“Uh, yeah.” She smiled and nodded.

He took her hand again. She stayed close to him, but this time it was because she was afraid she might fall. She hung on to his arm, and he made a joke that she couldn’t really hear over the music, but she laughed anyway.

“Is here good?” Daniel asked.

They were at the top of the beach, right where the grass turned into sand. It appeared to be one of the few places where they could sit without being right on top of someone else.

“Yeah.” She smiled. “Here’s great.”

She glanced around, just to make sure they weren’t stealing the spot from anybody else, and that was when Harper saw her.

It was almost as if the crowd had parted around Penn just so Harper could see her. She stood at the edge of the grass, her black eyes blazing, and smiled widely at Harper, revealing her abnormally sharp teeth.

29. Instincts

TWENTY-NINE

Instincts

Gemma had thought about hanging downstairs with her dad. She liked Indiana Jones well enough, and she was trying to spend time with Brian while she could. Unlike Harper and Alex, she wasn’t convinced there was a way out for her.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t committed to trying. She just didn’t have high hopes for it.

Just the same, she wanted to spend some time by herself. Between living with the sirens, then being babysat constantly since she got home, Gemma felt like she’d hardly had any time to be alone to collect her thoughts.

Gemma hadn’t been sleeping well, either, and not just because of the nightmares about Jason or the watersong nagging her for being so far away from the other sirens.

Yesterday, Alex had told her that he loved her, and while that thrilled her endlessly, it also raised a new question. How was that possible? The sirens had repeatedly told Gemma that it wasn’t possible, that nobody could ever truly a love a siren, but Alex did love her.

There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he did. Alex couldn’t lie that convincingly, and when they were together, he acted like a normal person. She’d spent enough time around Sawyer to understand what a guy acted like when he was under the spell of a siren.

Alex wasn’t acting that way at all. He was clearheaded, and when he told Gemma he loved her, he meant it.

She’d actually woken up this morning hoping the curse would be broken. But of course it wasn’t that simple. She was still a siren, no matter how Alex felt about her.

So that meant one of two things: either the sirens had lied to her, or they were wrong about humans being able to love sirens.