When Ava Malloy was seven years old and her grandmother - may she rest in peace! - asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she replied: “a siren”. 

The answer came to her instantly because she had recently finished flipping through a dog-eared compendium of Greek gods and monsters, and was enamored by the illustration of a half-woman, half-bird luring sailors with the promise of sweet music.

She didn’t know that her grandmother would take it as a serious answer, nor that the rest of the family would cackle about it nonstop, carrying the legend of Ava the Siren through countless Thanksgivings as if it proved something essential about her character.

It was a childhood moment that, in retrospect, would feel like a hinge. Not that Ava wanted to lure men to their deaths - though she would, eventually, become quite adept at making them lose their heads - but she was drawn to the idea of being impossible to ignore: a creature whose power required neither explanation nor apology, and whose allure was both a curse and a gift. At that tender age, she’d just been enchanted by the idea of singing so beautifully that the world bent around her voice, but as Ava grew older, the fantasy matured with her.

She became a collector of stories, especially the ones about women who remade themselves out of scraps, who gathered power quietly, and who lived by their wits in a world that resented their cleverness. Her high school years were spent in the company of misfits: girls who wore their eyeliner like armor, who whispered secrets in the library stairwell, who named themselves after obscure gemstones and told each other’s fortunes. She also discovered a true passion for singing, and not just in the shower.

After graduation, Ava left her hometown behind, never quite able to decide if she missed it or not. She went to university in a city where even the pigeons looked cynical, and studied philosophy and psychology mostly as a provocation. She worked terrible jobs, read dense, untranslated novels in laundromats, and circled back to Greek and Latin, and every myth involving transformation. 

In the years that followed, she learned the difference between power and influence. She learned how to make an entrance, how to leave before things turned sour, and how to spot the moment when a room full of strangers would begin to orbit around her. Ava had many lovers, but they were always the kind who’d fall for the story of you more than the reality, and she let them. She liked being the mysterious one, allowing them to believe she might vanish at any time, and perhaps she would, if only to prove the point.

It was just after her thirtieth birthday - marked by a bottle of cheap champagne and a meticulously curated playlist - that Ava was initiated into the Spiral Society. It happened not at some occult gathering or velvet-draped salon, but in the most mundane of places: a rooftop bar during happy hour. A friend from work introduced her to a woman named Phoebe, a perfectionist who wore her hair in elaborate coils and spoke with the slow confidence of someone who had never once doubted herself. After seeing the way she handled people, always leaving them begging for more, Phoebe asked Ava if she wanted to join their “little club,” and when Ava pressed for details, Phoebe only laughed and said, “You’ll see. The less you know, the better.”

Ava said yes because she couldn’t think of a reason not to, and because she suspected that the invitation was the point, not the club itself. The next week, she found herself in Phoebe’s apartment, a place so suffused with scented oils and velvet cushions it felt like the inside of a boudoir-themed snow globe. 

There were six other women there, each with her own mythic backstory: a banker-turned-burlesque performer, a professor who’d been blackballed for seducing half her faculty, a chess prodigy who only played for money now, and more. They were all beautiful and seductive in their own ways. Ava felt immediately at home, as if the Spiral Society had been made for women like her: restless, acquisitive, and unable to settle for a life of ordinary success.

It was a club, but also a shared conspiracy. The Spiral Society’s stated mission was simple - amuse yourselves first, and the world second - but their operations were anything but ordinary. They specialized in ensnaring anyone who came their way, turning successful men and women into obedient puppets. Their schemes often skirted the edges of legality, but they didn’t care. They lived for the orchestrated chaos only they could produce, and had a blast doing so.

Ava’s own specialty was infiltration. She could get into nearly any party, conference, or invitation-only event just by acting as if she belonged. She collected passwords and lanyards like charms. She was, in the argot of the Society, a “door whisperer.” There was a thrill in it, especially when she managed to pull off some minor coup, but what she liked best was the moment when someone would realize that she was not, in fact, supposed to be there. The flicker of confusion, the brief uncertainty about whether to confront her, the slow dawning appreciation that she had, somehow, bested the system.

She wondered sometimes if her grandmother would have approved, or if the old woman would’ve scolded her for using her gifts for such frivolity. But Ava liked to imagine the sirens of myth not as villains, but as rebels: women who refused to let the world pass by on its own terms. In the Spiral Society, she had found her fellow conspirators, and there was a comfort in being surrounded by women who thrived on the same restlessness.

On the night of the Society’s tenth anniversary - an event celebrated with champagne and gold confetti - Ava raised her glass to the assembled vixens and said, “To the Spiral Society, and to seeing how far it’ll go.” The others cheered, and for a moment, Ava felt as if the whole city was theirs to play with and all the rules had been rewritten in their honor.

The day immediately after, Phoebe texted her, asking her to come to her apartment ASAP. Ava didn’t even hesitate. When a Spiral sister called, one couldn’t say no. It was ride or die all the way through.

Phoebe was waiting for her with a proposal, which she presented as if it were a gift wrapped in a riddle: “There’s a man I can’t seem to crack. I want him broken and rearranged, so I can cheerfully discard him afterward.” She was lounging on her velvet sofa, a glass of anisette in one hand, her posture as effortless as a cat’s, but Ava could see the tension in her brow, the rarest of admissions that something in the world might not be entirely under Phoebe’s control.

The subject in question was a startup magnate named Viktor Lantz, newly minted billionaire and darling of the business gossip columns, whose public persona was all Swedish minimalism and humility but whose private appetites were, as Phoebe put it, “lapidary in their precision.” Phoebe had been pursuing him for weeks, circling through art openings and tech fundraisers, matching his wry humor with her own, and still, he had managed to remain politely unbothered. He even seemed to enjoy being pursued, which only made him more infuriating.

“He doesn’t believe in the inevitability of desire,” Phoebe complained. “I find that both offensive and, in some oblique way, thrilling.”

Ava tried not to laugh at Phoebe’s annoyance, but she did feel a twinge of satisfaction: here was a challenge worthy of the Spiral Society’s resources. She was intrigued, not just by Viktor but by the idea that someone could be immune, if only temporarily, to the Society’s methods, which had never failed her. Phoebe’s plan was simple. Ava was to infiltrate Viktor’s world, get beneath his skin, and return with his pride in a jar.

“You’re exactly his type,” Phoebe said, reaching for Ava’s hand and scrutinizing her with the intensity of a jeweler grading a diamond. “He goes for the ones who look like they might eat him alive but secretly want to be rescued. Give him both. Make him ache for it, then make him beg.”

Ava gathered the dossier Phoebe had prepared: lists of Viktor’s favorite restaurants, reading habits, photographs from his childhood in Malmö, even snapshots of his ex-lovers annotated with Phoebe’s catty marginalia (“Note: she wore nothing but navy blue for six months, why?”). The whole thing felt less like seduction and more like a heist. Ava was to become the embodiment of temptation, perfectly tailored to his needs.

As soon as she left Phoebe’s apartment, Ava slipped into the heart of the city and let herself be swept up by its rhythm. She wore Viktor’s favorite color, studied his authors of choice, and deliberately arranged to be seen at the coffee shop he frequented every Tuesday morning. She inserted herself into his line of sight like a rumor, never addressing him directly but always existing at the periphery.

It took three weeks for him to speak to her, and when he finally did, it was in the form of a question: “Are you real, or am I just imagining you?” His accent was more pronounced than she’d expected, and his eyes, pale and steady, gave nothing away. Ava smiled, let her voice curl around his uncertainty, and said, “Does it matter?”

The dance began in earnest after that. Dinners at impossible-to-book restaurants, long walks through verdant gardens, and late-night arguments about the ethics and politics. Viktor was clever enough to know that he was being manipulated, but also vain enough to believe he could outlast the attempt. He tested Ava at every turn, offering up pieces of his past and then watching to see if she handled them with care or weaponized them, as others had.

The further she went, the more Ava started to enjoy herself. Viktor’s resistance wasn’t a wall but a series of intricate locks, each requiring a different key. There was pleasure in learning his patterns and in finding the cracks where his confidence wavered. She even caught herself wondering, late at night, what it would feel like to let the game end and just exist in his company, unmasked.

But she never let herself forget the assignment. It was a favor for a sister, after all, and Ava was too skilled to lose herself in the mark. Besides, the victory would be all the sweeter for the effort required. The Spiral Society had a tradition: the more difficult the quarry, the more elaborate the trophy.

And so, when the night finally arrived - an invitation to Viktor’s penthouse, under the pretext of reviewing his collection of antiquities - Ava dressed to kill, choosing a silk dress that suggested both vulnerability and command. She rehearsed her lines, her exits, her tells. She knew that Phoebe would be waiting for a full report, and Ava intended to deliver something unforgettable.

Viktor was waiting for her at the door, barefoot and holding two glasses of aquavit. He looked tired, as if he’d spent the day arguing with the entire world. For a long moment, they just stood there, two predators on the edge of something irreversible.

“Come in,” he said finally, and Ava did, stepping past him into the uncertain future she’d been plotting for weeks.

They sat across from each other, his ravenous eyes falling on her. Viktor wanted to accelerate things; she could tell - his every movement was an experiment in proximity, and his every sentence was a test. He kept getting closer to her, sliding his palm across the tabletop until their fingers nearly brushed. Whenever he tried to close the gap decisively, she parried and deferred, but never rebuffed him outright. Everything in her posture said “maybe,” “almost,” “try again.” She let him orbit, adjusting the gravity of their relationship with the subtlest of nods or glances.

Viktor, for his part, took each rejection as a challenge. He was not the sort to escalate forcefully. His game was all about persistence and refinement, approaching her at new angles, changing the subject to catch her off guard, offering more expensive liquors or rarefied amusements as if to sweeten the lure. He shifted gears so skillfully that most people wouldn’t notice the pattern, but Ava could see the strategy at work and admired it for its elegance. They talked about art, about the loneliness of those who outpaced their peers, about the ethical obligations of those with too much money and too little meaning. Sometimes, he would say something genuinely vulnerable, and she would let herself respond in kind, but never quite all the way. He would lean in, thinking he had found a secret passage, but she would pivot, leaving him blinking at the space where she’d been.

She watched the tension gather in his body, the way his jaw set when she upended his expectations, the way his eyes narrowed when she laughed at his self-deprecation rather than giving it the validation he sought. He was competitive, yes, but also a little wounded, as though every failed attempt at closeness was a small bruise to his ego. For a moment, Ava felt a twinge of guilt—she liked him, after all, and he had done nothing to deserve being made a mark. But the job was the job, and the truth was that she was enjoying the game far more than she cared to admit.

After an hour, he grew restless. The teasing, the chase - it was supposed to be an opening act, not the whole concert. He reached for her hand more boldly, interlacing their fingers, and this time she let him. She could feel the slight tremor of anticipation in his grip. He leaned in, his lips inches from hers, and whispered, “You don’t have to keep running.”

She smiled back at him and purred. “Who says I’m running?”

He hesitated, searching her face for a sign, then kissed her—tentative at first, then hungrily. She let the kiss deepen, but just as his hands began to travel, she broke it off with a soft laugh and a finger pressed to his lips.

“Let’s not ruin it by rushing,” she said, her voice low and velvety.

He looked at her, a little stunned. “You’re impossible,” he said.

They talked more, the conversation loosening with the second bottle of wine. At some point, he started playing music, something Swedish and melancholic, heavy on minor keys and trembling strings. She listened for a while, then asked, “Do you ever sing?” He shook his head sheepishly. “I was told as a child that I had no ear for it.”

She stood, moving to the makeshift stage created by the space between the sofa and the stereo. “Everyone can sing,” she said. “It’s just a matter of finding your own register.” She gestured for him to join her, but when he remained seated, transfixed, she sang for him instead.

She began with a simple folk song, her voice soft and uncertain at first, as though she were still measuring the room. But then she let herself lean into it, modulating her tone just so, hitting the precise frequency that made the air vibrate. Her grandmother had called it “the blood note,” the place in the scale where the body resonates in sympathy with the voice. It was a trick she had practiced for years, mostly as a party gimmick, but here, in Viktor’s apartment, it became something else: a kind of incantation, a spell that drew the listener out of himself and into her spell.

Viktor sat perfectly still, his eyes wide and wet. He was unprepared for the effect. His defenses, so artfully constructed, crumpled in the face of her song. She was careful not to overdo it, letting the melody break and catch at just the right moments, hinting at vulnerability without surrendering to it. By the time she finished, the room was silent except for the ticking of a distant clock.

She opened her eyes and saw Viktor looking at her as if she were some rare and dangerous animal. He tried to speak but couldn’t find the words, so he simply reached for her hand again, this time with reverence rather than conquest.

Ava squeezed his fingers, smiling, and said, “It’s not about having the right voice. It’s about being heard.”

He nodded, swallowing hard. “You make it look easy.”

“It never is,” she said, and meant it. “Do you want to hear another song?”

“Yes, please.”

Ava circled the coffee table with a deliberateness that was neither predatory nor performative - just a slow, gathering force, as if she were winding up a storm inside Viktor’s living room. He watched her as she moved, and for the first time since they’d met, she saw a genuine uncertainty in him. Maybe it was the wine, the late hour, or the way the city’s lights flickered through the high windows and threw moving shadows behind her. Whatever it was, he seemed hollowed out, all playful bravado siphoned away, leaving behind nothing but longing.

The stereo was still playing, but softer now. Ava stood over it, pulled a different record from the shelf, and put it on without ceremony. Then she turned, met Viktor’s gaze, and sang again—this time not a folk song but a torch song she remembered from childhood, the kind her mother would hum while peeling apples, always a little off-key but heartbreakingly sincere. Ava’s voice was low and smoky, each word a pearl dropped into an ocean of sadness. She let her eyelids flutter shut, then open again, catching Viktor’s reflection in the glass of the liquor cabinet behind him.

She walked to where he sat, dropped to one knee, and took his hand in both of hers. “Let’s try something,” she said, her voice so gentle it was almost a lullaby. “But you have to promise to trust me.”

He laughed, shaky, and said, “I don’t know if that’s wise.”

She shook her head, squeezing his hand. “It’s not about being wise. It’s about surrender.”

He hesitated, but then replied, “Show me.”

She led him to the open space by the window, where the city glowed blue and white and endless. She pressed her body to his, guiding his hands to her waist, then to her neck, then back again, as though they were learning how to touch each other from scratch. Every time he reached for control, she redirected him, making him follow her rhythm. She sang directly into his ear, whispering lyrics that made his skin shudder with goosebumps. Their hips moved in sync, slow at first, then with a mounting urgency, and Ava could feel the tension in Viktor’s shoulders begin to dissolve.

“Do you know why I picked you?” she murmured, not breaking the song.

He shook his head, eyes glassy.

“Because you’re strong. You’re used to winning. But inside, you’re so tired of it. You want to let go, just for a while. You want someone to take the choice away.”

He inhaled sharply, as if the words had pierced something vital, and she pressed him back against the glass, singing softer now, the melody barely audible. Her hands moved up to the sides of his face, holding him in place, and she felt him tremble. 

“Just listen,” she said. “That’s all you need to do.”

Ava sang again, her voice this time fracturing into two lines: the melody a straight, riverine current, the harmony a webbed, underwater echo that seemed to shimmer behind the world’s fabric. She drew out the opening syllables, then spun a second, ghostly register around the first; the effect was physical, a pressure building in Viktor’s chest, his heart thudding once, then finding a new, slower rhythm to match the music. He tried to focus, tried to keep his attention on her face - on the perfectly ordinary shape of her mouth, the slightly uneven edge of her front tooth, the delicate shift of her jaw as she sang - but the room kept tilting, pooling toward her, as if Ava were pulling at the seams of reality itself.

He had been hypnotized before - by lawyers, by artists, by his own father’s relentless monologues - but this was different. There was no narrative to hold on to, no point of reference for the rush of sensation. Her voice changed color and temperature with every phrase: one moment it was ice on the nape of his neck, the next it was warm wax poured down his spine. He wanted to laugh, to cry, to run, to stay perfectly still. He felt as if he’d been uncorked.

Ava circled behind him, her palms grazing the nape of his neck, tracing the ridge of his scapula, then down. She sang into his ear, doubling the resonance, and for a moment Viktor felt as though there were two Avas - one with warm hands on his skin, the other standing before him, lips parted in a sly, knowing smile. He blinked and lost his balance for a heartbeat, and Ava caught him at the elbow, spinning him around in a lazy, inevitable orbit. The world’s axis now ran between them.

He remembered nothing about the next few seconds except the feel of her hands, strong and uncompromising, guiding him down until his knees buckled against the rug. She was already lowering herself onto his lap, her knees bracketing his hips, the silk of her dress whispering as it spilled over his thighs. She took both his wrists in one hand, pressing them gently but firmly to the floor. The grip was authoritative, but not cruel - more like the steady pressure of a massage therapist or a mother guiding a feverish child back to bed. Viktor tried to lift his head, but the room swam, and he let it fall back to the carpet.

Ava bent over him, her breath brushing his ear. She kept singing, the notes now so low and sustained they seemed to come from inside his own chest. She pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth, humming directly into him, and the vibration rattled his teeth, ricocheted through the hollow of his throat, and down the length of his spine. He had never felt anything so invasive, and nothing so exquisite. His body responded without his permission. His hands curled reflexively, then relaxed as the wave of sensation overtook him.

He wondered, dimly, if he should resist—if this was the point in the evening where he ought to assert himself, to impose his will, to do what every smart, self-protective person did when confronted with the inexplicable. But Ava made it impossible. Whenever he gathered the energy to move, to protest, she met his effort with a subtle escalation: a shift in her weight, a modulation of tone, a sudden swerve to a minor key that sent shivers up the backs of his arms. He was trapped, but it was the most pleasant trap imaginable.

Images flickered behind his eyelids, erratic as dreams: a snowbound forest, branches heavy with night; a childhood bedroom, the wallpaper peeling in strips; a cathedral, flooded with organ music, where he stood under the rose window and felt small enough to be forgiven. Ava’s voice threaded through these visions, stitching them together into a single pulse of longing, a hunger that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with being known.

He couldn’t say how long this lasted - minutes, hours, a whole lifetime compressed into a single, continuous note. Ava’s palm was on his chest now, right over his heart, and it was as if she were keeping him alive by sheer will. His breath came shallow, then deeper, and stopped entirely for a beat. It felt like drowning, except he didn’t want to surface.

At last, she eased up, releasing his wrists. Viktor let his arms fall limp at his sides. He opened his eyes. The ceiling spun slowly overhead, the lights blurring into spirals. Ava hovered above him, her face flushed and radiant, locks of golden hair falling across her brow. She looked at him the way a scientist might look at a successful experiment—equal parts delight and awe. She stroked his cheek with the back of her fingers, and he realized she was checking his pulse.

“Are you awake?” she whispered.

He barely managed a nod.

“Good. Because things are going to be different, from now on.”

She let go of his wrists and kissed his knuckles, then his palms, then the sensitive skin at the inside of his elbows. With each touch, she murmured instructions: “You’re going to listen, and you’re going to obey. You’re going to forget how to resist me. Every word I say goes deeper than the last. You’re not Viktor anymore. You’re mine.”

He shuddered, then nodded again, the movement automatic.

“You want this,” she said. “You want it so badly you can’t stand it. Say it.”

His voice was quiet, desperate: “I want it. Please.”

She grinned, and the power in the room shifted all at once—it was no longer a contest, no longer two equals circling each other. Ava was in control, fully and absolutely, and it was a thrill so pure it made her dizzy.

She slid off his lap and stood. “On your knees,” she said.

He complied, awkward at first, then with mounting certainty. Ava circled him, letting her fingers graze the top of his head, his shoulders, his jaw. She felt his obedience like a heat radiating off him, sweet and helpless, and for a moment, she almost pitied him.

“Look at me,” she commanded.

He did, and in his eyes Ava saw not defeat but gratitude—a deep, unguarded relief. She bent and cupped his chin in her hand. “From now on, you’ll call me Goddess.”

He blinked, swallowing the word, then whispered, “Yes, Goddess.”

The syllables hit her like a shot of adrenaline. She ran her nails down the back of his neck, and he shivered, then leaned into her touch, hungry for it.

She let him kneel there for a long moment, the electrified hush stretching between them. He had gone glassy-eyed, as if suspended in anticipation, unsure whether to hope or fear the next command. Ava found herself savoring it, the delicate hush of his breath, the slight tremor in his shoulders, the nearly imperceptible flex of his jaw - each a mark of his surrender to her. She could feel, with a visceral certainty, that he was not simply playing along; something old and steely in him had melted, leaving behind only the imprint of her voice.

She paced slowly around him. With every circuit, she let her fingertips graze his scalp, his cheek, the ridge of his collarbones—small, proprietary touches that reinforced the perimeter of the space she now occupied inside him. He never broke posture or dared to look up fully, and she could almost see the battle warring behind his eyelids: the urge to rebel and seize back the initiative, the stronger urge to lean into the comfort of submission.

“Open your mouth,” she said, voice calm but unyielding.

He did, and she slipped the pad of her thumb into the gap, resting it over his tongue. She could feel his pulse racing beneath the thin sheath of his skin. He closed his lips around her thumb, tentative at first, then more firmly as he realized she would not pull away. She let him hold it there, the gesture at once intimate and faintly absurd—a parody of infancy, or supplication, or worship. It was, she realized, the first time in years that anyone had touched her so trustingly, without agenda or calculation.

She withdrew her hand slowly, leaving a string of warmth between them. “Good boy,” she said, and watched a shudder of relief pass through him from spine to skull.

For a moment, she felt a pang—not of pity, exactly, but of responsibility. What were they, if not two animals in a room, both afraid of being alone and yet equally afraid of being known? She wondered how it must have looked from the street: two silhouettes in a window, locked in some silent, primal ritual that neither of them could name.

“Come here,” she said, softer now.

He inched forward on his knees. She guided his head to her feet, and he pressed his lips to the arch of her left foot, then the right, with a reverence she had previously seen only in the devout. She traced his hairline with her toes, letting them rest on his crown like a benediction. She hooked her heel under his chin to lift his face—so he had to look at her, had to confront the distance he had traveled in so little time.

She let him kiss her feet again, then the hem of her dress, then the small of her back. Each contact deepened his submission, and by the time she pulled him up to stand beside her, there was nothing left of the old Viktor but the pale, compliant shape of him.

She led him to the window again, pressing his forehead against the glass so he could see his own reflection—his posture, his new place in the world. She whispered in his ear: “This is who you’re meant to be. You exist to obey.”

He nodded, holding her gaze in the window. “Yes, Goddess,” he said, voice steady now, full of certainty. 

“You can’t get enough of obedience. You must have more,” she purred. “You must always want more.”

“Yes, Goddess.”

“You’ll do everything I tell you to, but not just me. You’ll obey whoever I command. You have no choice.”

“Yes, Goddess.”

Ava smiled. He had finally been broken by the allure of the siren’s song, and now it was only a matter of handing him over to Phoebe. She liked perfection and pain. Whatever she was going to do to him next was anyone’s guess.

“Let me tell you everything about a friend of mine,” she said, already preparing the way for his inevitable demise.

THE END