Tricia Rayburn - Siren

Siren

Tricia Rayburn

For Michael

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With special thanks to Rebecca Sherman for her guidance, patience, and supreme dream-making skills; Regina Griffin, for welcoming me so graciously to the Egmont family; Ty King, for being Siren's very first fan; and my friends and family, without whose enthusiasm and support my stories might never have been told.

I'm a lucky girl.

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Copyright

CHAPTER 1

MY SISTER JUSTINE always believed that the best way to deal with your fear of the dark is to pretend it's really light.

Years ago, she tried to put the theory into practice as we lay in our beds, surrounded by blackness. Protected by a fortress of pillows, I was convinced evil hid in the shadows, waiting for my breathing to slow before it pounced. And every night, Justine, a year older but decades wiser, would patiently try to distract me.

"Did you see that cute dress Erin Klein wore today?" she might ask, always starting with an easy question to gauge just how bad it was.

On rare occasions, usually when we went to bed late after a busy day, I'd be too tired to be terrified. On those nights, I'd say yes or no, and we'd have a normal conversation until falling asleep.

But on most nights, I'd whisper something along the lines of "Did you hear that?" or "When vampires bite, do you think it hurts?" or "Can monsters smell fear?" At which point Justine would proceed to question two.

"It's so bright in here," she'd declare. "I can see everything--my backpack, my blue glitter bracelet, our goldfish in his bowl. What can you see, Vanessa?"

And then, I'd force myself to picture our room exactly as it had appeared before Mom turned off the light and closed the door. Eventually, I'd manage to forget about the evil waiting in the wings and fall asleep. Every night I thought it would never work, and every night it did.

Justine's method was useful in combating my many other fears. But several years later, standing on top of a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, I knew it didn't stand a chance.

"Doesn't Simon look different this summer?" she asked, coming up to me and wringing out her hair. "Older? Cuter?"

I agreed without answering. Simon's physical transformation was the first thing I'd noticed when he and his younger brother, Caleb, had knocked on our door earlier. But that was a discussion for another time--like when we were warming up in front of the old stone fireplace at our lake house. First, we had to actually make it back to the house.

"Caleb, too," she tried again. "The number of brokenhearted girls in Maine must have, like, quadrupled this year."

I tried to nod, my eyes locked on the swirling water and frothy foam fifty feet below.

Justine wrapped a towel around her torso and took a sideways step toward me. She stood so close I could smell the salt in her hair and pores and feel the coolness of her damp skin as though it pressed directly against mine. Water droplets fell from

the ends of her hair, plopped on the warm gray slate, and sent smaller drops bouncing onto the tops of my feet. A sudden gust of wind lifted the billowing spray up and around us, turning my shiver into a shudder. Somewhere below, Simon and Caleb laughed as they scrambled toward the steep path that would lead them through the woods and back to us.

"It's just a swimming pool," she said. "You're standing on a diving board, two feet above it."

I nodded. This was the moment I'd been thinking about during the entire six-hour drive up from Boston, the moment I'd pictured at least once a day since last summer. I knew it looked scarier than it was; in the two years since we'd discovered the old trail sign marking this secluded spot far from tourists and hikers, Justine, Simon, and Caleb had jumped dozens of times, never walking away with so much as a scratch. More important, I knew I'd always feel like a junior member of our little summer group if I never took the plunge.

"The pool's heated," Justine continued. "And once you're in it, all you have to do is kick twice, and you're at the steps leading to your comfy lounge chair."

"Will a cute cabana boy bring me fruity drinks at this comfy lounge chair?"

She looked at me and smiled. We both knew that was it. If I was coherent enough to crack a joke, I'd already opted out.

"Sorry to say I forgot the pineapples at home," Caleb said behind us, "but the cabana boy's here and ready for service."

Justine turned toward him. "It's about time. I'm freezing!"

As she headed away from the cliff's edge, I leaned forward. Whatever relief I felt now was temporary, and my disappointment in not being able to do what I'd vowed all year long would only grow once we left Chione Cliffs. Tonight, I would lie awake, unable to sleep because of the pain I'd feel for being such a chicken, such a baby, yet again.

"Your lips are turning blue," Caleb said.

I turned to see him shake out his favorite beach towel--the only one I'd ever seen him use, with a cartoon lobster wearing sunglasses and swim trunks--and wrap it around Justine. He pulled her toward him and rubbed her arms and shoulders.

"Liar." She smiled at him from under her terry-cloth hood.

"You're right. They're more lavender. Or lilac. Because lips like those are just too pretty to be boring old blue. Either way, I should probably warm them up."

I rolled my eyes and headed for my shorts and T-shirt. Justine had made her own vow for this summer--not to hook up with Caleb again, the way she had last summer and the summer before that. "He's just a kid," she'd declared. "I'm done with high school, and he has an entire year to go. Plus, all he does is play that ratty guitar when he's not playing video games. I can't afford to waste another second on what will never amount to anything more than endless hours of making out ... no matter how good those hours are."

When I asked why she didn't hang out with Simon, who would be a sophomore at Bates College and was therefore more age- and intellect-appropriate, her face had scrunched up.

"Simon?" she'd repeated. "The walking, talking Weather Channel? The brainiac who's using college as an excuse to study cloud formations? I don't think so."

It had taken Justine all of thirty minutes--just long enough for us to unpack the car, have a snack, and hop into Simon's old Subaru wagon--to break her promise to herself. She hadn't jumped on Caleb right away, though it was clear by the way her eyes lit up as soon as she saw him that she wanted to. She'd waited until we were in the car and down the road to throw her arms around his neck and squeeze so tight his face turned pink.

As she nuzzled against his chest now, I pulled on my clothes and grabbed a towel. Although the sun was out and I hadn't even gotten wet, I still shook from the cold. This far north in Maine, temperatures in the middle of the summer didn't get much higher than the low seventies, and the biting wind always made it feel at least ten degrees cooler.

"We should get going," Simon said suddenly, emerging from the trail mouth.

Simon might've been the older, quieter, more studious Carmichael brother, characteristics previously complemented by a lanky frame and bad posture, but something had happened in the past year. His arms, legs, and chest had filled out, and with his shirt off, I could actually see small ridges on his abdomen. He even seemed to stand taller, straighter. He looked more like a man than a kid.