29- I can See You

The sun was setting when she arrived, and judging by the number of people, she assumed she had come at peak time. People were leaving the beaches and heading in there to eat.

As she crossed the restaurant to the bar, she felt people looking at her. It seemed to her that there was a silence in the room when she walked by. She still wasn’t used to the power of the sirens.

"What can I get you?" the bartender asked her without waiting for her to settle into the stool.

"Um, a cherry Coca-Cola will be fine," Mia replied.

"Right away," he said, cheerfully smiling before darting off to prepare it.

There was a guy two stools away from her, holding a Long Island iced tea. Mia glanced at him and saw that he was looking at her. Apparently, he took it as an invitation and sat down next to her.

"Hey," he said with a southern accent. "What are you going to have?"

"Coca-Cola cherry." Hardly had those words left her mouth when the bartender appeared in front of her with her drink.

"I added a couple of extra cherries for you." The bartender winked and pointed to the three maraschino cherries floating on top.

"Thanks," Mia said.

Another customer called the bartender from the other end, and he reluctantly walked away to do his job.

"Well..." The guy next to her leaned over the bar and moved closer to her. "Are you from around here?"

"No." Mia deliberately looked straight ahead and stirred her drink with the straw. She wanted to eat the cherries, but she was afraid that might be misinterpreted as a seductive gesture on her part, and she didn’t want the guy next to her to get the wrong idea.

"Me neither," the guy continued. "Although the town is very pretty." Sip.

"Yeah." He took a long sip of his drink before turning to her. "By the way, I’m Leo."

She smiled faintly, trying to be polite.

"Mia."

"Nice to meet you." He extended his hand, but she didn’t shake it.

Leo was quite attractive, but he seemed much older than her. And not to mention that she had no intention of getting involved with anyone. She had fled from Leo Lycan and the sirens to avoid it. Besides, Leo was not Ignacio.

"Are you here alone?" he asked her.

"I'm having dinner alone," Mia clarified. "I needed some time to myself."

"Ah." He scratched his reddish-blonde hair and, for a glorious moment, she thought he had gotten the message. "A pretty girl like you shouldn’t have dinner alone. Why don’t you have dinner with me?"

"Don’t you think I’m a bit young for you?" Mia asked. The guy was probably twice her age.

"Is that what’s worrying you?" Leo laughed jovially, as if he had solved a problem that Mia didn’t even know she needed to resolve. Then he leaned closer to her, almost whispering. "The younger, the better; that’s what I always say."

"Wow," Mia said. "That’s honestly repulsive."

"Oh, come on, beautiful." He brushed her arm with his hand in a way that might have been intended to seduce her, but it sent shivers down her spine. She moved away from him.

"Is he bothering you?" the bartender asked, leaning over the bar and glaring at Leo.

"We’re just having a little fun, that’s all," Leo laughed and leaned away from Mia, trying to look more innocent than he actually was.

"No, Mia, he almost killed me," Rossy told her. "It was terribly painful, both physically and emotionally, and in the end, I started going crazy. When I finally ate, I was so out of control that I almost caused a massacre with everyone around me. You need to eat more."

"If it hurt so much, why didn’t you eat?" Mia asked. "Why did you go a whole year without eating?"

Rossy looked down.

"I'll tell you another day." She leaned over, stretched her arm into the bathtub, and pulled the plug to drain it. "Why don’t you turn on the shower to rinse off while I go get you a towel?"

Mia didn’t like admitting that she felt wonderful after stepping out of the shower. Emotionally, she was a wreck, but physically she had never felt better in her life. She had never done drugs, but she imagined that a good trip couldn’t be much different from that feeling.

Rossy returned with a huge towel and Mia wrapped herself in it.

"Do you feel better now?" Rossy asked.

"I guess," Mia said, trying to minimize how good she felt, and headed toward her room.

She lay on her bed and covered herself with the blanket. It bothered her that it was warm, but she left it on, as if she wanted to bury herself in it. Rossy had followed her and stood at the head of the bed, hesitating, before sitting down.

"Why are you so nice to me?" Mia asked. "You used to be such a bitch..."

"And I still am," Rossy replied. "But this is pretty hard to get through. Negani and Antonieta are too dumb and selfish to be of help. I think no one should have to go through this alone."

"How do you live with this?" Mia asked.

"With what?"

"With the guilt."

"With killing people, you mean?" Rossy asked.

"Yes." Mia pulled the blanket a bit to see Rossy. "I just can’t stop thinking that he was a person and..., and he didn’t deserve it."

"If it makes you feel any better, it didn’t hurt him," Rossy said.

"How can you say that? I ripped his heart out!"

"Yes, but you’re a siren," Rossy said. "When you feed, you emit a sound that’s like a kind of purring. It’s something between a cat’s meow and a lullaby. It has an anesthetic effect on your prey, as if they were in a coma. They don’t know what’s happening to them. They die in peace."

"I don’t care." Mia covered herself again with the blankets and, although that fact made her feel a little better, it didn’t eliminate her guilt complex. "Either way, I killed a man tonight."

"That’s the hardest part to get over," Rossy said. "That we are the ones who commit the real murder. You’d probably also be devastated if you killed a cow, but you don’t think twice about eating a hamburger."

"It’s not the same," Mia insisted.

"That’s what you believe right now," Rossy said. "But the longer you live, the more your perception of humans will change. They do nothing but die, and over the silliest things. Their lives are very, very fleeting. The best thing that can happen to them is a painless death, and we give it to them."

"You can’t really believe that," Mia said. "You can’t believe you’re doing them a favor by killing them."

"Sometimes, yes." Rossy's voice sounded sad; she was looking at Mia’s comforter and playing with a loose thread. "What helps me the most is trying to find someone who deserves it."

"People who deserve to die?" Mia asked.

"Yes. Pedophiles..., rapists..., that kind of people," Rossy said. "We seem to excite them in a special way, so it's easy to find them."

"Edgar was neither a pedophile nor a rapist," Mia retorted. "And I bet the other werewolves you killed in 'A Place Where the Sirens Dwelt' weren’t either."

Rossy shook her head.

"I didn’t do that. It was Antonieta, and even she ate more than usual. She was collecting human blood to create a new siren."

"Did she kill all those werewolves for just one jar?" Mia asked. "I can't believe it."

"There were two failed attempts before you showed up," Rossy reminded her. "Antonieta saved Aggie's blood in a jar because she knew we only had the blood of one siren. But she could afford to waste human blood. She knew she could always get more. So she took what she needed and then left them, but, since the girls died, she needed more blood and another werewolf."

"So she didn’t eat them?" Mia asked.

"No. Anyway, Antonieta doesn’t like sharing anything," Rossy said. "And it doesn’t bother me. I’d rather go after people who deserve it, not lovesick Lycans."

"But you don’t have the right to decide who deserves it," Mia insisted. "One can’t just decide about life and death for others. One can’t play God."

"People decide about life and death every day," Rossy asserted firmly. "In the end, it doesn’t matter if you agree with what we do or if you think it’s right. I do what I have to do to survive, and you’re going to do the same."

"Am I interrupting some girl talk?" Negani asked, peeking into Mia’s door.

She slumped against the doorframe, her back slightly arched. She had changed; she was wearing a white nightgown, with her long blonde hair down covering her chest, which the fabric did not.

"No. Mia was resting," Rossy said, standing up.

"I just wanted you to know that you’ve gotten yourself into a fine mess, Mia." Negani laughed when she said it, with a strange, flirty giggle.

"A mess? Me?" Mia propped herself up a bit, leaning on her elbows.

"Leo Lycan just called Antonieta. Turns out the police are crowding the alley," Negani said. "They’ve found the body."

"And what does that mean?" Mia asked, afraid that they would catch her.

It wasn't that she wanted to distance herself from a possible murder charge. On one hand, she thought that the best thing that could happen was for them to arrest her because she could no longer harm anyone else. But on the other hand, the idea of serving a life sentence was terrible if she was going to live forever.

"Nothing." Rossy shook her head. "Antonieta and Leo Lycan are going to handle everything. For them, it’s just a little extra work."

"And Antonieta hates being made to work extra," Negani said, smiling at Mia. "But that’s not the only reason you’re in trouble. Antonieta has found out about your smooching with Leo Lycan today."