“Thank you.” Lexi returned his smile, then stood up and brushed sand off her legs. “Okay. I’m ready.”
Penn and Thea got up more slowly than Lexi, and Penn led the way off the beach. Half a dozen guys said hello to them as they walked away, but only Lexi responded. Gemma, who garnered some male attention of her own, wasn’t used to quite this much ogling, and she found that she didn’t enjoy it.
They went to a rocky area that jutted out into the bay, not quite to the cypress trees, but far enough to be out of sight of the crowd on the beach.
As soon as they got there, Thea slipped off her bikini bottom and waded out into the water. From where she stood, Gemma couldn’t see her legs turn into a tail, but she knew it had happened just the same.
“Shall we go for a swim?” Lexi suggested, slipping down her own bikini bottom.
“No, I don’t want to swim,” Gemma lied. “I just want to talk.”
Lexi’s bikini bottom was just below her hips, and she paused, looking from Gemma to Penn. Penn only stared at Gemma for a minute, debating what she planned to do.
“You go ahead and swim,” Penn told Lexi without looking at her. “I’ll stay here and talk with Gemma.”
“Okay.” Lexi sounded hesitant, but she took off her bikini bottom and went into the water. Within moments she’d disappeared out in the bay, swimming with Thea.
Gemma watched from the corner of her eye but tried not stare. It was hard to be this close to the ocean and not swim. The waves lapping against the rocks were like music, singing to her.
They were summoning her, seeming to beckon her at a cellular level. Her very being yearned to be in the water, but she needed to talk to Penn. She didn’t think she could do that if she were frolicking about in the bay.
“So, what did you want to talk about?” Penn asked, leaning back against a large boulder behind her.
“For starters, how do you deal with that?” Gemma gestured to the ocean beside them and tugged at her earlobe. “It’s driving me nuts.”
“You mean the watersong?” Penn smirked at Gemma’s obvious distress.
“The watersong?”
“That music you’re hearing right now, the way the ocean sings to you? That’s the watersong. It’s calling us back home, and it’s why we can never be that far from the ocean.”
“So it doesn’t ever stop?” Gemma twisted a strand of hair around her finger and glared out at the waves.
“No, it doesn’t,” Penn admitted somewhat sadly. “But it does get easier to ignore when you’re not hungry.”
“I’m not hungry,” Gemma insisted. “I ate breakfast this morning.”
Penn shrugged a shoulder and looked out at the water. “There are different kinds of hunger.”
“Listen, I wanted to talk to you about something you said.”
“I assumed as much.” Penn watched Thea and Lexi splashing around a ways from shore, then turned back to Gemma. “Are you ready to join us?”
“That’s the thing.” Gemma shook her head. “I don’t want to join you.”
“So, you want to die, then?” Penn raised an eyebrow coolly.
“No, of course not. But there has to be a way out. There must be something else I can do.”
“Nope. There’s not,” Penn said simply. “Once you take the drink and transform, you’re locked in. You’re a siren, and the only way out is death.”
“But that’s not fair.” Gemma clenched her fists because she could do nothing else to ease her frustration. “How could you do this to me? How could you turn me into this without even asking what I wanted? You can’t just force me to be this … this thing.”
“Oh, I can, and I did.” Penn straightened up and took a step toward Gemma. “It’s too late. You’re a siren whether you like it or not.”
“Why would you even do that?” Gemma asked with angry tears stinging her eyes.
“Because I wanted you.” Penn’s voice was cold and hard. “And I do whatever the hell I want.”
“No.” Gemma shook her head. “You can’t do this. You can’t have me. I’m a person, and you can’t just force me to be something because you want me to!”
“Honey”—Penn smiled—“I already did.”
Gemma wanted to hit her, but she kept her hands at her sides. She had a feeling that Penn was a lot more dangerous than she looked, and she didn’t really want to ignite her wrath. At least not yet.
“I don’t think you know as much as you think you know.”
“Like what?” Penn laughed drily.
“You said that it wasn’t possible for guys to really love a siren,” Gemma said. “But Alex cares about me, the real me.”
Penn’s eyes flashed hard and her smile vanished.
“That just shows how young and stupid you are,” she hissed. “Alex is what, seventeen? Eighteen? He’s a teenage boy with raging hormones. You think he gives a damn about you?” She laughed darkly. “Look at you! You’re gorgeous, and that’s all that matters to him.”