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trying to fight.
    I was wrestling the earplugs into her ears when suddenly, she stopped fighting us.
    “What happened?” I asked, although my voice sounded muffled and strange—I could only hear it in my head. Kate moved her lips in reply, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. So she grabbed her phone with her free hand and typed something on it, showing it to me.
    We’re out of range of the siren song. You can all take your earplugs out now.
    I moved to remove my earmuffs, but stopped myself. “How do we know you’re not trying to trick us?” I asked. “What if you just want us to take off our earmuffs so we hear the siren and drive towards the cliff?”
    She smiled and grabbed the extra earplugs from my hand—the ones I’d been trying to force into her ears. She put them in, covered them with the extra pair of muffs, and typed something else on her phone.
    I was telling the truth—we’re out of range of the siren. But good job being cautious 
    I showed the others the messages, and we all removed our earmuffs and earplugs. Once sure that she was telling the truth about being out of range of the siren, I unlocked the cuff around Kate’s wrist and called on my power to heal the places where the metal had cut into her skin.
    “For a moment there, I thought you would saw your hand off to get to that siren,” I said, checking her wrist and ensuring that it was completely healed. “What did she say to you?”
    “Oh, just that she knew all of the secrets of the universe—everything from the past, present, and future—and that she was on our side on the war against the Titans and would share all of her knowledge with us if we met her at the bottom of the cliff.” Kate chuckled, as if it were ridiculous. “Telling you about it now, I know it was a lie. But something about the tone and cadence of her voice… I don’t know.” She shrugged and looked off into the distance. “It made me believe her.”
    We neared the shore, and Blake steered the boat towards the closest dock. It belonged to one of the huge houses on the outskirts of town. Judging by how the house had no lights on, how the snow around it was untouched, and how their boat was covered up, I guessed the house belonged to one of the many retired couples who only stayed in Kinsley over the summer.
    Blake tied up our boat, and we gathered our weapons, hopping onto the dock. “Are you glad you listened to the siren song?” I asked Kate. “Because you kind of… well, you freaked out back there. You tried to use your powers on us. If we hadn’t been so far out in the water, who knows what you would have done?”
    “Except that we were out on the water, so I knew going into it that I wouldn’t be able to do anything to hurt you,” she said, sounding absolutely confident that she was right. “Barely anyone has ever heard the siren song and survived. If I hadn’t tried, I would have regretted it forever.”
    Chris jumped off the boat, landing right next to us. “The two of you can chat about this later,” he said, securing his gun in his holster and looking up at the looming cliff. “Right now, we have a siren to catch.”

CHAPTER NINE
     
    Compared to locating the siren, capturing her proved rather simple. We hiked up the trail to the top of the cliff, with our earplugs and earmuffs on. We surprised her by coming at her from behind, and before she knew we were there, Chris shot her with a tranquilizer bullet full of gray energy. She was on the ground in seconds. Lucky for us, the siren’s greatest weapon was her song—not her physical strength. In fact, with her porcelain skin, long wavy hair, tiny frame, and huge eyes, she looked more like a doll than an ancient monster. She was so petite that bringing her from the cliff to the training room in Darius’s basement was a breeze.
    We only removed our earplugs and muffs once she was bound to a chair inside the shooting range and shut inside. The range had a soundproof glass window, so it