Chapter Twenty-One

She was too stunned to scream.

Rebel’s chest splintered as the knowledge pounded through her on the rhythm of her pulse. Betrayed. The pain blocked out the shouts of her name. She didn’t know what was happening until a net was hurtled above her, breaking the veil of treachery. The trawl spun down—a body slammed into her side—Anjeline trying to pull them out of its path.

Too late. The meshwork entangled them.

She felt magic flourish around her. A blistering power she knew. It vibrated from Anjeline like a smothered star. Sparks rose up around them, rushing through Anjeline’s fingertips and threading along her tongue. It swelled against the mesh, but in a split second—the magic flashed away.

“It’s enchanted.” Anjeline gasped. “I can’t remove it.”

Rebel’s mind finally caught up to her limbs, and she snatched her switchblade from her belt, flicked it open, and slashed at the net. It was as if she had punched cement. A shock rippled through the mesh into her core. The knife quivered from her hand, dropping farther into the pool of water below. “No!” She struck the net with her fist, and pain shot up her arm.

A melody vibrated the air.

Her body went limp. A mesmerizing song rose from the Siren’s crimson lips and she suddenly seemed to radiate desirability, shining from every pore of her glistening skin. Rebel couldn’t pull her gaze away. Never had she heard such wonder. Such loveliness. The seductive tune compelled her to do nothing else but obey it and halt her struggling.

“Snap out of it.” Anjeline tugged her arm.

The tiny bit of Rebel not enthralled by the Siren’s song would have smiled at Anjeline’s protectiveness. Dark, slippery figures encircled them, and the world around Rebel became all water and fishtails. Countless webbed fingers emerged under the net and jerked Rebel’s shoulder, seizing her satchel for the vase within. And the song ceased.

The bag now dangled from the Siren’s wrist.

Anjeline threw Rebel a horrified look, but she was already moving. Her mind cleared, and in a growl, she yanked at the net, trying to lunge at the Siren.

But more figures split the waters.

Rebel dropped back. Two towering creatures massed before them, rising from the pool with the upper half of a horse and tails of a fish. Hot puffs of air flared from their nostrils, and the water horses snatched the net’s rope between their teeth and pulled. The meshwork shrank around Rebel and Anjeline as the beasts dragged them to a block of floating foam. Their legs went out from under them, and they landed on the float.

“Bring them to the cages,” ordered the Siren.

“Wait!” Rebel finally found her voice. “You can’t do this.”

The Siren’s black eyes flickered over her, and Rebel felt as if she’d been hit by a strong wave. “Can’t I? You were offered at a price. You of all humans should know there are no friends among thieves.” She waved her tail and the water horses pulled them along.

Rebel and Anjeline struggled, but the mesh tightened even more. Down the tunnel, they were dragged to a passageway where icicles dangled from the ceiling and more torches dashed the walls. The frigid air pricked every inch of Rebel’s skin. She shivered, cold, stiff, and sweaty all at once. A warm hand gripped hers. “Tell me you have another knife on you?” Anjeline whispered so close Rebel felt her muscles tense like an archer’s bow.

All Rebel could do was shake her head.

More tunnels branched off to the sides, slanting up or downward with the rushing waters. The Siren’s tail propelled herself at the head, while her mermen shadowed behind her, holding tridents. Rebel watched them conversing, wondering what they were discussing. The tide change? The way humans looked floating upside down in the river?

What flavor she tasted like?

Her stomach lurched. They were hauled through underpasses with enchanted bells dangling above the waters and eels slithering underneath, like some type of an alarm system. A beam of warmth came from this tunnel as it dead-ended into a circular cavity, where an older mermaid bearing a torch waited. Cages and animal pens filled the space, stacked on top of another within the tunnel wall niches. In the unoccupied cages, tiny bones and wings were scattered about, while human-sized cages hung from the ceiling.

Faint noises echoed, like birds fluttering.

A few small cages swayed from the strange creatures within. Their bodies threw off a great amount of light and Rebel squinted. Most of them appeared humanoid. Their limbs were long and thin, no bigger than her foot, and they possessed wings of a hummingbird. They might have been richly colored once, but now they looked soiled and dull. Some glanced at her with colorful eyes, full of sorrow and despair. Others buzzed about the cages in circles with cries of mercy at the Siren.

A young man kneeled within one of the taller cages. Slits were cut into the back of his leather jacket, and even darker, leathery wings protruded from it. His silver bangs brushed the top edge of his ambitious eyes, and he began to ram his shoulder into the cage. Between the banging, a hissing came. The cage’s bars sizzled and his wings shuddered. He lurched back in pain and bared his teeth at the Siren, but one word from her lips and they silenced.

The water horses drifted the float toward two hanging pens, and Rebel became aware of the tightening hand on hers. Anjeline whispered, “Now would be the time for you to scheme one of your reckless plans.”

Rebel glanced around the tunnel, an idea slowly forming. “When they remove the net, distract them with your glowiness,” she said. “I’ll snatch the bag and bolt like lightning.”

“There’s water underneath us,” Anjeline pointed out.

“So I’ll swim.”

Anjeline sighed. It wasn’t exactly a plan. Though, reckless.

As the mermaids approached on either side of the net, Rebel tried calculating how she would run from eight of them while trapped in their habitat. But if fish could swim upstream, surely she could, too. She gave Anjeline a nod. The water horses released the net from their teeth, removing the webbing, and Rebel’s heart pulsed into action. She made a sudden forward thrust toward the Siren—ready for Anjeline to flare into a ball of heat.

Her own cocksure spirit betrayed her.

Rebel’s feet were used to scaling ledges, not water-logged foam. The float tipped into the water—and she landed on her backside with an oof. Hissing laughter emerged and she looked up, coming eye to eye with a trident pointed at her.

“In the cage.” A merman sneered, his mouth full of jagged teeth.

Rebel didn’t budge, blocking their access to Anjeline. As if it mattered. But then warmth rippled up her spine. A dazzle of smoke, and Anjeline shifted into that Abyssinian cat. In a blur, she pounced up a mermaid’s tail and slashed at a face—leaping from one shoulder to another—sending the merfolk into a frenzy.

Others shouted and dashed forward.

Just as Anjeline sprang into the air to claw at the Siren’s eyes, a webbed hand caught her by the scruff of the neck. The Siren threw her into a cage and, in a puff of smoke, she turned from feline to girl again. Before Rebel could punch first, several slimy hands dragged her forward, forcing her into the cage beside Anjeline’s. The door slammed on their hopes.

“Fish-eating twats,” Rebel spat. “By the way, I pissed in your river.”

The Siren hissed out a chuckle. So much for their plan. She shot Anjeline a grateful look, even if it hadn’t worked. They watched as a merman held open the satchel for the Siren and she caressed the vase within, hunger filling her eyes.

Rebel’s heart skipped and she flung her arms through the bars. “You can’t…take her!” She wheezed. “The Wishmaker is with me.” She expected Anjeline’s death glare for that. But by the smoke drifting off her shoulders, Anjeline was too enraged herself.

“You think such a powerful creature could be yours?” The Siren sliced through the dark waters, drifting to Rebel’s cage. “You humans destroy everything you touch. Including yourselves.”

“You know nothing of humans,” Anjeline spat. More heat bristled off her skin in an attempt at intimidation, and she slipped a hand through the cage to Rebel, trying to touch.

“My, my.” The Siren grinned, displaying honed teeth of a shark. “Wishmaker, are you turning empathetic of your captor?”

“Rather a human than of man-eating trawl.” Anjeline sneered.

The Siren flipped her tail, like a scaly middle finger. “I understand the human’s fox traded you without a thought. Too cowardly to pay the debt himself.”

The words stung, splintering in Rebel’s chest. All these years she’d confided in Jaxon, all he’d taught her, and this was how he’d betrayed her. Tossed her to the fishes. Until a moment ago, he had been the big brother she never had, and now, she couldn’t even call him a friend. Still, she needed to know. “Jaxon’s debt, what was it?”

The Siren’s inky gaze pinned her in place. “The fox is a solitary Sidhe. Outcast by the Sun Court, yet refused to bow before the Moon Court. Not as sly as he convinced himself he was. One of his heists went awry and the Sidhe he purloined from tossed him into the river. We saved his skin, with the expectation he pays the debt back with three years of his life.”

“You exploited him?”

“Despite what you’ve heard, mermaids are not cruel. We’re just cold-blooded.” In a grandiose gesture, the Siren swept an arm up and down her body.

“Jaxon wasn’t supposed to betray me, either,” Rebel said, taking a breath. “Clearly, I’m not a good judge of character.”

“We don’t harm humans unless they blemish our waters.” The Siren leaned in, the bars separating her face from Rebel’s, and she licked her lips. “I don’t usually take ones for pets, but I’ll make an exception with you.” Slippery fingers reached into the cage, stroking Rebel’s cheek, and she shuddered at the icy touch.

Heat rippled off Anjeline in warning waves.

“Melusine, dear?” The older mermaid drifted toward the Siren, her hand caressing the cages, calming the creatures from buzzing about. Her hair gleamed as leafy as the others, but with streaks of gray, and her face bore decades of creases. “Don’t you think you have enough pets?”

Once the Siren, Melusine, looked to the elder, her eyes seemed to soften. “Enough? They’re never enough to fix what these humans have done to our oceans.”

Anjeline rattled her cage. “The Courts won’t allow this.”

The Siren’s tail flicked savagely. “When they do nothing to aid us, we must help ourselves.”

“By keeping…prisoners?” Rebel coughed, glancing at the winged boy.

“More like pets,” he quipped.

“Workers,” Melusine corrected, observing Rebel and whatever sickness she had. “You humans pollute yourselves. You’ve polluted our homes for centuries, and seeing as feyries adore you spores, then they should be the ones to right your wrongs. And now I hold something far better…” She lifted the vase from the satchel.

At the touch, Anjeline went rigid.

Rebel knew what it meant, the imprint of power over Anjeline had shifted from herself to the Siren. In a daring attempt, she flung her arms through the bars, grabbing at the vase, and hitting Melusine’s hand. The bag tumbled from her webbed grasp, sending some of its contents and Rebel’s beloved book plummeting into the water. At the same moment, Rebel’s fingers snatched at the vase, glancing off its sides—and a jolt shocked Melusine.

Sparks flicked out.

In a shriek, Melusine lurched back. The vase slipped from her fingers, but in a flash, she caught it with her tail. Mermen raised their tridents in warning and her fingers trembled as she glanced from the vase to Rebel in bewilderment. “Who are you, girl?”

Rebel ignored them, wheezing from the exertion and focused on Anjeline. “You don’t have to cast it…”

A sad smile touched Anjeline’s lips at how untrue that was. The burden of her imprisonment showed in her eyes and Rebel started to grasp the worst part—whoever possessed the vase more than possessed her—they controlled her power.

Anjeline turned to the Siren. “Wishes come with a price.”

“Ah.” Melusine nodded. “The consequences of a darkened heart. Well, then, you should know the virtues of mermaids far exceed any human or magician alike.”

With great pride, Anjeline canted her head, her fierceness springing from inner strength and unwavering certainty as she said, “The heart is a strange thing. Darkness often exists even beside the brightest of lights.”

“Don’t chide me.” Melusine sneered. “I’ll have my wish.”

“There are rules.” She counted them off as she did before. “I cannot grant the wish to kill, make one more powerful than the Creator, or make alive the dead. And you must agree to my term.”

“Term?”

As Anjeline had in the lycan’s lair, she glanced in Rebel’s direction. “The Fingersmith. Keep her out of the hands of the Prince and your wish will be reality.”

The winged boy drew near his bars and whispered to Rebel, “The Siren detests the Prince of the underneath. He seduced her sister and she literally lost control, now floats in the center of the oceans…the Bermuda Triangle.” Rebel met Anjeline’s gaze, unsure why she hadn’t used the term for herself. But she would be lying if she didn’t feel a wave of relief.

“You think I’d offer anything to that son of the devil?” Melusine hissed her reply. “I concur. Now, for what I desire.” She moved her lengthy mane behind her and the seaweed cape around her tail. “I wish…” she said, “…to walk the earth.”

At the words, Anjeline curled her lips and exhaled.

The wish took shape. Creating. Forming. As it became, tendrils of light streamed from Anjeline’s tongue into threads of being. The shimmering spirals swathed around Melusine’s tail end, thickening, and ever so slowly, scales dematerialized and fins faded.

What stood in its place were shapely women’s legs.

Melusine straightened before them, her body slick with river water, and as nude as the Venus de Milo. The merfolk bent low on their tails and kowtowed to their Siren, now able to walk her revenge among mankind.