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Cover Copy
The performance of their lives is about to begin…
Death has transformed former ballerina Anya Truss into a vila—an alluring wind nymph—but her need for revenge has kept her trapped on the riverbank where she was drowned. Now, after fifty years of waiting, she finally has a chance to break free by getting even with her cruel dance instructor, the man who betrayed her and broke her heart. But for her plan to work, she must place her trust in a handsome but unlikely ally.
Straight-laced police investigator Sergey Yuchenko has spent years searching for the father he never knew, and he finally has a solid lead. Problem is, that lead comes in the form of a ghost—a gorgeous but stubborn vila with destructive powers she can’t control. Anya’s graceful beauty awakens a desire in Sergey like he’s never felt before. But when past secrets are brought to light, the lovers will have to face an evil that could tear them apart forever.
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Books by Amber Belldene
Siren Romance
The Siren’s Touch
The Siren’s Dance
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
The Siren’s Dance
A Siren Romance
Amber Belldene
LYRICAL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
Copyright
Lyrical Press books are published by
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Copyright © 2015 by Amber Belldene
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First Electronic Edition: April 2016
eISBN-13: 978-1-60183-703-5
eISBN-10: 1-60183-703-8
First Print Edition: April 2016
ISBN-13: 978-1-60183-705-9
ISBN-10: 1-60183-705-4
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
For AJ Larrieu, because I love you.
Acknowledgements
I am incredibly grateful to my agent, Becca Stumpf, for encouraging me to write this book, my editor Heidi Moore for being excited about it, and for all my writing friends who squealed about codename Slipper, the sequel to codename Teapot. Sincerest thanks to Emily, Serena, Samantha, Celia, AJ, Ally, Audra—everyone whose wisdom made this a better book.
Chapter 1
Anya twirled among the trees, weightless, her ghostly feet floating just above the forest floor. With no other way to pass the endless time, ballet was her only solace. But her choreography was frenzied, a blurring blend of every part she’d ever learned in her many years of training, a dance of deep despair and bottomless anger. The all-consuming emotions turned her movements brisk and ungainly, and without a body to grow tired, her grand pas never ended.
She neared the far of her tether, the mysterious force that leashed her to her moldering ballet shoe, trapping her within a fifteen-meter radius of the slipper that had lodged under a rock on the riverbank where she’d died.
Just before the supernatural leash would yank her, she turned, halted, and stared.
A black car had pulled up alongside the water, and a young couple emerged with a stooping old man. Odd. She’d rarely spied anyone at this remote spot. But they were probably just bringing their didus on a scenic tour. They would be no help to her, would never even see her.
She was alone. Stuck, forever, it seemed.
Only one man could bring her what she desired--eternal rest, or short of that, the company of the other vilas. To her detriment, that man was utterly beyond her grasp.
She flung her body into the dance again, but as she circled around, the three visitors approached the water, and the young woman came into focus through a gap in the trees.
Anya froze on a pinpoint, the sight hitting her like a heavy blow, as if she still had a body to feel impact. The woman looked nearly identical to her sister, Sonya, but the resemblance had to be a coincidence. Sonya had been shot on the bank of this very river and had floated up to the surface dead, her face pallid and blood staining her nightgown pink against the dark river, just moments before Anya herself had drowned. And that had been forty-eight years ago.
Grief dragged at her vaporous form. Poor Sonya. If only Anya had spared a single word of gratitude for her sister that night before they’d been killed, instead of biting out bitter replies to her every kindness. But in Sonya’s shadow, graciousness had never come easily to Anya.
“Unless she was carried away, she has to be here, where she died.” The woman’s hopeful tones rippled through Anya in a voice identical to her sister’s. Up close, she looked even more like her. Impossible, and yet something very much like hope flitted through Anya too.
“Do you see anything?” the woman asked, just as the threesome cleared the trees.
The gaunt, aged man looked straight at Anya. “I’ll be damned. She is there.”
Anya hovered, motionless and astonished. He could see her. Besides her fellow vilas, this man was the first to set eyes on her since she’d died.
Nothing about their arrival here made a drop of sense. How could Sonya be alive, and why was this man, of all the strangers who’d passed by in all her years here, able to see Anya?
Behind a cloudy veil of age and pain, his sharp eyes held her fast. In a rush of recognition, the answer came. She’d seen those steely gray irises before, on the other side of a gun aimed at her. He’d chased her into the river, called out to her to stop running, begged her not to jump. And now, he could see her--this man who’d caused her death and been an accomplice to Sonya, Mama, and Papa’s murders.
Anger poured off Anya, raising up a hot gust of air over the water, even though