Harper had probably missed it because she’d been out of sorts. After she’d woken up from that dream about Daniel that ended with Gemma saying, “Wake up,” she hadn’t been able to get into any kind of routine. Everything felt off, and she hadn’t done her usual search on the computer for the sirens.

Fortunately, while Harper and Alex had been relying on technology, Daniel had been looking the good old-fashioned way. He’d been going to Pearl’s every morning and buying a copy of each paper she had. And eventually it had paid off.

Unfortunately, the article hadn’t been very specific. The only real information they’d gotten from it was that a body had been found near a restaurant. Daniel had figured out what town it was, but that was still a fairly large area to search.

Harper didn’t even know where the sirens had been living when they were in Capri. She’d heard something once about them staying in a beach house that used to belong to the mayor, but she wasn’t sure if that was true.

Her worst fear wasn’t that they wouldn’t find Gemma. Or that the sirens would try to stop Harper from taking her. She would figure out how to fight them if she needed to. No, her biggest worry was that they would find Gemma, and she wouldn’t want to come back with them.

What would she do then? Gemma was sixteen and had new mythical powers. It wasn’t exactly like Harper could drag her home and force her to stay in her room. If Gemma wouldn’t come back with them on her own … then she wouldn’t come back.

As they drove on, Harper didn’t voice any of these fears, though. Alex probably shared some of her concerns, but he wasn’t talking about them, so she didn’t think she should, either.

Besides that, she had more important things to focus on—like figuring out exactly where they were going. The drive started out okay, but things quickly went downhill.

Before they’d even made it past the state line, they got stuck in traffic for nearly an hour because of an accident ahead of them on the highway.

Daniel tried to keep things upbeat, but Alex and Harper were too nerved up for it to really work. After several failed attempts at making conversation, he settled for tuning the radio to a classic rock station and air-drumming along to “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin.

Once the car got moving again, things went smoothly for a while, and then they were off course again. Harper’s ’96 Sable lacked any kind of GPS, so they were relying on the maps app on Alex’s phone.