by Lindsey Duga
My spine straightened slightly. I’d known McCarney since I was twelve and he rarely used my first name. It was either “boy” or “Clemmons.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Tell me where you are.”
I gave him the address of the hotel and even the room number.
McCarney was silent for a few long seconds, before I finally said, “Sir?”
“I’m worried about you, Colt. I realize this is what you’ve been trained for. But doing this on your own…”
For a few moments, I was too stunned to reply. I never thought I’d hear something so sentimental from McCarney. Even if he practically raised me, the man was a soldier through and through. Tough. He put his country and its people first. Not his feelings for a boy he’d molded to be a weapon.
I swallowed. Shook my head. “It’ll be fine, sir. There’s a rattler I can get her on at seven this morning back to DC. Besides, you know that if she somehow managed to get her gag loose, she could turn any one of the agents against me. It’s better if I do this solo.” I could almost see her cloth slipping from her mouth, her muttering a few words, and all the men slowly putting their pistols up to their own heads…
“Yes…yes, you’re right. I’ll at least get a car sent to the hotel. You’ll likely have to sign for it, so make sure you leave the siren tied up and gagged before you go down to get it. Am I clear?”
“Crystal, sir.”
“Good.”
At that, the line went dead and I hung up the phone, slipping around the desk of the clerk who was now snoring loudly.
Reentering my room and seeing her there, sleeping still, I walked over to the bed and looked down at her.
She had seemed so good and innocent…until she had used her voice on that man. Had he done something to make her seek retribution? Or had she been operating under someone else’s orders? How often did she use her power like that?
I had so many questions, but one was much more desperate than all the others: what does her voice sound like?
I tried to rationalize it. True, I could keep her gagged, but if she knew I could resist her, it might make this whole ordeal easier. If she was powerless, she might even cooperate.
Except none of that was the real reason. I wanted to hear it. I wanted to test my abilities. I wanted to know that everything I’d gone through to get to this point was worth it.
So I took a seat in the corner chair, and waited.
She woke only two hours later, which was impressive for a girl her size and that amount of chloroform. Resting my elbows on my knees, I steepled my fingers and watched her come to.
She blinked her big blue eyes and shook her head as if she was trying to shake out the drug. After testing her restraints, she started taking deep breaths like she was trying, but failing, not to panic.
“And so it wakes,” I said, my voice low.
Immediately her head jerked to the side, eyes widening. I saw myself reflected in them, so wide with horror and fear.
Her neck craned and her body twisted as she parted her lips. “Let me go.”
The magic in those words was incredible. I was halfway to the bed, reaching for her restraints when my instinct roared to life, halting my steps. I took just a moment to revel in my strength, to feel a rare sense of pride in what I was, when I so often resorted to self-loathing every damn day.
Rubbing my temples to get rid of the magical effects of her words, I growled, “That’s not going to work.”
She said nothing, her eyes narrowing in confusion and disbelief. Surely no one had ever been able to resist her before. Perhaps she was wondering what I was.
Your worst nightmare, siren.
I couldn’t bring myself to even think her actual name. The special name I’d tried to guess over the course of a few nights. Even though the interactions had been brief and one-sided, I’d enjoyed them. Too much, in fact.
She tried a different command. “Untie me.”
My fingers twitched with want to obey her. To obey the magic flowing through the air and into me, but I clenched my fists and shook my head. “You can keep trying, siren, but you won’t control me.”
Her brow furrowed. Slowly she sat up in bed, her warm autumn hair falling around her shoulders. Her fear was tangible, thick in the room like a fog, but curiosity was there, too.
“If you have a question, you can ask,” I told her, not liking her fear, like I was the bad guy here, not the girl who’d caused a man twice her size to scream bloody murder. “Your voice doesn’t work on me, siren.”
Her wrists twisted in her restraints, and she slowly moved her legs to hang over the bed, toes brushing the carpet. “Why do you keep calling me that?”
The magic within it aside, her voice was nice, lilting, and not so abnormal. If I had to place it, she sounded a bit like a chorus girl. Melodic, but not too airy—strong and clear.
“Because that’s what you are,” I answered evenly. Did she not know? Or was she just trying to fool me? No…she couldn’t be that good of an actress. The fear and confusion in her eyes were real. So maybe she understood what she was able to do, but not why she was able to do it.
Shit. This was going to be hard to explain.
Why do you need to tell her anything? a little voice in my head said. She’s a monster.
“I don’t know what that is,” she said finally.
I scanned her form, trying to determine what she was thinking. Her hands were shaking and her skin was pale. If she were completely innocent, she might be demanding why she’d been taken like this, but she seemed to know why. She definitely knew her own power.
“A siren is a creature with powers that allow them to exert their will over others using just their voice. In old texts, they were monsters that lured sailors to their death.”
She sucked in a small breath as she tried to yank her bound hands apart. The rope bristling against her skin was loud in the quiet room, while the sounds from the waking city were deadened by the window glass.
“You’re saying I’m a…”
“Monster, yes.” The faster she accepted this as truth, the easier it would be.
Her brow furrowed in anger, fingers curling into fists. “I am not a monster.”
The magic pouring into her words was thick and powerful and it threatened to overtake me. To make me believe her. After years of “practice,” I was immune to the powers of most monsters. But withstanding hers wasn’t so much immunity as it was a constant battle. I had to shield my mind against her magic in a way that felt like it was testing me.
Her wrists kept pulling against the rope as she stared at the floor. Her eyes roamed from floorboard to floorboard like she was searching for some hidden answer.
“I’m not a monster,” she repeated, the magic in her voice weaker. Less sure.
“Would you like me to prove it to you?” I asked, standing. She lifted her gaze to meet mine as I loomed over her.
She glanced away, to the corner, and then back to me. “How would you do that?”
I took her chin in my hand and she tried to rip her head away. “Relax,” I sighed. “I’m not going to hurt you. Not like you hurt that man.”
At that, her jaw clenched, but her eyes lowered, as if in shame.
I glanced at my watch. The next train was due to leave in an hour, plus I wasn’t sure when the BOI car was supposed to arrive. But perhaps I could convince her to come to the Bureau willingly. Maybe if she realized the harm she could put people in—the whole country in—she would want to cross to the good side.
And if she proved to be useful and loyal, then maybe she could live a life under a tight leash. Like me. It wasn’t much of a life, but it was better than the afterlife.
I had to imagine.
“Just let me prove it to you. Open your mouth,” I said.
She regarded me skeptically,
her nose wrinkling rather cutely.
“If I’m wrong, I’ll let you go.”
That did the trick. She parted her lips and then, without waiting to see if she’d change her mind, I pushed two fingers into the roof of her mouth—finding what I knew would be there.
The smooth surface of a pearl. It was embedded deep so only a portion of it could be felt, but it was easy to tell the difference between flesh and the smooth crystalline calcium carbonate.
The siren’s pearl.
There was a small part of me that had hoped I wouldn’t feel it.
I retracted my hand quickly as she raised her bound hands to wipe at her lips.
“See?” I said.
“See what?”
“You feel it, don’t you?”
“Feel what?”
“Your pearl. It’s what’s in the roof of your mouth. It gives you your powers. Your ability to speak and have people do whatever you tell them to.”
At that, her lips parted once more, this time in shock. “It’s a…pearl? Madame always told me it was left over from tonsillitis surgery when I was younger.”
To me, it seemed like a pretty flimsy excuse. But if you didn’t know much about surgeries or medicine, then it might be easy to hear something like that and simply believe it.
“Madame is the woman who runs the speakeasy. Is she your mother? Does she know what you are?”
The siren’s lips pursed, her gaze shooting downward again. Retreating. I suppose I couldn’t blame her for not trusting her kidnapper with any information about people close to her.
I checked my watch again. Fifty-five minutes to the train. “Look, whether or not you believe me, I have to get you to the Bureau. They’ll decide what to do with you.”
“What to do with me?” she squeaked. “Waitaminute.” Her voice climbed an octave and she began to speak fast. “This is just…too wild. You’re telling me I’m some mythical creature and now you’re kidnapping me?”
“I’m taking you in,” I snapped, my patience stretching thin. I was used to fighting against claws and fangs and horns—big burly monsters that controlled the streets. But with her, I felt like the bad guy here.
I shook myself and steeled my resolve against the fear in her eyes. Evil takes different forms. “You’re the property of the United States government now.”
Her mouth opened and closed several times, her eyes huge. “The…the government? Bushwa!”
I let out a humorless laugh. “It’s true. I work for a specialized division of the BOI.”
“A specialized division for what? Monsters?”
“Yes. You’re not the only monster, but you’re the only one of your kind. The only siren.”
“What does that mean?”
I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. “It means the monsters that you’ve heard stories about—werewolves, gorgons, vampires, cyclops, all of them—they’re real. And common, mostly because their magical parts are easy to come by, but a siren’s pearl is impossibly rare. Thank God. Imagine if there were more of you. Creatures who would use their voice to make people do whatever they wanted?”
Her wrists twisted again, and a shiver passed through her. I frowned at the redness blooming on her skin.
“This doesn’t have to be hard. You can work with the BOI and be under their supervision to make sure you don’t—”
Now it was her turn to laugh. It was harsh and fake, followed by a bitter smile. “Who’s to say that what they would make me do wouldn’t be just as monstrous? Colt, do you really think that the government would use me only for good? And I thought I was naive.”
I flinched at her use of my name. I’d given it to her against my better judgment. I told myself I’d still been trying to seduce her at the time, hoping to get her to talk to me. Now that I’d heard her use it, I wasn’t so sure.
She rose from the bed and shuffled two steps, as much as she could with her ankles tied, and placed her bound hands on my arm.
“Please, let me go. I promise I won’t do anything else. I’ll never say anything ever again. You saw that I don’t speak—it’s because I don’t want to control people, and if you take me to the BOI, they’ll either kill me or use me. Earlier you asked me who Madame was…she’s my foster mother—she rescued me from some bad man who wanted to use me for this power. We spent months on the run. I don’t want to be used, Colt. Please.”
Even if she hadn’t been a siren with magic woven into every word—whether she intended it or not—she would’ve been hard to resist.
I met her blue gaze and then, with my own, traced the round curve of her cheeks, remembering my first thought of her—that she belonged to a different time. A softer world without organized crime, tommy guns, dope, and monsters on every dirty street.
If she truly was as innocent as she claimed, then I didn’t believe that she should be killed or used, but I also knew the damage and destruction she could bring.
I knew all too well.
I had to take her in. Let the BOI figure out what to do with her. Her fate was in their hands. So was mine.
And it wasn’t all bad.
“You’re too dangerous,” I said in a low voice. As I removed my arm from her touch, the man’s screams reverberated in my head.
Her fingers curled inward and she drew her hands back, bowing her head. Her thin shoulders shook, and I wondered if she was crying.
But then she suddenly froze and lifted her head, revealing her dry face and sharpened, narrowed eyes. “Were you expecting company?” she asked.
The car. Shit.
I didn’t have a gag on her yet.
I clapped my hand down on her mouth and she let out a muffled cry.
A knock sounded at the door. “Sir?”
“Yes?” I called back as the siren tried to pull my hand down from her mouth.
“A car’s here for you, sir,” the voice said, not tired at all. Awake and alert even at six in the morning.
“Swell. Be right down.”
Footsteps echoed off to the right.
When I was sure the bellhop was gone, I dropped my hand from her mouth and she glared at me in return. “You didn’t need to do that.”
I shook my head. “I wish I could believe you.” After pulling out the handkerchief from my pocket, I folded it and quickly pressed it across her lips, looping it around to tie it behind her head. She didn’t fight it, but her eyes followed me, and with every movement my chest got tighter and tighter, burning with an uncomfortable heat, and the ache between my shoulder blades was back.
I left her on my bed, bound and gagged, just as McCarney had instructed, and headed into the hall. As I emerged, I caught sight of a maid with long dark hair plaited down her back coming out of the staff entrance on my left.
Wait…the staff entrance was to the left? Then why had the bellhop’s footsteps gone off to the right?
A small, insignificant detail that could be nothing and yet…my instinct nagged me.
I stepped back inside my room and locked the door. The siren made a small, confused sound behind me, but I ignored her. Listening to my gut, I stayed where I was…waiting. For what, I wasn’t exactly sure, but then I heard footsteps outside. More than one pair. Three, maybe four.
What’s going on? Did McCarney send backup even though he said he wouldn’t?
I crossed to the bed in three long strides and tugged the handkerchief out of her mouth.
“What is it?” she asked me.
While my mind jumped from possibility to possibility, something, multiple somethings, clicked beyond the thin hotel walls. A bad feeling crept into my bones and I took out my pocket knife, cutting through her hand restraints in one quick slice.
If it’s not the BOI, who else knows we’re here?
We had to leave. Now.
“Something’s not right. I need
you to—”
My order was cut off by a new yet familiar sound: rat-tat-tat-tat.
A sound I knew all too well. So I did the only thing I had time for—I wrapped my arm around the siren’s lower back and tucked her into my chest just as the first bullet exploded through the wall.
Chapter Seven
The Singer
Dry wall and bits of plaster burst outward in a clean radius as a round of bullets flew through the room. One hit the mattress. The piece of deadly lead made a poof noise as feathers and fluff erupted from the blankets and pillows.
Another cascade followed, raining down upon us while debris of all kinds blasted through the room, each bullet hitting a new target.
I couldn’t see much through the gap between Colt’s arm and his chest, but I didn’t have to see it to know. This was one of those legendary tommy guns I’d heard of. The machine guns and their ability to fire multiple rounds at once lived up to its reputation.
My breath was loud in my ears as Colt’s arms tightened around me and yet I felt like I’d go deaf in the next minute. Having only heard stories about it, I finally understood why gunfire was nicknamed Chicago lightning—it was thunderous with flashes of light caused by the gun’s flare. But apparently it wasn’t just in Chicago.
At first, I was too scared and too stunned that I was here in the middle of a shootout to do anything. Then Colt jerked back, letting out a cry of pain.
The warm liquid running down his arm onto my own skin jarred me, and I screamed. I didn’t even realize the words I’d said, but then they echoed through my brain, my magic clinging to the air around us and traveling through splintered wood and ripped plaster.
“GO AWAY.”
Immediately, all gunfire stopped, and then footsteps, maybe four separate pairs of feet that I counted, pounded down the hallway, running away. As I commanded them to.
Colt slumped against me, a soft moan escaping his chest. He was too heavy to support, but the rope that he’d cut through fell away as I wrapped my arms around his middle and helped him to lie on the torn-apart bed. Feathers, puffs of cotton, and dislodged springs were everywhere, but I didn’t care. The white of it all was quickly colored red by the bullet wound coming from Colt’s left shoulder.
