Tidal (3 page)

“I don’t want her to quit the play. She needs to be doing
something
.” She rubbed her temple.

In fact, Harper preferred that Gemma stay in the play. Daniel had taken the job at the play partially because he needed the work, but it also meant that he could keep an eye on her. So every night, for a few hours, Harper knew that Gemma was safe. She just wished that Gemma would start making better choices where boys were concerned.

“I get that she’s going through this totally insane thing, but I don’t know how bringing another person into the mix will make it any better,” Harper said. “She broke up with Alex because she knows how dangerous it is for sirens to be around boys, and now she’s dragging in another boy.”

“I thought the only reason the sirens cared about Alex was because he was in love with her,” Marcy said. “They probably won’t give a crap about some random boy, unless he falls in love with Gemma, too.”

“I don’t know.” Harper’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t even know what the sirens want anymore. They’ve been here for
weeks
, and nobody’s figured out anything. We still have no clue how to break the curse. They don’t know how Alex is able to love Gemma, or why Daniel is immune.

“I’m supposed to be leaving for college in two weeks, and I have no idea what the hell is happening or how to help Gemma, and I just want to scream or rip my hair out.” Harper groaned in frustration.

With working full-time, getting ready for a college she wasn’t even sure she was going to anymore, worrying about her sister, trying to find a way to battle evil mermaids, all while making time for a new relationship, Harper was nearing her breaking point.

Marcy snapped her fingers suddenly, causing Harper to jump in surprise.

“Duh!” Marcy announced. “You should talk to Lydia.”

“What?” Harper asked.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Marcy said. “But I keep forgetting. This whole Edie thing has my mind all messed up.”

“You really need to get over the Edie thing, Marce,” Harper said. “She’s your boss, and she’s going to be around for a long time.”

Marcy sneered at the thought of dealing with a supervisor again, and then she continued on with her story. “So I was on Facebook the other night—”

“Wait. You’re on Facebook?” Harper interrupted. “Since when? I thought Facebook was the antithesis of everything you stood for.”

“No, I said getting on Facebook and posting pictures of my cat with hilariously misspelled phrases in all caps was the antithesis of everything I stood for,” Marcy corrected her. “And sometimes I use Facebook. I like playing the games where I water plants all the time, and I talk to old friends.”

“There really is just so much I don’t know about you,” Harper said.

“Yeah, there is,” Marcy agreed. “But the point is, I was talking to this old friend of mine. I’d completely lost touch with her, but it turns out she owns a bookstore up in Sundham. She’d definitely have some books that might help you out with the sirens. Plus, she’s pretty knowledgeable on all that kind of stuff.”

“Like what kind of stuff?” Harper asked tentatively.

Marcy shrugged. “Hunting vampires, slaying demons, raising the dead. That kind of thing.”

“She can raise the dead?” Harper was too weary to hide her skepticism.

“No,
she
can’t,” Marcy said defensively and swiveled in the chair a bit. “But she knows a lot about it, if that was something you were into.”

Harper went back to scanning the books and tried to think of a tactful way to let Marcy down. Whenever Marcy did even the slightest thing for somebody other than herself, Harper tried to reward it.

“Look, Marcy, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. It’s really very considerate. But—”

“But what? You have a better lead to follow?” Marcy asked pointedly. “Or any other leads or ideas? Any clues at all?” Harper pursed her lips but didn’t say anything. “Exactly. My idea may be a little out there, but it’s better than no idea.”

“You’re right,” Harper relented and offered Marcy a grateful smile. “Are you busy this weekend? If the bookstore’s open, maybe we could go then.”

“Yeah.” Marcy nodded. “You should get used to making the trek up to Sundham anyway, since you’re going to college there pretty soon.”

“
If
I go to college,” Harper reminded her.

“Oh, crap, here she comes,” Marcy said.

She jumped off the chair, grabbed the stack of books that Harper had checked in, then dashed from the desk to put them away. All this happened within the few seconds it took for Edie to open the front door and come inside.

“Hello, girls,” Edie said brightly as she strode inside.

Edie was the kind of woman who somehow managed to be beautiful and dowdy at the same time. She was tall and thin, with blond hair, high cheekbones, and full lips, and considering she was over forty, she’d aged astonishingly well.

But she hid under long flowing skirts, overly drapey tops, and layers of beaded jewelry. Her eyes were a lovely blue, but they were barely visible behind her thick calico glasses.

“Hey, Edie,” Marcy said. Since Marcy was so short, the stack of Harry Potter books went up to her chin, and she was nearly tipping over as she turned back to continue speaking to Edie. “Love to chat. Gotta run. Books to put away and all that.”

“And how are you doing this lovely morning?” Edie asked Harper as she walked behind the desk. She dropped her oversized purse on the desk, and it jingled loudly.

“Fine,” Harper lied and wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Are you feeling okay?” Edie asked, concern filling her voice, and almost absently she touched Harper’s face. “Your skin is cool, so at least you don’t have a fever.”

“I just haven’t been sleeping that well,” Harper said and stepped away from Edie.

She didn’t have a reason to move, except that she didn’t want to be that near Edie’s scrutinizing gaze, so Harper turned away to straighten some forms sitting on the desk.

“Troubles at home?” Edie asked.

“Nope, just good old-fashioned insomnia.”

“You know what will fix that right up?” Edie asked. “Tea. I know it sounds cliché, but it really works! I’d never been much for it, but when we went to England, they had it with every meal. Now Gary drinks it every night. He can’t sleep without it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Harper said.

“You really should.” Edie leaned back against the desk and crossed her arms loosely in front of her. “There are just so many different things you can learn from other cultures. Gary and I came back from our honeymoon so much healthier and wiser than we were before.” Edie launched into a lengthy list of new facts she had picked up on her travels.

Marcy peered out from behind a bookcase at Harper, as if to say,
I told you so
. But Harper already knew she was right. She just couldn’t fault Edie for her somewhat incessant prattling. She’d found such intense happiness, and she wanted to hang on to it for as long as possible. Harper couldn’t blame her for that.

“That is true,” Harper said when Edie paused to take a breath, trying to cut off her train of thought. She turned to face her and smiled as brightly as she could. “Hey, Edie, my dad forgot his lunch again, and I was wondering if I could leave a bit early for my break so I could bring it down to him.”

“Of course you can,” Edie said. “But I have no idea what he’ll do when you go away to college. Then again, I have no idea what
we’ll
do, either.”

Harper didn’t say anything to that. She hurried into the office to get her dad’s sack lunch out of the minifridge before Edie could regale her with more tales of her magical time spent abroad.

When Harper went outside to get into her car, she glanced across the street at Pearl’s Diner. Since the sirens had moved back to town in July, she’d gotten used to spotting Penn, Lexi, and Thea hanging out in the booth by the window, drinking milkshakes. Penn had this awful way of staring at passersby the way a lion stares at a gazelle.

Today the booth was empty, and there was some relief in that. Even though they had come to some type of understanding, Harper didn’t like talking to the sirens or seeing them in any capacity. They were evil, and they made her skin crawl.

Unfortunately, her relief was short-lived. As she walked closer to her car, she saw the long, bare legs draped over her hood, and Harper slowed her steps. She briefly considered going back to the library, but she refused to run from the sirens anymore.

Lexi sat back on the hood of Harper’s Sable. Her head was tilted back, so her long golden hair cascaded down onto the windshield. The short skirt had ridden up high on her thighs, and the hot metal of the car should’ve burned her skin, but Lexi didn’t seem to notice.

“Can I help you with something?” Harper asked as she walked around the front of the car to the driver’s-side door.

“Nope,” Lexi said with her usual melodic lilt. “Just getting some sun.”

Harper unlocked the door and opened it. “And you just happened to decide to tan on top of my car?”

“Yep.”

“I’m leaving now, so you might want to move,” Harper told her and got inside.

Lexi made no attempt to move, though, not even after Harper started the car. If it weren’t for the people walking by or watching from shop windows, Harper would’ve sped off with Lexi on the hood of the car. If she hurt Lexi, that would just be icing on the cake.

But people were watching, and she’d be liable to get arrested if she deliberately threw Lexi off her car and then ran her over. So instead, she revved the engine and rolled down the window.

“Lexi, come on,” Harper said, trying to sound as forceful as she could. “Get off the car. I’ve gotta go.”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Lexi said. “All you had to do was ask.”

She sat up straighter, then turned back to look at Harper through the windshield. Lexi lifted up her sunglasses, revealing that her normally aquamarine eyes had shifted into the odd yellow-green of an eagle. Her lips peeled back in their usual seductive smile, but her straight teeth had been replaced by jagged fangs.

Harper swallowed hard, then honked the horn loudly in response. Lexi laughed—a light, lyrical sound—and her features shifted back to their normal stunning state. As Lexi slid off the hood, she was still laughing, and Harper sped off as fast as she could.

While there had been an uneasy truce with the sirens over the past few weeks, they hadn’t exactly been leaving Harper or Gemma or even Daniel alone. Lexi especially had a habit of popping up and reminding them of exactly what kind of monster she was.

It was as if the sirens wanted to remind them not to get too comfortable, and that at any moment they could snap and kill anyone they wanted.

As she drove down to the docks, Harper tried to shake off her encounter with Lexi. By now she should be used to it, but those razor-sharp fangs chilled her every time she saw them.

When she reached the docks, she parked her car as close as she could get and took a deep breath, stifling what was left of her chill. On her way, she walked past the space where Daniel used to keep his boat.

He didn’t dock there anymore because he didn’t live on his boat. Daniel had been staying out at Bernie’s Island, and he kept
The Dirty Gull
at the boathouse. He used it to get back and forth across the bay, but he docked it somewhere else for a cheaper hourly fee.

When she went down to the docks where her father worked loading and unloading barges, she usually went to the foreman’s office, and he would summon her dad. This time, before she had a chance to even reach for the door, Alex opened it and stepped outside of the office.

“Oh, hey, hi!” Harper said, trying much too hard to sound cheerful.

“Hey.” Alex wouldn’t even look at her.

He’d started working at the docks a few weeks ago, and Brian had told Harper about it, but she had yet to actually see Alex here. In fact, she’d hardly seen him at all since he’d broken up with Gemma, and she was a little surprised by how he looked now.

Working at the docks doing hard labor had made a visible difference. He wore gray coveralls with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows, and the fabric strained against his biceps. His shoulders appeared broader than before. In the last few months Alex had looked more toned and muscular, but now he was downright buff.

His heavy work gloves stuck out of the back pocket of his coveralls, and his hands looked cracked and rough. Before, the only calluses he’d earned would come from playing video games, but in a short amount of time his hands had already come to resemble Brian’s.

Alex averted his eyes, staring off at a barge behind them. His brown hair was longer, almost shaggy, and his mahogany eyes were stormy. Harper wasn’t sure if it was from working out in the sun all day, but his face appeared harder. Something had changed in him.

“So how is … um, how are things?” Harper fumbled. “Do you like working here? My dad says that you’re doing good.”

“It’s fine.” He stared down at his steel-toe boots and didn’t elaborate.

“Good, good.” Harper held up Brian’s lunch. “I was bringing my dad his lunch.”

“I ate lunch already.”

“Yeah?” Harper asked. “Cool. Cool.” She glanced around, hoping to see her dad or anyone who could breathe life into this conversation. “How long have you been working here?”

“Three weeks.”

“Yeah? Good. Yeah. It’s a good way to save money for college.”

“I’m not going to college,” Alex replied matter-of-factly.

“What?” Harper leaned in, hoping she’d heard him wrong over the noises of the dock. “You’re going to Sundham University. Aren’t you?”

“Nope.”

Harper was confused by his sudden change of heart. For years now, Alex and Harper had been planning to go to the same college. They were going into different fields, but if they were moving to a new town, they thought it’d be nice if they knew someone. Plus, Sundham was close to home for both of them.

“What about all your plans?” Harper asked. “What about the meteorology and astronomy stuff?”

“I’m just not that into it anymore.” His mouth twitched as he watched the barge slowly pulling into the bay. “I’m working here now.”