The Last Smile in Sunder City (The Fetch Phillips Archives #1) - Luke Arnold Page 0,33

they were holding themselves together. It wasn’t that the people in the area were rich, they just still seemed to care.

Modest and homely, the Gladesmith house presented the most valiant attempt at a garden I’d seen in years. One scientist had suggested that all soil contained a magical element, fearing that after the Coda we would lose all vegetation within a decade. The Gladesmith garden was the first evidence I’d seen to the contrary. It was mainly shrubs and grasses but it was alive, and that was something.

I knocked and waited for Mrs Gladesmith to answer. There was no Mr Gladesmith, but that wasn’t a surprise. January was a Siren and that meant her mother would be a Siren and her father mortal. The first Sirens were created when a ship full of female warriors crashed into a rocky island during a thunderstorm somewhere out on the Harmon Sea. In magic-rich waters, the crew drowned but didn’t die. They became something else. Their lungs filled with water and something far more potent. They crawled out of the ocean, onto the island that had dashed them, wailing with voices of pain and wonder.

They stayed there for an age, luring passing ships onto the rocks with their song. Then, half a century ago, the descendants of the first Sirens stole a boat and sailed it back to the mainland. When they arrived, they looked for the last thing anyone expected: a date. They chose their men, sang their songs, and did their best to settle down.

Every child of a Siren would be another Siren daughter. Their species scattered themselves across the continents, setting up families in lovely little homes.

In the old days, the husbands would happily hang around, providing for the wife and child. Not since the Coda. In a strange, global, mass-separation, every husband and father I’d heard of, once the Siren song was broken, walked out on the family and never returned.

It wasn’t that the Siren women weren’t beautiful. Even without the power of their song, a Siren would likely look like a fantasy filled with fine wine. The husbands weren’t necessarily bad men either; they were just forced to realize that they’d been living under the influence for their entire relationship. Even if the choice to bed a Siren was a pleasant one, they knew they hadn’t made it with a sound mind. After the incident, they were truly free, possibly for the first time in years, and ventured off with shame, confusion and a desire to make their lives their own again.

Mrs Gladesmith came to the door dressed in a nightgown and despair. Her eyes were red, her cheeks bloated and her hair a mess, yet she was still an indestructible beauty. We entered the living room and I sat down in an armchair with too many cushions. She offered tea and I declined.

“With milk or without?” she asked.

Her mind was somewhere far away, miles out to sea.

“Without. Thanks.”

She went into the kitchen and I was left alone in a room so full of sadness it was suffocating. Even the wallpaper looked suicidal. I transferred a few cushions to the couch and sat back.

It was a living room made for unwrapping presents and spending warm nights by the fire. Above the mantel was a timeline of family photos. January featured in all of them, mostly alongside her mother. Both of them looked beautiful and bright. This house had not been immune to the changes in the world, it had just accepted them and tried its hardest to adapt.

She returned with two ceramic cups and a sugar bowl, balanced on a silver tray. When she set them down on the coffee table, I was hit with an unexpected pang of nostalgia. The factories in Sunder City were almost exclusively powered by the underground fire pits. They all went quiet when the Coda happened, so a lot of industries dried up. Ceramic and other materials had become suddenly rare, so if you were a clumsy oaf like me, that left you with tin dinnerware pretty quickly. The cheap kind that screeches when you rub against it with the knife. Luckily, most of my meals came from a bottle.

“Thank you, Mrs Gladesmith.”

“Call me Deirdre.”

I nodded. She perched on the edge of the couch, not allowing herself to get too comfortable. I understood the inclination. Her daughter was missing and everything inside her wanted to do something about it. To sleep was to abandon her. A smile was betrayal. To ever be