Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [46]
I shook my head, and she muttered something in Spanish. “The lake turns black and I get the vampire right off the assembly line,” she said, then cast her own apologetic glance. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
Lorelei sighed and dipped a hand back into the water. Her features relaxed a bit, as if touching the water soothed her.
“Being a siren isn’t like being a nymph,” she said. “They are born into their roles; their mothers are nymphs, as well. A siren’s power doesn’t work that way.”
She pointed to a table across the room. Propped upon it was a dark, iron disk about six inches across. There was writing on it, but it was too far away to read.
“Piedra de Agua,” she said. “The water stone. The siren’s magic is carried within it.”
I frowned back at her. “I don’t understand.”
“To own the stone is to become the lake siren,” she said. “To trigger its magic, you must request the stone, but it only accepts certain owners. Once it’s yours, it’s yours until the next owner comes around.”
“So you chose to be a siren?”
Lorelei looked away, staring down at the water. “Technically, I had a choice to accept the stone and its burdens, although my options were limited.”
“And the boats at the shoreline?”
She looked back with pride in her eyes. “I chose to accept the stone, but I work things a little differently. I’m the siren of the lake, and I have to sing, but I picked the most isolated spot I could find. Rosa and Ian, my husband—they help steer the sailors back to the mainland. The damage to the boats I can’t do much about.” She smiled a little. “But everybody’s got insurance.”
I couldn’t fault that logic. “How long do you have to serve as siren?”
“The Lorelei before me—we all take the name to keep the myth alive—lived here for ninety-six years. Of course,” she said with a burgeoning smile, “she was forty-two when she became siren, so that’s not a bad perk.”
Because I had a sense it might help, I offered up my own story. “I was made a vampire without my consent. To save my life, but it wasn’t something I’d planned. That came as a surprise.”
She regarded me with interest. “So you know what it’s like to rewrite your life. To weigh who you were against who you must become.”
I thought of all the things I’d done and seen over the last year—the death, the pain, the joy. The beginnings . . . and the endings.
“Yes,” I quietly agreed. “I know what that’s like.” That thought reminded me of my purpose. “Lorelei, if you didn’t cause this, do you know who might have?”
“If the nymphs aren’t involved—if this wasn’t caused by a water spirit—then I think you need to look more broadly.”
“Such as?”
She looked away, guilt in her expression.
“Lorelei, I need to know. This isn’t just about the nymphs. Our Houses are at stake. Humans are already blaming vampires, and if it goes any further, I can guarantee the registration law will pass.”
“There’s only one group as tied to the natural world as we are,” she finally said. “We find our solace and our awe in the water. In the flow of it, the power of it, its ability to cleanse and destroy.” She closed her eyes. “They find their power in the earth. They treasure it—the woods, the wilds.”
My stomach sank. “You’re talking about shifters?”
“The Pack is in Chicago, isn’t it?”
“Because we asked them to stay. They wouldn’t do this.”
“Did you think they’d attack your House?”
Technically, only a handful of vengeful shifters had attacked the House, but I took her point. “Of course not.”
“You can’t turn a blind eye to who they are or what they’re capable of. You are aware of the chemistry between nymphs and shifters?”
“It’s hard to miss.”
“It’s because of the chemistry between earth and water,” she said. “A kind of elemental union. Maybe the water’s sickness is because there are too many shifters and nymphs in one city.”
Not that I had any better theory, but it seemed too convenient to blame shifters, a group with whom nymphs and sirens clearly had a tempestuous relationship.
A man suddenly walked through the front door, a handful of cut logs in his hands.
Despite the chill in the air,