Dark Water: A Siren Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

sat back. Did seeing our house no longer remind him of me? Had it already come to that?
    There was only one way to find out. Ignoring the small part of my brain warning the rest of me that he needed time and space, I jumped off the bed, lunged across the room, and threw open the door.
    “Hi, there.”
    A couple stood in the hallway. I resisted stepping back, closing the door again.
    The man smiled. He had blond hair, brown eyes … and a pretty wife whose face hardened the second she saw me.
    “Do you live here?” he asked.
    “Yes,” I said. “Sort of. This was—is—my family’s house.”
    “It’s lovely,” he said.
    “It’s
old
,” his wife corrected.
    If he heard her tone, he ignored it. “When was it built?”
    I paused. This was one of dozens of facts that, up until ten seconds ago, I’d had memorized and could recite automatically.
    “Nineteen forty,” I finally guessed. It was definitely in that range.
    “That makes it barely middle-aged.” He held out one hand. “Brian Corwin.”
    His wife looked from his open palm to me. Her lips lifted in a small, stiff smile, but her steady gaze suggested I’d better think carefully before accepting his offer.
    “Vanessa Sands.” I waved instead of shaking and nodded past him, toward the stairs. “And if you’ll excuse me, I really—”
    “Why are you selling?”
    My eyes locked on his. “Excuse me?”
    “The house is in great condition. It’s quaint. Charming. A stone’s throw from the lake. It’s everything this town was before it wasn’t anymore.” He shrugged. “Your family must have a very good reason for leaving.”
    Several, actually. Good memories. Bad memories. Its proximity to fresh—not salt—water. Our desperate need for a new start. But I couldn’t share any of this with a possible buyer—at least not without inviting more questions. Plus, I’d been through enough to know that Brian didn’t ask what he did because he truly wanted to know the answer; he asked because he truly wanted to know
me
. Or at least the person his body was telling him I was.
    “Maybe it’s all the dark paneling,” his wife offered, when I didn’t respond right away. Her voice was pleasant but strained. “Or the peeling wallpaper. Or the faded carpet. Or the crumbling steps outside. Or
maybe—
”
    “Did you or did you not say, all of three minutes ago, that it had amazing potential?” Brian’s smile was gone. “And that it could be the fixer-upper you’ve been dying to transform?”
    My chest tightened. My fingers ached to scratch my skin as it dried across my face, neck, and arms, but settled for taking the water bottle from my sweatshirt pocket. I drank as Brian and his wife argued and waited for my body to cool, relax. Stressfulsituations always accelerated my dehydration and zapped my energy and had been doing so even more lately. I’d increased my salt intake accordingly, but I wasn’t sure it was enough.
    As much as I loved this house and as sad as I’d be when it wasn’t ours anymore, I had to admit the oceanfront house had definite benefits. The main downside was that it was expensive—even though Anne insisted that before last summer, we would have paid double for it. Mom had said we’d be fine financially for a little while, but we’d need the money from the sale of the lake house sooner rather than later.
    Given all that, wouldn’t it be okay to make an exception to my very rigid rule of not using certain abilities for my own personal gain? At least this once? Especially since it could lead to not one but two positive outcomes—including the strength I’d need to walk up to Simon’s front door and say everything I’d longed to for months?
    I didn’t know. But I drained the water bottle, swallowed, and took a deep breath anyway.
    “Finished basement.”
    Brian and his wife turned toward me. I continued before I lost my nerve.
    “There’s a finished basement. My mom renovated it five years ago. She used it as an