seas_open | Entries tagged with caden

Whatever is responsible for this, April doesn't notice when it happens.

She and Caden have been back in town for a few days now and she knows he'll need to go back again in the next little while, but she plans on staying here. Not because she hadn't enjoyed her time in California, but given how much she's banked on Coop's generosity when it comes to her job -- the first legitimate job she's ever had and currently her only source of income -- she really thinks it's a good idea she stay and actually work a little.

She's unpacked, she's settled back in her apartment, and she spends a few days just settling back into town. It's a strange thing to feel, settled in any way, but she does. And she isn't entirely sure what she thinks of it, whether she likes it or hates it, but she's allowing herself to exist in this state, to give it a chance instead of rebuffing it as soon as she feels something out of the ordinary.

Whenever she uses her powers in Siren Cove, she does it almost without thinking. There are times she uses them to get what she wants, times when she's irritated and makes someone do something for her, but none of it is truly harmful in any way. Though it seems someone disagrees.

She's in a coffee shop, she's in a hurry, and she needs to get to the front of the line quickly, so she taps the guy in front of her on the shoulder, gives him a smile and asks him in a gentle, melodic voice if he'd mind letting her go ahead of him. In response he only rolls his eyes and turns away from her.

For the rest of the day she tries it on everyone she meets. She asks people easy favours, she suggests things for them to do, and while some people help her just out of the kindness of their heart, most just ignore her suggestions, and that's never happened to her before. She has never met anyone immune to her powers.

By the end of the day she's so furious she's trembling and she stands near the boardwalk, unsure of what to do or where to go. She needs to see Caden, she needs to tell him something is wrong, but she needs to see her father, too. Maybe he'll be able to track down whoever is responsible for this.

Staring out at the ocean, her jaw clenched tight enough to hurt, April finds the only thing she wants to do is scream.

April hasn't been to California in a good, long while, and even though she's no longer wanted in the state thanks to Robert, she's still a little wary about returning. There are people in California she's screwed over in an especially impressive manner, people she knows would love to see her and call the police and send her to prison for a very long time, and while she doesn't think she's going to run into any of them -- especially not with the state she left them in -- there's still a part of her that's prepared to look around every time they're out somewhere.

But she isn't so nervous that she's found an excuse not to come. If she did, she's sure Caden would have been disappointed, but he'd probably also understand. She doesn't know many genuinely good people, but he's certainly one of them and if she told him she wasn't feeling well or if she explained she was nervous, he'd have accepted it and gone on his own. She knows that.

But she's here. Wary or not, she's here. And it really is all fairly exciting. She's never been one to care much about fiction; books and movies had never been all that interesting when her life had been the way it was, but this is different. This is something Caden has written and now she's getting the chance to see how it's going to be brought to life in a different medium. And he's happy, she can tell.

She doesn't know how long they're going to stay, but she had asked Coop for a week off and he'd seemed happy enough to give it. After that, she'll see what things look like.

She feels guilty.

Lying in Caden's bed, that's the thing she keeps coming back to, the thing she doesn't know what to do with. She can't remember the last time she felt anything even close to resembling guilt and as she lies here and stares up at the ceiling, she realizes she isn't sure what to do with that. Siren Cove was supposed to be nothing more than a stop, a place to play for a little while before she continued onto another city, another population to fuck with, another way to make some quick cash.

But here she is. Nearly a year later, she's still here and for the first time in her life she actually feels guilty about her actions.

They were awful. She's done terrible things to people before, she's manipulated them and broke them, she's stolen tens of thousands of dollars and ruined lives, but it's never been without some kind of reason. The men she steals from often make their money in their own dishonest ways. The marriages she destroys should have crumbled a long time ago and giving the women infidelity as a cause for divorce puts them in a far better position. She doesn't think of herself as a good person, she's not doing anyone any favours, but she's never gone out of her way to hurt people she cares about.

And now she owes a lot of apologies. Spencer and Joel, obviously, but even more pressing is Caden. She'd been so cruel to him, said things she can't quite explain and when she thinks about the woman she's been for the past two weeks, she has to wonder. Is that what she's destined to become eventually if she doesn't rein herself in somehow? Is that the path she's eventually going to travel?

And if it is, why does it bother her so deeply to think that might be the case?

With a soft sigh, she pushes back the blankets from the bed and gets up, dressing quickly in a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. She ties her hair back and wanders out of the bedroom, following the smell of coffee to where she knows she'll find Caden in the kitchen.

Over the past month, the list of people April has kept in touch with has been very small. She talks to Caden the most, followed by Coop and then her father, though she's really only texted Robert twice, mostly just to let him know she's still alive. If she decides not to return to Siren Cove, she isn't sure what she's going to do. Keeping in touch with him seems like it's the right thing, but when it comes to family, April has no idea if the right thing is always the best thing. Maybe it would make more sense to just cut her losses and get out of Siren Cove for good.

Caden can travel, clearly. He has money, he has a house in California, he's no more tied to the town than she is. And since he isn't, there's really nothing keeping her there. Nothing except maybe Coop and her father. And maybe Les, even if she hates to admit it even to herself.

That's what she's thinking about when she enters her hotel room that afternoon. She's thinking about family and people she's allowed into her life. She's thinking about packing and about maybe heading to California for a little while before going home. (Is it home? The label scares her a little.) She's thinking about these things and she's distracted, it's the only reason she doesn't immediately notice that there's someone else in her room.

He hits her hard enough to knock her out.

The next two days are a bit of a blur.

They don't hurt her, not at first. They just want their money, same as before, only without Les here, without Lara, she's in a bit of a bind. They're different sirens this time, less prone toward brute force and more likely to find what they're looking for just by being thorough. They go through her belongings, looking for something that indicates where she might be storing the money from her mother's estate, but April doesn't keep anything in her real name. All her assets are held in banks across the world under various identities and the only account under April Ross has sixteen thousand dollars in it. Not bad, but not enough.

They go through her phone, whisper amongst each other, then send someone a text. When she asks who they're trying to communicate with, she's hit again, so hard that her head rocks back against the chair they've tied her to, and she keeps her mouth shut after that. She isn't afraid, not exactly, but she doesn't know how she's going to get out of this. Not this time. The only real solution seems to be to pay them off, but she hates the idea of tipping them off to what she's really worth.

"Maybe her boyfriend will be more interested in paying off her mother's debt if he sees he bruises," one of them says and snaps a picture of April on her phone.

She laughs. "If you're texting Les, you're out of luck."

"Not him. The rich one. The writer."

And something in her chest seizes. She doesn't want Caden involved, not in any of this, but they send the text with the picture of her, bruised and tied to a chair, and she isn't sure there's anything else she can do but wait.

April is restless.

It's an itch under her skin, the feeling she most closely associates with the times she lets herself really be free, when her scales surface and she slips into the water. That's where she goes when she feels like this. That or she disappears, but Siren Cove has done something to her and she can't just disappear into thin air.

Her father would probably find her, for one, and right now she's still at a place where she doesn't want to give him a reason to contact her. Right now she's still of the mind that as little contact as possible is best.

But she's restless and she's twitchy and she's sure Coop had sensed it all afternoon. She'd bid him a distracted goodbye before standing on the sidewalk, undecided, then turned toward Caden's. She should go see Les, he's always made her feel better, but there's still that little sting that's worked its way under her skin. Like a fish hook, a little barb that's dug into the side of her throat and is tugging, tugging every time she tries to move.

She'd come to the cave for him. He'd gone home with Corrine.

She doesn't know what she really feels, not yet, but tonight she goes to see Caden instead, arms wrapped around herself to ward off the chill in the air when she knocks on his door.

She goes to his place without calling, without thinking.

Les is gone, which doesn't make any sense. In a place like this where half the town has some kind of magical ability, where Les has powers she doesn't even know about, it doesn't make a goddamn bit of sense that he's missing. It seems inherently wrong and absurd and she thinks about calling Coop because she knows he and Les are friends, too, but when she finds she has her phone in her hands, she's not sure what to say.

He hadn't shown up for his plans with Corrine. He's not at home. He's certainly not at her place. No one can reach him, he isn't answering his calls or his texts. His front door had been left open. He's nowhere to be found and it doesn't make any sense.

She's on Caden's porch without knowing how she got there and she's banging on the front door and she's furious with herself because this behaviour is ridiculous. She isn't like this. She doesn't worry or overreact.

Les is probably fine.

Except no one knows where he is and what she's feeling is definitely worry. Because not that long ago, it had been her fault he'd been hurt. Not that long ago, she's the reason his safety had been threatened and now she can't help but wonder if it's her fault again.

She's out on the beach when the lights of Siren Cove go out and for a long moment, April only stands there, her toes in the cool sand, a light shawl wrapped around her shoulders, staring back toward the suddenly dark town. It's a bit of a coincidence, she thinks, the town suddenly going dark on Halloween, and she considers returning home to her apartment and trying to call Les before she realizes it's not just that the lights have gone out.

Even the sky is darker. Somehow it's like everything has been turned down and in a town filled with sirens and witches, April can guess it isn't an accident. She's near Caden's place, had been debating stopping by for a visit when the lights had gone out, but now that everything is dark, she's willing to bet he has his hands full dealing with his own place. Trying to find candles or a flashlight, whatever it is people do in a situation like this and so she decides not to bother him.

She should go home, but as she bends to hook her fingers in her shoes, she catches sight of something. A small shadow darts across the beach in front of her, zigzagging across the sand before it suddenly changes directions and charges directly at her. April takes two rapid steps back, shoving her free hand into her bag for her mace, but before she can close her hand around it, her foot catches on a rock and her ankle twists at a painful angle, sending her down to the sand.

"Fuck," she curses, still groping for the mace, but by the time she has it in her hand, whatever had been running toward her is gone. She's alone on the beach. Alone in the dark with a twisted ankle and... no cell reception. Of course.

Caden's house is close, but there's no guarantee he's even home and as April struggles to get herself back on her feet, she can already feel her ankle swelling. She's going to be stuck here all night unless someone finds her.

And it's then she sees another dark, looming figure glide across the sand and hopes someone finds her sooner rather than later.

Since being caught by half the town walking out of the ocean in half-siren form, April has taken care to get her morning swimming done before there's much of a crowd on the beach. She's not ashamed necessarily, she's just still not sure how a siren like her fits into this town, how she's supposed to follow the rules. Before Siren Cove, she's never been part of a group of sirens, she's never had a matriarch and if she's honest, she's mostly been trying to avoid the situation.

It just makes things easier.

She's long since finished her swim this morning and she's dressed again, wandering the beach as she dries her hair on her towel. There are plenty of houses that line the beach and there's a part of her that still wonders if she can't give up the nice apartment she has to find a place closer to the water. Being out here, being in the ocean, it's as close to home as she's ever had.

But at the same time, she still doesn't have a job in Siren Cove and she knows moving into a house she shouldn't be able to afford will bring up questions. And given what she's been warned about when it comes to following the rules, she's not sure that admitting she's conned a good number of people out of a fair bit of a money over the past five years is going to go over particularly well. So she stays where she is, but she spends a lot of time on the beach anyway and she checks out the houses as she goes.

There's one home in particular she's looking at today. It looks like someone is moving in and April wanders closer curiously, her towel draped over her shoulder as she catches sight of the man who looks like he might be renting the place.