Siren in Store by Megan Hussey Page A

beach balls, sunglasses and
decorative sunblock containers that lined her shelves.
    The males in particular, she noted,
also were fond of the mermaid figurines that filled a corner
display; a selection of sirens cast in china, porcelain and
polystone.
    Despite the obvious difference in
their size, price and structural makeup, the mermaids who lined the
lit stone alcove at the center of Beth’s display all shared a
number of striking similarities that did not escape her
notice.
    “What, the mysterious, mystical deep
blue sea is so mysterious and mystical that the folks down there
don’t ever feel the need to eat?”
    She sniffed at the tiny waistlines
and nonexistent hips that graced each example of her siren
dolls.
    “And all of that excessive water
exposure only strengthens the strands of all that long, luxurious
hair that they don’t even need a decent detangler to
maintain.”
    No wonder every man who passed
through the door of that shop stopped to gape at those blasted
sirens.
    Her boyfriend included.
    Around the time Beth acquired
Siren’s Call Books, she also acquired the store’s previous owner; a
comic book artist who had used the shop as a storefront for his own
line of fantasy publications.
    In lieu of hawking three dimensional
collectibles that portrayed images of heavenly sirens, her beau
Woody inked adult comic books filled with their nude
likenesses.
    “Fates be thanked for those fins,”
she rolled her eyes heavenward, “or those skinny little wenches
would be good and naked.”
    Still she had to admit that those
skinny little wenches ‘flooded’ their coffers and helped pay their
rent—while her own line of literary novels gathered dust on her
fiction shelf.
    Even so, the few tourists who
sampled her fiction seemed to enjoy it a great deal. She dreamed of
the day that her books would line the shelves of a store she didn’t
happen to own—and that, furthermore, someone apart from herself and
her literary fan club (which included her best friend Maureen, two
people she actually didn’t know very well who were nonetheless
possessing of excellent taste, her mother, and her second
cousin—but hey, at least it wasn’t her first cousin, surely she
didn’t feel obligated to be there, right?) would see fit to
purchase her work.
    “As much as I love the creative
process and all that, I’d love to see some of those fifty shades of
green as well,” she rolled her eyes in keen self-contempt. “And the
reader wouldn’t even be tempted to take out an active and ongoing
restraining order against my heroes. Bonus!”
    Still Beth figured that all things
considered, she and Woody lead a pretty nice life.
    Most of the time.
    “Where in the hell have you
been?”
    She jumped at the sound of a booming
voice that emanated from her reference section; one that belonged
to a man whose slight frame and underwhelming presence served to
belie his loudly spoken words.
    “Well top of the morning to you too,
man of my heart.”
    Fixing him with a catlike smile,
Beth greeted her lover with pursed lips and defiantly arched
eyebrows.
    “Can eyebrows truly be defiant?” she
mused, adding aloud, “I’m sorry to be late, but today turned out to
be a major migraine day.”
    The empathy that Beth expected came
in the form of a cool, sharp sniff.
    “As opposed to a minor migraine?”
Woody countered.
    “Well it’s becoming more major by
the moment,” Beth growled, regarding her approaching beau with a
keen, pronounced sneer. “At any rate, I appreciate your kind
sympathy.”
    Woody sighed, wrapping a slender arm
around her shoulders in a half-hearted hug.
    “Sorry hon,” he offered her a weak
smile. “It’s just that I’ve been trying to deal with our morning
customers by myself, and to balance the ledgers from last night
…”
    “I know,” Beth interrupted, planting
her hands on her hips. “This is why we need to hire …”
    “Additional personnel …” Woody
completed in a nasal tone that drove her over