Page 42 of Song of Lorelei
He was surprised to see not just Aersila, but Undine as well, slink over the side and crouch down, dripping seawater puddles onto the deck. Nireed had mentioned to Lorelei tensions between the two, but whatever differences they might’ve had, they evidently had been set aside.
The glint in Jackie’s eyes as she pulled rubber bands off the thick file folder he delivered, reminded Killian of that vicious look that Aersila, Undine, or even Lorelei, sometimes got. Predators coiling to strike, savoring their prey’s obliviousness to impending death.
It was more than hunger. It was glee in the kill.
Killian had no doubt HCMRC’s piss poor leadership would get their comeuppances once Jackie was through with her reporting. But that’s not why he was here in the middle of the ocean, alone with two murderous sirens.
Lambent blue and amber eyes stared back at him in the waning light. Waiting.
He signed Aersila and Undine’s names and said, “We need your help.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
LORELEI
The anniversary of The Osprey tragedy reopened Lorelei’s wounds and packed salt into them. She was supposed to give remarks at the memorial unveiling. Her best friend Katrina had even flown up from Boston to support her, but sandwiched between Kat and Killian, as she sobbed her frickin’ eyes out, she knew she couldn’t do it this time. And wouldn’t. She just didn’t have it in her.
While the crowd was a lot smaller than the one that gathered in the church in Portland a year ago, it consisted entirely of locals, not the families who lost their loved ones.
For her crew’s friends and families, she would have tried.
Carrie was there, too, unexpectedly but mercifully quiet and humble with her hands clasped in front of her and her head bowed, as if in prayer. She kept her distance and hadn’t said a word to either Lorelei or Killian since the event began. Some might say Carrie should have offered sympathies, despite their differences, but Lorelei was grateful she kept them to herself. Genuine or not, Lorelei didn’t have the energy to deal with any kind of interaction from her fiancé’s ex.
The crowd of people pressed in from all sides with their pitying stares and phone cameras. They encircled Lorelei, and the stone obelisk before her, the memorial structure erected outside on the ocean-side of the Haven Cove Marine Research Center, to commemorate the lives lost.
Forty-nine names were etched into its surface—eighteen permanent crew members and thirty-one sailing trainees. Like her. But only not like her. There should have been fifty names carved there, but the siren blood in Lorelei’s veins and the hidden gills along her neck kept her name off the stone.
She stared at those names, listening to the breaking of ocean waves against rocky shore, behind the din of the people surrounding her.
At least at the memorial service at the church last year, everyone gathered was bonded by the same abyssal grief that swallowed them whole. There was also a podium she could grip and a wide stretch of space between her and the first row of pews.
And no cameras.
Someone’s phone clicked to her right, mimicking a camera’s shutter sound as they took a photo. Lorelei startled at the sound. The person responsible turned beat red and mouthed the word ‘sorry.’
A gruff voice rose from the crowd. “Put that away,” the man grumbled, mirroring Lorelei’s mood exactly.
When Lorelei looked up, she made eye contact with Ed Knutson, a retired Portland Press Herald reporter. Not all locals then. He nodded to her with a small, weary smile as he nudged his way through the crowd to stand with them. Though his eyes were puffy and red, his face had filled out since the last time she saw him. He looked healthy, not gaunt, nor sallow with grief.
Touching her hand to her chest, Lorelei made sure Mackenzie’s silver necklace was tucked away beneath her shirt. She wouldn’t be able to explain to Ed how she’d gotten this remnant of his niece. It was all that remained of her from her time onboard The Osprey. Drowned and eaten by a mermaid you knew just wasn’t something you told people.
Phil took the lead on the event, telling the gathered crowd why they were here today. She wished it could have been anyone other than him, a local minister or priest, but he’d insisted that it be him if Lorelei couldn’t do it. And she couldn’t. She was just too much of a mess.
Choked sobs clogged Lorelei’s throat.
It was too much. She just wanted to honor and grieve in peace without an audience. If it weren’t for Killian and Kat’s arms around her, she would have felt so open and exposed in front of all these people—reliving those horrible hours spent out on the open ocean in an immersion suit, certain she would die.
Ed occasionally blew his nose, but his tears were silent.
A part of her resented that she was the only one crying loudly at this event, drawing attention, when this wasn’t about her. This was about The Osprey crew who lost their lives on that fateful, stormy night. The way people stared at her openly and dry-eyed made her feel like she was making a scene.
But she wasn’t. She had every right to this grief.
When Phil finished his remarks, he looked to Lorelei, his expression over-schooled with faux sympathy and asked if she would like to say some words. She’d prepared some. They were written on a piece of paper folded up in her pocket, but her thoughts on whether she could give them hadn’t changed since the event began.
She shook her head and gestured to the towering obelisk with a tissue-crammed hand. The only words that she could manage were, “I wish they were here, and this wasn’t.”
Phil pushed, and she felt both Killian and Katrina tense on either side her. Before they could raise their voices to defend her, she leveled her boss with a hard look. “No.”