No . . . wait. Something’s not right with his expression. It’s not shock, or awe, or a thousand things I would expect to see at this point. It’s . . . alarm? Is he actually afraid of me? I hadn’t expected to see actual fear, real apprehension....
My heart shreds. He’s genuinely terrified, by the stark look in his eyes—like I’m going to haul him out and kill him or something. Our eyes can’t seem to tear apart, and I just tread water as I take in the dark fear in his eyes.
And then he moves.
And I realize he’s not tied up anymore.
Huh? The shadows shift and rearrange themselves. And then, the full picture seems to focus. It’s Erik who takes a step away from the tree. The moonlight falls across his face, casting a weird, grim darkness over his eyes. He gives me a twisted smile, one that sends a chill racing down my spine. He takes another step, toward Cole, toward me.
Fear ripples through me again. Down my spine, settling low in my stomach. There’s victory in Erik’s look. Like he’s won. What is he doing?
And then it gets worse. Sienna steps out from behind another tree, one hand gripping the bark like it’s the only thing steadying her.
Pajamas. Somehow that’s the first thing I pick up on. She’s wearing flannel pants and a dark gray CCH T-shirt, probably something she borrowed from Patrick. I seem to be stuck on the pajamas, staring at them as if they’re the most important part of this puzzle. Did Erik go to her house, yank her out of bed, and bring her here?
Panic swells again. How much has she seen? I try to read her expression, and I realize: enough. She’s seen enough. I bite hard on the edge of my lip. Hard enough to draw blood.
Why would Erik do this? Why would he ruin everything in one fell swoop?
I throw myself forward, until my bare feet find muddy bank and I climb out of the water. The lake water drips down my hair, slides down my skin. I take a few hurried steps, embarrassed to have an audience when I’m nearly naked. I instinctively go to grab my clothes, but they’re missing. Stolen.
I start to step backward, hide my body in the water, but it makes my skin crawl. I don’t want to see the iridescent scales on my legs either. I’m not sure what Erik wants, only that he controls the situation. Does he want me in the water, or does he want me out?
And why did he bring Sienna here? To destroy my life completely? Is he panicking because I pushed him away?
I take a few more steps, so that I’m fully on the shore. I should be embarrassed, demand some clothes, but I’m too angry. How could Erik do this? Is he that desperate to separate me from everyone else? Does he think if he isolates me somehow, he’ll win?
“What do you think you’re doing?” My voice was supposed to be angry, demanding, but it comes out pathetic and shaky.
“Ensuring I get what I deserve.” He’s standing there as if he owns the lake, his shoulders squared, his smirk cocky.
He looks nothing like the guy I’ve spent the last few weeks with. Nothing like him.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I worked very hard to make this all happen, and I’m not going to let you simply throw it away.”
“What are you?” Sienna bounds forward. Her pink slippers sink into the mud as her hair floats out around her in the breeze left over from the storm. She’s inches from me. Her hands ball up and release, flex again, and I brace myself for the punch to the nose I’m sure is coming.
But it doesn’t. I blink. Sienna seems to be in shock, not sure what to say to me or why she’s saying it. Just that she doesn’t understand any of this.
“Did you drive here?” I ask.
She blinks.
I glance over at Erik, who is struggling to keep Cole under control now that he is no longer tied up. I’m not sure how he managed to untie him from the tree and yet still keep his hands bound behind his back. I lower my voice. “Did. You. Drive. Here.” Every word is perfectly articulated, low enough that I don’t think Erik can hear.
Sienna, bless her soul, nods.
“Leave. Please, if you’ve ever trusted me a day in your life, leave. And I swear to you, I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. Everything. Including the truth about Steven. But you have to go.”
Erik knows what I’m doing now, steps forward as if to stop me, his smirk turned into a frown. He didn’t count on this. On Sienna listening to me for a second, once she saw who I was. On Sienna actually having a mind of her own.
I stare into her eyes for a long moment. They look so much like Steven’s, it’s hard not to look away as the pain snakes around my heart. And then . . . she spins around. Runs. Her blonde hair streams behind her as she leaps over a log, breaks into a sprint as the sticks in her path snap under her weight.
A tiny piece of me relaxes. And then I turn to Erik, surprised that he let her go. “You need to leave. This isn’t right and you know it. You’ll never get what you want this way.”
“You don’t even know what I want.” He looks pleased, which sends a shiver of fear down my spine. There’s such a weird gleam of satisfaction in his eyes, like the cat that has the canary.
I grit my teeth. “This isn’t something you can force me into. You want me to give you forever, and I can’t even give you a day. It’ll never work. Just let me go. Let him go.”
He just laughs. “You don’t get it, do you? I don’t want forever. I never did,” he says, giving Cole a little shove. “I was never going to fall in love with you. Yes, love can break your curse, but I don’t give a damn about your bloody curse.”
He pauses, takes in my expression, and grins wider. “See, I’m not cursed to be a nix. Unless you think a horse is cursed to be a horse. I am a nix. Forever and always, a creature of the river. It’s not so bad, really. I get to control people. Drown them when I feel like it.” That creepy smile envelops his face. “And I feel like it fairly often.”
Cole’s eyes flare wider. He’s just realized he’s in danger. That Erik is capable of more than either of us ever realized. He starts to take a step away from Erik, toward me, but Erik is too fast for him. He grabs the back of Cole’s shirt and yanks him.
I’m frozen, blindsided by the harsh reality of who Erik is, by the fact that I stupidly trusted everything he told me. I was too desperate for it all to be true.
“Is anything you said true? Is your mom even a siren?”
The smirk returns as he shakes his head, and then it grows into an ugly, arrogant smile, as if he just came into possession of the world and is about to wave it in front of me before yanking it away. He reaches out and shoves Cole so abruptly that Cole falls to his knees. Because he’s still shackled, he doesn’t put his hands out to catch himself, just falls facedown.
I step forward again, shivering from fear, not quite sure if I should leap forward and launch myself at Erik, or if there’s some more logical way out of this.
Erik turns his attention from Cole to me. Something foreign glitters in his eyes. “You were easier than the other sirens. The guilt of killing made you desperate to believe there was a way out. All I had to do was paint a pretty picture, and you were mine.”
I don’t blink, don’t move. Every muscle in my body seems to go slack at once, as if my entire body wants to give out. I stare at him, the lake water still lapping at my ankles. His devilish smirk grows until he looks possessed.
“At this point, you’re supposed to ask why. Why you. Why a siren.” He pauses. “It’s because humans are so easy to kill. A pretty face like mine, and they fall for anything. They practically walk into the river, and all I have to do is smile. You’ve killed one, you’ve killed a thousand. And in four hundred years, I’ve killed at least that many.”