“You’re all wet,” Liv said. “Were you out swimming?”
“I was out taking care of something,” Penn replied, and sat down in a chair, seemingly not caring that her dress was soaking wet and would dampen the furniture.
“Oh, I was wondering if we could go swimming. Thea said I had to wait until you got back,” Liv said.
“Maybe later.” Penn smiled briefly at her, then turned her attention to Thea.
“Because I’ve been sitting inside all afternoon without anything to do—” Liv began, but Penn held up her hand to cut her off.
“Have you talked to Gemma today?” Penn asked Thea, completely ignoring Liv.
Thea picked up her script from where she’d set it aside on an end table and pretended to be immersed in it. “She texted me to ask why I wasn’t at rehearsal.”
“Do you know if she’s still searching for the scroll?” Penn asked as she combed her fingers through her long hair.
Thea kept her eyes fixed on the page and her face as expressionless as possible when she said, “She hasn’t said anything lately.”
“What scroll?” Liv asked.
Penn glared at her. “The scroll you were supposed to be watching out for. Remember? Back when the plan was for you to stay with Harper and make sure she didn’t figure out how to kill us all. You were supposed to find out what she knew about the scroll, but instead, you threw a fit, and now you’re here.”
“Oh.” Liv paused. “That scroll.”
“Yes, that one,” Penn said, and rolled her eyes.
“But … you guys still have it, right?” Liv asked.
“I have it under lock and key,” Thea lied, and avoided making eye contact with anyone.
She’d given Gemma and Harper the scroll last week, but if Penn found out, she’d kill her. Not figuratively, but literally rip off her head, tear out her heart, and murder her. Penn had put Thea in charge of the scroll because she didn’t trust Lexi with that kind of responsibility, and Penn was too busy playing with Daniel to concern herself with it.
That was the one good part about Liv’s leaving college. If she snooped around Harper long enough, she’d have been bound to figure out that they had the scroll, and Penn would eventually deduce that Thea had given it to them.
That didn’t change the fact that Liv was psychotic and couldn’t handle a simple assignment.
“Where is it?” Liv asked.
Thea cast her a look. “Like I would trust you with that information.”
“What would I do with it? I don’t want to hurt you guys.” Liv smiled warmly at them. “You’re my family.”
“It’s better if you don’t know,” Penn said. “The fewer people that know, the safer it is.”
“Well, if Thea has it, then Harper or Gemma obviously don’t. So we’re safe. What does it matter if I’m at college or not?” Liv asked.
“Why don’t you just go out and swim for a while?” Penn suggested. She kept her tone amazingly even when she talked to Liv, using more self-discipline than Thea knew she had.
“Really?” Liv asked, and practically jumped off the couch.
“Penn,” Thea hissed. “She shouldn’t be unsupervised.”
Penn waved off Thea’s concern. “She can handle it for a few minutes. I’ll come out and join you, so stay close to the bay.” As Liv darted off to the back door, Penn called after her, “And don’t kill anyone! I mean it.”
“I won’t. Thank you!” Liv shouted as she ran out the door.
“It’s so ridiculous.” Penn shook her head. “We have one siren who refuses to feed and another one who won’t stop. Maybe we should have Gemma and Liv hang out together, and they can rub off on each other. Then they’ll end up somewhere in the middle. Like me.”
“You think you’re in the middle? You eat like once a week,” Thea said.
“It’s better than Liv, who thinks she should eat three times a day. And your once-a-month diet is impossible.”
“It’s not impossible.”
“What was all that about when I came in?” Penn asked.
“Nothing much. Just that Liv is totally insane and horrible and way worse than Lexi and Gemma combined.”
“She’s not so bad,” Penn insisted. “She’s new. Give her time.”
“Really?” Thea arched an eyebrow. “That’s the card you’re playing now? You were ready to behead Gemma for much less.”
“We’ve got two horrible sirens, and we need to make at least one of them work.”
“And your money’s on Liv?” Thea was dubious.
“My money’s not on anyone right now.” Penn sighed and stood up. “I should probably go out and join her.”
“You’re really going to swim with her?” Thea asked.
Penn shrugged. “Why not?”
“You’ve been swimming for a while,” Thea said. “I mean, I assumed you were out stalking Daniel, too, but it couldn’t have taken that much time.”
“I wasn’t stalking him.” Penn laughed and started walking toward the back door. “And I swam around for a bit after I talked to him.”
Thea got up and followed Penn. “How did it go?”
“What?” Penn stopped near the kitchen island and turned back to face Thea.
“Your talk with Daniel. Based on your current good mood, I’d guess it went fairly well.”
Penn smiled coyly. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Why are you sneaking off to see Daniel anyway? Why don’t you just tell me that’s where you’re going?” Thea asked. “I know you are, and I don’t care that you have some weird crush on him.”
Penn laughed and put a hand on either side of Thea’s face, almost cradling it as she spoke to her. “Thea, my dear sister, I love you. But we’ve spent nearly every day of our entire lives together. This is something that I want to keep private. Just for me. Let me have it.”
Then Penn leaned forward, giving Thea a quick peck on the cheek before turning around and walking away.
“Okay…” Thea was too dumbstruck to talk for a second. “What’s going on? You’re freaking me out. Did Daniel do something to you?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Penn assured her as she opened the back door. “And don’t worry. Everything will be fine. I’ll get Liv under control, and this will all work out. I promise.”
Penn laughed again, then shut the door behind her. Through the broken window, Thea watched as she jumped off the cliff.
Thea put her hands on the back of her head and let out a deep breath. Penn’s attempts at calming her only made things worse. Whenever Penn assured her that everything would turn out okay, things always went to hell.
So if the past was any indication, all of this was going to end up very, very bad.
SIX
Breathless
It was still strange, waking up in a house without Harper. The laundry wasn’t magically folded in the basket, and the dishes didn’t miraculously do themselves. Gemma didn’t mind stepping up and filling the hole her sister had left at home, but it still felt very weird.
The freedom was nice, not that Harper wasn’t still texting and calling her all the time. Gemma wasn’t completely sure how Harper managed to get schoolwork done, but knowing her, she was probably finishing it all, along with extra credit assignments.
The biggest thing Harper’s absence had left her with was time to think. Gemma no longer had somebody across the hall to discuss things with. She had told her dad everything now, but it wasn’t the same as talking to Harper.
As Gemma scrubbed the dishes from last night’s supper, her mind wandered to all the things that worried her. Like if she would ever really be able to break the curse, and what was taking Lydia so long with the scroll translations.
And why had Thea skipped play practice the night before? Thea claimed she had to babysit Liv while Penn ran an errand, but she refused to explain beyond that.
Daniel had shown up late for rehearsal last night, and he’d seemed out of sorts. Gemma tried to talk to him about it
, but he’d just brushed her off. She couldn’t help but fear that Thea’s absence and Daniel’s uneasiness were tied together.
After Gemma rinsed off the last dish and put it in the drainer, she leaned against the sink. She stared out the window at Alex’s house next door, and her worries were replaced by a familiar longing pulling at her heart.
It had been over a week since she’d last spoken to Alex, and that conversation had been tumultuous. He’d yelled at her until she finally explained to him that she’d gotten him to break up with her using her siren song. He was hurt and furious, but then he’d kissed her.
It was the first time she’d kissed him in over a month, and sometimes at night, she’d replay it over in her mind. He’d been angry, so his lips had pressed against hers with urgency and passion, but the tenderness hidden beneath had been unmistakable. The very thought of it made her heart ache.
Gemma decided that she wasn’t going to live this way. He was right next door, and if she missed him, then she should go see him. She didn’t want to waste what little time she had left on this earth missing someone who lived right next door.
She dried off her hands, smoothed out her hair, and walked over to Alex’s house. Taking a deep breath, she knocked on his front door. But all of her confidence completely disappeared when he opened the door, and she saw him standing in front of her.
His T-shirt pulled taut against his chest and arms, and Gemma’d almost forgotten how much more muscular he’d gotten since he started working at the docks. He’d gotten his chestnut hair cut since she’d seen him last, but it was still a little longer than he usually wore it, so it landed just above his eyebrows.
Alex looked older, and she hadn’t gotten used to it. There was still some of his innocence, some of the boy next door hidden in his features, but he had a new maturity and strength to his face—a hardness in his jaw and brow that wasn’t there before.
But it was his eyes that struck her momentarily mute. For the first time in a while, she could actually see him in them. Lately, his mahogany eyes had been a mask revealing nothing, but now there he was, the boy she’d fallen desperately in love with, and it was enough to take her breath away.
“Hello?” Alex asked, sounding bemused as she stared dumbly up at him.
“Hey,” Gemma said with a dopey smile. “Hi. I hope you don’t mind that I stopped by.”
“No, of course not.” He grinned, his whole face lighting up, and he stepped aside. “Come on in.”
“Are you sure?” Gemma hesitated before entering, but he gestured widely to his house.
“Yeah. I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” he said.
“You have?” Gemma asked uncertainly as she slid past him.
“Yeah.” Alex walked toward the living room, so she followed him, and he looked back over his shoulder as he talked to her. “I mean, I talked to Harper when she was still in town, and she kinda updated me on everything that’s going on with you.”
“Did she?” Gemma asked. “That’s good. I think.”
Daniel had borrowed Alex’s car last week, then used it in an attempt to rescue Gemma, and he’d gotten it bogged down with mud. Harper and Daniel had returned the car to Alex and helped clean it up.
Gemma had wanted to help, but she was afraid that things would still be weird, so she’d focused on trying to translate the scroll while Harper had filled Alex in on all the goings-on with the sirens.
“So what did you want to talk to me about?” Gemma asked.
Alex motioned for her to sit down, and she sat tentatively on the couch. He remained standing for a few more seconds, then sat down at the other end.
“I didn’t like the way we left things last week,” he said finally. “But I didn’t want to bother you with stupid drama.”
“You’re not bothering me,” Gemma said quickly.
He smiled crookedly and stared off at the brick fireplace in the corner. His mother had decorated the living room in shabby chic, and the couch was covered in a weird, flowery pink fabric. Grade-school pictures of Alex hung in frames made of reclaimed wood.
Gemma let her eyes linger on a picture of him when he was twelve. His cowlick had been atrocious, but even then, there’d been something cute about him. He’d walked her home from school in the rain once, when Harper had been sick.
He’d been in middle school at the time, but he walked over to the grade school to get her because he had an umbrella, and he didn’t think that Gemma would. That might have been the very early beginnings of her crush on him.
“I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do, anymore.” Alex ran a hand through his hair and looked over at Gemma.
“What do you mean?”
“With you. I’m not your boyfriend, and I don’t even…” He shook his head. “I just wanted to tell you that I worry about you, and if you need me—for anything—I’ll be there in a second. I want to help you.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you.”
“Sorry, I’ve been talking, and you came over here to say something. Sorry. Go ahead.”
“No, it’s okay,” she said. “I wanted to check up on you.”
“On me?” He was taken aback. “Why?”
“Because of how things went the last time we talked.”
His face paled for a moment. “I’m sorry for yelling at you.”
“No, you had every right to,” Gemma said.
“No, I didn’t.” He shook his head. “I was angry, and I was hurt, but I know that whatever you did, you did it because you cared about me. You were doing what you thought was best to protect me.”
“I really did, Alex.” She met his eyes when she said it, hoping to convey her sincerity. “I really hope you understand that. Everything I did, I did because I—I cared about you.”
“I know that. And even then, I think I knew that. I was just in such a fog of confusion and misery and just … bleakness. But I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that. It was uncalled for, and I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I understand,” she said. “You’ve been going through something terrible, and it’s my fault. You should be mad at me. I did something major to you without even asking.”
“Gemma, it’s okay. I’m okay,” he reassured her.
“You do seem to be doing so much better than the last time I saw you.”
It wasn’t just the look in his eyes, the way he looked more like himself—although that was a big part of it. Alex just seemed relaxed and calmer. Before, he’d been so brooding and angsty, but now, there was a lightness about him again.
“I’m feeling so much better,” Alex said with a relieved smile. “It’s like this fog has been lifted, you know?”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, and she meant it.
But what she didn’t dare ask was why? Not because she didn’t want to know but because she was afraid of what the answer might be.
When she’d used the siren song on Alex, it had been to make him stop loving her. And he had. Or at least it appeared that way, but it had also caused him to spiral into despair and anger.
Now he was better. He should still be trapped under the spell, and though she was very happy that he wasn’t, Gemma didn’t know how to explain it. The siren curse hadn’t been broken, so the song should still have an effect on him.
Unless he didn’t love her anymore. Maybe it wasn’t the song itself that hurt him but the fact that it conflicted with his own feelings for her. And if he stopped loving her, the conflict would disappear.
“I’m not like happy happy, but I’m closer than I’ve been in a while,” Alex went on with the same broad smile.
“I will find a way to get you all the way back to normal,” she promised him, forcing back the lump in her throat. “I’m going to find a way to undo the curse, then that will set you free, too.”
Or at least that was her plan. From what Lydia had told her, and from Thea’s story about Asterion and the minotaurs, once the curse was broken, it was like it had never existed. W
ith Asterion, that meant that the immortality the curse had given him along with his bullhead had been taken away, and since he was centuries old, he’d turned into dust.
Although no one had explicitly stated it, Gemma hoped that if the siren curse was broken, any enchantments of their siren song would be lifted as well. She didn’t know for sure if breaking the curse would only affect the cursed themselves—so Thea and Penn would turn to dust, but all of the siren spells would still live on—but she hoped it would erase everything, including the spell she put on Alex.
Until then, she could only hope the spell would continue to weaken until any lingering enchantment eventually disappeared.
Not that it would make that much of a difference anymore, not if Alex had set himself free by falling out of love with her.
She was surprised to feel the ache in her chest growing, her heart tearing in half all over again. This is what she’d wanted. Setting Alex free and away from her to keep him safe. It was best for him, and she knew that.
But it felt like losing him all over again. After their kiss last week, she’d been rather stupidly and selfishly hoping that they would be able to be together again once this was all over—or sooner than that, if she was being completely honest.
“Is this about the scroll that Harper was telling me about?” Alex asked, pulling her from her thoughts.
He sat at the other end of the couch, his dark eyes resting on her, and the distance between them had never felt so great. All she wanted to do was reach out and touch him, to have him pull her into his arms one last time and taste his lips as they pressed against hers.
But she couldn’t, so she forced a smile and nodded. “Yeah. We’re still working on it, but we’ll find a way.”
“You do what you need to do for yourself, but you don’t need to worry about me.”
“How can I not worry about you? I broke you.”
“That’s the thing.” He licked his lips. “I don’t really feel broken anymore.”
“I noticed,” she said, hoping her words didn’t sound as pained as they felt.
“And I think…” A slight blush broke out on his tanned cheeks, and he lowered his eyes. “I think it was because we kissed.”
Elegy (A Watersong Novel) Page 5
