Page 10 of Leviathan's Song
She wiped them on her pants. “It’s not mine. Oh, hey, it’s the mermaid.” She straightened to look at him, brushing some loose hair out of her face and pulling out her hair tie. She gripped it between her clamped lips to redo her ponytail.
“Mer…maid…” Levi repeated drily.
Sidney frowned as she finished pulling back her hair. “Sorry… merman. Mer… dude?” She cringed. “I’ll be honest, I have no idea what to call you.”
“Well, I’m not a mer, so let’s stick with Levi, I guess,” he muttered.
“Levi, then.” She nodded and puffed out a breath. “I’m Sid,” she replied, before turning to me. “What happened?”
People had scattered when Levi’s first enchantment rolled through, but as his voice had returned to its usual siren lure, some had edged back in and were watching us, completely failing to be inconspicuous about it. I eyed the crowd and leaned toward Sidney, coming distractingly close to Levi. “They were Phantoms, and they’rehere,” I hissed quietly. “Like right there.” I pointed toward the warehouse next to us. She jerked her head around to look at it. “They knew the guy from my house.”
She turned back to face me with widened eyes and a somewhat amused expression, then started forward. “Yeah, I saw their tattoos, but whoopsies… I wasn’t aware of that when I left you here.” She waved us ahead of her. “Less talk, more walk. I got what we needed.”
I faltered, scrambling my way back to the moment, then started back the way we had come as Sidney clutched my upper arm and began to tow me along. Levi followed closely, hovering protectively as I turned to catch the vendor’s eye and thanked him again. He gave a small wave and watched me leave with obvious concern on his face.
“Should we file something with Enforcement about that?” Levi asked, throwing his thumb over his shoulder.
Sidney’s eyebrows shot up, and her laugh bordered on hysteria. “Uh, no.Nope.Enforcers have way bigger fish to fry down here than those guys, and if they took them in, I’d get tossed in along with them for sure.” She rubbed a thumb absently over her first knuckle while scanning the streets around us.
Levi huffed an incredulous laugh, and his blue eyes danced with amusement. His laughter made my heart stutter and pulled at me even more than his words did, and I wondered again at his reaction on the bus.
I glanced at Sidney to make sure she was wearing the new ear cuff I’d made into an enchantment ward for her. She didn’t typically wear jewelry, because every time she shifted, it just fell on the floor, but she’d made an exception for this one.
“I’ve seen somewildstuff go down out here, but I gotta say, that was pretty incredible.”
He looked appropriately impressed. I smiled, grateful for my friend. She’d always been rough and tumble. Her middle brother had started doing mixed martial arts with her in early high school, but she’d joined all her siblings in more intense training when she moved to Dry Gulch. It was well known for its higher crime rate, though most of that reputation was for pickpockets and petty theft. At least, I’d thought…
Sidney preened, turning her cheek into her shoulder with a coy smile and sketching a sarcastic curtsy, making me smile despite my nerves. It was the right thing to say to her. Complimenting her appearance usually made her uncomfortable, but nice comments about her fighting skills would always light her up.
“Why,thankyou,” she said in a sing-song tone with a little more bounce in her step. After a few more steps, she paused, then rushed to catch back up. “Wait, you’re really not a mer?” she asked, the previous conversation having caught up with her.
“Nope.” He let the “P” sound pop on the end of the word.
Sidney screwed up her face. “But you’re a siren, so where did you come from?”
Levi stared ahead with a bored expression on his face. “Well, you see, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they go and take aspecial nap—”
“Whoa, hey, whoa,” Sidney blustered, hands up and eyes wide. “I don’t need details. I just don’t understand how all this works.” She circled her arms in his general direction.
He smirked at her bluster and then rolled his eyes, obviously having heard this line of questioning before. “It works just fine. Thank you for your concern,” he said, giving a flirty smile.
Sidney squinted at him and fought a smile, obviously both amused and a little annoyed at his evasiveness. I just shrugged. He didn’t owe her an explanation of his heritage.
Levi laughed at her expression. “There’s nothing to explain, darlin’.” He held out his arms. “What you see is what you get. Are you two going to be okay? Can I walk you back to the Gate? I was gonna meet a guy about a gig next week, but I got a little distracted with screaming and dudes with knives and flying ninjas and the damsel in distress.”
Even as the effect of his words swept over me, kept at bay by my ward, I wanted to bristle about being referred to as a damsel in distress. Unfortunately, it was a legitimate description of the situation I’d been in. Without their intervention, I wouldn’t have been able to save myself. If I was honest with myself, it wasn’t the reference that chafed, but the fact that it was true.
We paused on the sidewalk once we’d made it enough blocks that I didn’t feel like I had Phantom eyes staring holes in my back. When I turned to thank Levi for helping me, I found him already staring at me with an intense expression I couldn’t really make sense of.
“Thank you for helping me, for distracting them…” I shifted a little uncomfortably as he searched my eyes for a long minute. His hair was mussed, and his brow wrinkled in thought.
Finally, he frowned, and all the humor drained from his face as he murmured, “That scared me half to death, Empress.”
It almost felt like a confession, something he didn’t want to admit, and I felt skitters of his enchantment through my ward, lightly drawing me toward him. It felt trancelike, caught in the pull of his magic as he studied me. I was completely unable to look away from him.
Eventually, Sidney cleared her throat, breaking the moment. Levi’s eyes snapped to her, releasing me from his gaze. Then, glancing back and forth between us, he said, “I can stay here with you if you’d like. I really don’t like leaving you here.”
Sidney huffed a dismissive laugh. “Dude, Ilivehere. Miss me with that bird shit.”
