Slowly, carefully, Dejean lifts one of the fresh buckets of seawater and pours it into my tub. I want to sing, but I only manage a weak moan. Cupping the water in my hands, I splash it onto my face, letting it drip down my chin and across my clamped gills. Bliss.

Dejean fills the tub until it reaches the center of my chest, leaving just enough space that it won’t slosh out as the ship rocks. After the muck I had before, I prefer the fresh water to any meal. I can’t cover myself in it as I wish to, but it saturates my tail and my lower torso, relieving the itching that’s cursed me for months. I pour it over as much of my shoulders and arms as I can, letting my body soak.

As Dejean wraps my elbows in his mystical bandages, I avoid looking at him, avoid flinching every time his hands move too suddenly. If nothing else, the weird white skins seem to work as a decent padding against the metal. He finishes up the second one and moves toward my back.

Twisting, I snarl at him, my sharp teeth bared.

“I haven’t hurt you yet, have I?” he points out softly.

“Maybe not, but you will.” If I don’t eat him first. His aid only means he wants me healthy for whatever he’s planning. The healthier I am, though, the easier it will be to escape.

When he tries to edge around me once more, I give him a pointed look, tightening my round eyes. Very slowly, I lean forward. He slips as far as he can into the small space between the back of the tub and the wall, until I can see nothing but the fringe of his curls. My instincts send me mixed signals: scramble away or attack, hide my face or bite his off. But I ignore them. Staring at my fingers, I run them through the water. They glide, long and spindly in a lovely, deadly sort of way, pointed nails drawing no resistance.

Dejean pauses from his work. “Why can’t you sing?”

Curling away from him, I growl a warning. He must want to keep me mute. He’s afraid that if I could sing, I’d soothe him with my voice and eat him while he’s mesmerized.

I would, but that’s not the point.

“Did Kian do this?” A mournful tone seeps into his softened voice, distant and pensive: the sound of a somber memory. “Did she remove something of yours? Some kind of vocal cords?”

The sincerity in his reply stuns me and my brain goes numb. I shake my head. His melancholy still echoing through me, I reach up and brush my fingers over the gills on my neck, sealed tight from being exposed to the air for far too long. The flaps themselves hold no hypnotic ability; that power lies in the oscillating chamber they open to. No siren knows how it works, only that with it, we make a vibration that subdues any land creature. A beautiful sound; the song of the sea.

I yearn to create that melody, but with the chamber hidden beneath locked gills, I can do nothing but growl and click and whine. I yank my hand down, hissing at Dejean for good measure.

He hums under his breath. “I understand, it’s very personal.” His fingers brush my shoulder as he wraps the bandage around my upper back. I scowl, but again, he catches me off guard with his words. “Maybe we can get them working again, once you trust me enough.”

He can’t know what he’s offering me.

Simone appears in the doorway to my little room. “Excuse my saying it, Captain, but you’re as dumb as they come. You shouldn’t be giving a siren any advantages. That creature will eat you the moment they can sing again.”

She’s not wrong.

Dejean chuckles, finishing with the bandage and standing. “Just as many humans want to stab me through—should I live in fear of adding to that list? At least Perle isn’t planning to dump me overboard for the minnows.”

“Crabs, not minnows.” I mimic a pair of crab pincers with my hands, baring my pointed teeth at Dejean.

He returns the motion, baring his own teeth in a way far more annoyingly friendly than I had. “Does that mean something? A lobster?”

With a scoff, I make the pincers less rounded.

“Crabs?” Dejean looks at me with so much elation that I barely manage to hide my amusement. After a nod from me, he repeats it louder, testing out the hand motion once more. “Crabs!”

Sighing, Simone shakes her head. “You’ll need to watch out for Kian.” She leaves the doorway, vanishing into the farther reaches of Kian’s cabin. “Especially since you’re playing with her pet.”

“This siren isn’t Kian’s anymore,” he snaps, though his bitterness seems directed elsewhere. “That monster’s not touching Perle again.”

“I’m not yours either,” I object. The thought of a future without Kian brings me some comfort, though, as terrible and misplaced as Dejean’s beliefs about me may be.

Simone reappears, nudging around the puzzle of connected metal shapes Kian would spend hours detaching and then reconstructing in the dead of night. “They’re more intelligent than I anticipated.”

“It’s reasonable, isn’t it?” Dejean bobs his head, as though agreeing with himself. “Sirens are very similar to humans, physically.”

“They’re like a sea monkey then?”

“A very bright sea monkey, I think.”

I cross my arms over my chest, grumbling a noise between a hiss and a gurgle. “If you humans were any smarter than a bright monkey you’d know how dumb you are to believe that!” At least they seem to be learning, though. If they keep this up maybe they’ll be halfway intelligent someday. Dejean grins at me, and I snort. “As though you have any idea what I’m saying.”

He clearly doesn’t, but he continues smiling anyway, the expression only fading when Simone asks another question.

“Why are you doing this, Gayle?” Her brows crease and she stares at him in a way far too siren-like, with genuine worry and affection where gruff, selfish human nature should be.

Dejean avoids her gaze. When he speaks, his words come out in a hush. “I’m passing down my debt.”

“You know the sort of compassion you owe is lost on animals, even bright ones.”

“I like them better than people.” He pulls out the liver, seemingly from nowhere, and cuts the rest of it in two, tossing me half of it.

“We agree on something!” Taking small bites, I savor it, the growl of my stomach mellowed somewhat.

Simone barks a laugh. “That murderous creature will eat your liver just as soon as the one you’re offering. Your debt is wasted on them.”

Again, she’s not wrong. Though with the weight still pinning me down, I would rather be handed free liver by Dejean than eat his, only to have Simone starve me as punishment.

Dejean shakes his head in response. He leaves for a moment, but when he returns, he carries what looks like a big square sponge.

“Do you think you can lift your hips into the air for me?” he asks.

I figure he means to put the weird sponge under me—at least, the part of me not weighed down by a hunk of metal. I would prefer sand, but anything is better than the harsh grinding of the tub. Gripping its sides, I push myself up as far as I can, straining against the weight.

Dejean slips the sponge into the tub. It takes time for him to ease it into place. Having his filthy human hands in my water does not make me the least bit happy, but for this, it might be worth it.

“Hurry up,” I yowl at him. “I bet I could eat a little of you and get away with it.”

He makes that ridiculous cheerful laugh he seems so fond of. “Almost—there!” He pulls away.

The sponge stays in place as I sink onto it. Where I can feel it, the soft, squishy material cushions me nicely. Not like sand, but a worthy alternative.

Dejean hands over the last piece of liver. I savor it, sad for the loss. If there are any other viable livers on this ship, I hope he brings me them soon. He’s not like Kian; he seems to enjoy the aid he provides. Though why he would bother still troubles me.

He joins Simone in Kian’s cabin, but again, he leaves the door open. Out the large starboard window, the sun sinks into view. Both humans move deeper into the cabin, out of my line of sight.

“Did you find them?” Dejean asks, his voice low and grim.

“I broke open every damn chest in here, and the crew has searched the rest of the ship, but they haven’t turned up,” Simone replies, just as harshly. “They may not be here at all.”

“No schematics either?”

Silence follows, which must have included a head shake from Simone, because Dejean groans. The ship creaks, and far above someone shouts a command across the top deck. The stacks roar to life, and smoke trails into both windows for a moment before the vessel surges forward. Out the port side, some of Dejean’s crew still stand on his ship, waving us off.

“What if there are no blockers to stop the effects of a siren’s song?” Simone asks. “What if Kian was lucky, and found a way to catch them without making direct contact?”

“I don’t think so. As far as I can tell, Perle believes they can’t sing as a side effect of something wrong with their gills. I doubt Kian could have known that going into the hunt.”

“Then she took whatever blockers she had with her.” She leaves Kian’s cabin, Dejean following in her wake. “This attack has been for nothing.”

“We found Perle, and we took the ship nearly intact.”

“One siren and a ship.” Simone snorts. “Perle is a prize on their own, but with the cost of the damages from the ships’ crash and Kian still out there, likely vengeful . . . She didn’t even leave us that fancy paralyzing weapon. What does one siren and a stolen ship do for us in the long run?”

“Maybe nothing.” Dejean’s next words are lost as he locks the cabin door.

He’s just looking for investments. Of course, that is the way his kind functions. No honor, only greed and cruelty. I can’t trust the humans. But as I’m left alone with my thoughts, relaxed against the funny sponge, licking the last traces of liver off my nails, I realize something.

The pain is nearly gone.