Page 66 of Song of Lorelei

She smiled wistfully, both touched by the gesture and heartbroken. “It’s not my museum anymore.”

“Not if we have anything to say about it.” Marci placed an arm around her shoulders, giving her a comforting squeeze. “We filed nepotism complaints on your behalf and had a conversation with Jackie. She’s working on a piece about your wrongful termination. Whatever it takes, we’ll get you reinstated.”

Dry eyes just weren’t in the cards today. “You didn’t have to do that,” Lorelei whispered, too choked up to give the words any volume.

“You sacrificed your dreams and your privacy so that Lila could keep hers. Of course, we did. And you’re a daughter to us, too, remember? We’ll fight for you.”

“Lila has fought for me every day since I told her what I am, and she has done so much for my kin. I owe everything to her.”

“That’s our Lila. Fiercely loyal,” Marci said proudly. “She told us that you got to see where the merfolk live. How was that?”

“Wonderful,” Lorelei breathed. “They were so welcoming.”

As they filled glasses of champagne and tucked into the tea sandwiches, she told them all about it.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

LORELEI

The sky darkened and rain began to fall, scouring away the days of joy her reconciliation with the Walshes had given her. Lorelei’s breathing remained even but worry gnawed at her insides. It had taken her a year after The Osprey not to seize in a panic every time the weather took a turn while Killian was out at sea.

There’d been red skies that morning, harbinger of a coming storm.

Red sky at night, sailors’ delight.

Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

Storms didn’t have to be devastating. Killian and his crew navigated them all the time. They sometimes got tossed around a bit, yes, but they always came home.

But as the wind picked up and the steady rain shower battering her windows turned into a torrential downpour, a severe weather warning alert blared from her kitchen radio, chilling her to the bone.

Killian, please. Come home to me.

Her lights flickered, then cut out.

* * *

Candles sat on every available flat surface, casting everything in a dull orange glow. Overkill for someone with her photic senses, but the shadows of the room closed in, and she did not want to be swathed in darkness.

Wind howled outside, whipping about the cove at ferocious speeds, buffeting the seaside cottage so much it rattled. The trees creaked and groaned, some bending at startling angles. Fragile branches snapped, falling with heavy crashes. The smaller ones pelted her home. Clattering. Scratching. Just so much noise.

Rain beat against the windowpanes too heavy to see more than silhouettes and flashes of lightening, but Lorelei could feel the tempestuous ocean waves, roiling, churning, and hungry. This was the side of ocean that took and did not return.

A terrible, dangerous beauty.

She wasn’t alone. Lila and Marci had come over shortly after the severe weather radio broadcast, their hair pulled up and covered by silk scarves, just before the heavy winds hit. This wasn’t a night to endure alone if one had the choice, not with loved ones in the clutches of a pitiless sea.

They sat on the hardwood floor in front of the couch, no question of logic, some innate, mutual agreement that sitting on it seemed unbearable. A kind of antsiness that needed the ground’s firm support, not cushion.

They checked NOAA’s weather app once and set it aside. Seeing all that red swirling across the map made them queasy with fear.

Ashen, Marci said under her breath, “This storm’s a ship sinker.” Lila didn’t seem to catch it, but Lorelei did. Siren hearing was sometimes a cursed thing.

Knots twisted over and over in her stomach, waterlogged, and pulled tight. The weather was just as bad out at sea where their men fished, or worse. Killian, Will, and Walt were at the mercy of a ruthless ocean, tossed about in a vulnerable hunk of metal.

At some point, Marci made them all hot tea. A distraction. Something to busy the hands when the mind was in turmoil. Though a simple, soothing comfort in times of stress, their cups went cold, untouched.

Lorelei similarly preoccupied herself with a stray hoodie string she found under the couch. All the various kinds of knots she learned during her sailing days, she tied in miniature one after the other. She’d fly through one, unravel it, and start again with another. Cleat hitch. Bowline. Butterfly loop. Square knot.

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