There was a long pause and I could hear whispering in the background. “Emma is back in her room. She’s calm now that she’s been given a sedative. But we’ll have to restrict her movements until we can evaluate her.” Gwen let out a long sigh and I could imagine her eyes closing while she centered herself. “This whole situation has been unfortunate, but I certainly can’t find any reason to blame you for the events. We’ll just have to chalk it up to bad luck.”
I let out a sigh and shook my head. Dawna, sitting beside me with a sad expression on her face, reached over to touch my hand and then pat it, offering what little comfort she could. Yeah, I suppose a demonic death curse could qualify as bad luck. Damn demons were apparently drawn to me like honey.
“Celia, we must speak now.” I looked up to where Adriana was now standing over the couch in the lobby. I held up a finger to shush her while I finished the call.
“Gwen, we’re going to have to talk about this later if that’s okay. They need me back upstairs.”
“Of course. I understand. We’ll discuss it after your therapy session with Dr. Hubbard next Thursday.”
Crap. I’d forgotten about that. It was probably on my calendar, but I’d intentionally not looked at it except to cancel things for the weekend. “Fine. That’ll work. Bye.”
I pressed the end button and scooted over on the couch to make room for my cousin. Her elegantly arched brows rose just a fraction. “Might as well have a seat. I know teleporting always makes me dizzy. Where’s Okalani?”
Adriana didn’t sit. She stood there with obvious discomfort, clutching the black zippered bag for dear life. “I sent her back home. I’ll call when I need her again.”
Aww. Poor kid. Fifteen minutes on the mainland and she has to go home. “Couldn’t you at least have taken her to a water park or a movie or something?”
But she wouldn’t budge. “We’re already having difficulty keeping her from clandestine visits here. Having enjoyable experiences would only validate her behavior and make her want to disobey more.”
“See, I have just the opposite opinion. If you let her have a taste now and again, she won’t be as likely to disobey because she’ll know there’ll be a next time.”
Adriana shrugged carelessly. “But you aren’t her mother. Nor am I.”
True. It wasn’t my place to say how she was raised.
“Um … Celia?” Dawna’s voice cut in. “Were you going to introduce us or something?”
Oh. Oops. “Dawna Long, this is Adriana, high princess of the Pacific siren clan.” Then I looked at Adriana. “Adriana, Dawna Long. Although pretty soon it’ll be Queen Adriana, huh?”
That raised Dawna’s eyebrows. “Whoa. You’re getting the throne? Sweet.”
Adriana’s face flushed just a bit and her tone took on an impatience tinged with panic: “There will be no wedding unless we speak. Now. And this is not the place for the discussion.”
That wasn’t good. “I’ll have to check with the police to see if we can leave. If so, we can talk in the car on the way back home. It’s a long trip. We’ll have plenty of time and privacy.”
Her eyes flicked toward Dawna. “Can your servant be trusted to hold her tongue?”
The look on Dawna’s face was priceless—a classic oh no, you didn’t! expression. Unfortunately, my phone was still dead, so I couldn’t get a picture. Dawna opened her mouth to start spewing an offended response, but I interrupted with a laugh and a hand on her arm. We didn’t need to escalate. Adriana had a pretty thin skin, too. “It’s okay, Dawna. Remember that she’s a princess. Servants and attendants are all she knows.” Then I looked at my cousin. “Dawna is my best friend and an employee of my security company. She’s not a servant in the sense you mean. But yes, she knows how to hold her tongue.”
At least Adriana had the sense and courtesy to dip her head a fraction at Dawna after a second of consideration. “Apologies. I’m unaccustomed to princesses of the realm having … employees.”
Or friends, I was betting. Dawna looked slightly mollified and her expression went through a few transformations before settling on oh, well. “Yeah … well, I’m not accustomed to Celia being a princess. We’ll all have to adapt, I guess. How about I go check with the police to see if we can leave? I’ll meet you two at the car.”
I was going to suggest that, but it sounded less … princessy coming from her. “Thanks. If they still need me, just yell.” I was actually surprised they hadn’t come to get me already for a statement. I wasn’t sure what was up.
* * *I was still unlocking the car when Dawna came up behind me, a strange expression on her face. “No statements required. They said they didn’t want to inconvenience us any further. We can go.” She shook her head and reached for the backseat door handle. “They were acting really weird. All smiles and apologies. Not coplike at all.”
That made me let out a little growl and look over the roof at the stunning redhead waiting for me to unlock the doors. “Did you manipulate them?” Because I sure as hell hadn’t.
She shrugged. “As you know, I’m not capable of that level of psychic manipulation.” Then she smiled. “But I am a princess, and soon to be a queen. They are not fools.”
“I’m going back to give my statement. I want the facts behind my shooting of that demon on the record.”
Now she looked petulant, as though I was being needlessly obstinate. “They won’t take your statement, Celia. In their minds now, your actions were totally justified … which is absolutely true. You’re being ridiculous. If it will make you use common sense, I assure you that I’m here for a crisis that’s equally as dangerous as your earlier one. The world truly is about to end.”
18
Okay, that got my attention. Dawna grabbed my elbow. “Um, Celia. Maybe she’s right. Let’s go while the getting’s good and find a good place to hide and wait it out.”
I turned my head and gave her a look. “I’m pretty sure waiting it out isn’t an option during a world-ending crisis.”
“Hardly.” Adriana’s tone was as dry as desert sand.
I slathered on a layer of sunscreen. I’d finally figured out about how strong the smell has to be for there to be enough. It’s like sitting in a vat of coconut flakes—close to gag worthy. Still, it works.
Once we were in the car and on our way toward the 5, Adriana started to speak: “How much do you know of the first age of the sirens?”
“Not tons. That was the glory days of Atlantis, right? And when it sunk into the ocean after the battle between the sirens and demons, you all got relegated to a few small islands around the world.”
Dawna spoke up from the backseat: “I always thought the legend of Atlantis was really interesting. I’ll bet it was an awesome place. It’s so deep in the Atlantic trenches that nobody’s ever found it.” She moved forward slightly to catch Adriana’s eye. “Is it true they had electricity on Atlantis, even back then?”
Adriana shook her head. “I can’t speak to the question of electricity, although it is quite possible they harnessed the sea into batteries of a sort. But there’s a very good reason why Atlantis has never been found—it’s not on the ocean floor.”
That made me take my eyes off the road for a moment. “Come again?”
Her face held both embarrassment and fear. “Atlantis was the location of the last dimensional rift. Worse still, it was the sirens who caused the rift.”
Dawna’s jaw dropped and she unhooked her seat belt so she could lean forward. “Wait. I thought it was the sirens who saved the world.”
Adriana let out a sigh. “It was both. We had no choice but to save the world. We’d nearly ended it. Or,” she added with another frown, “more precisely, certain contingents of the sirens had.”
“Like Stefania, you mean?”
Adriana nodded at the corner of my vision. I changed lanes to get into the flow of traffic on the interstate. “Queen Eris had bred badly and her daughters didn’t hold the world’s children—the humans—in very high regard. Princesses Kraystal and Evana were of the opinion that the land would be better off without the human race. But sirens were at that time loathe to step too far inland, giving them no way to exterminate humanity. So they sought … help.”
“The demons.” I was starting to get sick to my stomach. “And now it’s started again, and I’m betting Stefania and Eirene had something to do with this new rift.” Adriana’s nod was answer enough. We drove for a moment in silence while I sorted out what I wanted to say. “So why change the history books? Why not just tell the world the sirens had a traitor, but you fixed it?”
Adriana shrugged. “Ego? Pride? I don’t have an answer. But I do know that even now my mother is going to be furious I’m telling you this.”
Oh! “So that’s why she was so angry when I asked about the Millennium Horns. Because it’s a reminder of the folly of the whole race.”
Now a deep sigh issued from Adriana. “No. Her embarrassment is from the second folly of the sirens—we’re not prepared for today’s crisis because the queens refused to believe the past could repeat.” I waited, and so did Dawna, until Adriana was ready to dish the details. After a long moment, she took a deep breath and continued, “When Queen Eris realized what her daughters had done, she sought the help of the greatest minds of the world. Human minds. To make the point to her daughters that sirens had to learn to coexist, she worked with members of what they considered a lesser race to come up with a plan to close the rift. It was a Greek philosopher and inventor, I believe, who first suggested the use of sound waves.”
I knew there had been some great minds in the past—after all, we still use techniques developed by the Romans and Egyptians. “I didn’t realize they’d experimented with that.”