“What do you care if I enjoy it?” Gemma asked. “If I want to be miserable, what’s it matter to you?”

“You’re one of us,” Thea replied. “I’m going to be stuck with you for a very long time. And it’d be nice to have someone to talk to that isn’t an insufferable idiot.”

Gemma thought of something, and she turned to look at Thea. The wind blew her long red hair back, slowly drying it of the salty water.

“What about your sister Aglaope? How long were you stuck with her?” Gemma asked.

Thea visibly tensed up at the mere mention of her sister. The sirens hadn’t spoken much of her, but they’d said that Gemma was meant to replace Aglaope. When Gemma pressed to find out how Aglaope died or what had happened to her, the sirens hadn’t been very forthcoming.

Well, it hadn’t been the sirens so much as Penn. Whenever Gemma tried to find out more, Penn changed the subject or brushed her off. Thea had seemed much more open to talking about Aglaope, so while it was just the two of them, Gemma decided to use the opportunity.

“I wasn’t stuck with her,” Thea snapped. “And she’s really none of your business.”

“You just said that I’m one of you now,” Gemma countered. “If I really am, shouldn’t I know what it means to be a siren? That means knowing stuff about the past, about the sirens that came before me.”

“She lived for a very long time,” Thea said at last. “She was only two years younger than me, so she lived nearly as long as I have.”

“She was an original siren, wasn’t she?” Gemma asked. “Demeter turned her in the beginning, and she wasn’t a replacement the way Lexi and I are.”

“That’s right.” Thea took a deep breath and brushed sand off her bare knee. “Aggie was actually my full sister, unlike Penn, who is only our half sister.”

“You had the same father as Penn but different mothers?” Gemma asked.

“Yes, but our mothers were actually sisters,” Thea said with a wry smile. “It was all very incestuous back then. The gods often moved around, sleeping with each other’s siblings and children.”

Gemma wrinkled her nose. “That’s gross.”

“So it is,” Thea agreed. “But that’s how things were done.”

“And you just went along with it?” Gemma asked.

Thea thought about that for a moment, then nodded. “I tried to.”

“But Penn didn’t,” Gemma said, turning her attention back out to the water, where Penn and Lexi were still taunting Sawyer.

“Penn’s never really been a go-with-the-flow kind of girl.” Thea laughed, but it was a hollow, bitter sound.

“What about Aggie?” Gemma asked, using the same pet name that Thea had used for her. “What was she like?”