Lullaby (24 page)

“Oh, my gosh, Marcy, you have a one-track mind,” Harper said, and got up from the desk to find some actual work to do.

“I have a one-track mind?” Marcy scoffed. “We spend every day talking about sirens, but I want to spend an afternoon talking about the
T. rex
and his ridiculous appendages, and I have a one-track mind?”

“You’re right.” Harper paused, unable to tell if Marcy was actually annoyed or just pretending. “I’m sorry. We can go back to talking about the
T. rex
.”

“Good. Because yesterday I read
1001 Exciting Facts About Dinosaurs
while you were gone,” Marcy said. “And today I plan on sharing all of them with you.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Fireworks

It still didn’t feel right. Gemma had reassured Harper a hundred times that she’d be fine, and Harper had talked to Alex, who told her he’d be right next door keeping watch on the house. Plus, Brian was in the living room, watching an Indiana Jones marathon on TV.

So it wasn’t like Harper was leaving Gemma unguarded. Still, when Daniel knocked on the door, Harper almost told him that she couldn’t go. But Gemma all but pushed her out of the house, insisting that Harper have a nice time on her date.

Most of the Fourth of July festivities were being held in the park in the center of town, but the fireworks were shot off over the bay. So as the day drew to a close, most of the activity moved over to the beach. The grassy area that ran along next to it was filled with concession stands that sold alcohol, food, and glow sticks and bracelets.

Parking anywhere near the beach would be impossible, so Daniel and Harper had decided to walk from her house down toward Anthemusa Bay. The sun was setting when Daniel arrived to retrieve her, and the fireworks were set to go off at twilight.

“So,” Daniel said as they walked down the street.

Neither of them had said much since they’d left her house. In fact, Harper hadn’t really said anything to him, other than “Hello” and “Yes” when he asked if she was ready to go.

“Yep.” Harper smiled up at him, then quickly looked away.

“You wore your hair down today.”

“Yeah.” She self-consciously ran her hand through her long dark hair. “I wanted to do something different.”

“It looks nice,” Daniel assured her. “
You
look nice.”

“Thank you.” She smiled.

“How did you wanna do this?” he asked.

“What?” Harper lifted her head, instantly afraid she’d misunderstood something.

“Watching the fireworks,” Daniel said. “I thought maybe we could take my boat out and watch them from there.”

“Like out in the water?” Harper asked.

“That’s generally where I take my boat,” Daniel said. “In fact, my boat spends most of the time in water. But I was thinking we’d take it a bit farther out in the bay.”

“Won’t that be all crowded with other boats doing the same thing?” she asked.

“Probably,” he allowed. “But not quite as crowded as the beach.”

They were still a couple blocks from the bay, and they could already hear the noise of the crowd. Every year, while the fireworks went off, a small orchestra played instrumental music. They’d apparently started, and the works of John Williams were echoing through the town. Even still, Harper could hear people laughing and talking over the music. The crowd was going to be intense.

“I don’t know.” Harper stared down at her flip-flops as she and Daniel continued toward the bay. “I think I’d rather stay on land.”

“Are you afraid to be alone on my boat with me?” Daniel asked. “Because I promise to be on my best behavior. Scout’s honor.”

“No, that’s not it,” she said with a laugh, but that was part of it.

The larger part, however, was that she wanted to be closer to her sister if something happened. Being way out on the water, in a boat that had stalled out on her once before, didn’t sound ideal.

“Well, this is your date,” Daniel said. “So if you want to watch fireworks from the beach, then the beach it is.”

“This is
my
date?” Harper asked. “Not ours? Just mine?”

“Yep.” He grinned down at her. “I’m all yours for the night.”

As they got nearer to the bay, the conversation got easier between the two of them. The awkward date jitters began to wear off, thanks in large part to Daniel. He had a way of making her feel at ease. Or at least he had a way of teasing her until she forgot to be uptight.

The beach was packed, but not unbearably so. They checked out the booths that were set up on the grass first. Most of them sold food or beer, and Daniel offered to buy both for Harper, but she declined. He did buy her a glow-in-the-dark bracelet, even though she insisted it was silly, though she secretly wanted one.

They stopped to watch a juggler. He wore a black-and-white harlequin getup, and he juggled color-changing light-up balls. In the fading light, this became more impressive, especially when he kept tossing more up into the air.

Harper clapped along with the crowd when the juggler threw the flashing lights even farther up into the sky, but she caught a glimpse of something else when she looked up. Three birds were circling above them.

In the dim light, it was hard to make them out precisely, but their wingspan appeared much larger than that of an ordinary bird. She couldn’t tell exactly how high they were in the sky, but as Harper squinted at them, she was certain they were too big to be regular birds.

“What’s the matter?” Daniel asked. He leaned down, almost speaking in her ear, so she’d hear him over the crowd and the nearby band.

“Those birds.” She pointed up at the sky, and glanced back at him. “Do they seem too big to you?”

“Are they ravens?” Daniel asked.

When Harper looked back, the sky had filled with a small flock of black birds. The three birds that she thought she’d seen before had either flown away or gotten lost in the flock. Either way, she couldn’t see them anymore.

“Never mind.” She shook her head. “I’m probably just being paranoid.”

“That does sound like you.” He smiled at her, then took her hand in his. “Come on. Let’s go find a place to sit before there aren’t any more places.”

As Daniel led her away, weaving through the crowd toward the beach, Harper tried to still the butterflies in her stomach. She’d held hands with guys before, and this wasn’t even the first time Daniel had taken her hand.

But something about this felt different. It was knowing that this meant something more. He linked his fingers through hers, and her heart nearly skipped a beat. She felt like a silly little girl again, but she couldn’t help it.

She was too busy thinking about how rough his skin felt against hers to pay attention to where she was going, and she nearly tripped over someone sitting on a blanket. To squeeze by the people, she had to walk among a few cypress trees, letting her free hand run along the bark of a tree as she walked by.

“Be careful,” Daniel said, apparently assuming that she was using the trees to steady herself. “That’s why I got you the glow bracelet. So you can see where you’re going.”

“Glow bracelets don’t give off as much light as you’d think. They’re more decorative than functional.”

“Ah, I understand now,” Daniel said, taking her wrist in his hand. “That makes so much sense.”

She turned to smile up at him, leaning back against the tree behind her, and he let go of her wrist. She thought they’d start walking away, but he moved closer to her. One of his hands was on the tree trunk next to her, the other rested warmly on her waist.

A strange smile played on his lips, and he shook his head.

“What?” Harper asked.

“I just wish you weren’t so beautiful,” he replied simply.

She laughed. “That’s a strange thing to wish.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“And why is that?” she asked. She could feel him leaning down to her, his body pressing against her.

“Because I didn’t want it to happen like this. Or at least not here, like this, with people swarming around us, against a tree,” Daniel said. “But you look so, so beautiful, and I just can’t resist.”

“You didn’t want what to happen like this?” Harper asked softly, but she already knew.

His lips were nearly touching hers when he said, “The first time I kissed you.”

Then he was kissing her, and everything else went silent. Harper put her arms around his neck, pulling him to her, and he kissed her deeply, pushing her against the tree behind her. Daniel had a bit of stubble, and it scraped against her skin as he kissed, but she loved the way it felt.

It ended far too quickly, with Daniel pulling away, while Harper leaned against the tree, struggling to catch her breath. It was probably for the best, since there were people everywhere, and she didn’t want to make out in front of everybody.

But she was still sad when it was over. Nobody had ever kissed her like that before, and she actually felt weak in the knees. She’d always just assumed that was a figure of speech, but Daniel made her feel that way.

“Should we head down to the beach?” Daniel asked.

“Uh, yeah.” She smiled and nodded.

He took her hand again. She stayed close to him, but this time it was because she was afraid she might fall. She hung on to his arm, and he made a joke that she couldn’t really hear over the music, but she laughed anyway.

“Is here good?” Daniel asked.

They were at the top of the beach, right where the grass turned into sand. It appeared to be one of the few places where they could sit without being right on top of someone else.

“Yeah.” She smiled. “Here’s great.”

She glanced around, just to make sure they weren’t stealing the spot from anybody else, and that was when Harper saw her.

It was almost as if the crowd had parted around Penn just so Harper could see her. She stood at the edge of the grass, her black eyes blazing, and smiled widely at Harper, revealing her abnormally sharp teeth.

TWENTY-NINE

Instincts

Gemma had thought about hanging downstairs with her dad. She liked Indiana Jones well enough, and she was trying to spend time with Brian while she could. Unlike Harper and Alex, she wasn’t convinced there was a way out for her.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t committed to trying. She just didn’t have high hopes for it.

Just the same, she wanted to spend some time by herself. Between living with the sirens, then being babysat constantly since she got home, Gemma felt like she’d hardly had any time to be alone to collect her thoughts.

Gemma hadn’t been sleeping well, either, and not just because of the nightmares about Jason or the watersong nagging her for being so far away from the other sirens.

Yesterday, Alex had told her that he loved her, and while that thrilled her endlessly, it also raised a new question. How was that possible? The sirens had repeatedly told Gemma that it wasn’t possible, that nobody could ever truly a love a siren, but Alex did love her.

There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he did. Alex couldn’t lie that convincingly, and when they were together, he acted like a normal person. She’d spent enough time around Sawyer to understand what a guy acted like when he was under the spell of a siren.

Alex wasn’t acting that way at all. He was clearheaded, and when he told Gemma he loved her, he meant it.

She’d actually woken up this morning hoping the curse would be broken. But of course it wasn’t that simple. She was still a siren, no matter how Alex felt about her.

So that meant one of two things: either the sirens had lied to her, or they were wrong about humans being able to love sirens.

They could be lying to her. That sounded like something Penn would do. But Thea had seemed convinced it was impossible for sirens to be truly loved, too, and Gemma had come to trust Thea. She doubted that Thea would lie to her for the hell of it.

So Gemma was inclined to believe that they were wrong. And if they were wrong about this, about something they considered to be a major part of the curse, what else were they wrong about?

Gemma’d wanted to discuss this with Harper, but she hadn’t gotten the time. Once Gemma was back from visiting Nathalie, Brian had spent the rest of the day with her, so she couldn’t talk to Harper about it.

And today Harper had been so busy getting ready for her date that Gemma didn’t want to spoil it. She could talk to her about it tomorrow. And besides, it would probably do Gemma some good to relax and not worry about curses or sirens for a while.

She stole Harper’s e-reader and decided to crash out on her bed. Harper and Gemma’s reading tastes were vastly different, so Gemma spent most of the time just scanning through the reader and rejecting the choices.

Harper did have a subscription to
Spin
magazine, though, and Gemma read through that. She lay on her back with one leg crossed over her knee, humming to herself and reading about Florence
+
the Machine.

Then suddenly it hit her. It was like somebody had punched her in the gut and knocked all the air from her lungs.

She sat up in bed, and with absolute certainty she said, “They’re here.”

She jumped off of her bed and her mind raced, trying to figure out what to do. The sirens weren’t
here
, as in at her house, but she knew they were back in Capri. And it wasn’t because of her connection with the sirens, although that strengthened her conviction and knowledge.

It was because Harper knew. There wasn’t any other way she could explain it. When Harper was in serious trouble, she would just feel it. The same way Harper knew when Gemma was in real trouble. That was probably how Harper had been able to figure out that Gemma had been staying in Sawyer’s beach house.

There was some kind of bond between the two of them, and it had been there as long as Gemma could remember. Whether it was an intense intuition or some kind of psychic link, Gemma didn’t know or care. But she felt it stronger than she ever had before, maybe because she was a siren now and it heightened any supernatural connection she already had. She just knew that she trusted this feeling, and right now it was telling her that Harper had discovered the sirens. If she wasn’t in danger right now, she would be very shortly.