The following morning, rested, refreshed and raring to go, the guys and I walked through the busy streets of Coney Island. At peak tourist season the place is unbelievably crowded with out of towners, anxious to give their money away to whoever takes it first. Needless to say, Remi and I used to come here every year - if people are going to throw their money away, then we might as well be there to catch it.

But it wasn't money I was after today.

"I can't believe I've never seen a parade before."

Nico was way more excited than any man his age - whatever that age was - had a right to be. Alexei and Christoph shot him exasperated looks.

"What? I don't get to have some fun as long as we're here?"

"You're a strange man, Nico," judged Christoph.

"Do you think it'll work?" I asked, for perhaps the tenth time since we had arrived. Yesterday, after staring into a coffee cup for a few hours, it had all seemed so simple and logical. Now that the day itself had come, the idea that an ancient mythical creature was interchangeable with an out-of-work actress in a cheap wig, plastic tail and with shells over her tits seemed more like a caffeine-fueled delusion.

"I can't think of anything more likely to work," said Alexei with a shrug.

"That doesn't fill me with confidence."

“Check it out! Cotton candy. I’m told it’s like human ambrosia.”

It was hard to be downbeat with Nico around, acting like a child hyped up on sugar.

"We're looking for mermaids," said Christoph.

“And eating some cotton candy will prevent that, how?” Nico growled.

He had a point.

I looked about me and began to surrender to the Coney Island spirit. Much as I tend to look at this place as nothing more than a grifter's paradise, there is something uniquely wonderful about it, in a sticky, disposable, primary-colored kind of a way. It was super-kitsch and super-tacky, but deliberately, so that was okay. Everywhere you looked there were people having fun.

There were stalls where you could buy toys or food or T-shirts that declared how much you had enjoyed Coney Island in bright, excitable capitals. Unicyclists interwove their way around tourists, juggling as they went and irritating the magicians who were trying to get people to focus on their close-up magic. There were ring tosses, coconut shies, whack-a-mole, shooting galleries and many more games that rewarded violence with an immense stuffed giraffe that somehow no one ever won. There were face painting booths, caricaturists, and people would put your picture on a T-shirt for a dollar or a mug for five bucks. There were children everywhere - far more than you would have thought the adults present could have accounted for - running around, screaming with excitement, every second finding something to do that was better than what they had found the previous second so they never actually did anything, and yet seemed to be enjoying themselves all the same. There was music, there was laughter, there was color, and there was a symphony of smells from the multitudinous food stalls that made you hungry at just one sniff.

Nico returned, holding a bundle of rainbow cotton candy and a caramel apple in one hand, a hot dog in the other, and a stuffed alligator under his arm.

"We have to save the world so I can come here again next year,” he declared as he tore into his hot dog with a groan of satisfaction.

If Remi and I had been working today, then Nico might as well have had the word “mark” tattooed on his forehead but I couldn’t help but grin at him.

"What now?" asked Alexei, turning to me and trying hard to ignore the embarrassing antics of his comrade.

"The mermaids should be down near the water," I replied. "I guess we just find one who can sing and take it from there." As we walked, I continued to talk to Alexei. "Were sirens ever real?"

"Oh yeah," he nodded. "The girls themselves are still around, although they're not 'sirens' anymore because they don't do the 'luring sailors to their doom' thing like they used to. Poseidon decided that there were enough ships dumping oil into the sea without his girls giving them a hand."

"So what do they do now?"

"What do any of us do? They live their lives. I mean, they still do a fair amount of luring men - Christoph had a thing with one a few years back - but now they just lure relationships onto the rocks rather than ships." He shook his head. "They've been around so long, you'd be surprised how many people have a bit of siren DNA in them. You ever know a person who could never just find their own boyfriend, they’re always after other people's partners?"

“Yeah, sure. Buddy-fuckers.” I recalled Jenny Guthrie at school, a drop-dead gorgeous redhead who had stolen more boyfriends than I could count.

"Chances are, they've got a bit of siren in them," Alexei continued. "They can't help it. Men are just unavoidably attracted to them, particularly if they sing. Oh, Nico, for goodness sake; you'll make yourself sick." He headed off to help Christoph drag Nico away from a donut stall.

"Fortunes - only a dollar."

The strange tinny voice made me turn to see an ancient Fortune Telling machine with a stylized gypsy head on top of it, its mouth shuddering open and closed in vague mechanical time to the words.

"You, Miss," the machine grated. "I can tell your fortune."

Although, I knew the machine was automated, it felt oddly directed at me. I glanced back to the guys to see them still arguing.

Well, why not?

I went over to the machine, inserted a dollar, and stuck my hand into the open slot so it could read my palm.

The machine went through a series of odd noises, which either meant it was producing my fortune or about to explode. Then, with a rattle, a small card dropped into my open palm and I took it out to read.

“Give up before it grows too late

Or regret it evermore.

For though you may the battle win,

You'll never win the war.”

I felt a slight shudder run through me, and not just because of the Yoda-esque syntax in the third line. It was one of those fortunes that could be extremely general, applying to anyone, but still felt as if it was applying specifically to me. We've all read our horoscope in the paper and been blindsided by how accurate it seems, before remembering that this is supposed to apply to one twelfth of the population and that yesterday's was way off the mark. Still, it's always creepy when it happens and this was entirely the wrong time for me to be getting creepy omens. It also seemed odd for a fortune machine to have such a negative fortune in it. Surely, the whole point of such a machine at a place like this was to keep everyone happy and buying stuff.

"You alright?" Alexei asked, as he returned with Christoph and a guilty-looking Nico behind him.

"Yeah. All good." I crushed the fortune in my hand and tossed it aside, determined not to think about it again.

Down at the waterfront, the mermaid parade was in full swing and they were all singing. It looked like I would be spoiled for choice, and yet, I could not shake the doubts that I had been feeling earlier, now exacerbated by the fortune. All these women were as close as I was likely to get to a modern-day siren but I couldn't help recalling something Alexei had said earlier about the girls who had been the sirens of old; that they were not “sirens” anymore because they no longer lured men to their doom. That was an essential part of being a siren, otherwise, I could just dress up as a mermaid myself and sing a song.

I watched the mermaids. They put a lot of feeling into their performance, singing directly to the children - mostly little girls - who had gathered to see them. As my eyes travelled down the line, I stopped on one particular mermaid. It wasn't that she was better-looking than the others - they were a very good-looking bunch and she was probably about average for the group - but she stood out. It took me awhile to work out why she looked different - it was because her eye-line was different, it was higher. It took me another moment to work out why; she wasn't singing directly to the kids the way the others were, she was singing to their dads. Specifically, she was singing to a group of three fathers who looked as if they had brought their daughters along to this event on sufferance because their wives had told them to, and now could not believe their luck. They hung on her every word, listening to no one but her, catching each syllable as it dropped from her ruby lips.

When the song ended, the mermaids got down from the fake plastic rocks they were seated on and waddled into the crowd, handing out stickers and flowers and other treats to the children who seethed about them. My mermaid didn't move as her three men, dragging their daughters behind, made a beeline for her. From the way she tossed her hair and smiled sweetly, I could tell that she was enjoying the attention and there was no way I would be able to pry her away from the male adulation. Fortunately, I had three secret weapons.

"Guys, can you get that mermaid to come over for a quiet chat?"

It would have taken a stronger woman than my mermaid to resist a three-pronged attack from Alexei, Christoph and Nico, who were as much sirens to women as she was to men. A few minutes later, she was at my side, with three crestfallen men behind her, wearing expressions that said “we don't think we'd have cheated on our wives but we'd have liked the opportunity to find out”.

"What's going on?" asked the mermaid, hotly, irritated that she seemed to have walked away from three sure things.

"I'm Marietta Martin.” I held out a hand, going into full grift. "I'm sure you've heard of me. I just heard you sing and I was, frankly, blown away."

The mermaid frowned. "You heard me in amongst all those girls?"

"When you've been in the biz as long as me, you get an ear for it. You are sensational; beautiful voice, beautiful body. Men want to be with you, women want to kill you. That's what I'm looking for. What's your name?"

“Antonia,” she said, flushing, and adjusting her breasts surreptitiously.

"Perfect." I pulled out my phone. "Sing for me, Antonia. Sing like I'm the man in the crowd you've got your eye on."

Antonia had the grace to look away with a self-conscious chuckle, realizing that I had spotted her little game.

Then she cleared her throat, opened her mouth, and sang.

The next two minutes went by in a daze as her clear soprano filled the air.

"Are you okay?" Antonia asked, after the last note faded.

I shook my head and remembered to stop the recording. "Yeah. Yeah. That was..."

I couldn’t deny it, she got me. In fact, if she had asked me, I would have run away with Antonia and never looked back. But now that it was over, the spell was broken, leaving me feeling off-kilter and sort of stupid.

"Thanks," I mumbled. "I'll let you get back to work."

"Don't you want my number?"

"Why would I want that?" I blurted out defensively.

"So you can call me about my singing career?"

I took her number and headed back to the guys, feeling a little guilty, but only a little as the woman had been picking up married men for kicks.

"Got it." I held up the phone.

"That's amazing."

"You're amazing."

The effusiveness of their congratulations was not the first time today I had noticed them acting a little odd. Maybe not “odd”, exactly, but over enthusiastic, over protective, and over the top towards me. Their guilt at what they had done, the genuine contrition and desperation to get back in my good books was obvious. Probably, they had similarly noticed my forced coldness towards them. Except in those moments when I forgot myself, I had tried to keep things all business - no wonder they felt as if they had done something wrong.

But of course, they had done something terribly wrong.

Something they’d literally been forced into doing, a little voice in my head piped in.

There was no sense in getting back on that merry-go-round. I didn't want to forgive them, but it seemed as if they weren't forgiving themselves, either. The situation was what it was, and whatever they had done in the past, they had been loyal friends to me in the present. Maybe they deserved to be let off the hook, just a little. At the very least, I could lighten up enough for us to enjoy ourselves together today. After all, we were at Coney Island.

"How about we stick around here for a bit?"

My suggestion was welcomed by two slow smiles, and Nico's beaming grin.