“You sure took off like a flash. ” Jason grinned as he fell in step next to her. “Sorry if I said something to offend you in there. ”
“No, you were fine,” she lied, and shook her head. “I just didn’t realize how late it was. I have to be getting home. ”
“You haven’t eaten anything yet,” Jason reminded her. “Let me take you out somewhere. I’ll find you something real special. ”
“No, I’m all right,” Gemma insisted. She turned down the alley that led to the lot where she’d parked her car, and Jason stayed at her side.
“Please, Gemma,” he entreated. “I was a jerk inside. Come back in. Get something to eat with me. Let me make it up to you. ”
She softened a bit and slowed down, but she still didn’t want to go back in there or eat with some stranger. Really, she just wanted to get out of there.
“Sorry. ” She smiled up at him. “I’m not hungry anymore. I should go. ”
“Wait. ” He grabbed her arm when she started walking away, and while his grip wasn’t exactly painful, she didn’t like it. “If you’re not hungry, there’s plenty of things we could do. ”
“I need to go home. ” She tried to pull her arm away, but he hung on tighter.
“I know I’m older, and that scares you, but that’s no reason to be shy. ” He smiled at her, but there was something menacing in the smile that made her recoil.
Thanks to her siren strength, she could overpower him, but just then he caught her off guard. He pushed her back against the brick wall of a building, putting an arm on either side of her and pinning her there with his body.
“Move,” Gemma insisted. “Jason. Please. Move. ”
Just because she could overpower him didn’t mean she wanted to. It would be easier and create much less of a scene if he just stepped away on his own. Not that there was anyone there to watch the scene. The alley was deserted.
“Move?” He laughed darkly. “Honey, I’ll show you some moves. ”
He rubbed his body up against hers, and something flared inside her. It wasn’t the lust she’d felt before, not like back at the house with Sawyer. At first it reminded her of when she went swimming, when the ocean hit her flesh and her body began to transform. It was that same kind of tingle running through her.
But instead of feeling the tingle in her legs, she felt it in her arms, and her mouth. Her lips trembled, and her vision changed. She couldn’t explain it exactly, but it was almost as if her eyes shifted and her pupils dilated, so she could see better in the dark.
Jason had been rubbing himself on her and trying to kiss her neck, his mouth moving gruffly against her flesh as with one hand he clumsily pawed at her chest. He looked up, maybe to see if Gemma was enjoying this as much as he was, and his eyes widened.
“What the fuck…?” he muttered, and those were the last words Gemma heard him say.
SEVENTEEN
Repercussions
“I did something bad,” Gemma said, her voice quavering as she spoke. “Something really, really bad. ”
She stood in the foyer of Sawyer’s house, her arms covered in blood up to her elbows. Most of it had dried on the drive home, but some of it still dripped wet on the white marble floors. Her clothes were splattered red, and her mouth was filled with a sweet metallic taste that was somehow both delicious and nauseating.
When she’d parked the car haphazardly on Sawyer’s front lawn after a frantic drive home, she’d caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror. The entire bottom half of her mouth was covered in blood, except for the lines that were clean from her tears. She’d been sobbing so hard as she drove, it was amazing that she’d been able to see where she was going, let alone remember how to get there.
The commotion of her car skidding through the front yard had drawn everyone to see what was up. Sawyer was already in the foyer when Gemma entered the house, and Lexi and Thea arrived shortly after.
“Are you okay?” Sawyer rushed over to her, inspecting her for wounds. His concern made sense, since she was covered in blood, but none of it was her own. Still, she was in such a state of shock, she let Sawyer touch her and look her over.
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“So you finally ate?” Penn smiled, walking into the room. She stared at Gemma with a bemused expression.
“I told you she would come back,” Lexi said proudly as she went over to Gemma.
“You did, but she’s a mess,” Penn said.
“She’s fine, you nitwit. It’s not her blood,” Lexi said as she pushed Sawyer away and looped her arm around Gemma’s shoulders.
“Whose blood is it?” Sawyer asked, sounding confused.
“That’s a very good question. ” Penn walked up to Gemma, standing directly in front of her. Gemma just wanted to collapse and sob. “Where’s the body?”
“The body?” Gemma asked, dazed.
“Yes, you killed someone and ate their heart,” Penn said, as if it should be obvious. “Now, where is the body?”
“I, um…” Gemma gulped back her vomit and tried to think. “I don’t know. It was outside a steakhouse in town. It happened in the alley next to it. ”
“A steakhouse?” Penn turned to Sawyer. “Do you know where she’s talking about?”
“Marcel’s Steakhouse?” Sawyer asked.
“I think so, maybe. ” Gemma nodded numbly. “I don’t know for sure. ”
“Go clean it up,” Penn directed Sawyer. “Take care of the mess before anybody finds it. ”
“His name is Jason,” Gemma told him, as if that would help him find the body somehow.
“Nobody cares what his name is,” Penn said. “Just take care of it. ”
“Okay. ” Sawyer nodded and hurried out the front door to follow Penn’s wishes.
“I’m sorry,” Gemma said as silent tears slid down her cheeks. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to go. ”
“You did the right thing coming back,” Penn said. “But next time, take the body with you. You can’t just go leaving your scraps around. It makes the humans suspicious, and that’s a headache you don’t want to deal with. ”
“The convertible is covered in blood!” Sawyer called from the front yard.
“Then take one of the other cars in the garage!” Penn shouted at him, and rolled her eyes. “He’s so lucky that he’s handsome and rich, because he is a friggin’ moron. ”
“He is cute, though. ” Lexi squeezed Gemma’s shoulder, trying to reassure her. “We should get you cleaned up, huh?”
“Yeah,” Gemma agreed.
Lexi leaned over, then licked her cheek. Gemma recoiled and pushed Lexi back hard, causing her to fall back into the front closet.
“Did you just lick blood off my cheek?” Gemma cried. She tried to wipe Lexi’s saliva from her face, but she probably only ended up smearing blood on her cheek. “You’re a psycho!”
“You’re the one covered in blood!” Lexi countered, clearly offended by Gemma’s reaction. “I just tasted it! At least I didn’t rip out his heart!”
“Lexi, that really was inappropriate. ” Penn looked at her in disgust. “Thea, go help Gemma get cleaned up. When Sawyer gets back, we’ll talk about how we’re going to deal with all of this. ”
“Come on. ” Thea took Gemma’s hand and started pulling her away. “You’ll feel better once you get cleaned up, and you’ll think better once the food settles. ”
“That wasn’t food,” Gemma muttered.
“It’s what you eat now, so it’s food,” Thea countered.
In the upstairs bathroom, Thea filled the bathtub with warm water. Gemma stripped down to her bikini, then climbed inside. The water quickly turned pink as the blood mixed with it, but Gemma barely even noticed.
She pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them, and Thea sat next to her, rinsing the blood out from the tangles of her hair.
“I’m a monster,” Gemma said quietly.
“We all are, sweetie,” Thea said as gently as she could. She used a cup to pour the warm water over Gemma’s hair and ran her fingers through it. The blood had really matted into it on the drive home in the convertible.
“I don’t even really remember what happened,” Gemma said, wiping at the tears that fell from her eyes. “It’s all kind of a red blur. ”
“You don’t remember the first couple times,” Thea said. “You’re not really in control of your body or your transformation. And since you were avoiding eating, you were probably especially out of control. ”
“But I … I ate his heart?” Gemma asked.
“That’s what we do,” Thea said. “That’s how we survive. We have to eat boys’ hearts. ”
“That’s so messed up. ”
Thea laughed darkly. “That’s all Demeter’s sick sense of humor. She was one twisted bitch when she made the curse. ”
“I don’t think I can do this. ” Gemma hugged her knees tighter as her stomach lurched. “I can’t kill people like this. ”
“The good news is that you only have to eat four times a year,” Thea said, trying to comfort her. “Once before every solstice. ”
“What?” Gemma sniffled and turned to look back at Thea. “You eat more than that. ”
“I don’t,” Thea said. “Not really. Have you noticed how my voice isn’t as silky as Penn’s or Lexi’s?”
“That’s because you don’t eat as often as they do?” Gemma asked.
“That’s part of it. ” Thea nodded. “I once went a whole year without eating. It nearly killed me. And now my voice is like this. If I ate more, the huskiness would eventually go away, but I don’t need to eat more, so I don’t. ”
“You can go a whole year without eating?” Gemma turned in the tub to face her. “Could you go longer?”
“No, Gemma, it nearly killed me,” Thea repeated. “It was excruciatingly painful, physically and emotionally, and eventually I started going mad. When I did finally eat, I was so out of control I nearly slaughtered everyone around me. You have to eat more than that. ”
“If you hurt so bad, then why didn’t you eat?” Gemma asked. “Why’d you go a whole year without eating?”
Thea lowered her eyes. “That’s a story for another day. ” She leaned over and reached into the tub, pulling out the stopper so the water would drain. “Why don’t you turn on the shower to rinse off, and I’ll go grab you a towel?”
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After Gemma got out of the shower, she hated to admit how awesome she felt. Emotionally, she was a wreck, but physically, Gemma had never felt better. She’d never done drugs, but she imagined that this was how a really good high felt.
Thea came back with a huge towel, and Gemma wrapped herself in it.
“You feel better now?” Thea asked.
“I guess,” Gemma said, trying to downplay how good she felt, and started walking to her room.
She lay down in her bed and pulled her blanket over her. It made her uncomfortably warm, but she kept it on, wanting to bury herself in it. Thea had followed her, and she stood tentatively at the end of the bed before sitting down.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” Gemma asked Thea. “You used to be such a bitch. ”
“I’m still a bitch,” Thea replied. “But this is hard enough to go through. Lexi and Penn are too dumb and selfish to help. I just don’t think anyone should go through this alone. ”
“How do you live with it?” Gemma asked.
“What?”
“The guilt. ”
“You mean from killing people?” Thea asked.
“Yeah. ” Gemma pulled back the blanket a bit so she could look at Thea. “I just can’t stop thinking that he was a person, and … and he didn’t deserve that. ”
“If it makes you feel any better, it didn’t hurt,” Thea said.
“How can you say that? I ripped out his heart!”
“Yes, but you’re a siren,” Thea said. “When you feed, you make a kind of purring sound. It’s like a cross between a cat and a lullaby. It has an anesthetizing effect on your prey. So it’s like they’re in a coma almost. They don’t know what happens. They die peacefully. ”
“Still. ” Gemma settled back down in her blankets, and while she found that fact a bit more comforting, it didn’t erase her guilt. “I still killed a man tonight. ”
“That’s the part that’s the hardest to get over,” Thea said. “That we do the actual killing ourselves. You would probably be a wreck if you murdered a cow, too, but you don’t think twice about eating a hamburger. ”
“That’s different,” Gemma insisted.
“For you now, it seems that way,” Thea said. “But the longer you live, the more your perception of humans changes. They die all the time, over the simplest things. Life is very, very fleeting for them. The best they can hope for is a painless death, and we provide that for them. ”
“You can’t honestly believe that,” Gemma said. “You can’t really think that you’re doing them a service by killing them. ”
“Sometimes I can. ” Thea sounded sad, staring down at Gemma’s comforter and picking at a stray thread. “What helps me is trying to find people that deserve it. ”
“People that deserve to die?” Gemma asked.
“Yeah, pedophiles, rapists, that kinda thing,” Thea said. “We seem to have the strongest effect on them, anyway, so it’s easy to find them. ”
“Luke wasn’t a pedophile or a rapist,” Gemma countered. “I bet those other boys that you killed back in Capri weren’t, either. ”
Thea shook her head. “That wasn’t me. That was Penn, and even she was feeding more than she normally does. She was collecting human blood to create a new siren. ”
“She killed all those boys for one flask?” Gemma asked. “I doubt that. ”
“We had two failed attempts before you,” Thea reminded her. “Penn saved Aggie’s blood in a jug, because she knew we only had one siren that we could get blood from. But she was more wasteful with the humans. She knew she could always get more. So she took what she needed, then left them, and when the girls died, she needed more blood and a new boy. ”
“So you didn’t eat them?” Gemma asked.
“No, Penn doesn’t like sharing anyway,” Thea said. “And that’s fine by me. I prefer going after people that deserve it, not lovesick teenage boys. ”
“You don’t have the right to decide who deserves it, though,” Gemma insisted. “You don’t get to decide who lives and dies. You don’t get to play God. ”
“People decide who lives and dies every day,” Thea said flatly. “And in the end, it doesn’t matter if you agree with what we do or whether you think it’s right. I do what I need to do to survive, and you will, too. ”
“Am I interrupting girl talk?” Lexi asked, appearing in Gemma’s doorway.
She leaned back against the doorframe, arching her back a little. She’d changed, so she was wearing a white nightie now, and her long blond hair hung down, covering up her chest in a way the fabric didn’t.
“No, Gemma was just getting some rest,” Thea said, and stood up.
“I just thought I’d let you know that you’re in big trouble, Gemma. ” Lexi laughed when she said it, a strange flirty giggle.
“I’m in trouble?” Gemma sat up a little, propping herself on her elbows.
“Sawyer just called Penn, and cops are swarming the alley,” Lexi said. “They found the body. ”
“What does that mean?” Gemma asked, feeling a new fear at possibly getting caught.
She didn’t exactly want to get away with murder. On one hand, she thought getting arrested might be the best thing to happen to her, because then she couldn’t hurt anybody else. But on the other hand, getting life in prison would be really terrible if she lived forever.
“Nothing. ” Thea shook her head. “Penn and Sawyer will take care of it. It’s ju
st more work for them. That’s all. ”
“And Penn hates extra work,” Lexi said, smiling down at Gemma. “But that’s not the only reason you’re in trouble. Penn found out about your little make-out session with Sawyer today. ”
“Lexi,” Thea groaned, and started pushing Lexi out of the room. “Just leave her alone. She needs to rest. ”
“She called me a psycho!” Lexi insisted as Thea forced her out of the room. “She can’t talk to me that way without getting in trouble!”
“Lexi, you are a psycho. ” Thea shut the door behind her, but Gemma could still hear them talking outside the room. “And Gemma’s one of us now. You’ll just have to learn to get along with her. ”
“She shouldn’t be making out with Penn’s boyfriends,” Lexi insisted, her voice getting quieter as she and Thea got farther away.
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“Neither should you, but you do it,” Thea reminded her.
“But I get in trouble for it!” Lexi whined.
“I’m sure Gemma will get in trouble,” Thea said. “Just not right now. ”
EIGHTEEN
Lost
Their afternoon of trying to summon spirits hadn’t led them any closer to finding Gemma, but it had left Marcy with a nasty sunburn that she kept complaining about at work the next day.
“I hope your sister appreciates what I did for her,” Marcy muttered.
She sat at the desk, resting her head against the cool laminate. Her arms were spread out, looking beet-red against the light color of the faux-wood, and she’d hardly moved since she’d come in this morning.
While Marcy was busy doing nothing, Harper went through the books that had been left in the drop box last night, scanning them back into the system.
“I’m sure she does,” Harper said. “As soon as we find her, I’ll tell her of your heroism in battling the sun. Gemma will be thoroughly impressed and eternally grateful. ”
“If it didn’t hurt so much for me to lift my arms right now, I would totally be flicking you off,” Marcy told her.
Instead of replying to that, Harper grabbed the stack of books she’d just scanned, and headed back to the shelves to put them away. If there had been a lot, she would’ve used the cart, but there weren’t that many and they were mostly children’s books, so they were lighter anyway.
“Are you and Alex planning on doing anything tonight?” Marcy asked, raising her voice to be heard as Harper walked away.
“Um, I don’t know. ”
She crouched down in front of the kids’ shelves. They were lower, so little kids had easier access to them. The books had been left in a bit of a mess, since they’d left quickly last night and neither Marcy nor Harper had straightened them up.
Harper started organizing them, putting them in the right order and uprighting the books that had slumped or were shoved in the wrong way.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Marcy called from behind Harper.
“That’s what I mean,” she replied tersely.
Harper’s enthusiasm was waning. Everything they had done, all the phone calls, all the searching, it hadn’t led them any closer to finding Gemma. And not only did they not know where she was, they weren’t even completely certain what she was.
Yes, Alex had a hunch that Gemma was a siren, and Harper was inclined to think there was something to that, but she didn’t even know what that meant. In her spare time, Harper was still looking up everything she could on sirens and mythology in general, but she hadn’t found anything particularly helpful.