Page 6 of Blood of the Sirens
My mouth hung open as he turned and dove with insane grace back into the water, casually swimming off into the sunset like the lead in a goddamn rom com.
What the—
“Wait a damn minute! Where are you going? There’s nothing out there!”
The inlet was part of the intercoastal waterway that winnowed out to the Atlantic Ocean. He was swimming south, and I knew we were the last few houses for a good twenty miles. Where the fuck was hegoing, then?
I held on tightly to the dock, refusing to look away. Refusing to believe he was just … swimming off into the darkness. And yet he did.
“Fuck.Fuck.”
I’d invited him in, but he hadn’t taken me up on it. I hadn’t found out a single thing about him, not even his fucking name.
I cursed as I realized my kayak was happily floating away. I dove after it, bringing it back and tying it to the dock angrily. I sat on the edge for a long time, my eyes straining to glimpse my mysterious man as the sun dipped below the horizon. Maybe he had a kayak somewhere nearby, offshore. Maybe he was camping in the public park a mile away. People often did.
Wet and grumpy, I staggered to the rusty outdoor shower and yanked on the chain, sending a cascade of freezing cold freshwater over my body. The jolt to my system helped pull my head out of my ass … a little bit, at least.
Focus on what needed to be done. That’s what I always didwhen life got too much to handle. My gaze turned to the house: once a bright white, it was now dirty and dingy looking. Maybe if I painted it a dark color, that would help? Ha, what a sad, desperate attempt to hide the fact that it was falling into disrepair.
It had been a beautiful, tidy seaside manor once upon a time, but now the front porch was unstable, and the back deck creaked and bowed if you ran across it. Welcome to America, where the next generation is quickly becoming poorer than the last.
I didn’t mind the old plumbing and the cracked windows, or how the wind sometimes cut through the gaps in the wood. I thought it was a perfect retreat for a dumpy, nearing middle-aged woman changing careers and with no real prospects in life.
Just like the house, I was a real disappointment to everyone. We were made for each other.
I grit my teeth against the cold water sluicing down my body, but it did nothing to quench the fire in my core.
Stupid men and their stupid mouths.
I toweled off and headed inside, intent on a bagel and a quick date with the vibrator that waited inside my top left drawer next to my bed. Then I’d attack the house like I wished I could attack Mr. Blondie.
First I’d vacuum, but maybe then I could go get some varnish from the hardware store on the highway. If I stained the deck, maybe that would help …
Casting another look around the dirty kitchen, despair settled around me like a heavy jacket. Fixing this house wouldn’t change anything; it wouldn’t help. No matter how much money I spent on it, it was what it was; just like me.
Neither of us could truly be fixed.
As I stomped into the bedroom, dripping water onthe worn floorboards, I tried to get Blondie out of my head, but I knew I’d been thinking about him when I took care of myself later. A strong jaw, quivering muscles, and those eyes …
Cum gutters.
I flopped down on the bed and snatched up my toy, refusing to feel any guilt. It wasn’t like I would ever see him again, after all.
THREE
Merrick
The horizon mergedwith the sea as the sun disappeared, night falling. The balmy water gave way to inky cold the deeper I went, but it only warmed my chest. The cold meant home.
Home wasn’ttoofar below the surface, but it was deep enough that the humans wouldn’t bother us. Our clan kept ourselves in a deep valley just off shore, away from the boats and loud machines the humans used. My palms skirted over the dancing red algae, tickling my skin. I made a mental note to grab some for my cave sometime. I wanted to experiment with grinding the algae up to see if I could make a red dye of some sort. Red was a bright color loved by mers, but hard to come by unless it was a weed of some sort or the scales of my fellow mers.
And understandably, they were quite attached to those.
I dove down into the inky depths, my eyes adjusting asbioluminescent lights lined our homes to guide us. Not that I needed it. My house was one of the largest, since Father was the chief. I swam inside, prepared to be chastised.
“Ah, he wasn’t lost after all.” My father paused, his eyes landing on me grumpily. My stomach flipped as thirty or so mers looked up and stared at me. Our home wasn’t large by any means; it wasn’t much larger than any of the other ones, constructed by stacking stones and plugging the holes with dead coral and using seaweed to cover the cracks. Even now, my eyes scanned the ceiling, thinking of a dozen different materials that could be used to make the houses more visually appealing–mother of pearl, conches … but alas. Father once told me this village was supposed to be temporary, but hundreds of years later, we were still here.
None of those musings help the fact that I was late; really,reallylate.
