Page 39 of Ensnaring the Siren

Whatever her sister needed to say, even if it pissed her off, she’d hear it out this once, and then no more. The conversation about what Nireed did with her body, and who she did or didn’t give her tail to, ended after that.

“He’s so far away. If you want to be with him, raise your children together, he can’t come to you. You’d have to go to him, away from the city, away from the pod, away from me. You’d be a Shallows Dweller. Your babies too. And you might be clever enough to avoid detection, to skirt a fisherman’s net, but what about them? What will you do if they take your children?”

Understanding harpooned through her. Here, she’d been thinking short-term, but Aersila had her eye on the horizon.

Undine, who’d gone quiet throughout the exchange, held her baby closer.

They were good points, every one of them, but they didn’t have the effect her sister intended. What Aersila saw as reasons to divert course, Nireed saw as a need to steer steady.

She would make these waters safer. For Aersila, for Ryn, for the baby in Undine’s arms, and for all the babies she’d one day hold in hers.

And Reid was going to help her.

Before she could say as much, a wave of panic flooded the water, erratic topaz light filling the space as Melusina darted into her and her sister’s shared abode.

“What is it?” Undine straightened.

“Celia’s missing.” Melusina looked sick. “Delphine and Zavier have already gone out to look for her.”

Dread trickled its glacial current down Nireed’s spine, and the collective spike of emotion in the water meant she wasn’t alone.

Celia was only a year old, but siren children were born able to swim on their own. Look away for just a moment, and they’ve darted off, getting their fins in things they shouldn’t. That Undine swaddled hers to her breast for nursing was more about motherly connection than need.

“Gather the others.” Each one of Undine’s movements held fierce command, her electric blue luminescence blinking steadily, and Nireed admired her assuredness and strength. This was why she was their leader, even though many of their elders had thought her too young. Undine did not falter in the face of adversity. “Whatever it takes, we’ll find her.”

The pod took to the open water as one, their chorus of desperate, searching song flowing on the currents, pleading to the Twenty-Armed Goddess for intercession, pleading to Celia to follow the sound of their song. To come back to them. To safety.

A weak, but unalarmed note answered.

Through a game of call and response, Nireed and the others found Celia, spotted her at a distance, close to the surface, happily twirling around in the water, giggles bubbling from her mouth. Oblivious to the danger rapidly closing in.

By natural law, there should be safety in numbers. But how had Nireed forgotten? There was no such thing when a net hundreds of feet wide and deep could swallow entire pods whole. But for now, they were on the outside looking in. Watching in horror as the unthinkable happened.

Their song died.

They only saw the net because it was already cinching, pulling everything inside it closer and closer together. Everything including Celia, who’d swum unknowingly right into its snare.

Delphine let out a heart wrenching screech as she raced toward the net. Toward the rapidly shrinking opening at its bottom. Toward her baby.

“Delphine!” Nireed screamed.

But the ocean swallowed her name.

Chapter

Twelve

Two cases in one night, that was the only reason Reid and his team were recalled from liberty. Annoying, but it came with emergency-responder territory.

“I see it,” Perez said over the radio. “Kruetz, get ready to be lowered on deck.”

For the last fifteen minutes, they’d flown a grid with a spotlight on the water, looking for Gale’s Promise, another one of Nautic’s boats. The captain’s distress call had given them an approximate location, but for the last few hours, that line of communication had been dead.

Either something had happened to their radios, or the crew was gone.

Seeing it now, Reid suspected the latter. The boat should’ve been lit up like a sports field for nighttime visibility, but the boat was completely dark save for a few dim auxiliary lights. Unpiloted and unmoored, Gale’s Promise drifted aimlessly, the waves gently rocking it from side to side.

Clipping in, Reid clapped Hatcher on the upper arm, his crewmate unusually quiet. “I’ll be okay. She won’t hurt me.”

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