Less than a year ago
I fly the rest of the way to Callie’s beach house, my heart pounding furiously.
At last, I will be able to see her, feel her, breathe her in! There will be no more other men, no more long, lonely nights.
I land soundlessly on her property, my wings folding behind me. I can feel something in the air and in my bones, a magic drawn up from the core of the earth.
A thousand times I imagined returning to her as I am now, and every second of the flight that brought me here I agonized that somehow this wasn’t real. Surely after all that waiting, it’s not just over.
I run my fingers over an aged terracotta pot that sits on her patio, the succulent it holds spilling out from it. Her house, her things—I can touch them! The magic never let me before. I had to sustain myself on scraps of information up until now. For a man like me, the secrecy nearly killed me.
I’m seeing Callie’s place for the first time. The inside is dark, and I can sense that at the moment, the place is empty. It stirs my blood into a frenzy, knowing that I’ll have to wait even longer to see her again. Now that the debt’s been paid, I have no patience for waiting.
I could always seek her out, but that sort of eagerness puts one at a disadvantage, and when it comes to reclaiming my mate, I have enough working against me as is—namely the fact that she blames me for leaving her seven years ago.
Her sliding glass door snicks as the lock unlatches. Silently it slips open, and I step inside.
Callie’s scent hits me, and it nearly brings me to my knees. How had I lasted this long without it?
My boots scuff against the gritty floor. I toe the sand that lays scattered along the ground, the unmistakable shape of half a footprint still visible.
Callie. My siren. Can’t keep herself away from the ocean.
My footfalls sound heavy as I make my way through her living room. I pick up an empty wine bottle and read the label. Hermitage. I nearly whistle. Expensive taste.
I’ve heard enough about Callie to know it’s not just wine she drinks. Whiskey is her other poison of choice, and if my information is correct—which it nearly always is—she enjoys her spirits more often than she should.
I set the bottle back down and move to the kitchen, my fingers trailing her cracked tile countertops. My gaze roves over the faded cabinets and the worn wood floors. She spent a pretty penny buying her seaside Malibu house, and yet by the looks of it, she hasn’t changed a damn thing about it.
I move over to a hanging corkboard near her fridge, several notes pinned to it, mostly just phone numbers and a note with a smiling dick drawn on it, signed Temper in the corner.
Leaving the kitchen, I head down her hallway. Her walls are bare of the usual photos that people mount. There’s no family portraits—no surprise there—but there aren’t any photos of Callie with friends.
Why?
I note with more than a touch of dismay that the trinkets we collected from around the world, the ones that once filled her dorm room, are also absent.
The question now is: are they missing because she’s still angry at me, or because she feels indifferent?
Please not indifference. I can work with anything but that.
The only things that hang on the walls are some framed watercolors of coral and a carved wooden fish; the generic sort of shit that you can buy at any store.
I pass her guest bathroom, then another room that looks like it’s sometimes a guestroom, sometimes a storage space. Casting a bit of my magic out, I listen to the shadows, letting them gossip to me about this house and its owner.
… drinks in the dark hours …
… shower busted down the hall …
… talks in her sleep about lost love …
… several men have stayed the night …
Hot jealousy roars within me at that last one. Here I stand, the man once famous for bedding much of the Otherworld’s female population, now torn in two when suddenly the tables are turned on me.
No men save me will warm her bed any longer.
Speaking of—Callie’s bedroom looms ahead. Just the sight of the door has my wings flaring. I head inside, my eyes drinking in the space. Everywhere I look there’s a testament to the sea—from more marine wall art, to a conch shell sitting on a side table, to vases filled with sea glass. Because she can’t live in the sea … she brought it to her. It even has the briny smell of salt and seaweed.
I move through the room, skimming my fingers over the spines of novels shoved into a whitewashed bookshelf.
It’s only when I get to one of the side chairs in her room that I come across something that doesn’t belong. I pick up the offensive piece of clothing, which was thrown over the chairback, and bring it to my nose.
I breathe in the material, then grimace, squeezing the cloth tight in my fist.
Dog. Specifically, a lycanthrope.
A bit of my inner darkness taints my eagerness.
Her … lover.
For a brief moment, I’d forgotten.
From what I’ve gathered, she’s been dating a Politia bounty hunter. At first, I didn’t believe it. Callypso Lillis, the woman who once quaked at the authorities, now dates one of them?
I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Sirens are a bit fatalistic. They have a long history of getting themselves into trouble thanks to a millennia-old curse placed upon their species. And even though that curse has since been lifted, there will always be a part of my mate’s kind that will attract trouble.
Though technically, between me and the bounty hunter, I’m the worse choice.
It only takes a little magic for flames to begin licking the material. Within seconds the offending shirt is nothing more than smoke and ashes, and then it’s not even that, my magic eating up every last trace of its existence.
I hope Eli enjoyed Callie while he had her. Now that she and I have paid our tithe, I have no plans to let her go again.