Time has a peculiar way of turning on its head. I'm transported back to the very first time I met Canosa, on the edge of the lake. The cherry expanse of the door rolls out between us in a six-foot long welcoming carpet. She stands on its opposite end, the way she stood back then, except, she's not a gorgeous femme fatale anymore. Her face and body are distorted in the way a heart attack would wreck havoc on its victim, leaving her features lopsided. My scream that proved lethal to both Teles and Ligeia hasn't exploded her, but it seems to have damaged her beyond repair. Only half of her tissues appear dead. Her mouth is open in a grimace. Her hair is reduced to a sorry matted mess and pushed to one side; on her other side, she holds Hunter in a neck bind. The only thing that didn't change is her penetrating gaze, her big green eyes oozing some prehistoric, primeval hatred.

"You bronze bitch. Let him go!" I roar.

"Make another move and he's dead," she hisses.

I lower my leg, having almost taken a step.

She tilts up her head up and laughs, her slick, moist breasts jiggling unpleasantly. My guts spasms in revulsion.

"Oh, I've been dying to see this pain on your pretty face. Marvelous," she exhales. "Now, kiss your boyfriend goodbye, Ailen Bright." She tightens the headlock. Hunter claws at her fingers, choking.

There is no time to think. It's not your typical staring and sizing each other up deal. Forget it. This is a battle for life or death, and I dive into it with zeal.

To say that I leap at her is to rob your imagination. I crash at her in a combination of an acoustic and a physical wave, ear-splitting in my shrill, all-consuming in my wake, oscillating and howling. I head-spear into her slimy stomach and we tumble down the stairs in a tangle of limbs, rolling all the way into the foyer and stopping only inches from the front door. The racket we produce must have roused the entire neighborhood.

I grab at everything I can, digging my fingernails into her flesh, biting her with my teeth, even reaching up with my feet in an attempt to kick her. Hunter is half-sandwiched between us, thrashing. He can't yell, his air is cut off by Canosa's arm. I can't see his face, only the back of his head.

We cartwheel around the floor, ripping coats off the hooks from the open wardrobe, spilling about shoes, and knocking down the umbrella tree stand with a clang. Canosa's hair meshes into my mouth, her limbs bulge with veins. Her mouth opens almost to an audible cracking of her skull, and then her teeth sink into my arms, my stomach, my face.

I'm about to be eaten alive. I don't care. There is only one goal on my mind. To free Hunter. If I can't overpower her with my strength, I can try to overpower her with my voice. I inhale, but before I can burst into a song, my throat splits open. Using her nails, she rips out a chunk of flesh from my neck, tearing both gill openings open. I gurgle blood, as pain blinds me.

"You disgraceful, ignorant girl! I'm sick of you!" Her voice booms around me and through me. "I will show you how to fight me. I will show you what happens when you dare to fight the Siren of Canosa!"

Whatever is left of me gets abandoned in haste. Canosa pulls herself up with a grunt and leans against the front door, Hunter firmly in her headlock. His eyes are closed; he's not moaning or struggling anymore. It appears he has passed out. I'm surprised he was able to stay awake at all, after everything that happened to him since yesterday. He only managed to snag a few hours here and there snoozing, and I don't remember him eating anything. His only drink was that muddy water from the mountain river hours and hours ago.

I want to scream at Canosa to leave him alone. I try to stand up, but my feet slide on the slick floor. My leg muscles are torn by her nails, the clear liquid of my dead blood pools between wooden planks of the parquet. I try to prop myself up on my elbows and succeed for a few seconds. I stare at my naked, mutilated body, watching skin and muscles begin knitting together with a quiet hush, itching like crazy. My elbows slip apart and I drop my head on the floor with a sickening smack.

Canosa appears out of nowhere and props my head on one of shoes. "So you can see better, silly girl," she whispers.

See what? I want to ask, but don't need to.

The next minute will be forever etched into my miserable memory. All I can do it watch and listen, because my body refuses to move, I can't even hum.

Canosa sits opposite me, about twenty feet away, by the front door. She pulls on Hunter's limp body, putting his head into her lap.

Everything in me screams no! Yet I can't look away, feeling the life drain from me with every one of her movements. I know there is nothing I can do. I know this is the end.

She stares into his eyes and ignites his soul. She promptly launches into a Greek song that sounds like gibberish to me. She leans over his face, holding her hair up to make sure I see everything. She grimaces in a deadly yawn and sucks out his very essence, his beautiful concerto, wisp by wisp, breath by breath, until there is nothing left. Then she smacks her lips, throws me a victorious stare, and breaks into a mad laughter that sends shivers up and down my spine, shaking every single wall in the house. Just like that—without a warning, without so much as a glorious battle—Hunter is gone.

Hunter, Hunter, Hunter.

Seconds melt into hours. At first slowly, and then all at once, the weight of devastation rips a hole in my chest and devours me, whole. My eyes roll back and I'm about to black out.

I feel Canosa grab me under my armpits and drag me upstairs. My feet slam against the steps, one by one. I don't care. I have no strength to stop her, no strength to look around. No will to do anything anymore. She unceremoniously drops me into the empty bathtub. I slam my head on the marble and my eyes fly open. I can't even utter a cry of pain, and not because she slashed my throat, but because I don't register it anymore. It happens to some other girl, some other body, in some long distant other world that is of no concern to me.

"There you are. I have relieved you of your pain. Aren't you going to thank me? Look at me." She painfully digs her fingers into my chin. "Don't you turn your head away. Look at me!"

I automatically gurgle something in response. I want to say, Hunter.

"I've been thinking about you, ever since you blew me out of the water in that mountain valley." She continues, "Have you been thinking about me, Ailen Bright? Tell me." Her stinking breath is inches away from my mouth, and I can't see beyond the halo of her hair.

She hops into the tub and pins my arms under my body with one knee; with the other, she crawls on top of my chest, sliding it onto my neck. I can't look away, drawn into her green eyes, drinking from them some sort of coldness that binds me first, then spreads through my agony, soothing it, minty.

"You have been thinking about me, haven't you?"

Hunter. You killed Hunter.

"Ailen Bright. You thought you could kill me. You silly, silly girl." She leans closer, her hair parting in two dirty curtains. "Well, let me tell you something, the girl who thinks she's so smart. It takes more than a song. You're not the first, you know. Many have tried before you."

I don't move. Hunter. I love you, Hunter. I didn't get a chance to tell you this a million times more.

"I'll let you in on a little secret," she continues quietly. "A secret only for you and me, what do you say? You can't kill me. Nobody can," Canosa whispers.

The air around us agrees with ominous silence.

"You're just dead meat that can sing, nothing more."

I croak involuntarily, because the wound she inflicted is healing quickly. She promptly reaches out and slashes my neck with her nails again. Cold slime oozes on both sides of my neck, dripping into the bathtub.

"It's who you wanted to be, who asked me to turn into A siren, Ailen Bright. This is what you are: a piece of dead meat that can sing."

I shake my head no, on autopilot, trained to respond to adults under any circumstance and reverting to my old way of behavior, having nothing left to grasp.

"Go on, then. Pretend to live. Pretend we never met. How about it? How would you like to play this kind of a game?"

I blink. Hunter, pulses in my mind on repeat.

"You're not just silly, you're rude. Didn't your mother teach you proper manners? Answer me. I want to hear you say it one more time." She waits a beat and slaps me on the face, hard.

I keep staring, barely feeling anything.

My mother was never there to teach me anything, flashes through my mid. Because of you. I watch this thought pass, like it's a gust of wind and nothing more. Then my mind returns to torturing itself. Hunter. I want to chant his name.

"This mess you're in? You're the one who made it. You took it into your own little hands. Well, you're not alone. Thousands before you asked for me, called me, and I came." Her nostrils flare, the stink of rotten lilies emanates from her in waves.

I wrinkle my nose at the smell.

"You're a spoiled little brat, that's what you are. You think only about yourself. You disgust me." She stands.

Relieved of her weight, I try to prop myself up and slide back into a heap of jittering muscles.

"You can't balance on this edge between living and dying forever, you're smart enough to know this. Not after you've crossed to the other side once, not after you've tasted the bliss of death. It's only a matter of time before you try again," she says, in a voice of authority not to be questioned. She stands above me, her skin glowing softly in the hazy darkness of the pre-dawn that seeps through the bathroom window.

"Soon, we'll meet again, like old friends. Like sisters." She beams. "Until then, stay out of my way. It's my final warning. You let me do my business, I let you do yours. And don't worry about burying your boyfriend's body. I'll take care of that for you. I'll feed him to the fish, just like I fed your mother." She squats and stretches out her hand to me.

I stare at her, blank. I understand that she said something about my mother's body, but I can't seem to grasp the meaning of it. Annoyed, she grabs my hand and clutches it with such force that I hear my bones crack.

Then she begins to sing.

I find myself entwined in the ribbon of her voice. It binds me, lifts me up, and whisks me away, to where there is no pain, no memories, no happiness, just nothing.

I let go and fall.

I fall into the vortex of her eyes, into her pupils, deeper into darkness, into what appears to be a mass of dead souls, a colorless chaos of shadowy figures, composed of fog. I fall inside, becoming part of this mass. It breathes as one gigantic body, all-consuming, rhythmic. I can't breathe. I'm surrounded with a liquid that has no oxygen—it presses on me and sweeps me off my feet.

A current of this liquid propels me on, toward the bottom of this crazy nightmare, ten feet, twenty, a few hundred, until my chest is ready to explode. Here, the fluid turns syrupy, sticky, and absolutely black.

Is this the River Styx? Is she showing me my final journey into afterlife, where she's supposed to be my guide?

At the far end of this blackness appears a face. Canosa's? No, it doesn't look like it. It stands out against the darkness like an ultimate black dot, all consuming, beyond emotion, plain it its vastness. A black hole. An absolute end. I don't see its eyes, but it's looking at me, staring me up and down, and then it frowns, as if I interrupted it and will be punished, severely, for it.

"Get out of my sight." The face booms. "You're early."

Horror raises every single hair on my body, freezes me into a piece of ice, dangerously miniscule against this enormous overpowering being. I think I know who it is.

It's Death.

Death itself just told me to leave. What do I do? I do the only thing there is to do. Get the fuck out. I turn and kick off, wading through thick, velvety liquid, a swamp of grief and loss. This is where everything ends, but I haven't crossed the final line. No. Not yet.

The syrup that choked me, spits me out and I take one frantic breath. I'm in a black lake filled with black water, floating under the black sky. The water writhes with bodies, brushing against my legs like long lily stems, clammy and soft. I shriek and swim, not feeling anything except red pulsing panic. I bump into a shore, but it's not a shore, it's the rim of the tub. I'm in a tub full of water and I'm climbing out, heavy, as if I weigh a hundred tons and can't lift my own body. The dank smell of abandonment packs its mold around me.

I wiggle my fingers, and move my legs, my arms. Everything seems to work. My throat feels as if it's healed itself.

A muted stillness clings in shards to my face, the floor giving way under my palms and knees as I drop down and lay on the cool tiles, head turning to the side to breathe. I glance at the broken door. Yes, Canosa was here, and yes, Hunter is gone. She took him. She took him for good. For some reason she didn't kill me, she let me live. Why?

And I know.

Emptiness shrouds me in a heavy blanket.

I pull my knees up, hug myself and whimper, rocking. Back and forth. Back and forth. As if movement will soothe my pain. As if I fit in this dark and lonely place—my misery. I push past a coldness so deep, it touches my frozen bones. I want to warm up, to hear Hunter's soul. But it's gone. Gone. Gone.

This is worse than death.

"Hunter," I moan, testing my voice. It works. "Hunter. Hunter. Hunter." I keep repeating his name, as if it will bring him back.

I try to imagine the sound of his soul, to bring back that feeling of home—the clatter of food cooked on the stove, the clanking of dishes, the shuffling of feet in slippers on a wooden floor, laughter, the anticipation of a meal, birds chirping behind an open window, the buzzing of insects basking in rays of the morning sun. Vivaldi's Summer, its violins.

I don't remember how it sounds.

I tighten my grip and keep rocking. Time as I know it has lost it essence. I try to soothe myself to some semblance of sleep. But sirens don't sleep, so I brood in my self-induced slumber.

"I want to die," I say. "Please, I want to die."

I rock some more. Morning light turns from a lilac to the soft gray that's typical of a Seattle dawn.

"Mom," I say. "I wish you were here. I wish you could hold me. I wish you could take me to wherever it is you are. I want to be together. Please, I want to die."

In front of the house, loose gravel crunches under the wheels of my father's car. My heart jumps, aflutter.

"Papa," I say. "Papa!"

He'll save me, he'll take me away. My Papa is all I have left. Immediately, I'm afraid he'll be mad when he sees the destruction I've caused to the house and will change his mind. My head pounds with horror.

Keys jingle and the front door slams. Footsteps.

"What is this mess...Ailen!"

I hastily push myself up, take a few steps on shaky legs, rip another towel from the hook and cover myself with unbending fingers. The skin on my cuts has closed, and my muscles have knit back together, but they still seem weak. A weird sense of déjà vu makes me dizzy. It feels like five days have never passed, like it's the morning of my birthday, all over again.

"I know you're here, sweetie. Answer me." Curses, followed by steps on the stairs. I want to disappear.

"I hope you're ready. We're leaving in fifteen minutes."

More steps.

I clutch the doorframe, to prevent myself from falling. My father slowly emerges from the shadow, first his head topped with his shiny, styled gray hair, then his black suit, then his fine Italian shoes. I dare not look him in the eyes. Both shoes stop abruptly in front of the broken door, their shiny noses glistening with contempt.

"I thought I'd find you here. What the hell happened?"

With a concentrated grunt, he lifts the door and props it up against the wall, clapping his hands to get rid of the dust.

"Will you look at this..." I hear anger in his voice.

He reaches with his hand past my shoulder, turns on the light and steps into the bathroom, whistling his dismay. The leather soles of his shoes squeak on the wet tiles. Light hits me in the face. Its electric intensity colors my hands in a bluish tint. Blue is my favorite color.

My father gapes; his mouth is open and his eyes are mad, his finger pointing. I dare to meet his gaze.

"Look what you did."

All I can do is stare.

"You know how much it costs to replace a door?"

"I didn't mean to, I swear," I say. "Well, I mean, I did do it, yes. Because Canosa was strangling Hunter. She—"

He interrupts me.

"Look at you. I spend all night preparing, organizing, arranging for caterers, scheduling flower delivery and whatnot, and picking out a casket. I haven't slept all night. I'm supposed to pick you up, clean, dressed, and ready. Your funeral starts in a couple hours. I rush back, and what do I find? The house is a mess and you look like shit!" His finger pokes me in the chest, above the towel, and I wince at his warm touch.

He sniffs the air. "Do you smell it? What's that smell?"

I don't answer, confused, scared that perhaps he's referring to my wounds inflicted by Canosa, maybe I didn't fully heal after all and they stink. I remain still, not daring to glance to see if I'm oozing blood anywhere.

"Answer me. Your father is asking you a question. What does that smell like?"

"What's what smell like?" I manage.

"I thought you more intelligent than this, Ailen. Think."

"Sorry, I don't know what you mean..." I say, afraid to lose the last pillar of my family, the only one who's left.

"You. I'm talking about you." Another jab, yet an exhale in relief. "You smell like the death of me. Do you know how much a funeral costs? Do you know how much it will run me to make it happen? To abandon my business here, to close my store? To move to Italy with you? It will cost me a small fortune."

I shake, filled with terror. He lifts my face, takes a breath. I widen my eyes, expecting a blow, disbelieving what I'm hearing.

"Come on, don't be scared. Did I scare you? I didn't mean to," he says with almost tenderness.

Was Hunter the price for me to get you back, Papa? Was that it?

"Let's just get through this together. Tomorrow, we'll start a new life. We'll sun every day, you'll have a new school and meet new friends...Hmm? How about it?" His eyes narrow and I search them, wanting it to be true.

"She killed him," I say, swallowing tears.

"Who. What?" He feigns interest.

"Canosa. She killed Hunter," I say.

He frowns without surprise. "That is unfortunate. I'm very sorry. But I can assure you that she won't bother us anymore."

"So you made a deal with her? Is this what you did? You paid her with Hunter?" I fall silent, processing the information I managed to spit out without realizing it was there all along, at the tip of my tongue.

"Look, sweetie, what's done is done. There's no use mulling over it. We need to get moving."

I gasp. "You seriously did it? How could you...How can you talk about it so mundane, like it's buying groceries or something." I pause. Each word takes an effort to produce through my paralyzed lips, regaining my ability to talk.

"He was my best friend. I...I loved him." As I say this, I feel the full impact of his loss and I grope for the tub behind me, slowly sliding to the floor, dropping my head into my hands.

I want to die, I want to die, I want to die.

"You're a siren. A siren can't have human friends," he says from above. There is finality in my father's voice.

I glance up. His lips press into thin line as if saying, there will be no arguing about this. Broken, devastated, and desperate, I'm so afraid to lose my dream of having his attention that I decide not to press the subject. It's easier to push the pain down and forget, as if my happiness with Hunter never existed. Besides, I'm used to suppressing everything I feel, it only comes naturally.

"And you're okay with me being, you know, a siren?" I wish I didn't ask this, wanting badly for the floor to part and swallow me before I hear his answer.

"Of course I am. I'm your father, remember?"

I blink. There, three feet above me, hangs his face, smiling, illuminated with the bluish electric light, resplendent with a fresh haircut and shave, yet gray and sunken from a sleepless night. Suddenly, he looks like a pitiful old man, and I want to comfort him; my grudges, my hate, my resolve to torture him, all blotted out by this new desire. This overwhelming yearning for being together, as a family.

"We'll talk about this later. Right now I need you get cleaned up and ready, all right? Can you do it fast? Five minutes?"

I nod, happy to distract myself from my pain, realizing that my body has fully healed in the meantime.

"That's my girl." He smiles. "Now, here is what I'll have you do."

He talks and talks. He talks fast. He explains it all. The reception. The guests. The venue. The boat. The burial at sea. The speech. The passing of the coffin. The plunge into the ocean. The goodbyes. All I hear is white noise. All I see are his eyes directed at me, for a full five minutes. I have Papa for five minutes, all to myself. It's a miracle paid for by an enormous pain and it's worth it. If only he'd give me a hug. One step at a time, Ailen, one step at a time.

"...you'll break out, swim to Ocean Shores, and wait for me by the lighthouse. Don't worry, there is only one. It's easy to find and it'll be empty at that hour. I'll meet you there after dark. Okay?" He stretches out his hand and I place mine into his. It's the first time we touch when I don't flinch away.

"Hunter is gone. Hunter is gone, Papa. I don't know if I can stand the pain," I whisper, unable to stop my words from escaping.

"I know. But you have me now, don't you?" He smiles and I don't know if he jokes or if he truly cares; if I should be scared or elated. I'm still unable to fully believe my luck.

"About the funeral..." I grope for words. "I thought they only scattered ashes at sea? You're not planning on burning me, are you?"

"Of course not!" he retorts. "How could you even think such a thing!"

"Okay. One more thing. Our extended family, they will be there, yes?" Fear gnaws its silky torture on my chest. "What if they notice something? I'm scared."

"You'll be fine. Pretend it's a performance, a school play. Your role is to play dead. You can do it, I have faith in you." A pat on the back. "Let's get going."

He pulls me to my feet, I lean on him, laying my check against the brushed wool of his black suit. I inhale his signature cologne.

Close. Close enough to a hug. This will do.