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Syrus grimaced at the phrasing. He was no whale. They may have been respectable creatures in their own right, but Syrus’s song was much more nuanced by far than the general chatter of large marine mammals.

“I mean…” Seth flushed and glanced at Riley, who had his arm around him in a possessive manner Syrus might have liked to replicate with Luke, if he’d thought it would have been allowed. “That’s the only word I could use to describe it.”

“You were at the facility?” Luke asked. “The same one that took Syrus?”

Syrus stiffened in his chair. He’d been too offended to register the import of Seth’s question. But Seth would have had to have been, to have heard Syrus’s plaintive melody.

Seth bit at his lip. “I was there briefly as a bargaining chip. But Riley and some friends… Well, they sort of torched it all.”

“Were they the ones who helped Syrus get to the ocean?” Luke asked eagerly. “The friends?”

Riley shook his head. “We never found any of the other captured. The facility’s employees were in a digital system, but any files they had on their experiments must have been on paper and evacuated at some point. We don’t even know what other kinds of creatures were there.”

“We did find the tank,” Daphne added brightly. “But there was only a mutilated human corpse next to it.”

Syrus could feel Luke’s stare boring into the side of his face, but for the moment, he ignored it.

Sybil, meanwhile, had been studying Syrus closely. “Yes, the song,” she mused, as if nothing else had been said since Seth’s declaration. “Sirens have that ability, do they not, if rumors are to be believed? A sort of…vocally based mind control?”

Now Syrus could hear Luke’s breath halting. He glared at the beautiful vampire woman. “My abilities are limited in this form,” he admitted reluctantly. “I can only suggest.”

Sybil waved an elegant hand in dismissal. “But in your other form, you’re quite powerful, aren’t you? All it takes is a few of you to bring whole ships down to devour. Or am I mistaken?”

Syrus narrowed his eyes. Were they deliberately trying to sow discord between Syrus and his humans? Right when Luke was finally lowering his walls and allowing for the start of mating courtship?

As if Syrus’s sweet Luke would need such powers to keep him in line.

“The legends you speak of took place ages ago,” Syrus told the deadly beauty, cocking his head. “Do you really think me old enough to have participated?”

“Well.” Sybil leaned back in her chair with a self-satisfied smile, as if she was allowing his rebuttal only because she’d already proved her point. “A lady never presumes.”

12

LUKE

Luke’s head was still reeling after dropping Colby off at day care.

Maybe he should have kept his son by his side after the chaos of the early morning, but all he could think when taking his leave of Coastal Crumbs was, Routine.

Just because Luke’s understanding of his own existence was getting tossed against the rocks didn’t mean Colby had to get taken out of his familiar schedule and suffer for it.

So day care it was. Although, Luke hadn’t refused when Syrus had insisted on coming inside to “sniff out” the teacher. Mostly because, if this morning was anything to judge by, hippie-dippie Mrs. Cox could easily have turned out to be some sort of ancient elf or scarf-and-bead-clad werewolf, and then Luke would have had to figure out an entirely different source of childcare.

Except she wasn’t, according to Syrus. Mrs. Cox was as mortal as Luke, and that was some small comfort. Maybe he wasn’t completely surrounded by otherworldly beings.

Still, Luke ended up pulling to the side of the road not far from the day care, in an isolated spot half-obscured by the surrounding trees. He couldn’t even say why, other than that he needed a moment to process, and without the grounding tether of his son in the car, he was afraid he might veer off the road while he did so.

Syrus was being uncharacteristically quiet too. He seemed vaguely miffed about something, but maybe he was just doing his own processing. He certainly hadn’t seemed pleased about the presence of vampires in Luke’s town.

Vampires.

Luke turned off the car and put his forehead down on the steering wheel as he sucked in a shaky breath. Fucking hell. It had only been—what?—a month or so since Seth had come to town, hadn’t it? Luke had been so grateful for a little fresh blood, an opportunity to shake up his familiar routine and change up Pine Bluff’s tiny downtown scene.

And now that fresh blood apparently drank blood. And Luke’s teenage niece was both aware and remarkably calm about it. And there was a merman in Luke’s house. In his car. In his life.

A cool weight settled on the back of Luke’s neck. Syrus’s hand. It shouldn’t have calmed Luke down—Syrus was one of the not-human stressors Luke was processing, wasn’t he?—but Luke’s breaths started coming more evenly anyway. Apparently Luke’s body didn’t understand that Syrus wasn’t supposed to be a source of comfort.

“What did Daphne say to you?” Luke asked without lifting his head.