Sometimes, he seemed to realize how futile it was, so he’d give up and just hold Gemma in his arms. She’d lay her head on his shoulder, relishing the way it felt when he enveloped her. That was exactly how she wanted to spend her last few hours on earth.
Those soft moments together only seemed to drive him on. After a few minutes of holding her, he’d go back to the scroll, determined to break the curse. But he never did.
As the night wore on, Gemma became increasingly weaker. A chill seemed to be growing inside her, a cold that spread outward from her stomach. When she began to shiver, Alex went into the laundry room to find something to cover her up with. He came back with the shawl that Harper had brought home from the sirens’ house, freshly laundered, and he wrapped it around Gemma’s shoulders before he went back to the scroll.
The watersong grew louder. It wasn’t painful or obnoxious, like it had been when she went to Charleston, but instead, it sounded more like a soft lullaby, like the waves were singing her to sleep.
Her life was draining from her, and she could actually feel it ebbing away. It was like she was very slowly losing consciousness, and she knew she didn’t have much time left.
She sat on the kitchen floor, her head resting against the wall, the wrap pulled tightly around her, and her voice came out in a tired whisper. “Alex. I need to go to the water. ”
He’d been standing over the sink, dousing the scroll in water, but he turned to look back at her. “What do you mean? Why?”
“I’m getting weak, and I need to be out in the water,” she explained simply. “I just feel it. ”
Alex started to argue, but when he looked back at her, his words fell silent on his lips. She was fading away, and she looked like it. The normal tanned glow of her skin had become ashen. Her hair no longer glistened, and she was struggling to keep her eyes open.
He rolled up the scroll and shoved it in the waistband of his pajama pants, then he came over and helped her up. He offered to drive her down to the bay, but the sky was still dark enough. They had time, and she’d rather enjoy the night and walk the several blocks down to the water.
That proved to be harder than she thought, and within a block, she no longer had the strength to walk. Alex scooped her up, holding her to him, and she rested her head against his chest as he carried her down to the bay.
He waded out into the waves, and when he made it deep enough that she could feel the seawater splashing on her, her skin began to flutter. She thought she’d be too weak for it, but it actually gave her a small burst of energy, and as her legs transformed into a tail, Alex let her go.
She floated nearby because she wasn’t ready to leave him, but when the time came, she’d swim as far away from him as she could get. No one told her what it looked like when a siren died like this, but she didn’t want him to have to see it.
The sky began to turn pink as the sun approached the horizon, and Alex reached out, pulling her to him. He held her in his arms and kissed her softly.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he said thickly.
“I should go. ”
“No. Not yet. ” He hung on to her tighter, and she let him, but only for a second, then she pushed away. “No. Stay. Just a few more minutes. ”
“Alex, I can’t. ” She shook her head as her tears mixed with the saltwater.
“There has to be something. ” He pulled out the scroll, and in terrified rage, he gripped it and tried to rip it in half. But the paper didn’t tear. It was like a thin sheet of metal, and sliced through his finger, leaving a nasty gash. “Shit!”
He let go of the scroll then, letting it float on the water, and Gemma swam over to him. She pressed her shawl against his cut. But instead of looking at his finger, her eyes went to the glowing paper beside him.
Whenever the ink was exposed to water, it would glow a little. But Alex’s blood had dripped on it in large drops, and as the saltwater mixed with it, the ink began to blaze like Gemma had never seen before. The words were actually on fire.
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“Oh, my god. ” Alex grabbed the scroll before it floated out to sea. “Is this it? Is the curse breaking?”
She shook her head. “No, the words are still there. ”
Alex shook his head, and she could see his mind racing, as he tried to put it together. “Blood of a siren, blood of a mortal, blood of the sea. That’s how a siren is made. ”
“It doesn’t work, Alex,” she tried to tell him. “I already—”
“Please. Gemma. Just try it again. We have to try,” Alex insisted with such a fierce desperation, and she didn’t have the strength to argue with him.
So she bit into her finger, tearing out a chunk with sharp teeth, even though she had already tried this once before and it hadn’t worked. But as her blood dripped down, mixing with Alex’s and the saltwater, Gemma found herself hoping that this time it would be different.
Right before their eyes, the words burned up and disappeared. Anywhere the mixture touched, the ink vanished, and then quickly, even where Alex hadn’t spilled his blood, all the words were gone.
The scroll was blank. And Gemma held her breath, waiting for more changes to come. But they didn’t.
“It’s working. ” Alex gave her a relieved smile. “The curse is breaking. ”
“I don’t think so, Alex. ” Her tail steadied her as she put her arms around him. Nothing had changed. She didn’t feel different, and her scales were pressed up against him. “Maybe it’s just too late. ”
“No. It can’t be too late. No, Gemma. ” Tears were in his eyes. “I love you. ”
“I love you, Alex. ”
He stared into her eyes, brushing her wet hair back from her forehead, then he kissed her, desperately, as though if he could just love her enough, then it would save her. He held her tightly, one arm pressed against the smooth scales of the tail that rose up the small of her back, and she could taste their tears with the saltwater.
The sun rose behind them, and as she felt the first rays hitting her, she closed her eyes and clung to Alex.
SIXTY-ONE
Vestige
She hadn’t seen as much of the world as she’d wanted to. In fact, she’d hardly seen any of it. Thea had spent thousands of years roaming the planet, but she had hardly gone anywhere since so much of it was too far inland.
That, and Penn always dictated where they went. Penn couldn’t stand the call of the watersong, so she refused to go anywhere that caused her the slightest bit of pain. Thea had thought that with Penn gone, she’d finally be able to explore all the places that had been blocked off to her.
But as it turned out, Thea didn’t do so well against the watersong, either. She didn’t go very far, and she always seemed to end up back in the ocean.
Still, the last two days of her life couldn’t be called bad. In fact, they were some of the very best she’d had in a very long time. Without all of Penn’s demands and threats and constant tantrums, everything had felt so much nicer.
Though Thea wished that Aggie had been there to share it with her, and even Ligea. She had loved them, and she still missed them. Penn had all but forbidden her to talk about them anymore, and Thea wondered once again why she’d listened.
It wasn’t that she was scared of Penn, but Thea felt intrinsically that she’d failed her. Since the day Penn was born, she had felt unloved and abandoned, and she had been by her parents. Thea had always tried to make up for that, but all she’d ever done was make things worse.
The horrible truth was that the curse was her fault. If she’d yelled at Penn that day, the day they’d left Persephone alone, or if Thea had simply let Penn go off without her, then none of this would have happened. So she’d spent nearly her entire existence trying to make it up to Penn for allowing her to be cursed in the first place.
The real kicker at the end of all of this is that Demeter’s curse centered around their love of swimming, but Penn had never eve
n cared for it that much. She’d been smitten with Poseidon, that was all. It had been Thea who loved the water, and, somehow, she loved it still today.
She waded out into the water, relishing the way her legs fluttered for the last time as they turned into a tail. The sky was lightening above her, so she swam out on her back, floating out farther into the ocean.
Her thoughts went back to her sisters, and all the fun they’d had when they were young, before all this madness with Demeter. Penn had claimed that everything had been a horrible struggle. Things were hard, but what Thea remembered most was how much she had loved them all.
She missed them terribly, and though she hoped she would see them again, she doubted she would. With everything she’d seen, Thea wasn’t completely sure she believed that there was a heaven, but even if there was, she most certainly wouldn’t be going there.
As she felt the rays of the sun warming her skin through the water, Thea closed her eyes. The tingling started first in her fingers, and she was relieved that it didn’t hurt. It actually felt good, like a whole new transformation, as her body slowly dissolved into ash.
Soon, there was nothing. The dust was lost in the sea. And Thea was gone.
SIXTY-TWO
Severed
The panic was so intense, Harper sat up straight in bed. She was covered in a cold sweat, and she put a hand to her heart. Something inside her had been severed.
“No,” she whispered.
Daniel, still groggy with sleep, sat up slowly. “What? What’s going on?”
“Something’s wrong. Something’s happened to Gemma. ”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
She pressed her hand more firmly to her chest, as if that would make the feeling change. “I can feel it. Something’s wrong. ”
“Call her,” Daniel suggested.
She reached over and grabbed the phone, but Gemma never answered. That was about what she’d expected, though.
Harper dove out of bed and grabbed her jeans off the floor. “I have to go. ”
“Go where?” He got out of bed much more slowly than she did, though it was clear he was trying to move fast. “Harper. Wait. ”
She folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself as Daniel hurried to put on his jeans and a T-shirt.
“I can’t feel her,” Harper told him plaintively.
“What?”
“It’s like she’s not there anymore. ”
Daniel pursed his lips, but he didn’t say anything. Something about that frightened her, that he didn’t try to comfort her or convince her that everything would be okay. Instead, he just picked up the pace, and when they went down the path to his boat, they were both running.
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His boat took a minute to start, but this seemed to aggravate Daniel as much as it did Harper. He kicked it and cursed under his breath, then The Dirty Gull finally chugged into life.
The ride across the bay had never seemed to take so long. The early-morning sun was blinding as it reflected off the water, but Harper kept her eyes fixed on the shore.
When Daniel docked the boat, she jumped off. She started to run toward the parking lot for her car, but then she stopped and changed her mind.
“This way. ” She pointed toward the beach just as Daniel reached her.
“What? Why?”
“We need to go this way,” she insisted, and started jogging down the path to the beach.
“How do you know if you can’t feel her?” Daniel asked as he ran after her.
“There’s something, but it’s not the same. ”
On the beach, her feet slipped in the sand, but she didn’t let that slow her down. She could see a lone figure, sitting in the sand far away from them. As she got closer, she started to realize that the figure was Alex, and that he was totally alone, staring out at the waves.
“Alex!” Harper shouted, and by the time she reached him, she was screaming. “Alex! Where’s Gemma?” He got to his feet, looking confused, and she grabbed him by his T-shirt. “Where is she?”
“There!” Alex pointed out to the bay, sounding totally baffled by her intensity.
“Where?” Harper asked, but all she needed to do was turn her head.
Gemma was several yards away, in the water. “I’m right here. ”
“Oh, my god, Gemma. ” Harper ran into the water, not caring if she soaked her clothes, and hugged Gemma, crushing her to her. “I thought you were dead. ”
“I’m not dead,” Gemma said, laughing and hugging her back. “I’m just not a siren anymore. ”
Harper pulled back to look at her, but she kept her hands on Gemma’s shoulders, as if she would disappear if she let go. “You already weren’t. ”
“No, I was before. I lied. But now I’m really not. ”
“How do you know?” Harper narrowed her eyes.
“I’m in the ocean, and I have legs. ”
The water came up to Gemma’s hips, and she pulled up her dress, revealing her normal legs. No fins, no scales. And then Harper really looked at her and realized that Gemma looked different. Her eyes were still the color of burned honey, but they were less sparkly. She was still beautiful, but she appeared younger—less like a model on a magazine cover and more like a normal, teenage girl.
That explained the feeling of being severed from her sister. There’d always been a strange bond, but when Gemma had become a siren, it grew more intense, which was how she’d been able to find her in Sawyer’s house when she ran off.
But now, without the paranormal element amplifying it, the bond had returned to its normal state, and she could barely feel it.
“How?” Harper asked in disbelief. “What’d you do?”
“We were so close, Harper,” Gemma said with a wide grin. “The blood of the siren, the blood of the mortal, the blood of the sea—that’s how to wash away the curse, and how I became a siren. But we were missing one thing. ” She pointed back to where Alex stood on the beach, and Harper noticed the golden shawl shimmering in the sand next to him.
“That’s the golden shawl we found you wrapped in the night after you became a siren,” Harper remembered, then looked back at Gemma as the shawl’s importance dawned on her. “That was the golden fleece that Pine was talking about. ”
“What?” Gemma asked, staring at her quizzically.
“The golden fleece,” Harper repeated. “Pine told me that he translated something in the scroll about it, but he thought it had to do with Jason and Argonauts. ”
“It was Persephone’s shawl,” Gemma explained. “The sirens had told me that before, and Demeter told us that Persephone had been found in it after she died, wrapped up much the same way I was when you found me on the shore after I became a siren. ”
“The whole curse is about Persephone, so Demeter made her a part of the curse as much as she could,” Harper realized. “She made the sirens use Persephone’s golden shawl. ”
“Right. To become a siren, I had to drink the blood of the sirens, the mortal, and the sea, and I had to be wrapped in the shawl and tossed in the ocean,” Gemma said. “So to break the curse, I had to reverse it, using the mixture of blood, and I had to be wearing the shawl in the ocean. Do everything like I did before, but just undo it, using the blood to erase the ink on the scroll. ”
Harper smiled at her sister. “What are you doing in the water now?”
“I wanted to see what it was like to swim with legs again, and it’s better than I remembered. ”
“So now you’re completely sure it’s all over?”
Gemma laughed. “I’m positive. ” And just because she could, Harper hugged her sister again.
“You scared the crap out of me, Gemma,” Daniel said as he slogged through the waves to reach them. He put one arm around Harper and the other around Gemma, embracing both of them tightly.
When Alex waded out to join them, Gemma separated from
the other two, ran to him, and jumped into his arms. Her legs wrapped around his waist, and he held her as she laughed.
Harper turned and looked up at Daniel. “You know, for the first time I really feel like this is over. I thought it was over before, but now I know in a way I didn’t, and it’s like a huge weight has been lifted. ”
“It’s really over. ” He put his arms around her, pulling her to him. “Now just as long as you don’t get tangled up with a pack of vampires or deranged witches while you’re at college, everything will be wonderful. ”
Harper smiled. “So I just have to avoid those things, and everything will be perfect?”
“No, I’m pretty sure that as long as we’re together, we’ve got it made. ”
As the waves splashed around them, and her sister laughed in the distance, Daniel bent down and kissed her, and Harper knew that he was absolutely right.
EPILOGUE
April 11
Harper stood on the stepladder, stretching out as she taped up the end of the streamer on the exposed beams of the cabin. Then she climbed down and put her hands on her back, admiring her handiwork.
“The streamers and balloons might be a bit much,” Daniel said from behind her, and she glanced back to see him putting out paper plates and plastic cups on the dining-room table.
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She turned back to the room, tilting her head to get a new perspective on the streamers and balloons she had taped up all over Daniel’s cabin. “You think?
“Well, Gemma is turning seventeen, not seven,” he said.
“Whatever. ” Harper shrugged. “She’ll like it, and I do what I want. ”
“Ooh. You’ve gotten such an attitude since you’ve been home from college,” Daniel teased as he walked over to her.
“Where are they?” She ignored him and glanced over at the clock hanging above the fireplace. “They should’ve been here by now. ”
“Well, Alex just got home for the weekend,” Daniel said as he slid his arm around her waist, pulling her closer to him.
“I know. We shared a ride back from Sundham,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, but you know, he and Gemma are probably spending quality time together. ”
Harper wrinkled her nose. “Gross. ”
“Hey, you didn’t think it was gross when we were spending quality time together this morning. ”
His other arm encircled her, pulling her close to him, and Harper didn’t resist. She loved it when he held her like that, crushing her to him, as his mouth pressed against hers. A familiar heat radiated through her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
Even after all this time, and all the kisses they’d shared, some of them in bed earlier this morning, each time he kissed her, there was still that hint of urgency and desperation, like they’d never really be able to get enough of each other.
Harper would’ve gladly stayed in his arms, kissing him all afternoon, but she heard their guests coming up the walkway on the island.
“They’re here,” she said, and since he looked so thoroughly disappointed at having to let her go, she gave him one more quick kiss on the lips before separating from him.