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 swi
msuit 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.
CHAPTER 4
Sam just stared at Whitney as she perused the menu. This was his normal Saturday morning breakfast joint, so he already knew what he was going to order: two eggs over easy, two sausage, two bacon, two biscuits, and two pancakes. Maybe it was a bit much, but he was really hungry. He needed blood but he also needed food, in large quantities some times.
“So …” Whitney began as she finally set down her menu.
“No talk about last night or anything to do with last night,” Sam quickly told her.
It wasn’t a safe place to talk about either of those things. He had to keep the siren secret, and chose to keep the music secret also. It was like he had a few other lives he lived, but it was better that way. Keeping them separate kept him from ever letting out secrets, and his life was full of them.
Whitney huffed a little, and he had to hide his smile. He liked her little huffs. She tended to do them when she was frustrated, but not mad. When she was mad, she was more likely to just tell you what she thought. Huffs meant she was only a little mad. And it was cute to watch her cheeks puff and her loose hair fly out of her eyes.
“Then what would you like to talk about?” she finally asked.
Sam grinned. “Well, how about you tell me more about you,” he suggested.
He had done his homework as much as he could about her, but there was very little to go on. When he first saw her, he wanted to know everything he could about her. Digging into her past proved very unfruitful, and he had to just listen to her talk to
friends to learn more. On paper, there was very little to go on. Obviously, he didn’t know she had been a former night human. Heck, he didn’t even know it was possible to take that out of someone.
“Um, like what?” Whitney seemed genuinely embarrassed being asked to talk about herself. Her cheeks got a little rosy color to them. Sam was content to just watch her and let her squirm, but the waitress took that exact moment to show up.
“Hey, Sam,” the cute brunette said as she moseyed up to the table, making sure that her uniform skirt puffed against the table top. “I didn’t know Mark had a sister.”
Sam looked up at her and smiled as nicely as he could. You never wanted to tick off your server at a restaurant. Lydia was always hitting on him, but he did his best to deflect her advances. Mark had already taken her on a couple dates and fed off her. It was kind of the code amongst the siren not to feed on the same person someone else had. Whatever the reason, Mark hadn’t called her back in the past couple months. Without knowing the why, Sam knew exactly when Mark stopped calling Lydia as she then made passing remarks to him about everything.
“Nope, not his sister, she’s my new friend,” Sam said, making Whitney’s cheeks turn a brighter shade of red when he said friend, making it sound like much more. It wasn’t anything more than that, but a guy could dream. That never hurt anything.
“Oh.” Lydia seemed genuinely disappointed. She pulled out her pad of paper and pen and immediately cheered up as she thought. “What about the other guy you bring with you sometimes? I forget his name. The quiet one. Does he have a friend?” She used the same emphasis.
“I’m not sure at the moment,” Sam cryptically replied. He knew perfectly well that Leo had a girlfriend. They were almost essentially married, or close enough. Both of them were excited to graduate from high school and head back to the island, but he didn’t need to tell Lydia that.