“So where is Diana?” Harper asked.

“She’s in the U.S. They drove to see her.”

Harper’s heart skipped a beat, and she asked, “Who are they?”

“Audra, Thalia, and I think even Nana went with them.” Lydia squinted down at the papers in front of her.

“But they drove. So it can’t be that far?” Harper asked. “Do you have any idea where?”

Lydia inhaled through her teeth. “I can’t say yet. But I’ll know soon. Very soon.” She rustled through the papers. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t have very much time, but I had to find Audra’s things and go through them all to find the right folder, and now I’m having problems because Audra’s being very cryptic to protect this Diana’s privacy.

“But that’s actually part of the good news,” Lydia said.

“What do you mean?” Harper asked.

“If Audra’s going through all the trouble to protect Diana, she has to be important. I’m not a gambler, but I’d put my money on Diana’s being a goddess,” Lydia said.

“And even if she wasn’t, she still knew how to set Thalia free,” Harper said. “So it stands to reason that she’d know how to set Gemma free.”

“I don’t want you getting your hopes up too high, but yes, I do think that Diana will know something that can help Gemma break the curse.” Lydia smiled at her. “And I’m struggling now with trying to find her, but I will find her. This is top priority for me. Which also brings me to my next question.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve been focusing most of my attention on the journal and Audra’s notes,” Lydia said. “Which means I haven’t been working on the scroll translations. Is that how you wanted me to do it? Or would you rather me work more on the scroll?”

“Um…” Harper furrowed her brow as she weighed both the options. “I guess … let’s find Diana. Pine sent the scroll to some of his colleagues to translate, so since he’s already working on that, I’d rather have you looking for Diana.”

“That’s what I thought. I did have some thoughts on the scroll, but I can keep in touch with Pine,” Lydia said. “I’ll pass my notes along to him, too.”

When Harper left Cherry Lane, she felt an odd mixture of hope and trepidation. Lydia seemed to be on the right track, which meant they were closer to breaking the curse than they ever had been before.

TWENTY-TWO

Resolve

After Liv’s theatrics the day before and Thea’s weary acceptance of their fate, Gemma felt more uneasy and restless than normal. Liv was nuts, and no one was going to do anything to stop her.

Gemma might have to resign herself to being a siren for the rest of her life, but that didn’t mean that everyone had to suffer. Or that anyone else had to get hurt. It was time that Gemma got a handle on her powers—no matter how evil and frightening they might be—and take care of Penn and Liv herself.

The other day, when she’d practiced shifting with Daniel, things had gone well—for the most part. But since then, she’d been having nightmares about when she’d killed Jason. When it happened, she’d blacked out, but now the dormant memories were resurfacing in brutal images that haunted her nightmares.

The guilt and the hunger plagued her, but Gemma couldn’t let either of those things stop her. The hunger would only grow stronger, so she had to learn to control it, to control her impulses and the monster inside that drove them.

She wasn’t the same scared girl she’d been when she ran off with the sirens in June, and it was time she stopped acting like that.

Her room felt too small to practice any of the larger transformations, so she decided to try things out in the garage.

It was mostly empty since her dad parked his truck in the driveway, behind her dead car. A couple sawhorses, a few old cinder blocks, and a tool chest sat in the middle of the room, and Gemma pushed them to the side, so she’d have more space.

One small window let the sunlight stream in. There were no blinds to cover it, but it faced Alex’s house, so she didn’t think there was a high risk of anybody peeping in to see her.

So with everything out of the way and ready, Gemma focused and tried to make her wings appear.

And nothing happened.

Squeezing her eyes shut, balling up her fists, and trying with all her might did nothing. She even tried holding her breath, and her face had probably begun to turn bright red when a knock at the side door interrupted her, and she started breathing again.

It wasn’t the door that led into the house or the large garage door for the cars, but the door on the side, so Gemma opened it cautiously and found Alex, grinning at her. His hair was damp, and he smelled sweetly of apple shampoo.

“What are you doing here?” Gemma asked him with a confused smile.

“I just got done with work a little bit ago, so I thought I’d stop over and see if you wanted to hang out. Then I saw you through the window.” He pointed to it. “What are you doing out here?”

She wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her arm. It wasn’t even that warm out, but she’d been straining so hard, she’d begun to perspire. “I was trying to practice transforming, but it hasn’t been going so well.”

Alex leaned on the doorframe and cocked an eyebrow. “Transforming?”

“Like how the sirens change. I can do that, and I need to learn to harness my strength so that I can fight them,” she explained. “I need to be able to stop them if I need to.”