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.Quietly, I tiptoed across the small portico and peeked into a window.I got only a small peek at wood and stone before I heard a voice behind me.“Ahem.”I jumped and turned to find the woman who’d opened the door standing behind me with a suspicious expression and a menacingly wielded feather duster.“Lovely home,” I told her, standing up straight again.“I was just curious about the interior design.With the wood.And furnishings.” I cleared my throat guiltily.“And such.”The woman rolled her eyes, then flipped her feather duster out like a composer directing an orchestra.“I have been authorized to invite you into the abode of Lorelei, the lake siren.Welcome to her home.”Her delivery was desert dry, but it got the point across.I followed her inside.The interior of the house was as organically designed as the outside.The window looked onto a two-story living room.One wall was made of rounded river stone, and a trickle of water spilled down the rocks and into a narrow channel that ran through the middle of the room, where it disappeared into an infinity-edged trough on the other side.A curvy woman sat on the floor beside the channel of water, trickling her fingers into it.Her hair was dark and pulled into a topknot, and she was dressed simply in a shimmery gray T-shirt and jeans, her toes bare.Her eyes were closed, and she sang out low and clear.I looked back toward the woman with the feather duster, but having done her duty, she was gone.“Are you Lorelei?” I quietly asked.She stopped singing, opened her eyes, and looked up at me with eyes the color of chocolate.“Honey, if you’re on my island, you know there’s only one person I could be.Of course I’m Lorelei.” Her voice carried a hint of a Spanish accent, and a lot of sarcasm.I bit back a smile.“Hi, Lorelei.I’m Merit.”“Hi, yourself.What brings you here?”“I need to ask you some questions.”“About?”“The lake.”Her eyes narrowed.“You think I had something to do with the water?”“I don’t know whether you did or not,” I admitted, kneeling beside the channel so we could speak at eye level.“I’m trying to figure out what happened, and you seemed like a good place to start.It’s not just the lake, you know.It’s the river, as well.”Her head shot up.“The river? It’s dead, too?”Neither the question nor the look of defeat in her eyes comforted me.“It is,” I said.“And the river and the lake are bleeding all the power out of Chicago.The nymphs are growing weaker.”Wincing as if in pain, Lorelei pressed her fingers to her temples.“They aren’t the only ones.I feel like I finished up a four-day shift and a two-day bender.Weak.Exhausted.Dizzy.” She looked up at me.“I didn’t cause this.I’d hoped the nymphs might have the answer, that they’d become too involved in some kind of unfamiliar magic, but that the magic could be reversed.”“They thought the same thing about you.”“That’s no surprise,” she dryly said.“You don’t get along?”She barked out a laugh.“I grew up near Paseo Boricua.Born and raised in Chicago by parents from Puerto Rico.The nymphs aren’t exactly a diverse crew.They see me as the odd one out.An interloper in their pretty little world of magic.”“How so?”She looked up at me curiously.“You really don’t know, do you?”I shook my head, and she muttered something in Spanish.“The lake turns black and I get the vampire right off the assembly line,” she said, then cast her own apologetic glance.“No offense.”“None taken.”Lorelei sighed and dipped a hand back into the water.Her features relaxed a bit, as if touching the water soothed her.“Being a siren isn’t like being a nymph,” she said.“They are born into their roles; their mothers are nymphs, as well.A siren’s power doesn’t work that way.”She pointed to a table across the room.Propped upon it was a dark, iron disk about six inches across.There was writing on it, but it was too far away to read.“Piedra de Agua,” she said.“The water stone.The siren’s magic is carried within it.”I frowned back at her.“I don’t understand.”“To own the stone is to become the lake siren,” she said.“To trigger its magic, you must request the stone, but it only accepts certain owners.Once it’s yours, it’s yours until the next owner comes around.”“So you chose to be a siren?”Lorelei looked away, staring down at the water.“Technically, I had a choice to accept the stone and its burdens, although my options were limited.”“And the boats at the shoreline?”She looked back with pride in her eyes.“I chose to accept the stone, but I work things a little differently.I’m the siren of the lake, and I have to sing, but I picked the most isolated spot I could find.Rosa and Ian, my husband—they help steer the sailors back to the mainland.The damage to the boats I can’t do much about.” She smiled a little.“But everybody’s got insurance.”I couldn’t fault that logic.“How long do you have to serve as siren?”“The Lorelei before me—we all take the name to keep the myth alive—lived here for ninety-six years.Of course,” she said with a burgeoning smile, “she was forty-two when she became siren, so that’s not a bad perk.”Because I had a sense it might help, I offered up my own story.“I was made a vampire without my consent.To save my life, but it wasn’t something I’d planned.That came as a surprise.”She regarded me with interest.“So you know what it’s like to rewrite your life.To weigh who you were against who you must become.”I thought of all the things I’d done and seen over the last year—the death, the pain, the joy.The beginnings.and the endings.“Yes,” I quietly agreed.“I know what that’s like.” That thought reminded me of my purpose.“Lorelei, if you didn’t cause this, do you know who might have?”“If the nymphs aren’t involved—if this wasn’t caused by a water spirit—then I think you need to look more broadly.”“Such as?”She looked away, guilt in her expression.“Lorelei, I need to know.This isn’t just about the nymphs.Our Houses are at stake.Humans are already blaming vampires, and if it goes any further, I can guarantee the registration law will pass.”“There’s only one group as tied to the natural world as we are,” she finally said.“We find our solace and our awe in the water.In the flow of it, the power of it, its ability to cleanse and destroy.” She closed her eyes.“They find their power in the earth.They treasure it—the woods, the wilds.”My stomach sank.“You’re talking about shifters?”“The Pack is in Chicago, isn’t it?”“Because we asked them to stay.They wouldn’t do this
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