came out of the house a few minutes later, and Gemma had apparently collected herself enough, because nobody commented on her emotional state. Daniel rode up with Harper in her car, while Gemma sat in uncomfortable silence with her dad in his truck.
When they arrived at Sundham University, Gemma felt a bit strange. All the other students appeared settled into their dorms, and Harper had a small caravan of people carrying her few belongings past them as they went to her room.
All the bigger furniture was being provided by or rented from the dorm, so Harper only had to bring her personal belongings. She’d chosen a loft bed with a desk underneath, and while it was already in her room, it hadn’t been put together.
Harper’s roommate was already in her room, hanging up a Florence + the Machine poster on the wall, when Gemma came in with Harper. Her back was to them, and her wavy blond hair was pulled up in a loose bun. As Brian and Daniel began the struggle with putting together the loft bed, she came over to introduce herself to them.
“You must be my new roommate,” the girl said. Her brown eyes were wide and surprisingly innocent, but there was something about her smile that made Gemma ill at ease. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”
“Yeah, it took me a little while.” Harper smiled sheepishly.
“Well, that’s okay.” The girl grinned broadly. “My gramma always said the best things in life are worth the wait.”
“Well, I hope so,” Harper said. “I’m Harper Fisher, and this is my little sister, Gemma.”
“Hi,” Gemma said, taking Harper’s roommate’s outstretched hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“I’m Olivia Olsen, but my friends call me Liv,” she said, smiling even wider. “And I hope we’re going to be friends.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Ramifications
Gia had heard her wailing. Aggie and Penn were out for their morning swim already, so far out into the Mediterranean that they couldn’t hear Thea completely losing it after slaughtering the only man she’d ever truly loved.
When Gia came into her room, Thea was sitting on the floor, drenched in blood, as she cradled her lover’s corpse. Thea might have stayed that way all day, until Penn came in and finished her off for killing Bastian.
If it hadn’t been for Gia, Thea wouldn’t have been able to get her wits about her. Since she’d fed, she was thinking clearer than she had in weeks, but her devastation completely overrode that and clouded her judgment.
Fair and soft-spoken, Gia didn’t even ask Thea what had happened or why it had happened. She simply gathered her up and took her into the bathroom to clean her, and then Gia went back out and wrapped Bastian in a bedsheet.
She sent the servants to fetch buckets of water, and when they returned, Gia began sopping up the blood off the floor with blankets and towels. Once Thea had cleaned most of the blood off herself, she joined Gia, kneeling down and scrubbing it from the floor.
Then the two of them went out, carrying Bastian with them. They dove into the sea and took him as far and deep as they could. They weighted his body down with a small boulder, knowing that the fish and the tides would take care of the rest.
When it was all finished, all the blood cleaned off them both from the sea, all the bedding and the body disposed of, Thea offered Gia a small thank-you, but Gia simply brushed it off and went into the dining room to join Aggie and Penn for a late breakfast.
Thea had always thought it was a shame that Gia had become one of them. They referred to her as their sister, since the sirens were a kind of sisterhood, but she wasn’t really. Unlike Thea, Aggie, and Penn, Gia’s parents were mortals. She’d gotten a job as a handmaiden for Persephone, and by all accounts she’d been doing a fine job until the other three girls showed up.
In fact, if Penn, Thea, and Aggie hadn’t dragged her away that day, Gia would’ve been content to stay behind and guard Persephone. She loved to listen to Gia sing as Gia braided Persephone’s hair.
But they had dragged Gia away. Then Persephone had been raped and murdered, and her enraged mother had cursed all four of them forever—even sweet Gia, who had the most beautiful singing voice imaginable.
It didn’t take long for Penn to notice that Bastian had disappeared, and she went berserk. Initially, she suspected foul play, since she couldn’t believe that anybody would leave her. But after days of Thea, Aggie, and Gia placating her, Penn had eventually come around to the idea that Bastian had left.
That didn’t do anything for her rage, though. She stormed around the house, breaking things, yelling, throwing fits. She tore apart several servants simply for looking at her the wrong way.
The one good thing about her preoccupation with Bastian was that Penn hadn’t noticed the change in Thea. Her radiance was back, her hair was once again lush, and she wasn’t so frenetic anymore. Her voice was still husky, and Penn taunted her about that—the way she’d been taunting her for months.
None of the other sirens had understood why she’d stopped feeding with them, although Aggie seemed to support it and cut down herself. Not nearly as much as Thea had, because it was maddening and painful, but she’d made an effort, at least.
Penn’s rage came to a head less than a week after Bastian had died. She was tearing apart his room, looking for any clues as to where he might have gone so she could find him and kill him. The other three tried to stay out of her way, and spent the afternoon in the sitting room.
Gia had taken to playing the piano and singing. Aggie was sitting in a chair, working on her needlepoint, which had been her favorite pastime for over a century. Thea sprawled out on a chaise, attempting to read a book, when Penn burst into the room.
“Which one of you did it?” Penn snarled, and Thea’s heart froze.
“What?” Aggie asked.
“Bastian.” Penn had some pieces of paper crumpled in her hand, and she held them up for all to see. “I found this in his room. Which one of you wrote this?”
“Whatever are you going on about?” Aggie asked, but Thea already knew.
As soon as she’d seen the papers, she understood what Penn was talking about, and she cursed herself for being so stupid. She thought she’d been so careful and had cleaned up any evidence of Bastian’s murder, but she hadn’t thought to erase signs of their affair.
“These!” Penn threw the papers to the ground. “And don’t play dumb. I know one of you did it.”
Aggie set aside her needlepoint, and she got up from the chair. She picked one of the pages up from the floor, smoothing it out.
“Bastian, my dearest love, I cannot wait until our next moment together. Every moment we are apart, I fear I will not survive until I can feel your embrace again,” Aggie read. She looked up from the paper and shook her head. “Forgive me, dear sister, but I do not understand. What do your love letters have to do with anything?”
“Those aren’t my love letters, you nitwit,” Penn hissed. “I never wrote those. One of you did.”
Thea sat up on the chaise, but she said nothing and tried to keep her face expressionless. She could feel Gia watching her from the other side of the piano, but Gia didn’t speak up, either.
“How do you know one of us wrote them?” Aggie asked reasonably. “These could be from the servants or any of Bastian’s old lovers. They could even be from his wife.”
“No, no, no.” Penn shook her head and knelt on the floor to tear through the letters. “This one. Here.” She held it out for Aggie to read.
“Your siren song, it calls to me in the night. Even when I am with your sister, I assure you, I am thinking of you,” Aggie said.
Internally, Thea winced, but she remained motionless. She and Bastian used to slip each other love notes under their bedroom doors. Thea would often carry his in the bodice of her dress so she could take them out and read them over and over again.
But in the process of making love, her dress often came off, and the notes would get lost or left behind. That one she’d apparently left in Bastian’s room after one of their trysts.
“See?” Penn asked, her eyes blazing. “One of you was trying to steal him from me!”
“Penn, even if one of us did sleep with him, and I’m not saying one of us did, I know that I have not,” Aggie said. “That means nothing. Bastian left you. He didn’t run off with one of your sisters. He left us all behind.”
“No.” Penn shook her head and got back up to her feet. “One of you drove him away. One of you was having an affair with him, and you scared him off. You went behind my back, and you chased away the man I love. One of you has to pay.”
“Penn, calm down,” Aggie said. “You don’t want to do anything rash.”
“Which one of you was it?” Penn shouted, ignoring Aggie. In fact, she wasn’t even looking at Aggie. She glared at Thea, and then at Gia.
Thea met her gaze evenly, her heart pounding so loudly in her ears that she heard nothing else. Penn’s eyes flitted over to Gia, who immediately lowered her eyes. She’d done nothing wrong—she simply cowered anytime Penn came at her.
But Penn took that as a sign of guilt.
“It was you!” Penn roared and ran at Gia. “You did this, didn’t you?”
“No, Penn, I would never—” Gia tried to argue with her, but Penn wrapped her hand around Gia’s throat and slammed her back into the wall.
“Penn!” Aggie got to her feet. “Stop it! Put her down!”
“She destroyed my only chance at happiness,” Penn growled. “And now I’m going to destroy her.”
Gia’s blue eyes were wide, and she pulled at Penn’s hand. By then Penn had already begun the transformation into the bird. Her legs were shifting underneath her gown, and she grew taller, with the feet and legs of an emu sticking out below.
Her arms were e
longated, and her fingers had hooked talons at the ends. Her silky black hair thinned out as her head bulged and changed shape to adapt to the mouthful of fangs. The wings burst through the back of the dress, flapping as they unfurled and partially blocking Thea’s view.
Gia never changed, though. Her eyes stayed blue the entire time, so none of her shifted into the bird-monster that could’ve protected her.
Thea had many years to think on this day in the future, and she never came up with a satisfactory reason why Gia didn’t. There were only two reasons she could come up with. Perhaps Gia didn’t believe what was really happening. She didn’t think Penn would actually hurt her, so she didn’t want to defend herself and upset Penn more.
Or maybe Gia wanted to die. She’d never really wanted this life or belonged in it in the first place. So maybe she welcomed Penn’s reaction, and that was why she never fought back or betrayed Thea’s confidence.
With one quick motion, Penn reached in and ripped out Gia’s heart. Aggie screamed for her to stop, but it was already too late. Gia opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She just moved her lips soundlessly, like a fish underwater. When Penn began tearing off her head, Thea closed her eyes.
Thea lowered her head, but she still heard the sound—the tearing of flesh, the cracking of bone, and the wet thud as Gia’s head fell to the floor. Those would be the sounds she’d hear in her nightmares for years to come.
Throughout the whole ordeal, as her sister murdered Gia for a crime that Thea herself had committed, Thea had said absolutely nothing.
THIRTY-FIVE
Determined
The curse of the minotaur and Asterion stuck in Gemma’s head. When he had destroyed the scroll, all the minotaurs had turned to dust. It had been like the curse had never existed.
As soon as they got back from dropping Harper off at college, Gemma knew she had to find the scroll—at any cost. It wasn’t just about her anymore—Alex needed her to do this, too.
She had some time with her dad, who seemed to be taking Harper’s leaving a bit harder than any of them thought he would. They went out for dinner at Pearl’s after they’d gotten back, and Brian had floundered with the conversation. He seemed kinda lost.
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