“You know what, I’m just going to go back to my room to soak this, I’ll just soak these and change into pajamas,” I tell her, and after hours of yelling over music, my voice comes out much too loud, bouncing off the tiled bathroom walls.
Deanna looks at me with alarm and heartbreak. You’d think I had just told her that her baby isn’t all that cute, actually. “You’re not coming with us to the bar?”
I stare at her. “I went to the bar. We were just at the bar.”
The thought of going back is out of the question. Even if I sit in a corner for the rest of the night and keep prompting Dan from Accounting to tell me about his pet untouchable slime so that no one else can get a word in edgewise, I don’t have the stamina.
“No, no, sweetheart, not the hotel bar. There’s another one down the street, it’s open much later. We were all about to head over there,” she coos.
Holy fuck. There’s more? I didn’t party this hard even in college. Why are my coworkers like this? A miserable feeling forebodes that I’m about to have to fend off the jeans she’s foisting on me again.
“Oh. I don’t think I could—”
“Come on,” she says, and then wiggles her fingers like she’s directing an orchestra. “Listen to the siren song of cheap cocktails.”
I’m too stunned to cringe inwardly a little on her behalf.
I stare at her a beat too long and then clutch my head unconvincingly. “Ohhh. You know. I think I’m actually starting to feel kinda sick. Would you be a dear and see if the hotel store has any pain meds? I’ll pay you back.”
The opportunity for heroism in front of her overrides any further pestering about the second bar. She visibly brightens at the chance to channel her inner nurse. I can smell the enthusiasm and need on her. Terrifying.
“Oh, of course, baby girl,” she coos, ushering me out of the bathroom with her.
“Thanks, uh, mama girl,” I return, and I’m still too shaken to really care how awful that sounded coming out of my mouth.
We part at the end of the hallway, her jogging down to the hotel lobby store with a mission, and me trudging my way to the elevators.
I don’t know how I’m going to survive the next few days of this trip trying to avoid that gargoyle. That interaction has left me feeling off balance in more ways than one. The way he was flirting with me, that kiss; it all has left my body thrumming with need for another taste.
But no one has ever noticed that I’m not human.
Sometimes people can tell. Usually, they can’t. I don't tell people I'm a siren—almost never.
Too many people treat it like an invitation to cross boundaries they wouldn't normally. Telling people means getting harassed, and if I call them out for changing their behavior, it gets shrugged off because my existence is “asking for it.” That’s like assuming every undead you come across wants to eat your brains. They either expect I'm always down for a quickie, even if that's not our relationship, or that I should be interested in threesomes.
Every time it happens, I pull back a little more. The cocoon I’ve built in my apartment is woven a little tighter. Maybe there aren’t more locks on the door, but opening it gets harder.
Being a siren isn't all bad. It means a lot of people want us for Monster Resources jobs. I can smell people’s emotions on their breath, which I guess in theory would be useful, but it involves sitting a lot closer to people than is normal in the office, and I haven’t really run into a situation where it gave me any more insight than someone’s general outward attitude did.
But hiring managers think it’s a good thing to have, and don’t even care that I never finished my degree.
I ended up going into MR because it was a steadier option than anything I could do with my art. A consistent paycheck and health insurance for my soul. Like, literally. It’s in my employment contract.
The hotel lobby seems empty until I round the corner of a large decorative pillar, and I’m halted by the sight of a harpy with her wings and a leg wrapped around an invisible man, the shape of him only visible by his clothes and askew glasses sitting on top of his head. Except, it looks like they were halfway through making him entirely undetectable.
A beat goes by, and when the harpy’s face is a little less smushed by the kissing motions she’s making, they notice me and startle.
“Oh,” the two of them say, more or less at the same time.
I recognize the harpy from all my in-office meetings with her. Kathy, half of the bane of my existence at work.
I’m frozen beside them, unsure if I want to go back the way I came or continue past them like I saw nothing. The two don’t exactly spring apart but they do detach themselves, re-buttoning their various undone buttons. I realize the invisible man’s shirt has the Evil Inc. logo embroidered just above the pocket, so he must work with us.
“Uh, I’ll, uh, circle back with you later, Kath,” he says and hurries past me out into the hall.
I know that voice, that’s the guy who’s always calling me about Kathy’s unnecessarily pedantic emails about less-than-prompt invoices.
“That was Ted?” The words just kind of haphazardly fall out as I glance back and forth between the harpy and the hallway his clothes have disappeared down.
