Page 35 of Siren Sins
Sarah sighed. “I know you’re jealous. If I still had my feelings, I likely would be too, now that you’ve found your soulmate. I see that he’s shared your room.” She forced a smile. “I do hope you’re happy.”
“I’m not,” I spat. It took no hesitation to admit that I wasn’t happy. Everything about this was wrong. Whatever existed between Luke and me was a result of Derek or the cosmos or my own supernatural instincts. It wasn’t a natural development, not like it had been with Sarah. I leaned in and took her hand, trying to ignore how cold she felt. “What we had was a real relationship. Luke and I are just—I don’t know what we are. But it’s not like what you and I had.”
“No,” she said and reclaimed her hand. “You think that our relationship was real, but it was just as manufactured as anything else. What we had was just the result of a shared sorrow. We both lost our mothers that night. We had a kindred pain. It made sense that we would find comfort in one another.” She ran her touch around the edge of her cup. A layer of frost webbed across her tea, but she didn’t seem to notice her blatant display of magic. “I don’t know who I am anymore,” she said absently. “The only place I feel happy again is the sea.” Her empty gaze found mine, but this time it flickered with a single emotion: fear. “If I give in, if I dive deep into the ocean, I’ll never come back.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. The source of this was the gem she’d gained as a mermaid. “Can I see it?” I asked. “The Tear of the Sea.”
She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again and a ring sparkled on her finger that hadn’t been there a moment before. “I’ve learned how to cloak it with a siren’s mirage,” she said. “It seems I’ve picked up a few new tricks.”
I frowned, but examined the ring as she presented it. “Does your father know you have this?” I asked.
She laughed. “Yes, of course. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have survived at all. He helped me to retrieve it, as well as helped me to regain my legs and my powers as a muse.”
“What if he wants the Tear for himself?”
She scoffed. “What could he do with it? It only reacts to sirens and other sea creatures. Since I was a mermaid, it seems to have bonded with me.”
I smirked. “I still can’t picture you as a mermaid.” I cupped my chin in my hands. “Did you braid your hair and decorate your nipples with seashells?”
She snickered. “No.” She waved her hand and the ring vanished. “Although life as a mermaid didn’t seem so bad. Most of their pastimes seemed to consist of orgies.”
My eyes grew wide. “What? How?” Horrifying images of fish men with penises unwinding from fins sprouted into my mind.
She smiled as her gaze grew distant and she leaned towards the window. “It wasn’t sex as we know it,” she said, easing my fears of fish penises. “It was something different. Like they were barely touching each other, and yet it was the most sensual, erotic thing I’d ever seen. It was hard to resist.”
I hummed in response, unable to erase the images springing to my mind. “Interesting.”
She pulled herself from the memories. “So, why do you ask about my father?”
I sighed. This was going to be difficult. “How well do you really know the guy?” I considered outing the new girlfriend, but that would just make me look like the jealous ex. Vikki hadn’t told Sarah that Apollo intended to overthrow the male muses for a reason. If I wanted Sarah to listen to me, I needed to find out why she trusted her deadbeat father. “You said Apollo helped to bring you back, but I don’t get it. You wouldn’t resist the call of such powerful magic just because your long lost daddy asked you to. Why did you come back, Sarah? If it wasn’t for me, then what?”
Her eyes grew wide. “I just,” she stammered, “it’s what my mother would have wanted me to do.”
I pressed my lips together. We both loved our mothers. They had been strong women who had guided and nurtured us, and just as their deaths had bonded us, their memory linked us together. “I miss my mother too.” My fingers spread over my collarbone where my Blood Stone rested its power into my chest. “I suppose it’s what’s kept me going, too. She wouldn’t want me to lose myself to grief or sorrow.” Sensing the break in Sarah’s defenses, I wafted my power around us like a fog. She scratched her nose but didn’t react to the tug of my influence that spidered around her wrists.
After a few moments of silence, Sarah sighed and seemed to finally relax into the haze of my power. “Our mothers would have been great friends. It’s so hard to accept that she’s gone.”
I leaned back with a sigh. “They’re just memories now. And if all you came back for was a memory, you’re going to need to find something new to build a foundation. You’re empty, Sarah. I can see that.” I continued to push my magic over her, tickling her nose with my intoxication. She licked her lips in response. “If you don’t fill your soul with purpose, you’ll lose yourself to the siren’s curse. I don’t care if you’re a muse, you’re notjusta muse.” I indicated the frost that had spread into her teacup. “You’re something else now.”
Sarah frowned. “I suppose you’re right.” She smoothed invisible wrinkles from her skirt, pushing away my magic without realizing it in blue layers of mist. “When my father returns, we’ll discuss this with him. He’ll know what to do.”
I frowned as the last of my red haze disintegrated into dust. She was powerful and the Tear of the Sea protected her from my influence. Even a Blood Stone couldn’t change what she’d become.
With a sigh, I left her alone. There was no way I was going to get through to her when she was like this. I needed to find something else to ground her to the mortal plane other than her parents. Apollo was a male muse and a lying cheat. Somehow, Sarah had forgotten that he’d left her and her mother when she’d been just an infant. When he came back to Miami, I’d make sure she saw who he really was.
When I returned to the bedroom, Luke was already awake and dressed. He leaned over the marble bathroom counter as he shaved. Heat fogged over the mirror, blocking my reflection from view and I silently slipped behind him. He tensed as I ran my fingers around his neck, pressed against his bare back and caressed the smooth ridge of his chin. “Angels grow stubble?” I asked.
He smiled. “It’s a curse, it seems. Everything is on overdrive with me. My hair grows too fast. Regeneration has its downfalls.”
I ran my fingers through his scalp and indulged in the silken luxury of his hair. He closed his eyes and made a rumble in the back of his throat. “I don’t know. Seems nice to me,” I said with a purr to my words.
“You shouldn’t touch me like that,” he said and gripped my wrist.
I frowned. “We’re soulmates, or whatever, why shouldn’t I flirt with you?”
He wiped the mirror and stared at our reflection. The hard lines across his jaw had come back. “It’s something Derek said to me. He told me you’d ‘unlock’ me once you’d had enough supernaturals. You’d already slept with him, and the dragon.”
I dug my nails into his shoulder and spun him around hard. “What are you saying?”
