Siren's Song

by Heather McCollum

  “And then I screamed into his ear, hoping to startle him enough to make him drop me.”

  Luke nods. “Your scream,” his tone burns. “It shot through me like icy fire, if that makes sense.” He shakes his head. “It was like I erupted, or the curse did, flooding me with power and so much fury. I couldn’t control it.”

  I lay my hand on his. It’s larger than mine and I balance my fingers along it. “But you did. Even at its worst.” I move my face in front so he has to see me. “You didn’t hurt me.”

  He snorts gently. “Just carried you unwillingly miles from home,” he glances up at the ceiling of the Winnebago, “to the middle of nowhere.”

  “Hey,” I bounce a little on the couch. “This isn’t too shabby. There’s a bathroom, a roof, blankets and pillows.” My voice drops slightly. “And privacy.” Luke stares at me from the darkness. I can’t see his features to try to decipher them. I feel my face heat at my unspoken suggestion. “You probably need food, though, and something to drink.”

  I stand quickly to cover my embarrassment and find some cabinets. I switch on a little light inside. “Jackpot,” I say with enthusiasm as I pull out an unopened bag of Cheetos and two bottled waters.

  Luke guzzles down one water, and I hand him the second after I take a few sips. He shakes his head. “There’s more in the cabinet,” I say and push it into his hand. A cell phone vibrates. I know it’s not mine.

  “It’s been ringing for the last thirty minutes,” he says and looks at the screen. “My parents.”

  I huff. “What are we going to say about where we are?”

  “Well, we could just forget about everyone and everything until tomorrow,” Luke suggests and a little grin relaxes his face. The phone beeps that it has received a message. I feel, rather than see, Luke move closer to me in the dark. “We could just hang out, you know, like two regular teenage runaways.”

  I laugh softly to cover the nervous thrill tingling through me. “God, that sounds fantastic.”

  “But…?”

  “How do you know there’s a ‘but’ coming?” I laugh.

  He reaches toward my face and I hold my breath. His warm fingers touch my cheek and brush across to catch a lock of my hair. Luke tucks it behind my ear. “Because you’re pretty responsible, probably comes from being an only child. Plus, your mom just got home from the hospital, and once you think it through you really don’t want her to worry all night.”

  I exhale as silently as I can. “Yeah…I don’t want her to freak. Although I’m sure they both probably already are.” Luke lowers his hand and I glance down. I hit the light button on my watch. 8:07. Yeah, they are freaking right now.

  Luke hands me his phone.

  “Me first?” I take it. “What do I say?”

  Luke laughs. “I’m waiting to hear so I know what to say to my folks.”

  I purse my lips but dial. “Hello?” Dad picks up on the first ring.

  “Dad, it’s Jule. I’m okay.”

  “It’s Julietta!” he yells into the room. “Where are you?! Are you with Luke Whitmore? Did he hurt you?”

  “Yes,” I break in, “I’m with Luke, and no, he didn’t hurt me.” Frustration rolls across my tongue with my words. “He’s the one keeping me safe.” Dad’s silent for a moment, making a tingle prickle up my back. “Eric’s there, isn’t he? Don’t answer,” I add quickly. “Don’t trust him, Dad. He’s dangerous. Mom was right.”

  “Where are you?” Dad asks evenly.

  “Where are we?” I ask Luke.

  Luke springs up and checks the console across the front of the Winnebago. “The ticket in the window says Cedar Grove RV storage. I think we’re on the north side of Cary.”

  “Umm…Cedar Grove between Cary and Durham, maybe.”

  “What? That’s thirty minutes away, at least,” Dad says.

  “We got to talking on a bus,” I lie.

  “A bus? What were you doing on a bus?”

  “You didn’t want me riding Luke’s motorcycle, so we thought we’d try public transportation to get something to eat out of town, you know, after seeing Matt at the hospital. We were both pretty shaken up.” Well, that last part was at least true. “We got to talking, and then we realized we’d gone too far. We got off at the next stop.” Dad doesn’t say anything while he processes my lie. He’s too smart to believe it, but will he let it pass, for now?

  “Eric says you are still in Summit,” Dad articulates slowly.

  “Summit, huh?” I look at Luke. “Must be where my cell is.”

  “What?” Dad asks. “Wait, I’m coming to get you. Where exactly are you?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s pretty dark. There’s an RV storage place on the road.”

  “In Cary?”

  “Yeah.” I watch Luke scan the area outside the windows. He shrugs.

  “Okay, I’m driving out there now. Just…just stay safe. Why are you calling on Luke’s phone?”

  “My cell is in Summit. It’s why Eric thinks I’m there. He’s been tracking me with it.” Nothing but silence on the other end and I wonder if Dad thinks I’m delusional like Mom. “Think it through, Dad. Why is Eric sure where I am? Did he even say?” Another long pause.

  “Just sit tight,” he finally says.

  “Uh…okay. Um, Dad…don’t let Eric come with you.”

  He only hesitates for a moment. “Got it. And Julietta, Luke’s parents have been here. They were worried like us when you two disappeared from the hospital and didn’t come home.”

  “We’ll call them next.”

  “Tell them I’ll pick him up, too.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I say and feel tears press against the back of my eyes. Love or gratitude? I’m not sure. Both, I think. “I’m…I’m sorry.”

  “I love you, Julietta,” he murmurs into the phone. “I’m coming.”

  “And Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t leave Mom home alone with Eric.”

  “She’s coming with me.”

  The phone goes dead and I hand it to Luke. His call is quicker. I hear his mom’s frantic voice on the other line. She ends with “I love you, Luke.”

  Luke looks straight into my eyes. “I love you,” he says back, his words full of true emotion. Silence sits on the other end, and then I hear Carolyn Whitmore sniff. Is she crying? Has she ever heard her son say that before? Say it and mean it, even if the emotion wasn’t prompted by her?

  He hangs up, and I lean back. “Well, we have about thirty minutes before my dad gets here.”

  Luke sinks down into the cushion next to me. “Want to play cards?”

  There’s laughter in his voice. “You got any?” I smile back.

  “I’d bet a batch of my mother’s cookies that there’s a pack somewhere in this beast.”

  I’m hyper aware when his arm presses against mine as he leans into me a fraction. I shiver.

  “You’re cold,” he states, and grabs a blanket.

  “How do you stay so warm in a short-sleeve T-shirt?” I ask as he tucks the blanket loosely around me. His hands graze my hips.

  He shrugs and leans back, his warm arm pressed against mine under the blanket. “I’ve always been hot-blooded. Carolyn made me wear those horrible footie pajamas all the time when I was little. I always woke up drenched in sweat during the night.”

  “I can’t imagine you as a little boy,” I whisper.

  “I was way too serious. She would call me her serious little man. Which was sort of true. By the time I turned five, I began remembering my past lives, past mistakes, the horribleness of the life in store for me. It doesn’t make one very childlike, although I attempted to act the part.”

  “It didn’t work, did it?” I say evenly as if the words are spread across thin ice. No change in pitch to crack into the sea of pity just underneath.

  “Nope. Carolyn has a mother’s instincts. She knew things were wrong.”

  Luke’s leg moves to press against the length of mine under the fleece throw
in a very natural shift.

  “Did they medicate you?” I ask, thinking of Taylin’s dad.

  “No, I just stepped up my act.” He huffs a little laugh. “And then I moved here, met you.”

  “Scowled at me,” I remind him with a thin smile.

  “Again, you forgave me for that,” he half-laughs. He ducks his chin so hair falls across his eyes.

  “Oh, yeah,” I smirk.

  Luke rakes a hand through his windblown hair. His smile fades. “I…I don’t know what to think about this life. I don’t know where it will end up.” His voice is soft. “I don’t dare hope that we’ll be able to break the curse, but I can’t see living without breaking it. Either I will die before I can kill you, or I will die of self-loathing and misery after…” He fades off, not finishing the ghastly prediction. “I can’t continue like this, like this afternoon, putting you in danger.” His voice is so soft I can hardly hear it. “But I’m not strong enough to stay away from you.”

  “Because of the curse,” I say.

  He turns to me. “Because I love you, Jule. More than this bloody curse forces on me.” My breath hitches at his words. His hand comes up to cup my cheek and upper jaw. “The urge from the curse has always been there, growing like an out-of-control itch that sometimes becomes all-consuming. But the other feelings inside, the warm hunger that stands apart from the stark, cold need of the curse,” his thumb strokes my cheek, “is more.”

  My breathing is shallow, silent bites of air as I pray, yearn, hunger after the truth in his words. He continues. “You’re brave, standing up to Eric, standing up to me at my worst in the alley. You never give up, not on Carly, not on your mom, not on me. Jule, you’re smart and strong and funny, and utterly,” his hand runs down the bare landscape of my neck, “beautiful.”

  I close my eyes as I feel the tears press behind them. I blink open.

  “What’s wrong?” Luke asks. His warm hand stills on my shoulder.

  I shake my head just barely. “I…I just want that so badly. For that to be true. For you to really feel that.” I place my palm against his heart under the blanket. “About me, not the Siren.”

  Luke’s hands come up on either side of my head to hold me gently as he leans in and feathers a kiss along my closed lips. He draws me in to his chest and I gladly go, wrapping my arms around the back of his head. My fingers twine in his hair. He pulls back ever so slightly, his lips speaking against mine. “Are my eyes glowing right now?”

  So he knows about that. I draw back and look up into them. “No,” I whisper.

  “I’ve exhausted the curse, I think, running. I tried that before one night when you sang in your sleep. It woke me up.” He scrubs his hands across his face. “I was halfway to your house when I managed to divert. I ran for hours that night, and in the end the force inside me quieted.” A shiver quivers through me at the thought of Luke, eyes glowing, tattoos writhing along his arms, running toward me while I slept. I slap the thought aside.

  “Like now,” he continues and grins a little. “All I feel is…” He pauses, his fingers toying with a curl that’s twisting alongside my cheek. “I love you, Jule,” he says as he stares. His eyes remain open and blessedly dark. That spot above my stomach tightens with hope.

  “I love you, too, Luke,” I whisper. He hesitates, waiting. I smile and shake my head slightly. “Still no glow.”

  “See?” he says and bends back to me, his hands tilting my face. His kiss is warm, seeking, tasting. Perfect.

  Time fades away as we experience, alone, in the dark, a kiss that becomes all-consuming. My mind is enveloped in Luke’s scent, his touch, his flavor. My heart runs hard, pulsing my blood to all parts of my body. No longer cold, I push down the blanket, my hands running up and down the soft cotton T-shirt stretched across Luke’s chest. I lose all track of time. Pausing, we breathe against each other.

  Luke lays his hands on top of mine where they rest. He’s rigid. I’m nearly panting, my brain swimming in a whirlpool of new sensations.

  “I’ve…never felt like this before,” I murmur and lean in to kiss him again but freeze. A sharp glow moves in the space between us. I jerk back. “Oh!”

  I try to yank my hands back but he has them trapped under the force of his. “Wait,” he says, and panic bursts in my chest at the gravelly caricature of his voice. I hold my breath, not wanting to make a sound.

  After several elongated minutes, the pressure on my hands lessens. Luke breathes deep and suddenly releases me. I scoot back on the cushions, my eyes wide, my hormones squelched by fear. He can control it. Don’t make a sound.

  “I think…” His voice moves slow but sounds normal again. I take a silent, long breath in. He looks up at me and the glow in his eyes has faded somewhat. “I think perhaps we shouldn’t…get so close. It’s not safe.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper and bite my lower lip.

  Luke smiles in the dark. “I believe I’m also at fault.” He shakes his head. “That was quite…ungentlemanly of me. It is good we stopped, even if the curse hadn’t interfered.”

  “You sound very old-fashioned,” I tease softly as my thumping heart slows.

  “I am. Old, that is. In my time, we’d probably be considered married just being here together.”

  My eyes widen and he chuckles. I smile back. He sobers some and shakes his head. “You are much too enticing.” He scrubs a hand over his face.

  “Have you ever…?” I leave the question incomplete, knowing he’ll know what I’m asking.

  “Have you?” he counters, the smile gone from his voice.

  I shake my head. “No.”

  Luke’s thumb rubs against my cheek and into my hair. His face relaxes. “Good.”

  “You didn’t answer my question, though,” I say and watch him carefully in the dim light.

  He exhales. “By my fifth life, I decided that I would try to force myself to love someone. So, I married.”

  My stomach clenches. He’s been married! I haven’t asked him about his past lives. Taylin mentioned his medical training and something about Napoleon back at the bonfire. I inhale. “What was her name?” Why that’s important I don’t know, but it’s something to say. I can’t believe he’s been married before.

  “Meredith. She seemed to love me, love us, the way we looked together, anyway, enough for both of us at first. So, I proposed.”

  Jealousy tightens my chest, but I concentrate on remaining relaxed as he continues, speaking quickly. God, even if the curse stopped him from loving her, would he have loved her if he could have?

  “We married, and I lived five guilt-ridden years as her husband before I succumbed to a heart attack after Taylin tripped and fell in front of a train.” Luke leans back against the pillow and clasps my hand. “It was horrible, trying to act like I loved someone I didn’t. I was constantly exhausted, and I think she knew.”

  God, Taylin was hit by a train? How much did that hurt?

  I really need to ask Luke more questions about his lives. They are a part of him. I’ve been so busy trying to figure things out I haven’t taken the time to get to know more of him. I flush in the darkness. “Did you…have kids?” I hold my breath.

  “No; I even went back once I was reborn, to make certain.”

  I sit up straight. “You found Meredith again?” Maybe he really did have feelings for her.

  “Yeah, scared the hell out of her since I looked younger than when she’d known me and she was in her sixties, I think. I ended up telling her I was a ghost. It was the easiest explanation. That I had come back to tell her what a wonderful woman she was and that she should be happy.” He stares off into the dark. “I tried to be convincing.”

  I don’t know whether to laugh or just stare in astonishment, so I sit in silence for a long minute while the questions bubble inside me.

  “Have you ever come back to your old parents?”

  He shakes his head. “No, that scene with Meredith basically stopped me from trying anything like that agai
n. And since I have never left anyone behind that I actually loved, it hasn’t been hard to stay away for enough lives to outlive everyone who might recognize me.”

  “Wow,” I murmur.

  He smiles. “Now, Taylin, she’s a different story. She likes to return as a ghost and scare the shit out of people who pissed her off in her past life.”

  “Why don’t I doubt that?” I smirk. “Was she always so…” I search for a kind enough word.

  “Bitchy?”

  “Uh, yeah. Shocking, mean, sort of?”

  “Well, she’s always been rash. Drove my mother gray with worrying over her temperament in a time when a successful marriage was the only way a good girl could survive. But no…she wasn’t mean.” He looks down at me. “She was beautiful and fun. Laughed a lot and saved every animal she found.” He looks off into the dark. “The curse is hell for me and Matt, but for Taylin, it’s worse. I would do anything to save her from it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, not sure there are any right words.

  Luke runs his thumb over my cheek. “Don’t worry. We’ll break the curse. Either way, you will be safe.” The words are a promise. He smiles. “Besides, if I’m killed I’ll just come back and see you when I’m reborn.”

  My mouth drops open. “Uh, eeww. You’ll be, like, eighteen years younger than me.”

  “Hey, it happens,” he laughs. “Just read the tabloids.”

  I shake my head. “Oh, no, you’re not leaving me.” I squeeze his hand and lean into his arm, as if clutching it will keep him with me. “We will break this thing.”

  I feel him kiss the top of my head. “Aye, we will,” he says softly in a distant accent. “But right now, we’d better head out.”

  I jerk up, hitting his jaw. “Sorry.” I tap my watch. “Crap, let’s go!”