Lullaby (14 page)

“Are you here alone?” he asked.

“I’m having dinner alone,” Gemma clarified. “I wanted some time to myself.”

“Oh.” He scratched his head, and for one glorious moment she thought her rebuff was going to sink in. “A pretty little thing like you should never dine alone. Why don’t you have dinner with me?”

“Don’t you think I’m a little young for you?” Gemma asked. The guy was probably twice her age.

“Is that what’s bothering you?” Jason laughed jovially, as if he’d solved a problem that Gemma didn’t even know needed solving. He leaned in closer to her then, almost whispering to her. “The younger the better, that’s what I always say.”

“Wow,” Gemma said. “That’s actually really creepy.”

“Aw, come on, honey.” He brushed his hand against her arm in a way that was probably meant to be flirtatious, but it made her skin crawl, and she pulled away from him.

“Is he bothering you?” the bartender asked, leaning over the bar and glaring at Jason.

“We’re just having a little fun, that’s all.” Jason laughed and moved away from Gemma, trying to look more innocent than he actually was.

“Is he bothering you?” the bartender repeated, and this time his eyes were fixed on Gemma.

Out of the corner of her eye, Gemma had seen the bartender hovering around her, sometimes ignoring the other patrons. Now at the other end of the bar a young man kept leering at her, much to the annoyance of his date. And Jason was next to her, stealthily trying to put his hand on her thigh under the bar.

Gemma had hoped to sit quietly, eat her meal in peace, and think about what she should do. But this was obviously not the place to do it. It was too busy, and she was drawing too much attention.

“You know what? I think I should just go,” Gemma said. Jason pouted, and she ignored him and jerked her leg away from his hand.

“You haven’t even finished your Cherry Coke,” the bartender said. “And if he’s bothering you, I can have him thrown out.”

“Oh, come on!” Jason protested, and threw his arms up in the air. “I wasn’t bothering anybody! We was just talking!”

“You’re always harassing ladies,” the bartender insisted, glaring at Jason. “We should have you banned from here.”

“How much do I owe you?” Gemma asked, interrupting their argument.

“Nothing.” The bartender smiled at her.

“I can get your drink,” Jason hurried to supply.

“I got it,” she snapped. “How much is it?”

“There’s no charge,” the bartender said, softening. “You didn’t drink any, anyway.”

She wanted to argue with him, but she wanted to get out of there even more.

“Thank you,” she said simply, and slipped off the stool.

Gemma hurried out of the restaurant. She wanted to jog, but she forced herself to keep her pace to a normal speed. Her stomach rumbled, and she knew she’d have to find someplace else to eat. It was nearly dark now, and she didn’t know the town, so she wanted to hurry.

She’d nearly made it around the corner when she heard footsteps pounding behind her, and she looked back over her shoulder to see Jason running to catch up to her.

“You sure took off like a flash.” Jason grinned as he fell in step next to her. “Sorry if I said something to offend you in there.”

“No, you were fine,” she lied, and shook her head. “I just didn’t realize how late it was. I have to be getting home.”

“You haven’t eaten anything yet,” Jason reminded her. “Let me take you out somewhere. I’ll find you something real special.”

“No, I’m all right,” Gemma insisted. She turned down the alley that led to the lot where she’d parked her car, and Jason stayed at her side.

“Please, Gemma,” he entreated. “I was a jerk inside. Come back in. Get something to eat with me. Let me make it up to you.”

She softened a bit and slowed down, but she still didn’t want to go back in there or eat with some stranger. Really, she just wanted to get out of there.

“Sorry.” She smiled up at him. “I’m not hungry anymore. I should go.”

“Wait.” He grabbed her arm when she started walking away, and while his grip wasn’t exactly painful, she didn’t like it. “If you’re not hungry, there’s plenty of things we could do.”

“I need to go home.” She tried to pull her arm away, but he hung on tighter.

“I know I’m older, and that scares you, but that’s no reason to be shy.” He smiled at her, but there was something menacing in the smile that made her recoil.

Thanks to her siren strength, she could overpower him, but just then he caught her off guard. He pushed her back against the brick wall of a building, putting an arm on either side of her and pinning her there with his body.

“Move,” Gemma insisted. “Jason. Please. Move.”

Just because she could overpower him didn’t mean she wanted to. It would be easier and create much less of a scene if he just stepped away on his own. Not that there was anyone there to watch the scene. The alley was deserted.

“Move?” He laughed darkly. “Honey, I’ll show you some moves.”

He rubbed his body up against hers, and something flared inside her. It wasn’t the lust she’d felt before, not like back at the house with Sawyer. At first it reminded her of when she went swimming, when the ocean hit her flesh and her body began to transform. It was that same kind of tingle running through her.

But instead of feeling the tingle in her legs, she felt it in her arms, and her mouth. Her lips trembled, and her vision changed. She couldn’t explain it exactly, but it was almost as if her eyes shifted and her pupils dilated, so she could see better in the dark.

Jason had been rubbing himself on her and trying to kiss her neck, his mouth moving gruffly against her flesh as with one hand he clumsily pawed at her chest. He looked up, maybe to see if Gemma was enjoying this as much as he was, and his eyes widened.

“What the fuck…?” he muttered, and those were the last words Gemma heard him say.

SEVENTEEN

Repercussions

“I did something bad,” Gemma said, her voice quavering as she spoke. “Something really, really
bad
.”

She stood in the foyer of Sawyer’s house, her arms covered in blood up to her elbows. Most of it had dried on the drive home, but some of it still dripped wet on the white marble floors. Her clothes were splattered red, and her mouth was filled with a sweet metallic taste that was somehow both delicious and nauseating.

When she’d parked the car haphazardly on Sawyer’s front lawn after a frantic drive home, she’d caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror. The entire bottom half of her mouth was covered in blood, except for the lines that were clean from her tears. She’d been sobbing so hard as she drove, it was amazing that she’d been able to see where she was going, let alone remember how to get there.

The commotion of her car skidding through the front yard had drawn everyone to see what was up. Sawyer was already in the foyer when Gemma entered the house, and Lexi and Thea arrived shortly after.

“Are you okay?” Sawyer rushed over to her, inspecting her for wounds. His concern made sense, since she was covered in blood, but none of it was her own. Still, she was in such a state of shock, she let Sawyer touch her and look her over.

“So you finally ate?” Penn smiled, walking into the room. She stared at Gemma with a bemused expression.

“I told you she would come back,” Lexi said proudly as she went over to Gemma.

“You did, but she’s a mess,” Penn said.

“She’s fine, you nitwit. It’s not her blood,” Lexi said as she pushed Sawyer away and looped her arm around Gemma’s shoulders.

“Whose blood is it?” Sawyer asked, sounding confused.

“That’s a very good question.” Penn walked up to Gemma, standing directly in front of her. Gemma just wanted to collapse and sob. “Where’s the body?”

“The body?” Gemma asked, dazed.

“Yes, you killed someone and ate their heart,” Penn said, as if it should be obvious. “Now, where is the body?”

“I, um…” Gemma gulped back her vomit and tried to think. “I don’t know. It was outside a steakhouse in town. It happened in the alley next to it.”

“A steakhouse?” Penn turned to Sawyer. “Do you know where she’s talking about?”

“Marcel’s Steakhouse?” Sawyer asked.

“I think so, maybe.” Gemma nodded numbly. “I don’t know for sure.”

“Go clean it up,” Penn directed Sawyer. “Take care of the mess before anybody finds it.”

“His name is Jason,” Gemma told him, as if that would help him find the body somehow.

“Nobody cares what his name is,” Penn said. “Just take care of it.”

“Okay.” Sawyer nodded and hurried out the front door to follow Penn’s wishes.

“I’m sorry,” Gemma said as silent tears slid down her cheeks. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to go.”

“You did the right thing coming back,” Penn said. “But next time, take the body with you. You can’t just go leaving your scraps around. It makes the humans suspicious, and that’s a headache you don’t want to deal with.”

“The convertible is covered in blood!” Sawyer called from the front yard.

“Then take one of the other cars in the garage!” Penn shouted at him, and rolled her eyes. “He’s so lucky that he’s handsome and rich, because he is a friggin’ moron.”

“He is cute, though.” Lexi squeezed Gemma’s shoulder, trying to reassure her. “We should get you cleaned up, huh?”

“Yeah,” Gemma agreed.

Lexi leaned over, then licked her cheek. Gemma recoiled and pushed Lexi back hard, causing her to fall back into the front closet.

“Did you just lick blood off my cheek?” Gemma cried. She tried to wipe Lexi’s saliva from her face, but she probably only ended up smearing blood on her cheek. “You’re a psycho!”

“You’re the one covered in blood!” Lexi countered, clearly offended by Gemma’s reaction. “I just tasted it! At least I didn’t rip out his heart!”

“Lexi, that really was inappropriate.” Penn looked at her in disgust. “Thea, go help Gemma get cleaned up. When Sawyer gets back, we’ll talk about how we’re going to deal with all of this.”

“Come on.” Thea took Gemma’s hand and started pulling her away. “You’ll feel better once you get cleaned up, and you’ll think better once the food settles.”

“That wasn’t food,” Gemma muttered.

“It’s what you eat now, so it’s food,” Thea countered.

In the upstairs bathroom, Thea filled the bathtub with warm water. Gemma stripped down to her bikini, then climbed inside. The water quickly turned pink as the blood mixed with it, but Gemma barely even noticed.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them, and Thea sat next to her, rinsing the blood out from the tangles of her hair.

“I’m a monster,” Gemma said quietly.

“We all are, sweetie,” Thea said as gently as she could. She used a cup to pour the warm water over Gemma’s hair and ran her fingers through it. The blood had really matted into it on the drive home in the convertible.

“I don’t even really remember what happened,” Gemma said, wiping at the tears that fell from her eyes. “It’s all kind of a red blur.”

“You don’t remember the first couple times,” Thea said. “You’re not really in control of your body or your transformation. And since you were avoiding eating, you were probably especially out of control.”

“But I … I ate his heart?” Gemma asked.

“That’s what we do,” Thea said. “That’s how we survive. We have to eat boys’ hearts.”

“That’s so messed up.”

Thea laughed darkly. “That’s all Demeter’s sick sense of humor. She was one twisted bitch when she made the curse.”

“I don’t think I can do this.” Gemma hugged her knees tighter as her stomach lurched. “I can’t kill people like this.”

“The good news is that you only have to eat four times a year,” Thea said, trying to comfort her. “Once before every solstice.”

“What?” Gemma sniffled and turned to look back at Thea. “You eat more than that.”

“I don’t,” Thea said. “Not really. Have you noticed how my voice isn’t as silky as Penn’s or Lexi’s?”

“That’s because you don’t eat as often as they do?” Gemma asked.

“That’s part of it.” Thea nodded. “I once went a whole year without eating. It nearly killed me. And now my voice is like this. If I ate more, the huskiness would eventually go away, but I don’t need to eat more, so I don’t.”

“You can go a whole year without eating?” Gemma turned in the tub to face her. “Could you go longer?”

“No, Gemma, it nearly killed me,” Thea repeated. “It was excruciatingly painful, physically and emotionally, and eventually I started going mad. When I did finally eat, I was so out of control I nearly slaughtered everyone around me. You have to eat more than that.”

“If you hurt so bad, then why didn’t you eat?” Gemma asked. “Why’d you go a whole year without eating?”

Thea lowered her eyes. “That’s a story for another day.” She leaned over and reached into the tub, pulling out the stopper so the water would drain. “Why don’t you turn on the shower to rinse off, and I’ll go grab you a towel?”

After Gemma got out of the shower, she hated to admit how awesome she felt. Emotionally, she was a wreck, but physically, Gemma had never felt better. She’d never done drugs, but she imagined that this was how a really good high felt.

Thea came back with a huge towel, and Gemma wrapped herself in it.

“You feel better now?” Thea asked.

“I guess,” Gemma said, trying to downplay how good she felt, and started walking to her room.

She lay down in her bed and pulled her blanket over her. It made her uncomfortably warm, but she kept it on, wanting to bury herself in it. Thea had followed her, and she stood tentatively at the end of the bed before sitting down.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” Gemma asked Thea. “You used to be such a bitch.”

“I’m still a bitch,” Thea replied. “But this is hard enough to go through. Lexi and Penn are too dumb and selfish to help. I just don’t think anyone should go through this alone.”

“How do you live with it?” Gemma asked.

“What?”

“The guilt.”

“You mean from killing people?” Thea asked.

“Yeah.” Gemma pulled back the blanket a bit so she could look at Thea. “I just can’t stop thinking that he was a person, and … and he didn’t deserve that.”