Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [45]
“I’m Merit. I’m here to see Lorelei.”
She seemed unmoved by my interest and stared blankly back at me.
“I’m a vampire from Chicago,” I told her. “I need to talk to Lorelei about the lake.”
Without a word, she shut the door in my face. I blinked back shock, then gnawed my lip for a second, considering my choices.
I could barge into the house, but it was a rule of etiquette that vamps had to wait for an invitation before entering someone’s home. It wasn’t going to do much good if I pissed off the lake spirit by breaching protocol.
Alternatively, I could pout my way back to the helicopter and advise the pilot she’d have plenty of time to get to her next appointment.
Since neither of those options would solve my current problem, I decided to go for option three—stalling while gathering a little intel. Quietly, I tiptoed across the small portico and peeked into a window.
I got only a small peek at wood and stone before I heard a voice behind me.
“Ahem.”
I jumped and turned to find the woman who’d opened the door standing behind me with a suspicious expression and a menacingly wielded feather duster.
“Lovely home,” I told her, standing up straight again. “I was just curious about the interior design. With the wood. And furnishings.” I cleared my throat guiltily. “And such.”
The woman rolled her eyes, then flipped her feather duster out like a composer directing an orchestra. “I have been authorized to invite you into the abode of Lorelei, the lake siren. Welcome to her home.”
Her delivery was desert dry, but it got the point across. I followed her inside.
The interior of the house was as organically designed as the outside. The window looked onto a two-story living room. One wall was made of rounded river stone, and a trickle of water spilled down the rocks and into a narrow channel that ran through the middle of the room, where it disappeared into an infinity-edged trough on the other side.
A curvy woman sat on the floor beside the channel of water, trickling her fingers into it. Her hair was dark and pulled into a topknot, and she was dressed simply in a shimmery gray T-shirt and jeans, her toes bare. Her eyes were closed, and she sang out low and clear.
I looked back toward the woman with the feather duster, but having done her duty, she was gone.
“Are you Lorelei?” I quietly asked.
She stopped singing, opened her eyes, and looked up at me with eyes the color of chocolate. “Honey, if you’re on my island, you know there’s only one person I could be. Of course I’m Lorelei.” Her voice carried a hint of a Spanish accent, and a lot of sarcasm.
I bit back a smile. “Hi, Lorelei. I’m Merit.”
“Hi, yourself. What brings you here?”
“I need to ask you some questions.”
“About?”
“The lake.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You think I had something to do with the water?”
“I don’t know whether you did or not,” I admitted, kneeling beside the channel so we could speak at eye level. “I’m trying to figure out what happened, and you seemed like a good place to start. It’s not just the lake, you know. It’s the river, as well.”
Her head shot up. “The river? It’s dead, too?”
Neither the question nor the look of defeat in her eyes comforted me.
“It is,” I said. “And the river and the lake are bleeding all the power out of Chicago. The nymphs are growing weaker.”
Wincing as if in pain, Lorelei pressed her fingers to her temples. “They aren’t the only ones. I feel like I finished up a four-day shift and a two-day bender. Weak. Exhausted. Dizzy.” She looked up at me. “I didn’t cause this. I’d hoped the nymphs might have the answer, that they’d become too involved in some kind of unfamiliar magic, but that the magic could be reversed.”
“They thought the same thing about you.”
“That’s no surprise,” she dryly said.
“You don’t get along?”
She barked out a laugh. “I grew up near Paseo Boricua. Born and raised in Chicago by parents from Puerto Rico. The nymphs aren’t exactly a diverse crew. They see me as the odd one out. An interloper in their pretty little world of magic.”
“How so?”
She looked up at me curiously. “You really don’t know,