As the night wore on, Gemma became increasingly weaker. A chill seemed to be growing inside her, a cold that spread outward from her stomach. When she began to shiver, Alex went into the laundry room to find something to cover her up with. He came back with the shawl that Harper had brought home from the sirens’ house, freshly laundered, and he wrapped it around Gemma’s shoulders before he went back to the scroll.
The watersong grew louder. It wasn’t painful or obnoxious, like it had been when she went to Charleston, but instead, it sounded more like a soft lullaby, like the waves were singing her to sleep.
Her life was draining from her, and she could actually feel it ebbing away. It was like she was very slowly losing consciousness, and she knew she didn’t have much time left.
She sat on the kitchen floor, her head resting against the wall, the wrap pulled tightly around her, and her voice came out in a tired whisper. “Alex. I need to go to the water.”
He’d been standing over the sink, dousing the scroll in water, but he turned to look back at her. “What do you mean? Why?”
“I’m getting weak, and I need to be out in the water,” she explained simply. “I just feel it.”
Alex started to argue, but when he looked back at her, his words fell silent on his lips. She was fading away, and she looked like it. The normal tanned glow of her skin had become ashen. Her hair no longer glistened, and she was struggling to keep her eyes open.
He rolled up the scroll and shoved it in the waistband of his pajama pants, then he came over and helped her up. He offered to drive her down to the bay, but the sky was still dark enough. They had time, and she’d rather enjoy the night and walk the several blocks down to the water.
That proved to be harder than she thought, and within a block, she no longer had the strength to walk. Alex scooped her up, holding her to him, and she rested her head against his chest as he carried her down to the bay.
He waded out into the waves, and when he made it deep enough that she could feel the seawater splashing on her, her skin began to flutter. She thought she’d be too weak for it, but it actually gave her a small burst of energy, and as her legs transformed into a tail, Alex let her go.
She floated nearby because she wasn’t ready to leave him, but when the time came, she’d swim as far away from him as she could get. No one told her what it looked like when a siren died like this, but she didn’t want him to have to see it.
The sky began to turn pink as the sun approached the horizon, and Alex reached out, pulling her to him. He held her in his arms and kissed her softly.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he said thickly.
“I should go.”
“No. Not yet.” He hung on to her tighter, and she let him, but only for a second, then she pushed away. “No. Stay. Just a few more minutes.”
“Alex, I can’t.” She shook her head as her tears mixed with the saltwater.
“There has to be something.” He pulled out the scroll, and in terrified rage, he gripped it and tried to rip it in half. But the paper didn’t tear. It was like a thin sheet of metal, and sliced through his finger, leaving a nasty gash. “Shit!”
He let go of the scroll then, letting it float on the water, and Gemma swam over to him. She pressed her shawl against his cut. But instead of looking at his finger, her eyes went to the glowing paper beside him.
Whenever the ink was exposed to water, it would glow a little. But Alex’s blood had dripped on it in large drops, and as the saltwater mixed with it, the ink began to blaze like Gemma had never seen before. The words were actually on fire.
“Oh, my god.” Alex grabbed the scroll before it floated out to sea. “Is this it? Is the curse breaking?”
She shook her head. “No, the words are still there.”
Alex shook his head, and she could see his mind racing, as he tried to put it together. “Blood of a siren, blood of a mortal, blood of the sea. That’s how a siren is made.”
“It doesn’t work, Alex,” she tried to tell him. “I already—”
“Please. Gemma. Just try it again. We have to try,” Alex insisted with such a fierce desperation, and she didn’t have the strength to argue with him.
So she bit into her finger, tearing out a chunk with sharp teeth, even though she had already tried this once before and it hadn’t worked. But as her blood dripped down, mixing with Alex’s and the saltwater, Gemma found herself hoping that this time it would be different.
Right before their eyes, the words burned up and disappeared. Anywhere the mixture touched, the ink vanished, and then quickly, even where Alex hadn’t spilled his blood, all the words were gone.
The scroll was blank. And Gemma held her breath, waiting for more changes to come. But they didn’t.
“It’s working.” Alex gave her a relieved smile. “The curse is breaking.”
“I don’t think so, Alex.” Her tail steadied her as she put her arms around him. Nothing had changed. She didn’t feel different, and her scales were pressed up against him. “Maybe it’s just too late.”
“No. It can’t be too late. No, Gemma.” Tears were in his eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you, Alex.”
He stared into her eyes, brushing her wet hair back from her forehead, then he kissed her, desperately, as though if he could just love her enough, then it would save her. He held her tightly, one arm pressed against the smooth scales of the tail that rose up the small of her back, and she could taste their tears with the saltwater.
The sun rose behind them, and as she felt the first rays hitting her, she closed her eyes and clung to Alex.
SIXTY-ONE
Vestige
She hadn’t seen as much of the world as she’d wanted to. In fact, she’d hardly seen any of it. Thea had spent thousands of years roaming the planet, but she had hardly gone anywhere since so much of it was too far inland.
That, and Penn always dictated where they went. Penn couldn’t stand the call of the watersong, so she refused to go anywhere that caused her the slightest bit of pain. Thea had thought that with Penn gone, she’d finally be able to explore all the places that had been blocked off to her.
But as it turned out, Thea didn’t do so well against the watersong, either. She didn’t go very far, and she always seemed to end up back in the ocean.
Still, the last two days of her life couldn’t be called bad. In fact, they were some of the very best she’d had in a very long time. Without all of Penn’s demands and threats and constant tantrums, everything had felt so much nicer.
Though Thea wished that Aggie had been there to share it with her, and even Ligea. She had loved them, and she still missed them. Penn had all but forbidden her to talk about them anymore, and Thea wondered once again why she’d listened.
It wasn’t that she was scared of Penn, but Thea felt intrinsically that she’d failed her. Since the day Penn was born, she had felt unloved and abandoned, and she had been by her parents. Thea had always tried to make up for that, but all she’d ever done was make things worse.
The horrible truth was that the curse was her fault. If she’d yelled at Penn that day, the day they’d left Persephone alone, or if Thea had simply let Penn go off without her, then none of this would have happened. So she’d spent nearly her entire existence trying to make it up to Penn for allowing her to be cursed in the first place.
The real kicker at the end of all of this is that Demeter’s curse centered around their love of swimming, but Penn had never even cared for it that much. She’d been smitten with Poseidon, that was all. It had been Thea who loved the water, and, somehow, she loved it still today.
She waded out into the water, relishing the way her legs fluttered for the last time as they turned into a tail. The sky was lightening above her, so she swam out on her back, floating out farther into the ocean.