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“You killed me.”
Those words were the last I said to Melissa before I walked out on her. The fact that she'd looked after me like a mother during the past year only infuriated me further. I already had a mother and Melissa had taken me away from her.
A little over a year ago, my life had looked totally different. I'd been seventeen years old, with a loving family in Switzerland, and without a boyfriend. Now, I was living in America, had supernatural powers, and I would stay seventeen forever. Pretending to be human while being a Siren was quite difficult. More than once I'd wished that everything would be normal again. I hadn’t chosen to become a Siren. Moreover, my creators could have warned me before I stumbled down a cliff in Malaysia. That fatal accident which led to my transformation could have been avoided, and this was exactly what made me so angry. Melissa, Roisin, and Cathy could have spared my human life. Then I would not have had to live with the burden of relying on other people’s hearts. Plus, I wouldn't be living away from my family in Switzerland and wouldn't have to pretend to be human.
Melissa, Roisin, and Cathy had received messages from the Orbiters, the highest power of the Siren world. They communicated with us by showing us images on the surfaces of water. Through these puddles, the three Sirens had known that I was going to have an accident when I was seventeen.
I was thinking about all that while sitting in our room in Boston, holding a framed picture of me and my boyfriend Alex.
Alex was the one thing I was really thankful for in my new life. Looking at the mischievous sparkle in his eyes, a warm feeling spread around my non-beating heart. In the picture, Alex was hugging me. We were standing in front of the dunes behind the house where I'd lived on Cape Cod for the past year. We were both happily smiling at Melissa who had taken the picture.
At that point, Alex had his assumptions that I was someone other than who I pretended to be. I, on the other hand, had no idea that he knew anything. How could he? I did my best to hide my differences from humans. But due to his studies of human genes and his intelligence, he'd figured out on his own what I truly was. That almost cost us our relationship. He was scared that he wouldn’t be enough for me. Whereas I was sure that the Orbiters would kill him because he wasn’t allowed to know about us. So far, the Orbiters hadn’t interfered. Still, my mind was restless and worried about the consequences of breaking off all contact with the other Sirens. Again, the last words I'd exchanged with Melissa entered my mind.
“Why didn’t you save me and let me stay human?” I was angrily throwing my few possessions into a bag in my room in Cape Cod.
“Nathalie, we only wanted to do what was best,” Melissa tried to explain.
“You killed me,” I hissed.
“No, we saved you.” Melissa put a hand in front of her face and looked as if she was about to start crying. Luke was standing next to her, moving his hand through his dark hair, searching for the right words to say.
“But you had the choice to save me before I stumbled down that cliff. You knew that I was about to have a fatal accident and you let it happen anyway.” I pulled the zipper to close the bag.
“You’re not being fair here,” Roisin said, leaning against the doorframe. “If the Orbiters contact you with a mission, you can’t turn it down. Sooner or later, I’m sure you’ll come to the same conclusion.” She crossed her arms in front of her.
That threw me off guard a little. After all, the three of them had been very kind the whole time I had been here. “I need some time, and distance,” I sighed. “From the beginning, I trusted you blindly. It’s time to get my own view on these things.”
“We will miss you in our house,” Luke said. “You were like the child we always wanted.” He put an arm around Melissa. “And usually, children don’t move out after one year already.” He gave a short laugh.
“Where are you going, anyway?” Melissa asked.
“I’ll stay with Alex.” Part of me appreciated what they had taught me in the past year. Nevertheless, I couldn’t bring myself to look at them any longer and stared at my bag. “Boston isn’t so far away from the Cape. I’ll get in touch again.”
“But you still have to go to school.” Melissa was trying to find reasons why I should stay.
“What difference does it make whether I have to run three miles or sixty?” I strode past them into the living room where Cathy was waiting. As usual, she behaved as if she was completely indifferent to the conversation I'd had with the others. That’s why I didn’t expect it when she stepped in front of me to block my way.
“The love bird flies into the nest to meet her other half,” she said with a sweet smile. One could have thought she meant well if it weren’t for that malicious undertone. “Just make sure you protect your nest from the Orbiters. Undoubtedly, you will hear from them. Whatever the task is that you need to fulfill, it’s not done yet.”
I shrugged. “If they want something, they should say so directly, instead of using others as their puppets.”
Cathy didn’t get irritated by my words and simply talked over me. “And the fact that they haven’t killed Alex shows that they need him for something as well.”
I gritted my teeth. “I won’t leave his side. If they hurt him, they’ll have to go through me.”
“Don’t worry, they will,” Cathy said, matter-of-factly. “The only questions are: when and how will they get in touch with you?” She stepped out of the way with an artificial smile. I left the house, not looking back. I imagined how they would still be standing in the living room like statues, their unnatural beauty covering up the undercurrent of sadness that was in the room.
Outside, Alex was waiting in his new secondhand car. I sat down in the passenger seat next to him. “You just left, and they let us walk out?” he asked, disbelievingly.
“I’m not their prisoner. Besides, I know the rules of the Siren world by now. Or at least, the ones they told me about. I guess as long as we stay low, we will be fine.”
A dark crease appeared on Alex’s forehead. “What could they do to us if they change their mind?”
“Don’t worry about them,” I assured him. “They want us staying as low key as possible. I’m more concerned about the Orbiters.”
“What should I do if they come, and how can we defend ourselves?” I could see how Alex’s mind was already working out a safety plan for us. For him, this had to be even scarier, since he didn’t have any special abilities.
“I don’t even know what they look like. Actually, I’m curious if they have something to say to us.”
“But what are they? What can they do?” he probed.
My shoulders deflated. “I don’t know. I only know that they are like our gods and if you break the rules, like telling a human about our secret, they punish both. But perhaps these rules don’t apply to us because they need us for something. Usually, the Orbiters don’t get in touch with Sirens, but all of us have received puddles from them.”
“What is a puddle, and did I receive one?” Alex asked.
I chuckled. “You would have noticed. It’s when you suddenly see a moving image on a wet surface, like in a water puddle.”
Alex shook his head in disbelief. “And what did they tell you in the puddle?”
“You.” I smiled broadly and Alex raised an eyebrow. I quickly continued. “I don’t know what it meant. I thought I was crazy because I saw your face everywhere. That was before we started going out.” I furrowed my brows. “So, I would like to know why they wanted me to remember you. Unfortunately, I don’t know how we’d be able to contact them.”
Alex started the car and rolled out of the driveway onto the road. “If you ask me, I’d prefer not to hear from them. I’m happy with us deciding how to spend our days.”
I nodded and turned around to catch a last glimpse of our cute cottage by the ocean. I couldn’t see any of the others and felt a pang of panic. Would we be fine without their knowledge? I still felt like a newbie and this house had always felt like a safe place.
I sighed. “I liked living here. The constant salty smell was so calming.”
“Now you will get the noises of cars, and the smell of what everybody in our building is cooking,” Alex laughed. “It’s not a fair trade, but at least we can be together. I hope that makes up for it.” He smiled at me and placed a hand on my thigh.
“How do we explain my presence to your roommates?”
“I thought about that while you were in the house. You don’t need sleep, right?” He eyed me curiously. Alex hardly knew anything about my Siren life because he had only figured out that I was one a few days ago. Thanks to this emergency, Cathy had spilled that my creation was intended. Otherwise, I would still be accepting life the way they explained it to me.
“Or do you sometimes sleep?” Alex added.
“No, I don’t. I haven’t slept or dreamed since I was transformed,” I replied.
“Amazing.” He shook his head. “But so, everyone at home is pretty busy. Brendon works odd shifts in a restaurant and isn’t home that much. We can get enough space and alone time. And for the other nights, you could go on a stroll for a few hours. So, it doesn’t look like you don’t have a place of your own anymore.” He smiled apologetically. “It wouldn’t make any sense for you to give up your place and move to our couch.”
I was quiet for a moment. I understood that we hadn’t intended that I would move in with him after less than a year of being together. Even if this was the best relationship I'd ever had. But going on strolls in the nights was nevertheless quite inconvenient. I was only thinking about cold winter nights or rain. “I hope I can get a few more night shifts at The Wild Rover.” Usually, it hadn’t been a problem to get more shifts at the Irish pub where I worked.
“I’m sorry I can’t offer you more right now. We will figure something out. I’m glad that you are moving in, by the way. I only wished I could have planned it out more romantically.”
“Perhaps you need to get used to not being able to plan life all the time.” I squeezed his hand. “To me, it is way more important that you were honest about having spied on me. It speaks for your intelligence that you figured out that I wasn’t human.”
“You have super powers; I have a super brain. Together we will be invincible,” he joked.
I waved his words off. “In the end, you came forward yourself and wanted to be honest, whereas Luke, Melissa, and Roisin would make a secret out of everything,” I stressed the last word. “If I was lucky, I’d find out about some of the little bits of magic that exist in our world,” I sighed. “It’s too much guessing with them.”
“You haven’t been with them for a long time?” Alex asked, giving me a side glance and then turning back to the road.
“No. I was transformed one year ago, in August. I’m still getting used to all this as well. Never could I have imagined as a human that these creatures we read about in books were actually real.” I faced Alex. “Whereas you believed the whole time that there had to be something more. You went looking for it and actually found something.”
He grinned. “I only wanted to find a major breakthrough in the anti-aging field. I didn’t actually bargain on finding you.” He pulled into a rest area. It was shaded from the highway by trees and the only facilities were a picnic table, a garbage can, and a toilet.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“My mind is flooded with questions. I can’t drive like that.” He turned the ignition off, pulled one leg onto his seat, and leaned against his door. “Do you know who you were before you were transformed?”
I took a deep breath. I hadn’t been allowed to talk about this in such a long time. I wondered whether some of the old me was still inside me. “I remember everything. That’s why it’s so hard to turn my back on my family. I was Serena and would be eighteen years old now.” I briefly flashed a huge smile at him. I knew that it was an issue for him if girls were the same age as his sister, Rachel. She was eighteen now and Alex was twenty-two. Since he still looked at me intensely, I continued. “I lived in Switzerland in a house in St. Gallen. My dad works at an insurance company and in summer we often went swimming together. It was because of him that I got interested in that sport.” I gave a short laugh. “I haven’t been swimming since I got here, even though I lived right by the ocean. It’s easier to be somebody else if I do things differently as well,” I explained. “My mom works in the human resources department of the post office.” My mouth quivered a little. “She was the best. No matter what my problem was, she could help me with it. And how do I pay my family back? I move to the other side of the world while they believe that I am dead.” I stared to the floor and Alex reached for my chin. He lifted my head upward.
“Why didn’t you contact them?” Alex asked.
“For the same reason I didn’t tell you. The others always threatened me with the Orbiters. I thought I would endanger them or that it would be too much of a shock for them if they found out that I was alive after all.” I gulped. “However, perhaps I should get in touch now. But only after we see how the situation with these mysterious Orbiters develops.”
Alex pressed his lips together and nodded.
“I also have a sister who is two and a half years younger. Isa used to borrow my clothes, and she told me all her secrets.” I smiled but soon my smile crumbled. “Her, I miss most. Apart from being sisters, we were also best friends. If something was bad at school, I knew that I had at least someone on my side and vice versa. But I left her on her own.” To stop myself from sobbing, I quickly rambled on. “I visited my own grave. My family had placed all kinds of family photos and my stuffed animals on the ground. They stopped looking for me.” A tear rolled down my cheek.
“They had to let go,” Alex said quietly. “It’s unhealthy otherwise. Nevertheless, I would feel much better if I knew that my mom was somewhere out there as a Siren. Even if she couldn’t come back.” His mom had died of a genetic defect when he was ten years old. “Anything is better than death,” he continued. “Therefore, I think this whole secrecy is rather idiotic. Once your family knows you are alive, I’m sure they will welcome you with open arms.” He hugged me as far as it was possible in the car. I wished I could have been stronger in front of Alex, but it felt nice to be comforted by him. Then, he let go, leaving his hand on the shoulder rest of my seat.
“But, wow, I imagined you to be one hundred years old already. There can actually be new ones of you created?”
“Yes, but not everybody can be a Siren. To become a Siren, several circumstances need to coincide,” I explained. “First, you must be female. Second, you need to be at the edge of dying due to an accident. If another Siren is close by, she can save you by extracting adrenaline from another human and injecting it into your heart. It’s a Siren’s duty to stay with the new Siren. At least until she understands how her powers work and how she can blend into the world without getting discovered. Third—”
“Whoa, stop. System overload.” Alex held up his hands. “Sirens, humans, injections, hearts, I lost the thread here.”
“Okay,” I said, a little slower. “A Siren needs to inject her genes mixed with fresh blood from another human’s heart into the heart of a woman who is about to die. In that state of panic, her body is operating at full stretch and can absorb the adrenaline. After the injection, the woman falls into a month-long transformation. That’s why I missed my own funeral,” I snorted. “And that’s how a Siren is created.”
“You’ll have to tell me again and I’ll write all this down,” Alex said, and let go a long breath.
“The most important circumstance I haven’t told you yet: you can’t have any addictions. It’s necessary to control yourself in every situation. No matter where your desires would rather lead you. A Siren is thirsty for human hearts and it would be a catastrophe if I couldn’t resist the temptations around me.”
“How difficult is it for you to be around humans?” Alex’s eyes widened.
“It’s no problem now. With you, it was quite difficult at the beginning. Your heartbeat was something else.” I licked my lips and then laughed at his grimace of fear. “But since you are way too important to me, you have nothing to worry about.”
“Have you ever wanted to kill me?” he asked nervously.
“All the time,” I laughed. “It’s part of the thrill about you. Your heartbeat is so attractive that I would love to rip it out and see it pumping in my hands for a few moments. But I’m confident that I can resist.”
“Is there anything I can do to make it easier?” Alex asked.
“Sex helps to distract me.” I bit on my lower lip. After our first time together on a romantic camping trip, our relationship felt more relaxed than it had in the beginning. At least for me, because I had the necessary valve to let out the build-up of steam.
He puffed his cheeks. “Ain’t I glad to hear that.”
“It’s fine, really. But for Luke, it’s way more difficult. Men aren’t made to become Sirens. Somehow, their bodies don’t change the way ours do.”
“Why not?” he demanded.
“I have no idea. Luke has been trying to figure out why he can control himself at all but so far, he hasn’t found any satisfying answers.”
“That’s so interesting,” Alex exclaimed. “Why was he created at all?”
“He would have died, and Melissa was in love with him and tried to save him. Somehow it works well enough that he can lead a pretty normal existence. But that’s not always the case.” I gave him a meaningful look. “Often, male Sirens need to be killed because otherwise, they will kill anyone who crosses their path.”
“I hope I never have to witness anything like that,” Alex said. His eyes wandered to the top right as if a new thought had entered his mind. Consequently, he asked the next question. “Is it a coincidence that your human name was the same as the one of the first Sirens mentioned in Greek mythology?”
“After everything that has happened to me, I quite frankly don’t believe in coincidences anymore.” I remembered that Cathy had once said a similar thing and felt an odd sense of déja vu. It enforced my feeling that we would somehow get many questions answered soon.
“Should I call you Serena now, or is Nathalie still fine?” Alex asked.
“I’ve gotten used to Nathalie. Besides, we must keep the pretense going. Serena doesn’t exist anymore.”
He nodded. “What about Melissa and Luke and so on? How long have they been Sirens already, and does that mean that they were humans before as well?”
“Yes, they all were. Cathy has been transformed for the longest and next was Melissa. Luke has been a Siren for about ten years, but it still gives him headaches.”
Alex nodded as if we were having the most normal conversation in the world. Then, he looked at me expectantly. “Do you have any special abilities?” He smiled.
“Get out of the car so I can show you.” I opened my door and walked around the car to his side. I kissed him on the mouth, whereupon I ran to the opposite side of the parking lot, which didn’t even take me one second. Alex stared around himself in confusion. I waved and walked back to him at a normal pace. “I can move extremely fast. That’s the most awesome advantage. While you were camping in the forest last week, I ran once around the whole world.”
His jaw dropped. “Um, I don’t know what to say.” He blinked. “Do that again!”
I ran and stopped a few times, which must have looked to him as if I disappeared and appeared at random spots.
“This is incredible!” he exclaimed. “And you walked out on the people who offered you that.”
“It’s more complex than this.” I was annoyed at him for bringing them up again, now that we were starting to have fun. “I learned that my creation was no accident. They did it on purpose and lied to me about it!”
“Why?” was all Alex could stutter.
“That I would love to know as well,” I sighed.
Alex nodded with a self-satisfactory smile. “See, I always knew you were special.” He poked my stomach.
“Well, I haven’t detected anything that differentiates me from the others.” I slightly pushed away from him. How could he always bring a flirty undertone into any kind of conversation? This made my knees go weak and I felt a warmth spreading through my body from where he had poked my stomach. I tried to pull myself together and stopped myself from letting my hands wander below his shirt. “Apart from the running, I can’t do anything special.”
“How about singing? Aren’t Sirens supposed to be able to sing beautifully?” Alex asked.
“That’s what I thought as well, but none of us can sing particularly well. I concluded that Sirens lost that trait because they mainly used it to attract lost sailors at sea. In the modern world, we don’t need to do that anymore. Or perhaps it was a myth and they never sang at all.”
“What about the sleeping and eating?” Alex now wanted to know.
“Everything inside me is frozen. I neither have a blood flow nor a digestion system. I solely live on human adrenaline.” I pursed my lips.
“Which means?” he laughed nervously.
“Once a month, somebody who dies will involuntarily donate their last energy to us.” I frowned and continued. “To stay alive, I go look for an unfortunate person who's had a fatal accident. Shortly before the person dies, I extract their last energy from their heart and insert it into mine. It’s astounding how quickly I got used to this method. As long as I don’t think about that person’s history or family, it’s simply my way to stay alive.” I held my breath for a second. “I hope you can live with a killer.”
“Well, you said you take energy from people who've had a fatal accident. That doesn’t make you a killer.”
I slowly exhaled. Even if he had taken it fairly well, I wanted to move away from this subject. I took his hand and pressed his fingers against my throat. “Here, feel this. I don’t have a pulse and my heart doesn’t beat either.”
“Hah, I was right. When we went camping, I thought that I couldn’t feel anything, but you were good at making up excuses.”
“Comes with this lifestyle,” I shrugged. “But due to that, I neither have to eat nor go to the bathroom, and I don’t need sleep either. My body works like a battery.”
“Must be very practical.”
“Sometimes. But sometimes I’d like to have some waffles with hot chocolate sauce,” I pouted. “Which would be deadly for me.”
He gasped. “I’ll try not to offer you any more sandwiches in the future then. Is there anything else I should know?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Well, you already saw that my eyes can look pretty different if I am upset.” Unfortunately, when Alex had told me that he'd spied on me, I lost my focus for a moment. I'd looked at him with my true eyes, which are abysmally evil. Most of the time, I managed to keep them normal. Yet, that only worked with a lot of concentration and additional colored contacts.
“Yeah, let’s hope you won’t ever get that angry in my presence anymore.” He breathed out.
“Other than that, I don’t think there’s anything else that’s extraordinary about us.”
“Except that you are incredibly beautiful and attractive, and all the guys notice that,” he mentioned.
“Oh, well, that.” I tried to wave it off. “You know, that’s something I could live without. It makes hiding that I’m not quite human a lot more difficult if men are openly gawking at me. Besides, the only one I need to be noticed by is you, and I hope that’s not just my Siren attraction.” I lay my arms around his neck. Instantly, every molecule inside me felt electrified and pulled toward him even more. For a moment, I lost myself in the dizziness of a kiss.
“It’s impossible to compare the attraction I feel toward you with anything else.” He squeezed my waist and I slowly let go of a breath, trying to concentrate on the here and now. “Are there more family members in the area or is there something like a Siren community?” he asked.
“There are others all over the world, but everybody mostly keeps to themselves. Or they remain with the people they chose to stay with.”
Alex shook his head in amazement. “That’s incredible. What more will we discover?”
“For now, it’s probably best we lay low and don’t draw any more attention to us.” I squeezed his hand, walked around the car again, and sat down.
He climbed into his seat as well. “Home?” he asked.
“Yes,” I smiled. “A new home once more.”
That’s how it came that I moved in with Alex and cut my ties to Melissa and Luke. And since, for the past three weeks, Alex and I had been living in a cocoon of intimate togetherness. Nevertheless, I couldn’t stop myself from worrying that this was only the calm before the storm.