After what seems like an eternity, the boat rights itself, but I'm hardly aware of the world around me, swimming in agony. I made the mistake of exposing my father's pain, in front of Hunter, and I expect he'll never forgive me. But I know that I struck gold, that my hypothesis is true. I saw it in his eyes before he shot me. I saw it in his broken posture, in his trembling hand, in his slack mouth, as if his teeth have been kicked out and his lips sank in, making his cheeks hollow and his eyes dead. It's like he's sorry he's being this way yet he has no choice; it's far too ingrained in his nature to change things, and it might take years and years, decades, and only if someone out there would be willing to put up with his shit, to let him spew it out and revive his soul all the way. That would have to be me. He has no one else left.

I'm not sure I'm up for the job. I watch Papa pull back, his eyes wide with surprise, as if he's conscious for the first time of what he's doing, conscious of hurting his own daughter, of what he just did. Then the mask of this is gone and he's back to steel.

"Quiet!" he yells. "I will use the gun, if I have to."

I'm numb all over. My vision is blurry, my hearing echoes, and bitter saliva fills my mouth. My right arm hangs loosely over the side of the seat and I feel Hunter grab it again and squeeze it three times. I wish I understood what he wants and curse my brain, wanting to kick myself. Tears spring from my eyes. I hate it, I hate it.

I hate it!

The slow purring of the motor reminds me that we're still floating somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

"Let us continue. We have a lot to cover, like I said before. I would prefer that you don't interrupt me again, is that understood?" He looks at me.

I manage a nod.

"Good. I'm sure Hunter is eager to hear the details of this particular job, aren't you, son? You want to go home and check on your mom, am I correct? It's been a while, she must be very worried."

My father is a pro at hurting people.

"Yeah, I can't wait," Hunter says through his teeth with a quiet contempt that's barely detectible.

The thought about putting Hunter in danger cools me, and I know that my father knows it too and is using it to his advantage.

"I want you to understand that siren hunters don't make mistakes. Because if they do, they find themselves dead." This is said to Hunter. "I decided...since you two are so inseparable, I'll send you both on a job. Yes, I think it will be a good lesson for you to learn."

Hunter squeezes my hand three times again. I raise my head, nauseated and reeling.

"You what?" I say, but it's so feeble that my father doesn't hear me. He doesn't look at me; he directs his eyes to the seat beneath me.

"Hunter, you'll be in charge." Now he shifts his gaze up. "Ailen, you'll do what he tells you to do. Is that clear?"

"Wait, you—"

"Do you want another taste of this, or shall I try one on your boyfriend this time?" he asks, and whatever trace of his vulnerability was left, is gone.

Hunter squeezes my hand again, three times. What does he mean? Three is my favorite number. Okay...It takes three minutes for an average person to drown. Does he mean for us to drown together or something? No, it doesn't make any sense.

"You'll go to the siren's feeding ground, the one under the Aurora Bridge, remember? They love fresh suicide jumpers, don't they? I want you to get rid of the two remaining ones, Ligeia and Teles."

What about Canosa? I want to interrupt, but catch the words just in time before they roll off my tongue.

"If, for whatever reason, they're not there, or if they manage to escape you, you'll track them down, all the way to their siren meadow or any other hiding place, and you'll finish them there. You will go as far as you need to go to succeed. If you manage to complete this," he looks at me, "Ailen, I'll let you keep your voice. You have my word."

He didn't mention Canosa. Canosa was the one who found us, who flipped our boat. They must have made a deal. She must have helped him catch me so that she can remain untouched. She bought herself her freedom.

A pang of pain pierces me, one that's worse than the physical pain from the blast. She betrayed me.

"You got it," Hunter says from below. I open my mouth, but he squeezes my hand again, and I close it without saying anything. All right, I'll play along.

"Ailen? Do I hear your agreement?" My father raises his eyebrows in question.

"Yeah...sure...we'll do it," I slur.

"Excellent." I detect irritation in my father's voice, the sweetest sound in the world, second to Hunter's soul.

"Any questions?" he says.

"What if we fail?" Hunter asks.

"You're asking the wrong question, son. I thought I made myself clear. Siren hunters don't fail. I hope you understand that I'm giving you a second chance. Please, don't prove me wrong."

The message is clear. Do it or die.

Hunter squeezes my hand again, and I think I get it. Three minutes under water. He really does mean it. He told me how he'd die, if he had to—the whole motorcycle racing and crashing thing. I squeeze his hand back three times, to indicate I understood.

"Don't forget, siren hunters don't leave witnesses," my father throws out, while steering the lifeboat wheel and shifting gears. He continues droning on.

"Let me repeat the rules for you, one last time." His voice blends into the ocean rumble, and I let my head hang off the side of the seat to watch Hunter.

He adopts a cheerful expression and nods with enthusiasm. The gleam in his eyes is feverish, akin to someone ready to die who doesn't give a shit anymore. It makes me mad. If he doesn't care, that means he's decided to make a spectacular exit. I want to scream, to grab him and shake him and tell him that this is serious, tell him to wipe that smirk off his face, but I can't. Papa's watching. And I'm afraid to make another move, because I don't want to be rendered into a vegetable, and I don't want Hunter to get hurt any more.

Father finishes his speech with a few broad strokes of his hand and a gallant tilt of his head.

"Remember, Ailen." His eyes rest on me. "If you complete this job, your lover boy will live." He smiles, the impenetrable mask of indifference back on his face, his body tense.

I don't know if I can muster enough hate to radiate out of my eyes, afraid to utter a sound, because he points the sonic weapon at me again. Its muzzle imprints in my retina, I stare at it so hard.

I nod and close my eyes.

Weakness takes over me and I let myself drift off into a near slumber, pulling my arm up and rolling to the other side of the seat, like into a cradle, pressing my face into the cool wall and quietly humming, seeking to reconnect with the water for strength, feeling it answer me, speeding us up little by little, so Papa won't notice, wanting to get out of this enclosure, and...

And then what? I don't know, I'll think about it when I get there. Right now I'm tired, so very tired, that for once, I don't care. I'm tired of caring, tired of everything.

Evening light streams through the circular windows, a dusty shade of periwinkle, getting darker by the minute.

It looks like it took us all day to reach the shore and weave our way through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and into the Puget Sound. I suspect it's a good thing that we're about to arrive in Seattle under the cover of night, because I'm sure the Harbor Patrol would want to investigate what a lifeboat is doing, floating freely along city canals. We come to a halt, back at our marina, under the Aurora Bridge.

My father kills the engine and I stop humming, holding my breath.

"We made it, faster than I thought," he says.

I let my breath out. He didn't notice.

"Alright, I'll be watching you two. Off you go. Use one of my rowboats, if you need to," he says into the dark, because at this point, the inside of the boat is rich with black velvet, punctured by street lights poking their way through the windows.

"W—" Hunter begins from below.

"We're done talking about this. I want you out. Now," my father says impatiently.

"Sure," Hunter mumbles. He cracks his back, and pulls himself up to my level. "Ailen? You all right?"

"Yeah," I say. My tongue feels wooden, my arms and legs stiff.

"Now!" Papa yells, and that makes me move.

Hunter positions himself between our two seats, grabs the sides of the opening and worms out of the hole, his feet dangling down for a second before they're gone. He leans in and sticks his arm inside, offering his hand.

I take it, not because I need help, but because it feels good to pretend to be a real girl, so I allow him to assist me with my exit, plopping down across him over the hole in the boat's top cover, swaying to the lake's gentle waves, and studying each other in the dark.

I inhale the tumultuous city air and look around. The noise of the busy neighborhood hits me square in the chest. To my left, at eye level, people scurry across the Fremont Bridge as if they're trying to beat the crawling cars to the other side. To my right, traffic darts across the Aurora Bridge, a good 160 feet over Lake Union, the world's second most famous location for suicide jumpers. It must be close to eight o'clock, just after sunset on the 10th of September, 2009. Three days after my birthday, if my calculations are right.

I tilt my head up. Dusk spray-paints the air in rivulets of lilac haze, seagulls squawking their hungry calls and darting around at random. The smell of fallen leaves mixes with an impending wetness threatening to gush from the scattered clouds. The air is cold, yet not freezing, pleasantly tasting of early autumn.

I stand and glance to my right again. I jumped off this bridge three days ago, into what? Into this. Into being trapped again, worse than before, with no foreseeable end to my torture.

Hunter takes my hand, and we hop off the boat onto the wooden pier, barely visible in the descending night. We land in the middle and fall over.

"We'll be all right," Hunter whispers into my ear, pulling himself up and giving me his hand.

"Oh, yeah? What the hell was that about, the whole hand squeezing thing?" I whisper back, now standing next to him, my face touching his. An electric current of warmth passes through me and sears me to the spot. I don't want to move, and don't want him to move, hoping to stretch the moment longer.

"Oh...that." He falls silent, and the gap between us widens.

"What, you forgot already? Well, I think I know what you meant, and I don't like it. Not one bit, do you hear me? I think..." I take a breath to tell him what I think and realize that I don't really know, it could've been just a convenient number, just a friendly way of squeezing someone's hand three times.

Hunter looks at me quizzically, waiting.

"You'll have plenty of time to talk later," my father calls from the boat, and we both turn around to listen. His head pops up from the open hatch, a sonic gun in his right hand, pointing at me.

"I forgot to mention one little detail," he continues. "About timing, just so you don't think you have a whole year ahead of you. You don't. In fact," he checks his fancy Panerai watch, "you have till the end of tomorrow. That's when I expect you to come back. Back here, understand?"

I suddenly think about how in the blue sky will he know that we actually did it?

He must be reading my mind, because he says, "In case you're wondering, my handy little radar here will indicate to me whether or not you've done the job. Amazing technology, isn't it? Now, get lost." He quickly darts his eyes to the sides, I'm sure the real gun is tucked in his pants. He points to a couple of rowboats bobbing on the water, tied to a slip post. I suppose because the sonic gun looks like a miniature loud speaker, he's not afraid to brandish it in public.

I squint into the distance. Rare yachts break up the slow drone of the freeway, and the night darkens fast. I realize my father wouldn't dare shoot Hunter here, in the open. The water steals my mind with its welcoming lull. Nothing prevents us from swimming away, into the open ocean, into freedom. Nothing.

His head disappears into the hatch.

"Come on," Hunter says. He tugs at my hand and steps carefully along the edge of the pier, sliding into one of the rowboats and helping me hop in after him. I let him.

We plop into a familiar position, me on the front bench, Hunter on the rear one, automatically grabbing the oar handles, ready to paddle. We face each other through stretching time, for a second or maybe a whole minute, not talking, just staring, until the sky opens up into a rapid drizzle. Raindrops trace our faces, but neither of us makes an effort to wipe them off. With the last wave of his hand through the window, my father's face disappears into the darkness of the lifeboat; its engine purrs and the whole thing lurches forward. There are no goodbyes, no last minute instructions, not even yelling. We're two puppies dropped into the pond, to survive on our own.

We silently watch the boat maneuver out of the marina and into the canal, drifting at first, then picking up speed and making its way west, toward the Puget Sound.

"Strangely enough, I feel sorry for him, you know. There is not much hate in me left, mostly pity. What about you?" I say and wait for some reaction, but Hunter says noting, pressing his lips together into a straight line.

"You have decided something and you don't want to tell me," I say.

Hunter sits motionless, obviously ignoring me. This is so unlike him that at first I stare. I want to make him talk, but then decide to let him be, for once.

"Fine, I understand, I get it," I sigh and shake my head, attempting to untangle my thoughts into some coherent stream of logic. "This just doesn't make any sense," I say quietly.

"What doesn't?" Hunter speaks up, like the previous part of the conversation didn't happen.

"Nothing does. None of this...stuff that's happened to me—to us—from the morning of my birthday until now. I mean, I feel lost...and confused." I glance up.

"And I'm sorry," I say, hearing the sound of the lifeboat engine trail off into the distance. "Whatever it is, this thing, it's my fault you got dragged into it. I should've never—"

"Ailen, stop it. One way or another, I would've ended up doing this. You only accelerated the pace." Hunter sighs. I feel like he wants to say something else, but he doesn't, perhaps embarrassed. Instead, he unties the ropes and pushes the rowboat out of the marina, post by post.

"What do you mean, pace? You didn't plan on becoming a siren hunter all along, did you?" I ask, breathless for a second. I sense an oncoming grip of hunger stirring my hate, fueled by Hunter's off-key soul blaring its echo at me. My gut is doing it against my will, according to the laws of our imminent ending. One of us will kill another, as long as we stay together. We'd have to avoid each other to survive this incessant need to eradicate, to tear, to pillage and scream and stomp. My hands curl into fists involuntarily and my heart rate spikes a notch. I keep it down.

"You know what I mean, so stop asking," Hunter quips. There's that teary look again that he's trying to control, and a grimace of irritation lurks somewhere beneath it, too. I wonder how hard it is for him to battle his need to twist off my neck, but I decide this is not the right moment to breach the subject.

"You almost cut out my vocal cords," I throw back, unable to hold it down.

"I'm sorry about that," he says quietly.

I feel bad that I reminded him of his pain and quickly try to change the subject. "Can you at least tell me why you squeezed my hand three times? Back on the boat?" I ask, but I think I already know the answer. "And wh—"

He drops both oars and places his hand over my mouth. It burns with his warmth that's somehow on fire. The rowboat gently bobs and we drift under the blinking street lights, gliding over their reflection in the water.

"It's very simple, okay? I'll say it one time only, 'cause it's very hard for me to say it, so don't ask me to repeat it again." He licks his lips.

"Okay," I say quietly.

He takes both of my hands in his and looks me in the eyes. "If you go, I go. I can't live without you, Ailen, would you get that into that stupid brain of yours?"

I know he's serious, yet I'm afraid to let the real meaning of his words sink in. I launch into the first thing that pops in to my mind, to fill the silence with something, some small talk. "But your mom—"

"Shhhh." He places a finger on my lips, shushing me. "She'll understand. She was in love once, too."

"So, you meant it?" Do you seriously wanna die? I want to add, but I don't say it aloud, still clinging to the hope that I'm wrong.

"Yeah, that's right. Only I changed my mind," he says.

I want to scream at him that this is not funny; it's not a good joke, it's mean. But it doesn't feel like it's the right thing to do. What he says feels important, serious, real.

"You changed your mind?" I manage, hoping it's a good thing. "To what?"

"Okay, so if you knew you'd die, in like, ten minutes, what would be the last thing you'd wanna do, right before your death? What?" His face is close, his eyes ablaze with sick fervor.

My heart drops. It's my turn to stare and not answer, holding myself still, wanting to leap at him, bury my nose in his scent, stretch him all around me like a blanket, curl up inside and never come out, living on his aroma of pine and the off-key melody of his burned soul.

"Exactly. So forget about the motorcycle. Who cares about that; it's just a toy, a bunch of metal parts on wheels." He presses his hands on my face. It's already dark, but an even darker shadow from the bridge covers us completely as we pass along, slowly drifting.

"When we were in the lifeboat, it crossed my mind—no, earlier, in the lab, when I couldn't cut you—I'm...I don't expect you'll ever forgive me, and I'm...so very sorry I didn't fight your dad harder, I tried."

He pauses.

I briefly shake my head, indicating that it's okay, I don't mind, wanting him to continue.

"Anyway, I thought that I might not come out of this alive, and neither would you. So I thought...before it's too late, I...um..." He licks his lips again, and I can tell he's very nervous.

"I want you." He spits it out in one slur, kind of like awantoo. So it takes me a second to understand what he said.

My mouth slowly hangs open.