Songs and Fins

by B. Kristin McMichael

  “Yes, they’re his problem now. All I have to do is keep you and the rest of the sirens on shore safe. And that starts with finding out who’s breaking my rules.”

  Whitney had to agree. The quicker they found the culprit, the quicker the hunters would leave. Whitney was thankful to have friends at school, but they were a double-edged sword. Friends now, and enemies as soon as they found out she was a siren. It would be better if they’d leave and never know—that was what she wanted, and she’d do her best to help them out so they could do just that. It would also keep the day humans safe at the same time. It was a win-win scenario, as long as her fishy side stayed hidden.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Thank you so much for letting me in here,” Sam said with a little push to his voice. The city coroner still hadn’t identified the body that had been found on the shore only days ago. Luckily, the hunters hadn’t caught wind of it yet, and Sam was going to try to keep it hidden so that more of them wouldn’t show up in town.

  After a bit of digging, Sam found a lot more than six dead day humans in the past few months. In fact, he was surprised that the hunters took so long to get there. It was almost like someone had been deliberately leaving dead bodies next to the shore the sirens called home. Any other night human out there would know that the bodies would draw the hunters to town. It was like they were being targeted on purpose. Sam wasn’t sure who it was, but first, he needed to be sure it wasn’t one of his.

  “If she turns out to be your cousin, could you identify her?” the coroner asked, his eyes dulled over by Sam’s magical voice.

  “Yes, if she’s my cousin we would like her cremated, and her death ruled accidental,” Sam told the older man. Any more suggestion in his voice and the balding man would fall asleep.

  Sam pulled back the white sheet. The girl was young. More than likely she was a teen from one of the neighboring towns. Sam hated to cover it up, and her family never getting closure, but all these deaths were making it hard for the siren. Whitney had been right in wanting to catch whoever was setting them up, and Sam was going to make sure they paid for it once he did find out.

  Examining the unhealed bite wound, Sam took in a breath. There wasn’t a single siren, blue or green, that would be sloppy enough to leave a mark. This wasn’t the work of the siren; this was a deliberate attempt to reveal the siren. Now he just needed to figure out who it was. Sam lifted the young girl’s hands up and looked at the nails. She had fought back. Again, another sign it wasn’t his people. Siren victims never fought back. They couldn’t because they were under the trance of the song. Gently he scraped the scales from beneath the fingers of the girl. He’d have to get them home and look at them under sea water to be sure, but he now had a suspect.

  “Yes, I am sure this is my cousin. Would you be able to take care of her for my family?”

  The coroner nodded and came back to the body.

  “Are there any more cases with unsolved drownings that I could help with?” Sam asked, sending a suggestion to the man.

  The befuddled man nodded. “We’ve had at least three cases a week. See, we had to help out the neighboring counties with that last storm that flooded their morgue. So we’ve been doing double, rather triple, duty. They each pulled in a case around the same time. I have two more bodies still here. They’ve both been claimed.”

  “I would love to look at them,” Sam only gave a little push. The old man was close to breaking.

  Walking over to the cabinet, the coroner slid out two more bodies. They both also had exposed bite wounds and scales under their fingernails. Sam took the scales that had been missed in the coroner’s examination and turned back to the man who wasn’t focusing on anything now. Reaching back, he took a glass vial without the man blinking and put the scales in his pocket. It was a problem now. He had seen enough to guess who was behind getting the hunters to town, and his father wasn’t going to be happy.

  “Thank you very much. Please forget I was ever here,” Sam told the man as he walked out of the room.

  The old coroner didn’t move a muscle. Sam had to hope it wouldn’t take long and no one would find him stunned, but at least the guy was old. If they did find him, it was likely the person would think he had a stroke. Sam was lucky it was an old coroner. No one would ever know he was there, and it was going to be his only chance to catch who was leading the hunters to the siren.

  Whitney tapped her foot impatiently. Patience wasn’t one of her strong traits, and Sam was pushing it with his ‘I gotta run in here alone’ bit. She wanted to go with him, but he said it was better with only one person. One person sneaking in and out was less likely to get caught than two. She knew that was true—since she didn’t have complete control of her siren singing, she wasn’t going to be much help—but she hated to wait. He had been gone twenty minutes and had promised to be back in ten. She was losing it, and soon would be marching in there herself regardless of the risks of getting caught.

  “So glad to see you worry about me,” Sam said as he appeared beside her, not coming from the direction she had expected. “But just so you know, this isn’t my first trip to this kind of office. You can trust I know what I am doing. The siren have to keep secret, and we often investigate anything in the area that is suspicious. I have no clue how these cases got by us.”

  “And did you figure out who’s behind everything?”

  Sam nodded, but didn’t add anything more. He motioned to the car, and Whitney hopped in beside him as he started it up. Sam took off away from town as he drove down the road, still not saying anything.

  ‘The suspense is killing me,’ Whitney silently told him, sure that he wasn’t going to say anything out loud.

  Sam grinned at her as she took the hint. Sam wanted everything private. She was the only one he trusted completely. He once had mentioned that he wouldn’t be surprised if everything he owned had bugs put in them so his brother, father, or someone else could listen in.

  ‘Turns out it isn’t one someone,’ Sam replied.

  ‘There are two people, like Jade suspected?’

  ‘I have a feeling a lot more than two. The three bodies they still had had three different color scales on them. I need to check them in ocean water to be sure, but I am ninety-nine percent certain who it is. Three different types of mer are trying to set up the siren.’

  Whitney took a minute to process that. Three different types of mer meant they were ganging up. From what she could recall, that was unusual as the mer clans liked to stay separate. Sam had mentioned something once about all the mer having their own islands in various oceans around the world, so there weren’t really any neighbors to the siren island. And leaving bodies all around the town the young siren called home was evidence of the groups ganging to kill off the siren. Whitney turned to watch Sam as he drove. She should have listened better during his welcome to the mer world lectures on mer history to know why Sam was so angry about it. Where she grew up, it was common for night humans to fight each other. Night humans weren’t exactly known as passive people.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Whitney watched as Sam gripped the steering wheel a bit too tightly as he drove.

  ‘I take you back and drop you off with Jade and Jax.’

  ‘Wait, just yesterday you bugged me to leave them and forbid me to ever go over there again. Now you want me to stay with them?’

  Sam was jumping sides quite quickly.

  ‘Really not my first choice, but they will keep you safe as long as they think you are a day human. Since you’re strong enough to resist any siren call, the only way they’ll find out is if you tell them. I trust you to be smart enough to not do that.’

  ‘Why don’t you leave me with the siren?’ Wouldn’t her own kind, no matter how much they disliked each other, be a better bet than people who would kill her for just being her?

  ‘Because one of the scales was blue. So there is a siren killing people, but I don’t know who. It is likely the person is working with the other mer to overt
hrow my father. I have a feeling this could have been a way to get hunters to town for me to deal with. Someone as strong as me, but who couldn’t take me on their own. Like I said, the hunters will keep you safe.’

  Sam kept driving and went back into town. He rounded town from the opposite direction from which they really came, and Whitney knew it had to be on purpose. She knew exactly where he was going and he wasn’t joking about it when she thought he was. Sam pulled up to the hunter house and put the car in park. He was actually serious about her hanging out with the hunters.

  “Have fun with your friends,” Sam said cheerily. “Please don’t get into too much trouble.”

  Jade had walked out on the porch. Sam waved to her, and she waved back. He must have already called her before they headed away from the morgue.

  “Please don’t let her talk you into something illegal,” Sam yelled to Jade like he was the caring boyfriend that wasn’t just dropping Whitney back off at the same hunter home she was thankful to have left alive the last time. “I’ll have to stop recording to bail you guys out, and my manager will get on my case.”

  Sam had the perfect cover for running around as much as he wanted. Jade and Jax assumed he was a busy rock star, recording an album. Whitney knew the truth on that one, too. It only took them one take to get a song right with their siren skills. The guys just used the excuse “we’re recording” to avoid actually working. Whitney made a sour face at her lazy rock star boyfriend. Grinning, Sam leaned forward to kiss her. While it would have been nicer to refuse, so he knew how much she disliked this new arrangement of keeping herself hidden, she couldn’t refuse his lips. She knew how easily his time on land could be cut short if his father chose to do so.

  “Will you pick me back up later, or do I have to walk home?” Whitney asked, getting out of the jeep. She wasn’t sure how long his running around would take.

  “I’ll be back for you,” Sam replied. “What time will you guys be done running around?” Sam asked Jade.

  Jade had asked Whitney to come over to run errands with her, as the cover for looking for the deadly merperson that was going to strike again soon. Whitney thought she had gotten out of it, but it seemed like it was back on now that Sam decided she needed hunter babysitters. Jax and Jade both made sure Whitney would promise not to tell her day human rock star boyfriend the truth, and they kept repeating to her that even though she was no longer a night human, she had to keep the secret. They promised her that day humans were terrible at finding out the truth, and most ended up on psychotic medication or in the psych ward in hospitals. They didn’t need to try to scare her. There was no way she was involving Sam in any of it, and he was already crossed off their list of suspects because of the concert they went to. His singing was good, but normal in their book.

  “I’ll bring her home around dark,” Jade promised. Sam nodded to her.

  Whitney shut the door and waved good-bye as he left. She plastered on her best “I can do this” smile and turned around to face Jade. Jade was grinning back at her.

  “Oh, what I would give for a cute rock star boyfriend. Man, you’re so lucky.” Jade bounded down the steps and looped her arm through Whitney’s, pulling her back to the house.

  It was just as run-down and just as scary to enter as it was the day before. Whitney had to do her best job hiding her nerves. Why in the world Sam thought she would be safe here was beyond her.

  “Mom, Whitney’s here. We can go,” Jade yelled into the house as they entered.

  Now Whitney’s heartbeat really picked up. She wasn’t sure she could actually fake her way through it. She was going to have to scold Sam later … if she got a later with him. Legendary hunter Rommy Kristian was home. Whitney’s mind blanked as she tried to come up with an excuse to leave quickly.

  “Hi there.” A middle-aged woman who looked like any other mom out there came into the foyer where Whitney was still standing with Jade. Whitney was too shocked to think about what she was doing as she took her outstretched hand.

  Rommy Kristian was medium height with dishwater-blond hair. There was no loud make-up, piercings or tattoos like Whitney expected from the slight glance she had from Sam’s memories. Instead, there was a lady that looked like any other soccer mom getting ready to go to the gym. She wore a pair of gray leggings and a deep green fitted tank. Bright pink running shoes made the outfit very surreal. Her hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, and the only non-standard mom thing on her was a tattoo on her forearm that matched Jade’s. Rommy let go of Whitney’s hand, and she finally realized she was just shaking the hand of a hunter, possibly an elite hunter.

  “Jax was right. There’s a residue of night human left on you. He said it’s like that all over town. I think the person we’re looking for might have spelled many people in town to leave that all behind. Maybe yours is stronger because you used to be a night human.” Rommy nodded her head to herself, like the conversation wasn’t with Whitney but just thinking out loud.

  “We can drop her off with Jax, and she can help him keep track of the shore,” Jade suggested, getting her mother back on track.

  “Exactly what I was thinking. No offense intended, but now that you’re a day human I doubt you’ll be able to keep up with us as we patrol.” Rommy reached for a dark sweatshirt and pulled it on, completing the I’m heading to the gym look she had going on.

  “Jax has been camped out at this spot near the shore for almost a week in his free time. He swears there’s something about that spot, but it’s a good choice. It allows you to see all the way down the shore without being seen,” Jade explained as she followed her mother out of the house. They didn’t stop to lock the door. It was a dump and Whitney would feel sorry for anyone that tried to break in or live there while the hunters were in town.

  Rommy hopped into a car that was much nicer than the house. Jade climbed in back, and Whitney slid in beside her. There was no way she was sitting up front with Romney. One wrong move and Whitney was pretty sure she didn’t stand a chance. She had missed her skinwalker night human over the years, but right now she was really missing it. Turning part-fish was only helpful if you were near water, not in a moving vehicle. She really had no way to fight back and was happy to sit in the back with her friend.

  Rommy sped down the street, taking the corners more quickly than Whitney would have, and that said a lot. Whitney was well known with her friends back at home for driving a tad too fast. Rommy made Whitney look like an old lady in comparison.

  “Guess I should have warned you to grab the handle. My mother doesn’t do anything slow,” Jade said, as if that explained it all. Whitney had a feeling it had more to do with the fact that she didn’t have a fear of death. Who else would go up single-handedly against night humans with unknown strength and abilities? Even more, who did that time and time again and came home alive? Yes, it was pretty clear Rommy didn’t fear death.

  It didn’t take long to reach the diner Sam had brought her to only weeks ago on their first official date. Okay, it wasn’t a date, but Whitney was going to count it as a date. Technically they had already bonded, even if they didn’t know it yet, which in her mind made it a date.

  “There’s a path right there,” Jade pointed to the trees and the pathway she already knew. “Our scout found that a week ago, and Jax has been there ever since.”

  Whitney nodded and left the car. Jade followed her out and opened the front door to slide in next to her mother.

  “Please make Jax leave when you do. He has a tendency to want to sit there all night, and we have school tomorrow,” Jade told her, acting more like his mother than a sister. It was a strange relationship that was for sure.

  “Why not tell her the truth? Jax isn’t a hunter and shouldn’t be out alone at night. Tell him I order him to walk you home once it gets dark. That should make him listen.” Rommy looked impatiently at Jade to close her door. Whitney didn’t need to be told since she’d heard it all. Not too much of the loving doting mother in the hunter.
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  “See you later,” Jade got out her open window before her mother sped away.

  Whitney stood and awkwardly waved to them. The water called, being so close, yet part of her dreaded it. Sam had warned her to stay out of the water, and now she felt he was correct. There were other half fish people lurking near the shores, trying to get the siren killed. She had to agree that Sam was likely the target as he was the one that would stand up to the hunters, but it didn’t make her feel any better. They might also plan to get all the siren killed, which included the friends that were still not talking to her. Whitney wanted all the drama to be done, and the hunters to leave so that she would have time to finish learning how to sing to get her friends back. More than anything, she just wanted her life back.

  Finally making it to the beach after getting lost in her “pity me” thoughts, it wasn’t hard to find Jax. At least she knew now how he had found her last week. It was also his spot to go to. She expected to find him hidden in the woods on the path somewhere, but instead found him sitting in the sand.

  “From your hairstyle, I take it you met my mother?” Jax said as she sat beside him. Whitney hadn’t noticed the new blown-in-the-wind look her hair had taken.

  “Yeah, she’s an interesting driver.” She tried to pat down her fluffy hair.

  Jax burst out laughing. “Well, if you can survive her driving, then you can survive hanging with us. She’s the worst of it, and her driving tops the list. We’ve had many a friend ditch us, or when we were younger kids would tell their parents about the exciting ride and never be allowed over again.”

  “So she’s always driven like that?”

  “As long as I can remember. We’re just used to it, but every time a new person rides with her, we’re reminded how strange our mother really is.”

  Jax was watching the water. There were binoculars at his side, but he wasn’t using them. He was just scanning the horizon as the waves lapped the shore.