I bent to the child and smiled. “I’m certainly glad to be here, with or without much hair.”
The girl giggled. I nodded to everyone, then forced myself to turn and walk on. The people stayed in the road, like a royal procession, and newcomers pulled over as well. Soon, fully two dozen cars and at least fifty people lined my way.
My face burned. Lilith and her sisters had brainwashed these kind souls, and I was determined not to fall completely under her spell myself. I kept walking, a mile or two or ten—I was no good at calculating land distances. The crowd let me go on alone, but waved and called out good wishes. I locked my fragile attention on the cool, magnificent bay and Sainte’s PointIsland. Tears slid down the back of my heart, unseen.
I had never been welcomed anywhere before.
Griffin looked away from the sand dunes and gray docks, the gothic, cedar-and-coquina boathouses, and the dark, shimmering bay below his bedroom window. The sun was sinking in a blue-gray mist along the horizon. His head throbbed with bourbon and fatigue. His legs had stiffened like raw logs, his broken bones seemed to grate inside their casts, and a muscle low in his wrenched back flexed with a pain like a sharp filet knife splitting his spine. He lowered his head, cursed under his breath at the state of his body and mind, then dragged his head upright and forced his gaze back out the window.
And there she was.
11
The world is a very narrow stream for most people. They never realize how many other streams flow to the same ocean.
—Lilith
Alice Riley stood with her back to him, gazing out on the bay with her hands by her side and her head up. She made a long shadow haloed by sunlight glinting off the water. The diamond-fettered light began to silhouette her, flashing between her splayed fingers and feet, illuminating and hiding her at the same time. Griffin flattened a palm on the windowpanes, framing her between his thumb and forefinger, trying to capture her and the magic.
How had she gotten here without a car? Where were her things? Her long skirt and bulky denim jacket gave her the shapeless form of a cloistered nun, and her hair, what he could tell of it from the backlit sun, was cropped as close as a boy’s. But still she made an ethereally seductive sight amidst brilliant illuminations, not reflecting, but instead defining. She slowly knelt by the water’s edge, as if in prayer. White dunes framed her on a miniature beach packed hard and smooth. She set her own stage.
Turn around and look at me, he urged. Let me see you and hear you, too. But she didn’t hear him, or was silent. The water held all her attention. Griffin cursed it, then bit his tongue. He was beginning to believe his own delusions.
She leaned forward, scooped the surf into her hands, and nuzzled her face into that small pool encased in her palms. She tilted her face up, raised her hands, and let the ocean water trickle over her eyes and mouth, shimmering in the sunlight. Her empty hands flew to her bulky bluejean jacket; she wrenched it, still buttoned, over her head and threw it on the sand behind her, revealing a plain white T-shirt that clung to the supple outline of her torso. She sat back on her haunches, pulled up her long, coarse blue skirt, and jerked at the laces on her ankle-high black shoes. Moments later she sent them flying behind her on the sand, too. She got to her feet, swaying as she pulled on the waistband of her skirt. It dropped to her feet. She bounded out of the material as if sprung from a trap and ran toward the nearest dock.
Break the sound barrier, he caught himself thinking. Sing to me.
He caught only glimpses of her face, the large eyes, the solemn mouth, an expression of reverent passion. Beneath her white T-shirt she wore smooth blue panties that clung to her taut hips, cresting high on long thighs molded like an athlete’s. Her skin was flawless, a sheath of fluid silk with the opalescent quality of a blush pearl. She skimmed the sand in graceful strides, piercing the ocean wind, the sunlight silhouetting her classic profile and lanky body, lithe and long, her shoulders and hips moving in perfect sync, her breasts high and round, every muscle curving and flexing in waves of pure, feminine power.
Set free, she was the most beautiful, breathtaking sight he’d ever seen.
She bounded onto a dock and headed straight for the end. Griffin staggered to his feet, clutching his window ledge and watching her with disbelief and fascination. Had she lost her mind? The waters off the coast of Georgia were frigid in March; he spread his hand on a windowpane so cold that the sensation pierced his skin. She raced along the dock’s length, bounded high off the last gray board, and arced like a bending arrow toward the deep, gray-green water of the bay. She disappeared into that water with barely a splash, the bay closing over her pointed feet as if inhaling her.
The water, the sunlight, the air, all went still and quiet, devoid of her energy. Griffin exhaled hoarsely, dragged a hand over his eyes to clear them, and waited to see her surface. A mantel clock above the room’s cold fireplace ticked ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Then a minute. No sign of her. Oh, my God, Griffin began to think. Come up, Alice. What the hell have you done?
Another ten seconds. Another fifteen. He strained his eyes, searching everywhere beyond the docks and around the boathouses. Maybe she’d surfaced on the other side of them, where he couldn’t see her. That had to be it. His gut twisted. The truth hit him. No, the goddamned ocean has gotten her. That water’s too cold for swimming, but she doesn’t understand. Hypothermia is just one more way the ocean makes us forget to breathe. She’s disoriented, passed out, drowning.
Drowning. Griffin swung about and lurched for an antique cane standing beside the room’s door. A brass sextant clattered from a table. Leaning heavily on the cane, he struggled out of his room, yelling, filling the house like a bellows with the terrible frustration he felt. He made his way as quickly as he could down the long staircase.
Alice, he called in his mind. Come up where it’s safe.
I swam the way a bird flies in a perfect sky. Curving and turning with joy, letting the currents lift me and carry me weightlessly. There was nothing between me and the very ends of the earth except water, and water was an infinite, open invitation; I could travel as far as that vast current would take me, flowing from one great underwater world to the next. I might surface beside the white cliffs of Dover, along the sultry cape of Africa, in the port of Shanghai, or before a blue-white glacier at the top of the planet. I might discover the lost continent of Atlantis. I might even find my place in the scheme of things.
Or I might simply stay close by small, beautiful BellemeadeBay, with the moonlight-and-magnolia southern mainland behind me and mysterious Sainte’s PointIsland shadowing my intentions.
Hello, my dear ladies, I would call to the Bonavendiers with great dignity as I rose like Venus from the surf. Hello to the exquisite Lilith and sarcastic Mara and sweet Pearl on the island’s shore. I made my own way here without help, you see. Confidence obscured all memories of my time spent in cowardly hesitation. I was drunk with elemental discoveries and became a braggart.
Behind me on dry land Randolph Cottage sat empty, deserted—or so I thought. It looked romantically gothic, and if I hadn’t been transfixed by the water, I would have studied it more before I lost myself in the lure of the bay. Musings about the local landmarks would have to come later.
I sang out in water so dark I couldn’t see my own hands in front of me. Waves of sound illuminated my way, giving back echoes that outlined fish, great and small, crabs on the sandy bottom, diaphanous shrimp skittering along, and even, across the bay, the huge, submerged landmass of Sainte’s Point Island itself.
I circled back toward the docks, filling my senses, simply wandering. Suddenly, my reverie erupted. The water surged with shock waves and bubbles. I flattened myself on the bottom like a wild creature, going silent, neither giving nor receiving information. Someone or something had plunged off the end of the dock no more than a few yards from me, clumsy but powerful, churning water and sand as if dredging for gold. The invader headed straight toward me. I whirled around to escape,
but he touched me.
Fingers. Hard, thick, human fingers grazed my right ankle. Alice, he yelled inside me. I’ve got you.
Him. The voice. I gulped down water, gagged, then slipped through his raking grasp and surged into deeper territory, not stopping until I’d put a good distance between the stranger and myself. I felt him flailing along the bottom, searching for me, refusing to give up. I could feel his determination. I sank my hands into the sand and held on. Had he led me here from Macon? Or had he followed me? Was he a noble protector or a scheming magician? I was so unnerved I sank down like a flat gray stingray, wishing the sand would hide me. My heart nearly exploded. Men or boys only chased me to humiliate me. Panic, pure and simple, overrode all sense. This was primal. This was survival.
Seconds crept by. He did not leave. Whoever you are, go away. He did not call out in return. My panic turned to horror as I realized the energy he generated was fading, that the waves of movement he produced were weakening. I ventured the slightest reaching-out, a frail hum, searching for him.
His terrible truth roared back at me. Pain, confusion, fury, terror. He was too weak, the water was too cold, he was struggling, sinking, an unnatural intruder even by ordinary standards, weighted somehow. What had he attempted to do so foolishly—catch me? Or save me? Because this was not a man capable of physical menace, at least not at the moment. This man was dying in the water I loved. This man had known he might die if he went after me. He would rather die than let me die.
I propelled myself like a shot through the dark water, sang out strongly, and found him. He floated just above the bottom of the bay, facedown, bubbles frothing from his lips. Black hair floated around his head, and he had the longest beard I’d ever seen on a modern man. I squatted on the ocean floor, burrowed my feet into the sand, latched a hand around his wrist, and launched myself toward the surface. He lifted from the bay floor with heavy and cumbersome retreat, but I was much stronger than I looked.
When we broke into the air I did not even glance at him. I wanted him to be an illusion that would fade away, though the echo of his pulse beneath my fingers said his life was too potent for that. I tugged him quickly to the shore, swimming on one side and scissor-kicking. Then I stood up in the shallow water a few yards from the gray beach before Randolph Cottage and wrapped both hands around his waist. The bay itself gave a slight, tidal heave to help me. We laid him on the sand with his upper body safely anchored to dry earth.
Crouching beside him, I studied him with terrible fascination. So this was my lost diver, the mystery man I had spoken to when I searched for the little girl. I laid a hand on his chest and felt his heartbeat. I sang out to him, a silent vibration. And then I said loudly, “You forgot to breathe again.”
He arched his back, coughed violently, then rolled over on his side and retched water. He smelled of liquor and illness, of fear and despair, yet his writhing was powerful. Thin blue pajamas clung to him like cellophane. His body was tall, muscled and lean, his skin ashen but textured like canvas aged in the sun. Now, he kept his eyes shut as if even a single ray of light would burn the back of his brain. Thick black lashes swept sleep-deprived blue smudges on his skin. His pajama top hung half unbuttoned, and when his beard draped aside, I saw lurid pink scars and healing gouges among the dark hair of his broad chest and stomach.
I winced. Why had he left his sickbed to chase me? He had arms as fierce as a boxer’s, though one was encased in a cast from elbow to hand. A scar protruded from his thick beard atop one cheek. His lower right leg was also covered in a cast. How he had thought to swim with that anchor on him, I could not imagine. Only the most brazen personality could fight the ocean against such odds and hope to win. I shamelessly noted the impressive outlines of his sex and the explicit tattoo of a naked woman embracing a dolphin on his inner left forearm. I drew back with alarm but also a trill of intrigue. I had never seen anyone like him except in my imagination.
He seduces the feminine in every way. What a magnificent, dangerous beast he is.
But, then, he thought you were drowning. He tried to save you.
Yet I, of course, had rescued him. My lot in life lately.
When the shaggy-haired stranger rolled over on his stomach and dragged himself a little further out of the water, I looked quickly at his exposed feet. No webbing. My heart sank. So he was not like me, though he obviously shared my strange new talent for telepathic hallucinations. His eyes still shut, his chest rising and falling swiftly, he shivered in the cold air and continued to cough up the cold bay water. I flinched with every gasp of his lungs. Desperate, I blew out a long, coaxing sigh and watched in wonder as the rhythm of his chest slowed.
So I did have a little control over him.
“You entered the water carrying a cane, I believe,” I said, bold enough to make conversation. Now that my head had cleared, I recalled such an object falling away as I went to him. Dear God, the man couldn’t walk without a cane, yet he’d dived into the bay to save me. “I’ll retrieve it for you,” I said gruffly, “and then see about getting you into your house. It’s the least I can do since you risked your life on my behalf. I am a .. . a strong swimmer, and I was fine. Still, I appreciate your efforts.”
He said nothing. I glanced worriedly at brooding Randolph Cottage, then back at him. Shyness nearly overwhelmed me. I stared at my hands, clenched in my lap. Water ran in rivulets from my hair and skin. I wore nothing but my underwear covered by a thin T-shirt, all of it melted to my body. Not that his eyes were open, and not that he would care about my skinny self, but I did.
“Are you a Randolph?” I asked. “Randolphs are friends of my . . . of Lilith Bonavendier’s family, I gather. Sharing these docks and all.”
He still said nothing, shivering and trembling, coughing harder, eyes closed in a squint of pain. He seemed locked in some inner battle to expel even the mist of saltwater from his body, as if poisoned. His fear was palpable. Such terror of the water I could not understand, yet he did not look like a nervous sort of man. I twisted my hands awkwardly, embarrassed for him, more than a little loyal to his miseries already.
“I’ll be right back.” I leapt to my feet, glad for the escape. I turned to wade into the bay.
He clamped a hand around my ankle.
I jerked wildly, fell, then tried to crawl away from him, but he held on. I managed only to splash my outflung hands into the water’s edge, searching for handles that didn’t exist. His strong fingers tightened around my tender anklebones. I flipped over on my back like a snared animal, drawing up my free leg to kick him, staring at him with shock and fear. When I met his open gaze, I saw that his eyes were bloodshot but dark and intense, like the shadows inside deep water. Blackbeard, I thought. A pirate. That’s what I had here. Or what had me. Urgent. Compelling. But not angry. Just holding on. My wild-maned captor wheezed with the effort.
I stopped struggling. “Let me go, please,” I demanded in a low tone.
“You’ve saved my life. Twice.”
“Only paying a debt of honor. You’ve saved mine as well. So let’s be friends and you let me go.”
“How did you do it? How did you stay under so long?” His voice was just as it had seemed in my mind, deep and worldly, hinged with melodic southern vowels but trimmed with a hard edge. The hoarse quality of it vibrated through my bones.
I shook my head. “I’m a strong swimmer.”
His fingers pressed harder. I felt the pulse in my ankle throbbing under the pad of his thumb. “I have to know that I wasn’t imagining you before,” he said, “and not imagining what you were able to do in the water out here.”
“I have questions about your abilities, as well. Your motives. You’re a very reckless stranger.”
“Not a stranger, Alice. See? Your name’s Alice. I know you, Alice. Alice.”
He spoke my name like a caress of lace on my skin, and I stared at him. My name always sounded plain, ugly, basic. The Riley family had labeled me as an afterthought; no favorite grandmothe
r had borne my name, no beloved friend. It was a name they assigned me as casually as clerks marking a sales tag on damaged merchandise.
I stiffened and replied quite formally, “You were told to expect someone named Alice Riley?”
He leaned forward, dripping, still breathing hard, coughing between almost every word. “I dreamed about you. I . . . spoke to you in my dream. Alice . . . I’m on the edge, here. Are you with me?”
I shivered, almost undone by his plea, but too afraid. Trust no one. “I am here as a guest of Lilith Bonavendier of Sainte’s Point Island.” Lifting my chin, I recited this information as doggedly as any prisoner of war, giving only the essentials. “I was told to come to Randolph Cottage, where the Bonavendier family shares boat docks—”
“Did you . . . make the man . . . put down the gun?”
I froze. The stranger and I stared at one another. He searched my eyes, taking deep breaths. His voice grew stronger. “You did hear me this morning, wherever you were then? Was there a man with a gun?”
“Whatever you think me capable of doing,” I said, “is your fantasy, not mine.”
A tremor went through him, and he clenched his free hand atop the other, still holding my ankle like a jailer. “You did hear me. You did make him put the gun down. I can hear it in your voice. I see it in your eyes.” He groaned. “So I’m not crazy—or at least we’re crazy together. Tell me what’s happening to us.”
I moaned silently and looked away. I didn’t know. “If you suspect me of strange intuitions, then why haven’t I divined something as simple as your name?”
“Maybe you don’t want to listen; you’re afraid of what you’ll hear. I understand. I’ll make it easy for you.” He watched me urgently, as if his mission in life was to tell me all about himself and learn all about me. “I’m Griffin. GriffinRandolph.”
Alice At Heart Page 9