Home > The Siren Saves The Billionaire (Nocturne Falls #13)

The Siren Saves The Billionaire (Nocturne Falls #13)
Author: Kristen Painter

For all the water babies who’d always wished they’d had a tail.

 

 

Late nights and early mornings were a girl’s best friend. At least when that girl wanted a little privacy to take a swim in the lake.

Privacy that was necessary, because said girl was also a mermaid.

By the light of the moon that still shone bright in the early morning hours, Undrea Seely went to her usual spot by the lake. She’d been coming here for about as long as she’d lived in Nocturne Falls. And although some of the area around the lake had begun to be developed in the last few years, there was quite a bit of it that remained forested and unspoiled except for the path that wound around it. Farther out, there was a road too, but in most places the trees and underbrush were thick enough to create a screen. The fog rising off the water helped, too.

The path was a popular walking, biking, and running trail for many of the locals, and since the new development had begun, tourists had started coming out here as well. Especially since they’d added paddleboat rentals at the other end of the lake where the shops and businesses were.

The paddleboats were quite a draw. Shaped like dragons, the boats came in black, green, and purple. The tourists adored them, judging by how often the boats could be seen tooling around the lake during operating hours.

But it all made privacy a little harder to come by.

Even more reason to be here before the birds were up.

She stepped off the path and walked toward the large rock formation near the shoreline. There were a few young trees and some bushes clustered around it in such a way that they formed a natural wall. It was the perfect place to shed her human trappings.

She stripped down to a simple one-piece black bathing suit, then folded the rest of her clothes into a neat pile. Her swimsuit would shift with her when she changed forms, like the clothing did for all the shifters she knew. It was part of the magic built into their systems and a rather convenient one.

With a quick look around to make sure she was alone, she left her things behind and walked into the water.

The feeling of sinking into the water, of having it lap around her, was unlike anything else. Winter or summer, cold or warm, being in the water was her equivalent of coming home. Her safe place.

That didn’t mean she missed her underwater life. She didn’t. Her life here in Nocturne Falls was about as perfect as she could want. She waded in deeper.

Sure, a little more male company might be nice now and again, but that would come. Eventually, the right merman would move to town and that would be that. Besides, she was in no rush to tie herself to that kind of anchor.

Not that married life wouldn’t be great. She saw that in her parents and in her married friends. But she wasn’t there yet. Her mom said it was because she hadn’t met the right guy. Maybe so.

The water was past her knees now, but the urge to shift had hit her as soon as she’d broken the surface. Legs were great for being on land, but nothing compared to the power and speed of moving through the water with a tail.

Hers was as beautiful as any other merfolk tail she’d ever seen. Granted, she was biased. It was her tail, after all. But the glimmer and shine and iridescence never got old.

She waded deeper in until it was safe enough to dive, then she did, shifting as she arrowed through the water and taking a deep gulp of it so that she could breathe, which was made possible by the gills behind her ears.

She swam forward in the same position for another few moments, then rolled over onto her back and flicked her tail once to propel herself farther.

She was about four feet under now, but even in the dark, her eyes could make out the sprinkling of stars still visible in the early morning sky above her. As for visibility below the surface, the moon shed enough light to allow her to see underwater. Didn’t matter if only a sliver of light filtered through; her eyes used it.

Too deep, however, and she’d eventually be unable to see. The lake only had those kinds of depths in a few places, none of which she’d be visiting today.

As she swam, she noticed something new. The current. Not long ago, on the commercial area on the far side of the lake where the shops and such were, a waterwheel had been installed near one of the natural springs as part of an eco-project to generate electricity.

It seemed like that wheel had added a new current to the lake, a subtle one, for sure, but she could feel it. Maybe not so subtle in some places.

Diving deeper, she passed schools of shiner minnows drifting amongst the aquatic plants that stretched toward the surface. Deeper still, she passed bass and sunfish, redhorse and darters. A few good-size trout zipped along, headed for the surface and whatever bug breakfast they might find in the early hours.

Near the bottom, crayfish scurried away under rocks, not hiding from her but from a large catfish shuffling by.

But the fish weren’t why she was there. She had plenty of aquariums if she wanted to see those.

No, she’d come to the lake to swim. To be a mermaid. With another powerful pulse of her tail, she sped through the open water. If she didn’t shift back to her true form every so often, she could lose the ability altogether.

It wasn’t hard to know when it was time. When she’d been on two legs for too long, an ache would start. Once it began, there was no stopping it. And the longer she stayed out of the water, the more the ache grew.

Thankfully, accessing water wasn’t hard. Any body of water would do the trick. Even a bathtub, in a pinch. For that reason, she’d made sure that the house she’d bought had a tub. A big one. She’d also set up a television in there because she spent a lot of time in that tub, especially in the winter months, when most outside water sources were frozen over.

She had a koi pond in her front yard, but she’d put that in. There had already been a sunken spot in the yard there, so it was probably deeper than it needed to be, but the koi were thriving. She’d yet to take a dip in it herself, however.

A pool would have been great, but not a necessity. Besides, she’d been fortunate to find a house in the hills, and that house wasn’t too far from the creek that fed the falls. Above those falls, a short ways up, was a natural pool.

If not for the amount of people it attracted in the summer months, it would have been an ideal place for a swim. She’d thought about talking to the family that owned Nocturne Falls, the Ellinghams, about registering as one of the town’s characters. Being a character was easy. It basically meant that a supernatural would publicly take on their true form under the guise of pretending to be that character to entertain the tourists.

The tourists, of course, assumed the character was done with makeup and prosthetics. Really, really good makeup and prosthetics.

Lots of supernaturals did it. That was the beauty of living in a place like Nocturne Falls, a town that celebrated Halloween every day of the year. You could be yourself, your real self, and the tourists thought it was part of the show.

Sure, there were some downsides to the tourist part of the town, but Elenora Ellingham, the grandmother of the three men who, along with her, owned and operated the town, had taken a very special precaution years ago.

She’d had a powerful witch, one enigmatic Alice Bishop, bespell the waters of the falls so that anyone who drank from them would be unable to see the truth of what was right in front of them. That was the same water that fed the reservoirs that served the whole town. It was pretty much impossible not to drink the water.

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