“And your pool is out of order, right?” Whitney used her siren voice to get the lady to agree. That had been another reason they stopped at the grungy motel—the pool. She doubted anyone staying at the place would be using it, and the fence would keep anyone passing from seeing what they were up to.
“Yes, sweetie, out of order.” The lady was almost mumbling as she stood up and grabbed a sign from behind the desk that said “Pool Closed – Out of Order”. She placed it right where Whitney was standing, and then sat down to watch her show again.
Whitney counted out the correct amount of cash for the rooms and swapped it for the keys before the lady came back to her senses. She still wasn’t used to using her voice on people, and found it strange to do. They were always left in a trance that could last hours. She wondered if it hurt them, and even after assurances by Sam that no one was hurt, it still felt weird.
After getting around the building and settling the others in their rooms, she found the pool and was happy to discover that the front desk lady put an “Out of Order” sign on the door to the pool also.
“I had her close the pool, and we can take turns watching by the door. That should get us enough time to get hydrated before we sleep.” Whitney hopped out of the van, and the sirens followed. “Whoever wants to go first can go. I’ll keep watch.”
Whitney showed the waiting siren into the pool. She had just been in the water before their road trip, so she was doing okay. All seven readily jumped into the water, changing into their green monster forms at the last minute. While the blue siren were half human when they transformed, the green siren kept a more fish-like appearance in their night human form. It took a while for Whitney to get used to it, but since her friends at school had all been greens, once she moved to the island it didn’t take her much time.
Whitney watched the pool gate as they swam around. Something still felt off. After more than a half an hour, several of the siren got out of the pool; only the youngest still remained in.
“I can keep watch while you go in,” Trudy offered.
“I’ll just take a shower in the room,” Whitney replied. Something told her that she should keep her eyes open for danger, and that something dangerous was certainly near. “Let’s go up to the rooms and get some rest. We’ll head farther inland as soon as we get enough sleep.”
The expressions on the siren faces around her would have made her laugh in any other circumstance. Siren, and mer for that matter, didn’t go inland. It was dangerous for them to not be around water. But that would also make it safe. The only other thing they needed beyond water was blood, and she still wasn’t too sure how they were going to do that.
Whitney ushered the siren to the two rooms and found the situation was better than expected when she discovered that the two rooms were connected via a doorway that was unlockable. She remembered once as a child being in a hotel with rooms that connected, but since then she had stayed in all new places that didn’t have that feature. It was luck that she chose a place like that now, as it was best to keep them all together.
“I need to check with the front desk. Stay here, and I’ll be right back.”
Trudy gave Whitney a look that said that while the other greens might be okay with being bossed around, she wasn’t. Whitney smiled at her friend and nodded, trying to reassure her that she wasn’t just being dominant. Trudy must have caught the small strain that came through her smile because she nodded back.
Shutting the door and hearing it lock behind her made her feel a bit better, but being on the second floor wasn’t too reassuring for a quick getaway. She had expected rooms labeled 100 would be on the lower level, but they weren’t. Heading down the open staircase at the end of the motel walkway, she slowed as she came to the bottom step. Cautiously, she made her way around the corner. There was a car parked outside the main office that hadn’t been there before. Quickly she turned back and went to the van. Luckily, she had grabbed her keys on the way out. As she walked to the van, Trudy came outside the room.
“I’ll be right back,” she called to her.
Trudy nodded and returned to the room.
Whitney drove the van out the back driveway of the motel and around the corner to a vacant lot. It would be better to not have the van around drawing attention to their stay at all. Why she hadn’t thought of that before was beyond her. The small wooded area between the lot and motel was enough to keep it hidden from view, but close enough to run to if needed. Whitney hurried back to the motel and checked for the car. It was gone. Keeping to the shadows, she made it back to the front office.
Inside was the same lady, and she appeared to be still dazed. Whitney hadn’t used that much power on her, or at least she hoped not. Whitney stood in front of the older lady and watched as she didn’t even notice her there.
“Did my friends just stop by?” Whitney asked.
Her glassed-over eyes gazed back at Whitney. She didn’t need to use any force; the woman was still too gone to care.
“I doubt they were your friends. They looked like mafia guys searching for some blond girl with a bunch of high school kids,” the lady finally answered.
Whitney nodded and hurried back out of the office. Climbing the stairs two at a time, she went back to the rooms and the waiting siren. Inside, most of the siren were already asleep. No one needed to tell them to sleep, they had gotten the hint that Whitney wasn’t going to slow down anytime soon. Whitney walked over to Trudy who was still awake.
“Problem?” Trudy asked, pulling her red curls up into a ponytail.
“Possibly. I think we need help,” Whitney replied.
She had thought of every option she could, but this was getting trickier. The farther they went inland, the worse it would get as they would be getting into other night human territories. And there was the blood problem. If they fed on humans in someone else’s land, they would be hunted by them, too. So far she was running out of ideas, and all she really knew was that she had to keep those seven siren safe. Siren or not, they were innocent night humans.
“Is there anyone you trust?” Trudy asked. She knew everything about Whitney’s former life in the night human world.
“I trust Cassie, but her mate is the beta of my old clan. If I tell her, it’s as good as telling him,” Whitney replied. She had gone to school with Cassie for several years, and for most of it Cassie’s mate, Nate, was a jerk. It was only right before she moved away that Whitney saw that he wasn’t always a bad guy. That still didn’t make her trust him. He was a legitimate night human. The night human council recognized the skinwalkers as a clan. He would have to turn her over if he knew, whether he was a jerk or not.
“Is it bad enough that we need to take the chance?” Her friend verbalized what Whitney was already pondering herself. Trudy didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she hugged Whitney. “Thanks for coming back for us. We would have never known until they killed us.”
Whitney patted her shorter friend’s head. She would always come back for friends, and now that she thought about it, a new feeling that felt much like the skinwalker she once had bloomed inside her, too. She would protect the innocent. That part of her was always there, but now as she looked around the room sprawled with sleeping siren, she knew it was a part of her that would never go away.
“Get some sleep,” she told her friend. “I guess I have a phone call to make.”
Whitney sat nervously, gazing out the window. She knew calling her friend in the middle of the night wasn’t going to wake her, but she still felt anxious about the whole situation. At least Cassie was still Cassie, and she hadn’t asked a single question. Oddly enough, all she requested was a picture of the nearest tree and told her she’d be right there. Whitney had no clue what that meant, but Cassie was a witch, and Whitney had to guess it was some new spell she was using now. Cassie assured her that Nate would be fine with her visiting. Whitney hoped that was true and Cassie’s mate would let her come. He was almost as protective as Sam.
As the air around the tree began to shimmer, Whitney realized something was happening, and it was probably best if she got closer to that tree. She left the motel room and locked the door behind her just to be safe. By the time she made it down the steps and to the tree, Cassie was leaning against it with a large, black panther lying only feet away.
“Ah, so that’s how Nate lets you leave the house. He sends Jared with you,” Whitney teased about the cat.
Cassie threw herself into Whitney’s arms, and the panther didn’t lift his head. Whitney laughed as Cassie knocked her off-balance, and they both ended up on the ground. It had been a long time since they had last talked, and even longer since they had last seen each other. Now that she was an outlawed night human, Whitney wasn’t sure she was ever going to see Cassie again.
“I’ve been waiting like months for you to call me back,” Cassie scolded her as they both sat up.
Whitney shrugged. She had one big excuse for not calling her friend back, and she wasn’t happy about having to tell her secret. Of anyone, Cassie deserved a break from the night human world drama. Her friend had endured more in the night human world without even knowing she was part of it for most of the time. Whitney always tried her best to not even talk about the clan Cassie belonged to and just let her have a life without all that. Now there was no getting around it.
“Did you bring the blood?” Whitney asked. She wasn’t particularly hungry, but she could tell that a couple of the teens upstairs were.
“Of course.” Cassie patted a cooler right beside her. “I’ve been practicing the whole travel-by-tree thing and can bring non-sidhe with me now. All it took was getting the spell right.” That made more sense now. Cassie’s father was a sidhe night human and her mother a witch. It didn’t surprise Whitney in the least that Cassie found a way to combine sidhe traveling with magic.
The panther beside Cassie lifted his head. Cassie reached over and petted him like he was a family pet and not a two-hundred-pound predator watching over her.
“I know. I’ll get to that,” she told the black cat. “So Jared is a bit on edge because of your new self that you failed to mention the last time we spoke.”
Whitney shook her head. Sam was convinced she wouldn’t have to worry about her friend and the skinwalkers finding out she was a night human again, because the siren were so secret that most people had never met one, but it was Cassie. She was smarter than most people. Whitney had a feeling she couldn’t fool her friend and asking her to bring blood was kind of a giveaway anyway. And it seemed like the panther wasn’t fooled, either.
“Long story short?” Whitney asked. Cassie bobbed her head to say okay. “A few months ago I almost drowned, and my swim instructor happened to be a night human. He thought he was saving me and instead accidentally turned me. Now I’m a siren.”
Cassie covered her mouth in shock. She’d obviously been expecting that Whitney was a night human, but she wasn’t expecting a siren or that she had been turned accidentally into one. It was a shock to Whitney, too, but at least she had months to come to terms with it.
“Wait a second. You’re a mermaid?”
Whitney shrugged. That was as close as any night human was going to think of her. The mer might be hung up on their different clans, but the rest of the night human world wasn’t. Siren meant mermaid to them. Actually, Whitney tried to hide her smirk at the thought of calling Sam a mermaid. He would love that one. She would have to tell Cassie not to call him that if they ever met.
“Yep, pink tail and all.” That was as much of a description as Whitney had for her. The rest of it had to be seen to understand the whole swirly body marks. The panther let out a grumble. “And don’t you even think about eating me. I might have a fish tail, but I don’t taste like fish.”
“So you need the blood because you’re an outlawed night human? Makes so much more sense now,” Cassie deducted.
“And you can’t tell Nate. He’ll tell your uncle, and then the hunters will come again. I have enough to deal with without having to fool hunters.”
“Again?”
Whitney shrugged. “It’s been a busy few months. Hunters are the least of my troubles right now. I called you because I need help. The mer world is at war, and basically, it’s all of the other mer clans against the siren.”
“You’re a siren, right?”
“Yep. I was lucky enough to join the clan everyone basically wants to kill. It’s been a blast. But at least I got Sam. That makes it a bit easier to deal with.”
“Sam?” Now Cassie was really interested. The whole time they’d grown up together, neither Cassie nor Whitney had ever had a boyfriend. Cassie’s uncle and now the alpha of her clan forbid anyone from dating her, and Whitney wasn’t a witch. The skinwalkers all had a witch as a mate. So neither of them had much of a dating life.
Whitney felt a blush coming to her cheeks. Shoot. She shouldn’t have said anything about Sam. Now she was going to have to admit that she had a mate.
“We can discuss Sam later.” She hoped avoidance would work. “Right now my problem is that I have seven siren up in those two rooms, and we’re being hunted by other mer. I didn’t think they would follow us inland, but they did. The goal of the other mer clans is to completely kill off the siren. I know the night human world couldn’t care less what happens to a group of outlawed teenage siren, but I do. They’re just teens, and are completely innocent. They had nothing to do with the night human war. They’re good kids who’ve never harmed a human, and they don’t deserve to die for simply being born siren. I don’t know what else to do. If the mer come back, I don’t know if I can take on two fully grown mermen and keep everyone safe. I need help, and that’s why I called you.” Whitney spat it all out and hoped Cassie was following along.
“Wow, and I thought my life was busy,” Cassie joked, trying to ease the stress she could see in Whitney. Whitney gave her a meager smile. “I’ll help you. You know I always will no matter if you are an outlawed night human or not. I really have no idea how you could be, but I don’t care. You’re my best friend and always will be. Besties have to stick together. And besides, you helped me with all this night human stuff before; now it is time for me to pay you back.”
Helped her? Whitney did what any friend would do for their best friend. She made sure that Cassie knew the truth and knew that she was there for her at any time.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I didn’t want to get you involved in all of this, and I really didn’t want to get the skinwalkers involved. This whole outlawed thing makes it all messy.” Whitney was beyond relieved. She had been worried all along that even though they were best friends, Cassie would find her being an outlawed night human a problem.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell Nate. I’ve gotten really good at keeping a barrier between us, so we don’t share everything. A girl’s gotta have her secrets, after all.”
Whitney smiled and laid her head on her friend’s shoulder. There was so much stress from just being a siren already, and being chased after was exhausting. Having Cassie there made her finally feel like something would go her way. Cassie was magical, and not just because she was a witch and sidhe combined into one. She had some sort of luck on her side, and Whitney really needed a little of that right now.
“So why were you going inland?”
“The mer like to stay near the ocean. If we go more than twenty-four hours without water, we become dehydrated and dangerous. Most don’t want to take the chance, and there’s the problem of feeding. If a mer feeds inland and leaves a trail, then other night humans will know about us. This way we stay a secret.”
“They do know it is the twenty-first century right? There’s running water everywhere.”
“I know. I think they know, too, but I can’t be completely sure. They’re so weird, Cassie. Nothing like the skinwalkers. Some of the mer have been on the island for decades longer than we’ve been alive. Do you know how much has changed and they don’t get it? I think
at times they don’t want to. They like being isolated, but that doesn’t help us now. I have to figure out what to do to keep everyone safe.”
“I have an idea, but I need to talk to a few people,” Cassie said as she smiled.
Whitney stared at her friend. She thought she was there to help.
“Cas, you can’t tell anyone about us. If they knew siren were still alive, I’d never be able to come back to land.” That was one of Whitney’s biggest worries.
“I’m not going to tell anyone. There’s one person I know that will keep it a secret and help us. I promise you can trust him.”
“Him? You aren’t going to tell Turner? Yes, he’s cool, and I doubt he would turn us into the night human council, but I don’t want to get him involved. He’s a good guy.” Whitney had met Turner Winter, a night human werewolf, when they had gone on a road trip a couple years ago. He’d told them if they ever needed any help, he’d be there for them, but that didn’t mean Whitney wanted to call him. She wanted to keep anyone she knew and liked out of the mer war that was coming.
“No, I’m not going to tell Turner—unless you want me to. I know you had a crush on him …”
Whitney knew what Cassie wanted, and she wasn’t going to admit who Sam was. Not right now. They could talk about boys some other time. Right now she needed to get the seven siren she was protecting somewhere safe.
“Do I know who you are going to talk to?”
“Know of him? Most people do, but I don’t think you’ve ever met him. He’s like an uncle to me now, or something.” Cassie shrugged, keeping her secret of the mystery guy as much as Whitney was of Sam. “Jared will stay here with you.” The panther lifted his head and gave her a hard stare. “He will stay here with you and alert you if any night humans come around. I’m going directly to the village. I’ll be safe, and Nate will be fine with that. After I talk to him, I’ll be right back.”