Gemma was still sleeping when Harper left. After Gemma had talked to their dad the night before, she’d stayed in her room. Both Harper and Brian checked on her many times, but each time, Gemma was sound asleep. Whatever Gemma had been up to while she was with the sirens, it had obviously exhausted her.

Harper had slept a lot, too. The twenty-plus-hour drive had been very tiring. But Harper woke up often, certain that Gemma had left again, and would rush across the hall to peek in on her.

Even leaving today had been hard. Harper had called in to work, because she wasn’t ready to leave Gemma for that long. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Gemma not to run away. It was that Harper was afraid the sirens might come and find her.

She’d called Daniel a couple times, and he hadn’t answered the phone. For some reason, that made Harper nervous. With possible revenge-seeking sirens on the loose, she didn’t like the idea of anybody involved with rescuing Gemma not answering the phone.

It wasn’t like she could leave Gemma home alone, though. Harper had called Alex, and he came over to help watch out for her. Since Gemma was still sleeping, Alex got comfortable on the living room couch.

He’d brought his laptop with him, and he immediately returned to doing his Internet search on how to break the sirens’ curse. When Gemma woke up, they both hoped she’d be able to help out, since she knew more about the mythology than either of them did. But for now they thought it’d be better if Gemma rested, and Alex was left to his own devices until she woke up.

Harper thought about warning him that his job was to guard Gemma, not make out with her, but honestly, she didn’t really care much about upholding Brian’s attempt at grounding Gemma, and he was at work so he couldn’t enforce it. Usually Harper would back him up, but this time she understood that Gemma didn’t need to be punished for what she’d done.

Besides that, she didn’t think Alex should be punished. He’d worked hard to find Gemma, so at the very least he deserved to be an exception to the rule. And he could help protect and watch over Gemma when Harper wasn’t around.

Still, Harper didn’t plan on making her trip down to the dock a long one. She just planned to see Daniel, make sure he was all right, thank him again for his help, and then leave. If she could do all that without getting on his boat, that would be even better.