Elegy

TWENTY-FOUR Blood & Water

The scroll lay on the kitchen table, weighted down with coffee grounds and a two-liter bottle of cola to keep from rolling up. Any fluid that Gemma could find in the fridge, she’d tried on it, before moving on to cleaning supplies. Now chicken broth and bleach sat puddled together on the papyrus, and the iridescent ink glowed dully through the liquid, taunting her.

With her arms crossed over her chest, Gemma bounced on the balls of her feet, as if that would somehow knock an idea free, and she’d realize how to break the stupid curse.

She kept thinking back to the night she had become a siren, certain that there must be some sort of clue there. Gemma had been in the bay, enjoying a night swim, and the sirens had been dancing around a fire in the cove.

This was before Gemma knew what they really were, and Lexi sang to her, calling to her. When she swam toward them, the siren song blocked out all fear and reason, and her body moved on its own.

When Gemma reached the shore, Lexi held out her hand and pulled her to her feet.

Penn had been dancing with a shawl around her. It was made of some kind of gauzy gold material, and she placed it over Gemma’s shoulders. “Here. To keep you warm.”

Then Lexi had put an arm around her, and at her touch the hairs on the back of Gemma’s neck stood up. Instinctively, Gemma pulled away, but then Lexi began singing again, and the siren song trapped her there.

“Come join us.” Penn had kept her eyes on Gemma and stepped backwards, toward the fire.

Lexi reached into the front of her dress and pulled out a small copper flask. “Let’s have a drink.”

“Sorry, I don’t drink.”

“Gemma,” Lexi said, her voice a song again. She held out the flask, but Gemma hesitated. “Drink.”

Then Gemma didn’t seem to have a choice. She couldn’t even consider refusing. Her hands moved on their own, taking the flask from Lexi, unscrewing the top, and putting it to her lips. It seemed involuntary, like breathing.

The liquid was thick, and it tasted bitter and salty on her tongue. It burned going down her throat. It felt too heavy and hot to swallow, and she gagged.

Much later, Penn would tell her what the liquid had really been made of—blood of a siren, blood of a mortal, and blood of the sea. When Gemma had found out, she’d nearly thrown up.

The cove had seemed to pitch to the side after she’d managed to swallow the mixture, and Gemma grabbed on to Lexi to keep from falling. Everything was swayed. She tried to stand up and nearly tipped forward into the fire, but Penn caught her, and then the world faded to black.

After she’d passed out, Penn had wrapped her in the shawl completely and then tossed her into the ocean. If the curse worked, Gemma would awaken as a siren the next morning. And if it didn’t, she would drown.

Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how she looked at it—the curse had worked, and Gemma had woken up on the rocky shore a siren.

“What am I missing?” Gemma whispered to herself now in her kitchen. “There has to be something that made the curse that will also help break it.” Then it hit her. “Blood.”

The instant she said it, she was reminded of a text that Harper had sent her on Monday after she’d visited with her professor. He hadn’t been able to translate much of the scroll, and he wasn’t certain about what little he had. But a phrase he’d guessed at stood out.

“The blood can’t become water,” she recited, repeating what Harper had messaged her.

When she’d woken up this morning, Gemma had run down to the bay and filled up a jar with saltwater from the ocean. She’d tried it on the scroll, and other than glowing a little, nothing much had happened, and the mason jar sat on the kitchen table, still half full of seawater.

“It can’t be that simple,” she said as she eyed the jar, but she went over to the kitchen drawer and pulled out a sharp steak knife.

Biting her lip to steel herself against the pain, she sliced the blade down her finger. As soon as the blood started flowing, she held her finger over the scroll and squeezed it, dripping it down on the words.

Quickly, she picked up the jar and poured a little bit of water over the blood. The words began to glow brighter than she’d seen them before, and using her cut finger, she smeared the blood and water together, pushing it deeper into the paper.

The words continued to glow for a few more seconds, but then they just faded back to normal. Truthfully, Gemma hadn’t expected anything much different. The mixture that Penn had used to turn Gemma into a siren had been the blood of a siren, the blood of a mortal, and the blood of the ocean.

She had the siren and ocean part covered. Now all she needed was a mortal, and, fortunately, she thought she knew of one who would be eager to give up her blood. Gemma pulled out her phone and quickly wrote a text.

Within ten minutes of sending Marcy the message, her friend was knocking at the front door. While she’d been waiting for her, Gemma had tried an experiment with just her blood, and although she hadn’t expected it to work, she had to give it a shot.

When Gemma answered the front door, Marcy was standing on the front step, and Kirby stood on the step below her, offering her a sheepish smile when Gemma looked at him in surprise.

“Oh. I didn’t realize you were bringing Kirby,” Gemma said.

“We were hanging out, so I thought he’d tag along,” Marcy explained. “Besides, you said it was an emergency.”

“I never said it was an emergency. I asked if you could come over real quick,” Gemma corrected her. “But thanks for being so speedy.”

“Is it a problem that I’m here?” Kirby asked. “I can leave or go wait in Marcy’s car or something.”

“Normally, I wouldn’t mind, but I had kind of a … personal favor for Marcy,” Gemma tried to explain, and gave him an apologetic smile.

“Is this about feminine hygiene?” Marcy asked.

“What? No. Ew.” Gemma shook her head. “No, this is about the … scroll.”

“You’re talking about the whole siren thing?” Kirby asked.

Gemma was taken aback. “You told him?”

Marcy shrugged. “Yeah, Kirb’s cool. If he can’t handle the stuff I’m into, then we couldn’t hang out. So I had to tell him about it, and he passed the test.”

“Are you sure you’re really cool with the whole siren thing?” Gemma asked Kirby, ignoring Marcy’s assurances that he could handle all things supernatural. “Because it’s gonna get even weirder.”

“Yeah, I think I can tough it out.” He nodded eagerly, and Marcy gave him a smile of approval.

“Okay,” Gemma said, since she couldn’t argue with that. “Because I need some blood.”

“Does it need to be a certain type? Because I’m O positive,” Marcy said, then pointed her thumb at Kirby. “And Kirby is AB positive.”

“How do you know his blood type?” Gemma asked.

“I’m very thorough when I vet the people I hang out with,” Marcy said.

“Very thorough,” Kirby added with wide eyes and a heavy sigh.

“No, it doesn’t matter what type.” Gemma stepped back from the door and motioned for them to come in. “Let’s get inside. I feel strange talking about blood on the front stoop.”

“Whatever makes you comfortable,” Marcy said.

“The blood just has to be mortal, but I’m not even entirely sure how much I’ll need,” Gemma admitted, as Marcy and Kirby followed her into the kitchen. Kirby surveyed the mess in the kitchen and did his best to look unruffled, while Marcy didn’t even bat an eye.

“Should we be breaking into a blood bank?” Marcy suggested.

“I thought I’d start with a drop or two from you, then take it from there,” Gemma said.

“All right. Do you have a sharp knife?” Marcy asked.

“Aren’t you even gonna ask what it’s about?”

“I’m gonna go out on a limb, but I’m guessing it’s about breaking the curse,” Marcy said dryly, and gestured to the scroll on the table. “But if you wanted to elaborate, I wouldn’t mind.”

“Harper told me about her professor thinking the ink was made of blood,” Gemma said as she went over to the kitchen drawer to grab a new steak knife. “Then Harper told me that Lydia thought that made sense, since the curse was usually written in something that pertained to it. And then, finally, it’s so obvious—the way to break the curse is the curse itself.”

“Okay, right. That makes sense.” Marcy nodded. “So … you’re turning the paper into a siren?”

“I’ll use the methodology for it. I became a siren by drinking a potion—blood of a mortal, blood of a siren, and blood of the sea.”

“What’s the blood of the sea?” Kirby asked.

Gemma lifted up the mason jar to show him. “Just water.”

“So your plan is to make a mixture of your blood, my blood, and ocean water, and then just rub it all over the scroll?” Marcy asked, and Gemma nodded, so Marcy pushed up the sleeve of her hooded sweatshirt. “All right. Let’s get started.”

Before they began, Gemma used a paper towel to wipe the scroll completely clean. She didn’t want their blood and water mixing with residue from anything else that might screw it up.

Gemma tried to cut Marcy’s finger, but she felt weird about hurting her. Then Marcy tried to do it herself, also without success, so finally, Kirby had to step in and save the day. With Marcy looking the other way, Kirby sliced the knife down her finger.

Marcy held her hand over the scroll, squeezing droplets out. Gemma’s finger had already healed again, so, hurriedly, she sliced open her own finger and mixed her blood with Marcy’s, then added the water last.

It wasn’t as much as she would’ve liked, but it was enough that she could smear it on the words of the scroll. The symbols began to glow beneath, shining brightly through her blood in a vibrant crimson.

At first, it seemed no different from before, when Gemma had tried out the energy drink for herself. But then they began to blaze even brighter, the dark ink shifting from red to an orange flame, like they were on fire.

She held her breath, thinking that this might finally be it … and then just as abruptly as it started, it stopped. The ink faded to its usual russet color. Nothing had changed.

“Well that sucks,” said Marcy. “I thought the scroll was going to burst into flames, then nothing. It’s never reacted that strongly before, right?”

Gemma bit her lip and shook her head, staring thoughtfully at the scroll. “That’s definitely never happened before, not like that. I wish we had the translation because I don’t know why it happened.”