But Gemma hadn’t known that Penn was visiting him. That changed things. Gemma kept things from Harper that would only scare her—not things that could actually hurt her.
“So … what’s going on with you and Penn?” Marcy asked.
“Nothing. ” Daniel shook his head. “She just has a crush on me or something, and I tolerate it because I don’t want to piss her off. ”
“Tolerate it how?” Marcy asked. “With sex?”
“Marcy. ” Daniel scoffed, but he lowered his eyes again.
“Daniel,” Gemma said firmly, and moved so he’d have to look at her. “We made a deal, remember? We said we’d tell each other everything, so we could have each other’s backs. ”
“No, that wasn’t the deal. ” He shook his head. “The deal was that you’d tell me everything so I could have your back. I can handle myself, but really, there’s nothing to handle. ” He forced a smile. “Nothing’s going on. ”
“But if something is…” Gemma paused, choosing her words carefully. “If something happens. You can tell Harper. She’ll understand. ”
“I know,” Daniel said. “I do, and I will, if anything does happen. But right now, I can’t bother her. She’s got way too much on her plate, with school and all the siren stuff. ”
“Yeah, and don’t forget her roommate from hell,” Marcy added.
Gemma turned back to Marcy, relieved by a break in the tension. “Oh, you mean Liv?”
“Yeah. ” Marcy tilted her head, looking confused. “I thought you said she was nice when you met her. ”
“She seemed nice enough,” Daniel agreed. “Kinda forgettable, I guess, since I don’t remember her that well. ”
“She’s a siren now, so she’s a bit more memorable,” Gemma said.
“What?” Daniel asked.
“She’s what?” Marcy asked, almost in unison with Daniel.
“How long has she been a siren?” Daniel demanded. “You let Harper live with a siren?”
“No, no. ” Gemma shook her head and raised her hands defensively. “Liv hasn’t been a siren that long. A week, tops. But she moved out on Tuesday, and that’s when I found out she was a siren. So I haven’t told Harper. ”
Page 19
“Why wouldn’t you tell Harper?” Daniel asked with mystified anger.
“Because Liv was gone and out of her hair, and I didn’t want to worry Harper about there being another siren,” Gemma hurried to explain. “I thought I’d tell her this weekend, when she’s home, so I can make sure she doesn’t freak out. ”
“Well, you should have told her sooner,” Marcy said. “Liv was a total psycho. She like trashed the room and attacked Harper. ”
“What?” Gemma asked, and it was her turn to sound shocked. “When?”
“What are you talking about?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t know. I think … Tuesday or something?” Marcy shrugged. “You guys really need to talk to each other. This whole keeping-secrets thing is bullshit. ”
“I’m not trying to keep secrets,” Gemma said. “She’s already under so much stress, I just don’t want to add anything on top of it. ”
“Why didn’t she tell me about it?” Daniel asked no one in particular.
“Probably for the same reason you haven’t told her about Penn’s visiting you,” Gemma said.
Marcy sat up straighter, and her blank expression seemed to brighten. “I just realized that I’m the only one completely in the loop. I know everything that’s going on around here. ”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not true,” Daniel said.
“Wanna bet? Try me,” Marcy said.
“Okay. ” Daniel thought for a minute before asking, “Where are more papers from Thalia?”
“I don’t know. ” Marcy raised one shoulder in a half shrug. “In some secret hidden space. ”
“Thanks for illuminating that for us,” Gemma said dryly. “It’s really helpful. ”
“No really, what if there’s a secret space that’s not out in the open,” Marcy expounded on her earlier statement. “You bend a candlestick to the side, and a door pops open, or you move a book, and the bookcase twirls around to reveal a hidden chamber. That kinda thing. ”
Daniel crossed his arms over his chest. “Since this is a one-bedroom cabin, and not a mansion, and every square foot is accounted for, I don’t think that’s an option. ”
“Then try under a loose floorboard or something,” Marcy suggested. “That’s where I hid all my personal items when I still lived at home with my parents. ”
“Are there loose floorboards?” Gemma looked up at Daniel.
“I don’t know. ” He shook his head. “I guess we’ll look. ”
The three of them split up to search for loose floorboards or any kind of “secret” nook they might have missed in the house. Marcy attempted to take Daniel’s bedroom, but he shooed her out and suggested she try the living room.
Gemma went into the bathroom and tried to peel back any loose tiles. She didn’t find anything, but she did manage to break a porcelain tile in half. She was on her hands and knees, looking for any loose boards in the kitchen, when she heard Marcy swear.
“Did you find something?” Gemma asked, and she instantly got to her feet so she could look over the kitchen counter.
“No. ” Marcy was kneeling beside the couch and scowling at her fingers. “But I got a splinter trying to pull a board up. ”
“I don’t think there’s anything under there. ” Daniel sighed. He came out of his bedroom and shook his head sadly. “I haven’t noticed anything loose or creaking, and I think this is a dead end. And you have to be at the theater soon for the play. ”
“Dammit. ” She’d forgotten, and she dug her cell phone out of her pocket to check the time. “I have at least another ten minutes before I need to leave here. Let’s just keep looking. ”
Marcy stood up. “Is there anyplace we haven’t looked?”
“I don’t know. ” Daniel glanced around his living room.
“What about that?” Marcy asked. She’d started sucking on her finger, presumably in an attempt to remove the splinter, but she pointed to the fireplace with her free hand.
“What?” Gemma asked.
“In the fireplace. ” Marcy took her finger out of her mouth so she’d be easier to understand. “That stone’s a different shade of gray. ”
The whole fireplace was done up in large river rocks. Most of them were varying shades of light to medium gray, smoothed and polished to look nice. But one stone near the end of the mantel was a very dark gray with a bluish tone to it.
“Did you replace that stone or something?” Gemma asked Daniel, but she could already feel her heartbeat speeding up.
“No, I didn’t. ” He shook his head and walked over to the fireplace, with Gemma right at his heels.
Slowly, almost gingerly, Daniel touched the stone. He started to wiggle it, and at first, nothing happened. Then he started pushing and pulling at it harder until it finally began to budge. As he started to slide the stone out, Gemma held her breath.
“Here. ” He handed it to her, then he reached into the dark hole left in the fireplace and began to dig around. “I found something. ”
“What is it?” Gemma asked.
“I don’t know. I think…” He let his sentence trail off as he pulled out a small, leather-bound book. “It’s a book. ”
“Oh, my gosh. ” Gemma nearly dropped the stone trying to take it from him, but Daniel caught the rock and set it on the ground. He stood behind her, peering over her shoulder as she flipped through it.
As soon as she saw the words, she knew. The small, delicate cursive matched the handwriting on the back of some of the pictures they’d gotten from Bernie’s house.
“‘On June 16, 1961, I married my one true love, Bernard McAllister,’” Gemma read aloud. “This is it, you guys. This is Thalia’s journal. ”
??
?I told you I know everything,” Marcy said.
“Does it say anything else?” Daniel asked. “Like anything about sirens?”
“I don’t know. ” Gemma flipped through the pages with trembling hands, scanning the faded ink on the yellowed pages. “It seems to be a lot of day-to-day stuff. Their garden. How much she loves Bernie. ”
Then Gemma flipped to the back, and her heart sank.
The journal had been divided up into three sections—a calendar at the front, the journal pages in the middle, and a “notes” section in the back, for important information, like birthdays and addresses.
Page 20
Writing covered the last section, written over the typed words, in the margins, sideways, to the ends of the pages and off them. Thalia had completely filled it … and all of it was written in symbols and shapes—a language that Gemma didn’t understand.
“Crap,” Gemma said. “It’s in Greek or something again. ”
“Maybe it can help Lydia with the translation she’s working on,” Marcy suggested.
“We could bring it out to her tonight,” Gemma said. “See if she can make anything out of it. ”
“You can’t,” Daniel said. He’d been reading over her shoulder, but he took a step back now.
“What? Why not?” Gemma asked.
“The Taming of the Shrew opens tonight. Remember?” he asked.
She waved him off. “No, I have an understudy or something. I need to stay and read this. ”
“No, you need to go be in the play,” Daniel said.
“That’s insane. ” Gemma shook her head. “This could be the piece we’ve been looking for. ”
“You can’t even understand all of it,” Daniel said. “And if you skip the play, Thea and Penn will know something’s up, and that could be bad news. You don’t want them breathing down your neck while you’re trying to figure out this journal. ”
Gemma sighed. “Good point. ”
“Thank you,” Daniel said. “Now come on. I’ll take you guys back to the mainland. ”
Gemma grumbled, but she did as she was told. On the boat ride back, she sat down in the sleeping quarters, safely away from the spray that might damage Thalia’s journal. She sat cross-legged on the bed and decided to read the parts she could decipher, and she started from the beginning.
In big letters in blotchy dark ink, Thalia had written an important inscription on the back of the front cover:
My dearest Bernard—if ANYTHING happens to me, you need to dispose of this. Nobody can ever find the secrets I’ve kept within these pages. It could be dangerous if in the wrong hands. For your safety, please destroy this.
NINE
Understudy
Behind the closed door emblazoned with a fallen starlet’s name, Gemma leaned in front of the mirror, applying thick eyeliner. Outside in the hall, she could hear people scrambling around to get ready for the first show, starting in twenty minutes.
In the reflection, Gemma glanced over at Thea. Like Gemma, Thea already had her costume on, but unlike Gemma, she already had all her makeup on, too. Her crimson hair was piled up in loose curls, and her lipstick was nearly the same shade.
“Are you nervous?” Thea asked when her emerald eyes met Gemma’s in the mirror.
“What?” Gemma lowered her eyes and pretended to dig around for her blush in the oversized makeup case that sat on the counter. “No. Not really. ”
“Good. ” Thea leaned forward, inspecting her reflection more closely, and tucked back a curl that had fallen loose. “You don’t need to be. Even if you forget a line or botch a scene, everyone will still love you. ”
“How does that work?” Gemma asked. “Will the whole audience be completely enraptured with you and me?”
Thea shrugged and sat back in her chair. “If we were singing, maybe. But by now you have to understand it. We have a natural talent for attracting attention, but when you project and try, your charms are that much more charming. ”
“Let’s say you were trying. Could you captivate the whole crowd?” Gemma asked as she applied her blush more heavily than she normally would. The lights from the stage required darker makeup to show up.
“If I wanted to, yes. ” Thea’s eyes narrowed behind her long lashes. “What are you getting at? Are you planning on raising a small army?”
“No. I just don’t completely understand how the siren song works. ” Gemma set aside her makeup and turned to face Thea directly, so they weren’t talking to each other through the mirror.
“It’s simple. You sing, you control whoever hears the song. ”
“But for how long?” Gemma asked, trying to keep her words from sounding as desperate and hopeful as they felt.
Ever since her heated visit with Alex yesterday, Gemma hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what it meant. Why did kissing him seem to have a positive effect on him? And why wasn’t he angry and filled with hate anymore?
She’d assumed that once the siren song was in place, it would be that way forever. But with Alex, something else was going on.
Unless, of course, it was just as she’d feared, and Alex had fallen out of love with her on his own.
“It depends. The more you mean it, the more you project, the longer the effects of the song will be active,” Thea explained.
“But eventually they will fade?” Gemma pressed.
“Sorta. ” Thea shook her head, like that wasn’t exactly how she would put it. “Like with Sawyer. Penn told him that he loved her, and he had to give us his house. If he hadn’t died, and she’d left him, eventually he would’ve stopped being infatuated and obsessed with her. But he would still believe the house was hers even if he lived to be ninety. ”
Gemma leaned back in her seat, letting out a crestfallen breath. “I don’t understand. If he was still following her orders, and she ordered him to love her, how is he able to stop?”
“The siren song is all about giving orders. Do this, don’t do that, give me this, go there,” Thea elaborated. “But Demeter made it precisely so it had no effect over the heart. It can’t change who a person is. If you hate peach cobbler, the siren song can make you eat it, even smile as you chow it down, but you’ll never actually like it. ”
“But what if you keep eating peach cobbler? Will you remember you hate it?” Gemma asked.
“If there’s not a siren constantly whispering in your ear, telling you that you love it, then yes, you probably would. ” Thea paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was lower and huskier than normal. “Love and hate are very powerful emotions that sirens have no control over, no matter how much Penn likes to pretend we do. ”
“So when Penn commanded Sawyer to love her, he never really did,” Gemma said, affirming what she’d always known. As soon as she’d been cursed, the sirens had told her that mortal men could never love them. “He just acted the way a person in love with her would act. ”
“And Penn does know that. She just finds that people are easier to control when they believe they’re in love with her. ”
Page 21
“Your heart doesn’t change. You still love or don’t love who you always have,” Gemma said to herself, her words quiet and breathy, and Thea cocked her head.
Yes, the sirens told her that men would never love her, but Alex had. He’d been able to because he always had, and maybe he still did. The siren song couldn’t change the way he felt about her, and when she kissed him, it helped remind him of how he really felt, of who he really was, and it dragged him out from underneath the fog of the spell.
After all of this, he might still love her, and as the realization hit Gemma, she couldn’t help but smile.
A loud knocking interrupted her elation, and she turned to see her dad pushing open the Marilyn door to the dressing room.
“I hope we’re not intruding,” Harper said as she squeezed in beside their dad.
He nearly gasped when Ge
mma smiled up at him, and his words were barely audible when he said, “You look so much like Nathalie. ”
She lowered her eyes, and her cheeks flushed a little. “Aw, thanks, Dad. ”
Thea looked at Harper in the mirror, her green eyes flat. “Hello, Gemma’s family. ”
“Hey, Thea. ” Harper smiled thinly at her.
“Hello, Thea,” Brian said, nearly growling at her, and Gemma saw his hand clench into a fist at his side.
Brian knew what Thea was now, that she and Penn were sirens. His natural instinct was to yell at them and tell them to leave his daughter alone, but since their siren song could still work on him, Harper and Gemma tried to get him to interact with them as little as possible. That was hard for him sometimes, especially at times like this, when all he really wanted to do was wring Thea’s neck.
“I’d invite you in, but it’s so crowded. ” Gemma gestured over to Thea, but it was their costumes hanging along the wall that took up the most space in the cramped room. “Did Marcy talk to you?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Harper said quickly, probably not wanting Thea to catch on that they were talking about finding Thalia’s journal. The less Thea knew about what they were doing, the safer it would be for her if Penn were to question her. “Marcy’s here, actually. ”
Marcy had been lingering in the hall since it was so crowded in the dressing room, but she leaned around the doorframe. “Are you gonna yak?”
“No, Marcy, I don’t think I’m going to throw up, but thanks for that lovely euphemism. ” Gemma smirked.
“Marcy, why don’t you and my dad go find our seats? I want to sneak back behind the sets and say hello to Daniel real quick,” Harper said.
“Good idea. We’ll let you finish getting ready. ” Brian turned back to Gemma. “Knock ’em dead, sweetie. ” He bent down and kissed her quickly on the temple before departing.
“We just wanted to wish you good luck,” Harper said, and started backing out the doorway.
“Thanks, Harper. ” Gemma smiled gratefully up at her.
“You can wait here for one minute,” Penn insisted from out in the hall. Under her usual sultry velvet tone, Gemma could hear the irritation in it, and she stood up so she could look past Harper out to the hallway.
It wasn’t until Penn pushed past the assistant director and reached the doorway to the dressing room that Gemma finally understood why. Liv was trailing at her heels, her large eyes looking petulant and her mouth turned down in a tight scowl, and Gemma’s heart froze in her chest.
“Oh, good, you’re all here. ” Penn’s face flushed with relief, her full lips turned up into a smile, then her dark eyes settled on Harper. “I think you two know each other, so it’d be fine if Liv waited here with you, right?”
“I…” Harper trailed off, too stunned to say anything, and her hand went to her throat.
“Great!” Penn clapped her hands together, then turned to Liv. “Stay here. Don’t move at all. I just wanna go backstage for a minute, and I don’t need you getting in my way. ”
Liv rolled her eyes. “Whatever. ” Once Penn was gone, disappearing into the crowd in the hallway, Liv turned back to Harper. Her irritation melted away, and her aw-shucks grin spread across her face.