26- Hello, hello

“Seriously?” Ignacio asked. “Can I… talk to him nicely?”
“Yes. I would start by saying his name to see if he is here and if he wants to talk.”
“And how will we know if he wants to talk?” Ignacio asked. “Is he going to answer us?”
“If there’s any presence, the stones will vibrate.” Yryhnna pointed to the black stones. “And then we’ll talk to him and decide how he’s going to respond. It’s almost always something like: ‘If he knocks once, it means yes, and twice, it means no.’”
“So how is he going to name a place?” Ignacio asked. “If we ask him where Mía is, it doesn’t seem like he can knock once and we answer, ‘Oh, of course, Miami.’”
“First, we’ll check if he is here, and then we’ll see,” Yryhnna suggested. “You start, Ignacio, since you were the closest to him.”
“Okay. Um…” He took a deep breath and then said cautiously: “Edgar? Um, EdgarAlphaLycan? It’s me, your friend Ignacio. Um, I wanted to know if you would like to talk to me.”
They waited a few minutes, and when there was no response, Ignacio tried again. Even Seila joined him, and eventually, Yryhnna repeated the incantation. But no matter what they said, they received no reply.
The three spent the entire afternoon trying to communicate with Edgar. The sun was beating down, and Yryhnna grumbled about the heat for a few minutes but continued with the séance. In the end, the stones vibrated twice, but Yryhnna could not establish any contact beyond that.
“So that’s it?” Ignacio asked as Yryhnna began to pack her things. “Are we giving up?”
“I’m sorry, lycan,” Yryhnna said as the sun began to set. “I can’t do anything more. We’re going to have to go back to the traditional way of searching.”
Mía arrived in a town about half an hour after leaving Leo Lycan’s house, but she drove around for a while before stopping. She needed to be sure her head was clear and her hunger under control.
In fact, that was what finally made her stop. She figured that eating human food would calm her appetite a bit.
The only thing Mía knew about the supposed diet of the sirens was what Negani had told her when they were in the cabin on La Isla Syrens. Antonieta wanted her to eat Ignacio, and Negani tried to convince her that eating him would be delicious.
However, Mía was not sure how much truth there was in that. Judging by what the sirens said, she assumed that, somehow, they needed to feed on humans but wasn’t sure what that meant. Maybe they only drank blood like vampires. She didn’t think they swallowed a whole person in one bite.
The only thing Mía knew for sure was that she didn’t want to find out. She had not yet reached the point where cannibalism seemed appropriate to her, and she hoped never to reach it.
Still, she had to eat something, so she parked behind a restaurant. She would have liked to park in front, but it was all occupied. Just like another city where the Syrens lived, this was another beach town, only much bigger. The restaurant was a steakhouse, and that’s why she chose it. She thought that eating a juicy steak would be the closest thing to eating a person.
Before getting out of the car, Mía looked at herself in the mirror. She had driven there with the windows down, and even though she had had her hair blowing in the wind for over an hour, it still looked fantastic. Mía had to admit that she looked stunning. The glow that had been fading in the last few days had returned.
She wondered if it had something to do with kissing Leo Lycan. Mía thought maybe the sirens were referring to that. Perhaps they didn’t eat the boys in the literal sense but in a figurative one. Maybe they were a kind of succubus that fed on sex and lust.
The Syrens did that; it was what Isis, their Goddess, had taught her.

To be honest, it didn’t excite her much either. She felt guilty enough for kissing Leo Lycan. She couldn’t even imagine how bad she would feel if she had to sleep with him. She was in love with Ignacio, and even though she might never see him again, if she went with someone else, she would always feel like she had betrayed him.

Besides that, she had always imagined that her first time would be romantic, with someone she loved, and not because she would die if she didn’t have sex.
But if it came down to choosing between killing someone or sleeping with someone, Mía would choose the latter.

Of course, she had no idea if it would come down to that. She had seen the kind of monster Antonieta had become, all fangs and claws.

She doubted that such an appearance was just for fun. Those teeth might serve some purpose, such as devouring werewolves.

Mía’s stomach growled, which prompted her into action. She hadn’t put on her shoes, but at least she was wearing a blouse over her bikini. Otherwise, it would have been a real problem getting a table at a restaurant.
Since Antonieta and Negani, the most dangerous sirens, were always shopping, Mía decided to check the trunk of Leo Lycan’s car in case the sirens had accidentally forgotten a pair of shoes. When she opened the trunk, it turned out better than she expected.

There were several bags full of clothes. She immediately found a pair of sandals, and then struck gold: a wallet with some hundred-dollar bills and one of Leo Lycan’s credit cards. That was fabulous since she planned to escape by land.
The only place where it would be impossible for the Syrens to find her.

The steakhouse looked pretty fancy, so Mía kept searching through the clothes to see if she could find a nicer dress than the one she was wearing. She touched a fabric with floral patterns and, before pulling it enough to know if it was a skirt or a dress, she saw that it was covered in dark red stains.
It was unmistakable. The fabric was stained with blood. Her heart pounded with a dull, muffled sound in her chest. As soon as she realized what she was holding, she dropped the garment because she didn’t want to touch the blood. She hurriedly put on the sandals, grabbed the wallet, and slammed the trunk shut.

Mía stared at the trunk, swallowing hard and trying to diminish the panic that was swelling in her chest. She knew that the sirens were monsters. She had to accept that they did bad things. But she couldn’t think about that. She couldn’t do anything about it. At least, not for now.
The best thing she could do was to calm herself, eat something before losing her sanity, and decide how she was going to deal with that situation.
She had to cross the long alleyway surrounding the restaurant to get to the main entrance, and that gave her lives and reincarnations to calm down. When she entered, she felt normal enough to smile at the maître d'.
The straps of her bikini were visible, and it was clear that her clothes were not appropriate for that place. It wasn’t a luxury restaurant, but it was refined enough that they might not let her in for wearing sandals and a blouse. The maître d’ had looked at her as if he was going to say exactly that, but then she smiled at him, and everything changed.
He apologized profusely because it would take a while to find her a free table, and asked her to wait at the bar until one became available. Mía told him she wasn’t in a hurry, fearing that he would literally kick someone out to make room for her.