Sam wiped the sweat off his face as he exited the stage. He was hungry and all the control he had to use while singing made it worse. He’d probably have to head right out to sea as soon as they got back to find something to eat. Human blood was preferred and most never strayed, but Sam found he could bear any type of mammal blood if needed. At least the guys understood, or rather tolerated, Sam. Well, they understood that the singing was hard, but heading out to feed would make them upset as always. He was pretty sure they had more than a few treats waiting to ride the bus with them. Sam just didn’t feel like feeding on some strangers. Who he really wanted to feed on was a stunning blonde, but she wasn’t an option. He had already fed on Whitney that week before when he had to rescue her in her swim lesson. He was limited to drinking blood only once every two weeks from her.
Singing for money wasn’t Sam’s first choice of professions. He would have been much happier washing cars or being a lifeguard. But those jobs didn’t pay nearly as much as singing. And singing kept him off the radar of the hunters. They would never expect him to be a siren since he could sing on stage and not affect the audience. Sam was lucky he had the control. Leo and Mark didn’t. Good thing they could play backup, and their manager hired backup singers once Sam had convinced him that Leo and Mark couldn’t sing.
“The bus will be packed up in fifteen,” Clark said as he tossed Sam a towel. “If you’d let my guys go back with you, they’d have it unpacked just as quick.”
Clark, their manager for the past two years, always offered to send someone back. That was really just code that he wanted to see where Sam and the guys lived and recorded their music. Sam couldn’t let him do that. He’d see that they didn’t exactly record in a rundown place like he thought. Being a siren did have it’s perks, like people willing to donate large amounts of new equipment if you asked nicely, or maybe sang them a song or two. Sam didn’t feel like it was right, but then again, at least they didn’t kill the day humans to get the equipment, and it wasn’t his fault day humans fell for their songs.
Sam climbed up into the bus to wait and stripped off his shirt in the process. He was still drenched in sweat from being on the stage, and the towel around his neck wasn’t keeping his shirt dry. They were almost finished packing, and he should have stayed down to make sure everything was packed correctly, but he didn’t want to stick around all the day humans who were hanging out and screaming his name. It wasn’t exactly safe at the moment now that his hunger was growing.
He could smell the day human guests the guys brought on when he walked on the bus, and ignored them as he sat down in the front. It was going to be torture, four hours of it to be exact. One of these days he was going to have to leave his morals at the door and join them, but not today. He still had enough control to make it home.
Leo walked on the bus behind Sam with his own day human groupie hanging on him.
“Going to join us in the tub?” Leo asked as the girl beside him giggled into his chest. She didn’t look like she was old enough to be out as late as it was. Sam raised an eyebrow to Leo, who smirked and wiggled his own eyebrows in return. No, she probably wasn’t.
The girl finally noticed Sam where he sat, and she swooned at the sight of him. Sam rolled his eyes at Leo who tried to keep her from falling by pressing her into a hug.
“There’s plenty of food if you want to join us,” Leo added. “Mark always picks up at least three.”
“No thanks,” Sam replied, waving Leo through the bus to the back where the hot tub was.
Leo shrugged and ushered the girl in his arms to the back of the bus. He turned to ask Sam one last time, but Sam just stared back at him, giving him the look that said to keep their feeding safe. The only way Sam even allowed Mark and Leo to feed on the bus was if they made sure their girls wouldn’t die and bring attention to their group. Mark had agreed as he was used to Sam and his no-kill policies, but Leo took some arguing with. When they met a hunter at their first concert, Leo seemed to agree that draining their dates was off the table. It was a close enough call for him to reform, at least in front of Sam.
Sam wasn’t against killing day humans in particular—they were food after all—but he took his job very seriously. He was responsible for the sirens living in his town. He hated to have to go fight with the hunters. They were trouble and had killed two of his older brothers when they were the head of the guard as Sam was now. By enacting the policy where they wouldn’t kill day humans once he came to land at sixteen, Sam had made the sirens on land completely safe. They hadn’t had a hunter in town in over eighteen months. Everyone hated the policy, but they agreed it was the best idea. Sam was there to protect them, but he couldn’t protect everyone at every moment.
Lying back against the window, Sam let his mind drift. He wouldn’t fall asleep on the bumpy bus, but he could daydream a bit. His daydreams went instantly to her as he knew they would. Whitney had been at school today, and since lunch, with his brother showing up, he had noticed her attention on him. He hoped that wasn’t because of Tim. Girls always fell for Tim. Sam knew Whitney wasn’t like most girls, but she was still just a day human girl. Tim’s charms probably would work on her and that kind of upset him. Tim could never be the guy for Whitney. He was rotten to the core. Whitney deserved more than that.
Whitney’s new attention on him got him thinking. Part of him wondered if she remembered anything from her swim lesson, but that was impossible. She was almost dead. If she remembered anything, she’d think Sam was part angel. Sam snuck a glance or two at her each time he saw her during the day. Was it possible that she looked more beautiful and alluring than before? She was just a day human and playing tricks on him. It had to be the lack of blood. He needed to take on a few more students to feed from. That’s what he needed.
The bus started up, and Sam realized he hadn’t noticed the bus driver, Mr. Max, come onboard. Anyone could have come on the bus, and they would have been in trouble if it were a hunter. He was going to have to quit all his daydreaming. He would fail at his job if he was too busy thinking of a particular blonde who invaded his every thought.
Sam sat up as the bus pulled out of the parking lot and turned to head toward home. The boys in the back with their girls were splashing around in the hot tub. He wasn’t about to join them. The water splashed again, and Sam stood up. He couldn’t risk feeding on the girls, but he could take a shower. There was enough water in the system for two showers, and if he took one long one, he would feel better. His skin had been itching since the afternoon.
One of the girls giggled as Mark began to sing. It was only the first time of the ride they would be feeding. Sam really didn’t need to stick around to hear that also. It was bad enough he was craving blood and a certain blonde girl that would never be his. Life overall sucked for the time being. His father wanted him to come home, and he couldn’t live the life he wanted if he did that. Yep, life more than sucked. Sam needed a miracle and something to keep him distracted from his life.
Opening the door to the shower, Sam just stood and stared. He had asked for a miracle, but he hadn’t really expected one to be waiting there. Sam wasn’t one for organized religion, but perhaps that was about to change. He reached forward and touched the girl in his shower. No, he wasn’t just imagining it. Whitney was really there.
Whitney’s mouth hung open in shock. She hadn’t had time to hide back under the seat after the concert when Mark showed up with two girls in tow. She figured they would need to pack everything, but she saw Mark coming as soon as she was on the bus. She was lucky she made it on at all, and that would have been majorly awkward if she had to get someone to drive up in the middle of the night to get her. She still didn’t know exactly where she was. Once on the bus, Whitney ducked into the shower, hoping to move once the coast was clear. Mark had walked on the bus and hadn’t left. It was either the shower or the bathroom. She was sure that the bathroom was the more used room, and since none of the guys used the shower on the way to the concert, she took the only chance to make it home unseen. Well, that didn’t exactly turn out that way.
Sam didn’t say a word as he stared at Whitney. She didn’t know what to say either. Was he going to tell the other guys?
Stepping into the already small space, Sam shut the door behind him. His wide shoulders almost touched both sides of the walls at the same time. The plastic walls rattled, and the water perched above Whitney began to fall. She heard the water move just as she had at lunch, but now there was nowhere to go. There was barely enough room for the both of them as it was.
The water fell from the corner above her head, and Whitney only stared at Sam as it happened. She regretted that she was fully dressed and turning into a night human. She was going to have to walk home naked after she dried off, and it was going to be completely humiliating as it was just to turn back in front of the guys. She didn’t need to look; she could feel her legs melt together. What she needed was for Sam to tell her what the heck was going on. From the expression on his face, he was shocked, but not the kind of shock like he hadn’t seen a fin or two before.
“Care to explain?” Whitney asked from her seat in the shower. How nice that the shower had a small bench seat. She didn’t have to tip over like she did in her own shower when it first happened.
“Crap,” Sam replied. That wasn’t an explanation at all.
“Buddy, you’re missing all the fun,” Mark yelled, pounding on the door. Sam had locked it behind himself, but the flimsy plastic wobbled.
Sam put a finger to his mouth for Whitney to be quiet. Even though she had no idea what was going on, she nodded. For some crazy instinct, she trusted Sam.
“I’m not hungry. I plan to shower and use up all the water,” Sam told his friend. That must have been a good enough answer since he seemed to relax, like Mark was now gone again.
Sam reached past Whitney and turned the nozzles to the shower.
Whitney would have “eeked” at the cold water that was shooting out of the shower head, but it didn’t feel cold at all. It actually felt nice. Sam moved closer into the small amount of room in front of Whitney and looked down at her. Bracing his hands on either side of her head, he moved his face beside hers.
“I’m going to pick you up and set you on my lap,” he explained in a calm voice, like he might upset her.
Whitney didn’t like to be manhandled, but then again, there wasn’t much she could do with a fin, and since he turned the shower on, the fin wasn’t going anywhere.
Sam easily picked her up and maneuvered himself to the seat beneath her with her back on his lap. Whitney grabbed around his neck to not tip over as he moved her. She relaxed while the water beat down on the both of them. She was pissed, as she was sure he knew something, but the water felt too good. It felt like it washed away her anger the longer it touched her. And the itching she had felt since she boarded the bus was completely gone.
Whitney stared at Sam, sitting eye level with him on his lap, his broad arms wrapped around her, keeping her from falling over as the bus turned.
“We have about ten minutes before the water runs out,” Sam stated, breaking their eye contact as he looked at her fin. “After that, we can’t talk without the guys hearing us.”
“And that would be bad?” Whitney had to jump to conclusions. Sam wasn’t explaining much of anything.
“Yes, very bad,” Sam replied, holding her steady with one arm and reaching forward with his other hand. He touched her fin gently, right where her knees would have been.
It was a strange and very new sensation. When she had turned into a part fish the night before, she poked and prodded the whole tail as she tried to make it go away, but having Sam touch it was so much different, a bit intimate. The ends of her tail flickered when he touched her finned knees. Sam grinned.
“Glad my new tail makes you happy, but you have a lot of explaining to do,” Whitney scolded him as best she could, but she was still sitting wrapped in his arms. It was a lot less effective from that point as he protected her from every bump and turn of the road.
Sam turned back to Whitney and his smile faded. He touched the lines that randomly covered her shoulders also, and then lifted his gaze to meet hers. Her body was covered from the waist up with swirling, almost tattoo-looking lines that left her breasts covered and gave a shimmery tinge to her skin.
“I suppose the first thing I should do is show you,” Sam finally responded after what seemed like forever, but couldn’t have been more than ten seconds.
Every time Sam moved or touched Whitney, it felt like time was slowing down.
He wrapped his free arm back around her waist, and she could feel him move slightly beneath her. Looking down, she watched as his legs merged together and a deep blue fin appeared. Whitney didn’t try to cover up her gasp. He was a mermaid also, or was that a merman? How was that possible?
Sam touched her cheek gently to get her to look back to him. Whitney was shocked a second time as his normally brown eyes were now a seafoam green-blue color.
“As you can probably guess, I’m a merperson,” Sam started to explain.
“Merman?” Whitney interrupted. She really wanted to call him a mermaid, but she could tell by his serious expression it wasn’t the time to kid around. Whitney felt like that a lot. When things got too serious, she couldn’t help but make jokes.
“Technically I’m a siren,” Sam continued like she hadn’t interrupted him. “I come from a family of night humans who turn part mer in the water and sing to lure their prey to them. Night humans are people that survive on blood. Things like vampires and werewolves are true, including mermaids.”
“But the mermaids are extinct. I was taught that growing up,” Whitney replied. It was confusing to see a childhood fantasy of hers sitting beside her. It made her tail problem much more real.
“Taught?” Sam raised an eyebrow at her choice in words.
“I was raised as a skinwalker. We learned about the other clans in North America all the time.” It wasn’t like she had to hide her own night human world from Sam. He was a freaking night human after all, even if he was a very extinct night human.
Sam smiled and sighed at the same time, like he found the last piece in the puzzle.
“So that’s why you turned,” Sam replied. “Here I was wondering how in the world you could have a tail, but you’re already a night human. It was in your DNA to be another one. I’ve heard of this happening in the night human world now with the new leader of the clans and all, but I didn’t know it was possible for other people.”
Whitney put a hand up and covered his mouth to stop him from talking. He had the wrong impression completely.
“I was a night human.” She tried her best to emphasize the past tense of it. “A year ago I got mixed up with a witch that killed my night human side. I moved here since I’m no longer a skinwalker.”
While Sam seemed like he was going to say more, he paused at her words. He stared into her eyes before suddenly looking up at the water.
“We have like two minutes left,” he said quickly. “You can’t tell a single person about this. The merworld is supposed to be dead. We’ve let everyone think that for over two hundred years. If the night human world finds out, they will come hunting us. I’ll explain it all more at another time. We should meet tomorrow at lunch. Tell your friends you’re taking me out to eat as payment for saving you from drowning.”
“I haven’t gotten paid yet,” Whitney interrupted him.
“Lie to them, ask them for money, I don’t care which. I need to teach you how to be a merperson or the mer will hunt you also.”
Whitney opened her mouth to interrupt him again. That wasn’t good enough. She needed more of an explanation. Sam covered her mouth with his hand.
“The only thing I have to tell you right now for you to survive is that all merpeople need two things. Water and blood. That’s it. Your fin needs to be in the water at least once every twenty-four hours. If you go longer, you’ll get itchy and dehydrated quickly. Then you’ll lose control of it. Second is that we drink blood, a lot of it. It takes about ten pints of blood every four to six months. Most mer prefer to drink that all at one time, and others take a bit at a time. You’ll need blood, especially now that you’re new.”
The water in the spout began to drizzle out. They were almost out of time.
Sam leaned closer to Whitney’s ear.
“I’ll teach you how to be a siren, but you can’t tell a single other person about it. It would mean your death and probably mine, and not in a very nice way.”
Whitney swallowed the lump in her throat. Sam sounded ominous, like he knew exactly how they would torture her to death. Maybe he did. She was already picturing the scary siren world that she was now part of. She never asked to be one, yet she was. Life was getting too complicated. Sam reached for the towel hanging on the door just out of reach of the water that had been spraying on them. Sam’s legs reappeared, even though water was dripping down him still, and he moved to pick Whitney up and place her back in the seat.
Whitney grabbed his arm and moved to whisper back in his ear.
“Okay, I get it. Don’t tell anyone, and I need water and blood. I get how to get the water, but what about blood?”
Back in the city where she was raised, there were blood banks night humans could just collect from. If she needed it, her friends probably could tell her where one was in every major Florida city, but since she couldn’t tell anyone about being a night human, she would have no excuse for wanting blood.
Sam nodded. He hadn’t thought of that, obviously. It didn’t take him long to decide what to do about it though as he tilted his head to the side.
“Until I teach you how to do this safely, I’ll feed you,” he said quietly.
Whitney stared at him. Feed on him. She had never fed on a human in her life. Sam noticed her hesitation and took her hand, placing it on his chest. Her face turned red. The skin was smooth, yet she could feel the muscle right below the surface. She was sitting in the shower with the hot guy she had a crush on, and he was offering to feed her blood. Yep, it had to be Alternate Universe Day. It was all just too weird.
Whitney looked up into his eyes. She was a newly turned night human, and she could easily lose control. He was completely calm and not worried in the least. As she stared into his eyes, he seemed to urge her to go ahead. Whitney took a deep breath and tried to not think of what she was doing.
Waking the next morning, Whitney found that she had a text from Sam telling her where to meet him. She had no idea how he even got her number, but that wasn’t the only mystery. After feeding her the night before, Sam stood up and walked out of the shower with the same shorts on that he had when came in. Whitney dried herself off and found herself back in her clothing also. How was that possible? When she had been a skinwalker, any transformation shredded her clothing. That didn’t seem to be the case for the sirens.
Whitney had woken to her phone beeping from Sam’s text. She would have rather slept more. After they had returned from the concert, Whitney had to walk home in the dark since Sam had to go with the guys and pretend she wasn’t even there. She didn’t know what time she finally fell into her bed in exhaustion. The dark never really bothered her much as she had spent most of her life as a night human. The four-mile walk was a bit much after being awake for over twenty hours and then having to sneak into her room to sleep. At least her aunt wouldn’t be there in the morning. She always worked morning shifts, and sometimes afternoon and night shifts, too. She was a bit of a workaholic.
Yawning, Whitney stretched as she rolled out of bed. She needed to beg her friends for a loan before heading out to eat with Sam. After all, they had all offered to help so she wouldn’t owe Sam any longer. Now she was just following through and taking them up on it. Trudy wrote her back that she could give her money, and Whitney now had one stop on her way to meet up with Sam.
She didn’t want to take a shower and deal with those issues, so she just combed her hair and threw on shorts and a T-shirt over the swimsuit Sam told her to wear. Sleepiness got the best of her. She was too tired to care what she really looked like, and it didn’t sound as if it mattered much since she was wearing her favorite pink polka dot bikini.
Her alarm clock began to beep, and she realized she had set it the night before, even if she didn’t remember when. Picking up her phone, she checked the time since she was sure her alarm clock had to be wrong. It couldn’t be that late. Yep, it was that late.
She ran down the stairs and out the front door, not even saying good morning to her cousin who was sitting on the couch watching TV. He said something, but she was already gone. She was going to be late unless she ran. Heck, her one stop alone, even though it was on the way, would make her late.
Crossing the next street, Whitney was half jogging. It would take her at least ten minutes to get to Trudy’s house. She didn’t look at the houses she passed or even the few people out walking dogs. She was on a mission to be the least amount of late as she could. More sleep would have helped, and it certainly would have made her cheerier, but what could she do? She had been out late to a rock concert. So it was kind of her own fault. When she made it there, Trudy was already waiting on the steps, money in hand like she knew that she would be running late.
Whitney smiled at her friend. That was a true friend, loaning money and waiting for her at the same time.
“I promise I’ll pay you back after I get paid next Friday. I just don’t want to wait any longer to start rewarding him for saving me. Otherwise, I’ll have to take him out every week this summer,” Whitney easily lied to her friend. She felt bad about it, but she knew the dangers of telling a day human of the night human world. She would do anything to protect her friends.
Trudy nodded along with her. “No, you don’t want to owe Prince Sam. I bet he’d make you come back from college on the weekends to pay him back if you don’t get it done before we leave in the fall.”
Whitney couldn’t help but look closer at her friend. The way they always talked about Sam made her wonder even more. It was like they knew him even though she never saw any of her friends interact with him. She was going to have to ask Sam who the sirens were in town. Could she have been friends with them all along?
“Thanks,” Whitney said as she took the money. “Gotta run. I’m already late.”
Trudy grinned. “Good. Make him wait. He’s the one demanding you take him out, at least he could give you enough warning to plan ahead. Guys like him are so difficult.”
Waving as she walked, Whitney headed off down the road in the same half walk, half jog pace she was doing before. By the time she made it to her favorite dock, she wasn’t surprised to find Sam waiting. He was standing outside his Jeep. He stood almost as tall as his Jeep, and he was wearing only a sleeveless tank with his board shorts. He didn’t even seem to notice as Whitney approached. His eyes were on the ocean, watching the waves while they came in. His dark, ear-length hair wasn’t pulled back out of his face like it was for school normally. Instead, it flopped over his ears and around his face, keeping his eyes from Whitney.
Waves rolled onto the beach not even twenty feet from them. The sound was always soothing before to Whitney, but now it sounded almost magical, like a song was coming from the waters. She stopped, looking at her handsome date. And yes she noticed, but she was trying her best to not oogle him, or rather get caught staring. Instead, she watched the waves beside him.
“Do you hear it?” Sam finally asked after at least five minutes of standing there listening.
“The song?” Whitney asked. She hadn’t visited the ocean since everything had changed. In fact, she hadn’t been around any body of water since it had happened only days ago.
“Does it call to you?”
Whitney listened to the wind blow the melody closer, but she felt like she was too far away to tell. She took a step closer to see if she heard it better. Sam finally turned to her and smiled, placing a hand on her cheek to get her to face him instead of the water. His touch broke the spell the water had put on her.
“Guess it does.”
Whitney had no clue what that meant, and was going to ask him before he interrupted her.
“I’m famished. Let’s eat first and then go somewhere we can be alone to talk.”
Whitney couldn’t complain about that. She hadn’t eaten breakfast either, though she wasn’t exactly hungry because of missing it. Normally her stomach would be growling by eleven if she skipped a meal. She might have been thin, but it wasn’t because of what she ate. She loved sweets, ate pizza once a week, and never skipped a meal for anything other than sleep.
“Hop in,” he ordered her.
She turned quickly so he wouldn’t catch her slight giggle that slipped out. After a year of people referring to him as Prince, she could finally see it better. She always thought he was bossy in her swim lessons because he was teaching her, but it seemed he was bossy in real life, too.
“Where are we going?” Whitney asked as Sam took a turn heading out of town.
“There’s a place a bit north of here I like to get breakfast at after shows. They know me, but no one else there does, and my … I mean, our kind doesn’t go there. We’ll get some privacy.”
Our kind. That sounded strange. She had been part of the night human world, but not for the past year. She felt like she didn’t belong with her aunt, or the day humans around her, but she didn’t feel like she belonged home with her brother and the skinwalkers. It was kind of nice to hear she was part of something again.
Whitney nodded to Sam since it seemed like he was waiting for a reaction of his choice of places. It was all so secretive, and a bit strange for her. Where she lived and grew up, everyone seemed to know about the skinwalkers. The people in her town were either a night human or married to one. There were no secrets beyond her friend, who everyone had kept in the dark because they didn’t know who her father was. Whitney never had to worry about talking to her other best friend, Owen, as they walked around town. No one worried about it.
Sam drove in silence while Whitney wondered what he was thinking about. His eyes were fixed on the road, even as hers drifted to the ocean when it peeked out every now and then through the houses they passed. She didn’t understand what he meant initially, saying it called to him, but she did now. It didn’t matter where she was looking or how many houses were in the way; she knew exactly where the ocean was. She wondered why it was like that, and couldn’t wait to finally get some answers.