Page 44 of Mama Si's Paradise

“Wait till you see the other side,” Amber said as she walked backward all around the fountain, and I followed, clueless—until I saw the other side of the statue. Until I saw the other half of the mermaids.

I stopped in my tracks. “What the hell?!”

Amber laughed her heart out.

While the left half of the mermaids was perfectly done, depicting them as gorgeous females with long hair and full lips and round cheeks, the right side of them was a skeleton. The eyes were mere sockets, and the jaws, the bones of their hands,their ribcages—I saw all of it. The statue was so well done that they looked like real bones.

“Osera, Minel,andGargannea,” Amber whispered, making goose bumps rise all over my skin. “The three siren sisters. Look.” She pointed at the engraving on the stone below the rock. The running water and the pink color of it made it almost impossible to read the letters, but it was easy when Amber had already said the names.

“Legend has it that, in a faraway realm where sirens swam the oceans and people turned into wolves and dragons reigned the sky, a dark and terrible curse was put upon the land, and these three siren sisters died in the fight to save the world,” Amber said.

“What was it?” I whispered, leaning closer to touch the fingertips of the mermaid closest to the ground, the only one I could reach. “What was the dark and terrible curse?”

“How should I know, silly? It’s just a story.” She sat down on the edge of the fountain, dipping her hand in the water. “Come on, sit. Feel it. It’s so warm.”

I automatically did, and I expected it to feel like water. It didn’t. It felt like really thin fabric against my skin instead.

“How are they doing this? How is this purple?” The glow was so beautiful I couldn’t look away, didn’t want to even blink for fear I’d miss a single second.

“It’s a special chemical concoction from what I heard. It’s in the water so it makes it glow purple, but it has to be at the exact right temperature. That’s why it’s warm,” Amber explained, just as mesmerized as me.

“It’s…it’s…” I didn’t have the word for it yet so I just shook my head.

“Magical,” Amber finished, and she nailed it. “Just like the rest of the Paradise. Come on, there’s more to see.”

A librarywith floating shelves Amber swore were being held by ropes, even though we couldn’t see them.

A room made out of white stone designed with no edges whatsoever, just smooth curves on the walls and the ceiling and the floor, with pools full of turquoise water inside.

An aquarium that was indeed bigger than my bedroom with all kinds of fish in it that scared me as much as it made me want to be swimming with them.

But the last room Amber showed me blew me away for real.

The ceiling was like a dome, with openings in the shape of triangles all over, huge openings that enabled us to see the sky perfectly fine. The floor was made out of wood cut into triangles as well, some steps lower and some steps higher, with thick white candles all over the place, burning, though the wax refused to melt. Burning, though nobody was there.

The smell in the air was perfectly balanced, the pressure, the heat, the feel of it just right. I stepped inside with a smile on my face, no longer afraid. There were no floating shelves and no fish here, just the sky that I could see through the openings on the ceiling. The uneven floor was masterfully done, and there was a single velvet couch in the middle of the room shaped like a triangle.

For a moment, the world fell away completely and all I saw was myself sitting on that couch with a book in my hands, surrounded by candles, reading under the starlight, detached from everything and everyone.

“Come closer,” Amber said, and her voice echoed in the high ceiling. She’d gone farther away and was descending stairs I didn’t realize were even there. They started in the middle of the room and went lower for possibly more than a floor, and the wall at the bottom of them was made out of glass, which showed a goddamnjunglebeyond.

A jungle that ended with the oceanright there.

A jungle that didn’t seem to be high up a cliff like the mansion was supposed to be.

“But…but we’re on the third floor,” I said, looking up at the ceiling again, at the sky beyond. “How are we so low? How did we get off the cliff?!” There was no way we could be so close to the ocean. No way.

“We didn’t, silly,” Amber said as she moved farther down the uneven stairs. “Come see this. It looks so scary out there.”

“But the ocean is right there.” I could see it now as I stood on the top stair. I could see it beyond those trees just fine.

“It’s not. It’s just dark, so it looks that way,” Amber insisted. “Comeon,Fall!”

Fuck.

A little light from the outside reached me the farther down the stairs I went. Amber was right, it was just dark. The ocean was down the cliff, far below the mansion. It wasn’t beyond this forest—of courseit wasn’t. It was just the night and the twinkling stars and my excitement that was making me see things, that’s all.

But the forest on the other side of the glass was indeed scary as hell.

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