by Skye Malone
I tried not to fidget uncomfortably. I wasn’t sure what to say.
“But you used to, right? I mean…” She looked uneasy.
“Yeah.”
At the tension in my tone, she grimaced. “I’m sorry. It’s just–”
“Weird.”
“Freaky.”
I couldn’t stop myself from shifting on the seat this time.
Out of nowhere, she gave a scoffing chuckle. I glanced to her, confused.
“Sorry,” she explained. “Noah… when I found out about him, he said that, and then I answered sort of the same way and I just…” The chuckle came again, the sound a bit more strained. “Yeah.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond.
Running a hand through her blonde hair, she let out a breath. “So what’s it like?” she asked, a lighter note in her voice. “Underwater, I mean.”
I studied her warily. “It’s alright.”
Her face took on a dry expression.
My caution didn’t fade. “Are you really okay about all this?”
“I’m going to be.”
My brow twitched up. She sighed.
“Chloe, you’ve been my friend since forever. And now you’re part… that. It’s taking some getting used to. But I will. I promise I will.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I’d pretty much suck if I dumped our friendship over it, wouldn’t I?”
Incredulity bubbled up and I gave a choked laugh.
She echoed the sound and then reached out, putting her arms around me. I squeezed her tight into a hug, tears stinging my eyes.
“Just don’t stab me with those spiky things, eh?” she warned.
My breath caught and I straightened. “I wouldn’t. I have to want them to–”
“I was joking,” she told me with a flat look.
I managed a jerky nod. Her eyes took on a sympathetic cast.
“Freaky, huh?” she said quietly.
“Takes some getting used to.”
Her lip twitched. “What’s it like in the ocean?”
I shrugged. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s strange. Like… they have a whole world down there. Cities, countries, royalty…” I glanced back to the living room, uncertain if I should tell her about Zeke.
“Wow,” Baylie said.
I blinked, my focus returning to her. “Yeah.”
She looked away.
I hesitated, catching something in her expression. “What?”
Baylie shook her head. “Nothing. Just… sounds interesting.” She drew a breath. “You miss it?”
I paused. I hadn’t really thought about it. There hadn’t been much chance, what with everything that’d happened since. “I guess.”
Her brow rose. “You guess? Come on, you always wanted to go to the ocean, Chloe. How could you not find this awesome? I mean, who doesn’t want to…” She hesitated. “You know, breathe underwater and all that.”
I looked down. I’d wanted to visit the ocean since I was a kid, it was true. But my body changing like it did still seemed bizarre, at least when I was up here on land and almost no one else was like me.
“I just think it’d be cool,” Baylie finished.
I glanced to her and spotted that expression again, only this time I realized what it was.
She wanted to go there. See those things.
And she couldn’t.
I swallowed. “It has its downsides,” I tried. “Sharks… cults… mercenaries who tried to kill us.”
“Mercenaries who tried to kill you,” she repeated. “Why?”
I hesitated. “Long story.”
She blinked, looking away. “Well, besides that, then. Cool otherwise.”
A moment passed.
“So… that Zeke guy.”
I tensed. “What about him?”
“He–”
The door opened. Ellie leaned her head out.
“Um, could you all come inside?” she asked. “Olivia wants to talk.”
It took me a second to regroup. “Yeah, alright.”
Ellie hesitated and then disappeared back into the house.
“Nervous little thing, isn’t she?” Baylie commented quietly.
I glanced over. “You trust her?”
Baylie seemed surprised by the question. “I guess. I mean, she did help us get you and Zeke away from her grandfather.”
I looked down, nodding. I knew that, just like I knew I should probably let it be enough to convince me she was okay.
But Niall had seemed trustworthy too, right up until the moment he turned on us.
“Come on,” Baylie said, rising to her feet.
I nodded again. Working to push the thoughts aside, I followed her into the house.
In the study, Zeke was sitting on the couch, looking no more rested than yesterday. “Morning,” he said with a nod when we came in.
I paused. “You sleep?”
He glanced to the window. “I–”
Noah came down the stairs.
“Hey,” Baylie said to him. “I thought I told you to get some rest.”
Awkward hesitation flashed over Noah’s face.
My own expression wasn’t much different. They’d both stayed up. The dark circles under their eyes were more than enough evidence of that. And from what I knew of them, I could guess what they’d been doing – each keeping an eye on the neighborhood with me, albeit from different places in the house.
The thought just made the awkwardness worse. Not knowing what else to do, I fled toward the kitchen.
I couldn’t stifle a breath of relief when Baylie was the only one who followed me.
Over the stovetop, Olivia was scrambling eggs in a cast iron skillet, while Ellie was filling glasses with orange juice. The worry hadn’t left the girl’s expression – I was starting to suspect it never did – and her lip slipped between her teeth when we came in.
“Good morning,” Baylie allowed with a wary look to the girl.
“Hi there,” Olivia replied, smiling.
“Anything we can help with?” Baylie asked.
“Oh, no, that’s fine. Just have a seat. This’ll be ready in a second.” She paused, glancing to me. “If you want food, that is?”
I froze, my hand on the chair to pull it away from the table. I could see Baylie’s incredulous expression from the corner of my eye. Discomfort increasing by the moment, I kept myself from looking to her.
“Yeah, sure,” I answered while I finished sitting down. “Thanks.”
Olivia smiled again. “I wasn’t sure if the distance from the water affected that. Made you need to eat on a more human schedule, I mean. What about sleep? Did you need that at all last night?”
I hesitated again. “Not really.”
She glanced back, and from her face, she must have caught something in my expression. “I’m sorry,” she said, chagrinned. “I don’t mean to bombard you with questions.”
“Zeke knows more about this stuff than me.”
She scooped the scrambled eggs onto two plates. “Zeke’s not half-landwalker, though. He’s never been like a human.”
I tensed, the words reminding me of the prejudices my parents had against dehaians. The way they’d called dehaians soulless creatures and murderers. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Olivia’s brow drew down at the tone. “Just that he wouldn’t know what it’s like to need food or sleep every day, or to have to worry about not seeing in the dark. That sort of thing.”
She gave a shrug as though she couldn’t understand my caution.
“Oh,” I managed, feeling Baylie watching me.
Olivia set the plates in front of us. Ellie ghosted after her, placing the glasses nearby.
I studied the eggs, suddenly wondering if I should trust the food. People had tried to drug us before…
“Are you okay?” Baylie asked, a touch of caution in her voice.
I glanced to her. She was eyeing Ellie.
>
The girl swallowed. “Grandpa started calling this morning.”
I tensed all over again.
“Did you answer the phone?” Baylie continued.
Ellie shook her head hurriedly.
Baylie let out a breath. Ellie’s face tightened like she agreed with the sentiment and then she returned to the counter to get her own juice.
“Your parents haven’t stopped trying to reach us either,” Baylie told me in a low voice.
I grimaced.
Silence fell as Ellie and Olivia came back to the table. Their forks clinked against their plates and, seeing them eating the food, I started in as well.
This paranoia was as strange as everything else that’d changed in my life.
But recognizing that didn’t make the fear go away.
My stomach twisting with nervous energy, I stuck the fork into another bite of the scrambled eggs.
“So Ellie said you wanted to talk to us?” Baylie prompted Olivia after a moment. “Was it about the food thing?”
I could hear the hesitation in her voice, but Olivia just shook her head.
“No,” she answered with a smile. “Like I said, I have so many questions, but that can come later. At the moment, I wanted to talk about what I can do to help you.”
I waited, still cautious.
“Ellie told you I’m one of the landwalker elders, right?”
I nodded.
“There are about fifty of us, and I can assure you,” she glanced to Ellie with a hint of an apologetic look, “we’re not all like Doctor Brooks. Before you came in, Ellie was sharing a bit more of what happened to you and Zeke while you were in Iowa, and all I can say is that I’m sorry. I respect Ellie’s grandfather for the work he’s done on behalf of those few half-and-half kids who’ve been born in the past several decades, and I know that to some extent, he was just doing as your parents asked. But for the other things…”
I fought to keep from shifting in the seat. I didn’t want to remember.
She seemed to see my discomfort. Her apologetic expression strengthened. “We don’t all think like him. And with a decent amount of certainty, I can tell you that if – when – the others who feel as I do learn about what happened… they won’t be pleased.”
I returned my gaze to the plate, unsure what to say to that.
“So how can you help?” Baylie asked.
Olivia sighed. “Well, like I said, I’ll be telling them what happened, but telling them isn’t enough. How old are you, Chloe?”
My brow furrowed warily. “Seventeen.”
Olivia nodded as though she’d expected the answer. “So you’re a minor in the eyes of the law, which means that your parents still have legal claim over you. And after what they did – and given the connections that Harman has – there is the possibility that they will attempt to bring you home with them and expose you to the treatments a second time.”
I shivered. There was more than a ‘possibility’. A lot more. Mom and Dad wouldn’t listen to me – to anyone – when we told them that I’d almost died from those ‘treatments’. They’d just believe that they knew best and wait for their opportunity to try again.
“So this is where the elders need to help you,” Olivia continued. “You’re special, Chloe. Unlike any half-landwalker, half-dehaian person born in… well, our history. You’ve survived changing into a dehaian, you’ve come back on land all this way and even brought a full-blood dehaian with you. And while, yes, I’d say that needs to be studied, I don’t mean the way Harman would. And I don’t mean right now. At the moment, we have bigger concerns.
“Ellie said she told you about the story of a creature called the Beast.”
“A bit,” I allowed.
“I realize that must sound preposterous, and I thank you for not deciding we are all lunatics and leaving at your first opportunity.”
Olivia smiled. I tried not to grimace, uncertain if I should mention the Sylphaen. Or if I should give her any extra information about my life at all.
“This creature is drawn by someone like you. From everything we know, the Beast is more a force than a physical being, and it feeds on certain kinds of magic – including that of the original dehaians. Thus, those original dehaians divided their abilities, leaving one side without magic in the traditional sense and trapped on land, while the other had magic but was trapped in the ocean. And this worked. It took years for this splitting to fully drain the Beast of energy, but eventually, the creature faded into virtual nonexistence.
“Until you.
“Even the tiniest bit of magic like the original dehaians was enough to start the Beast waking again. And now it’s returning. So this is why we need the other elders’ help. We need to figure out what to do about this – and soon, before the Beast becomes any stronger. And we need to protect you in the process.”
“Why should I trust you?” I asked quietly.
She smiled again, as though she’d expected the question. “Because, at the moment, I wonder if you have a better option. The landwalker elders are incredibly connected. We have many options at our disposal to help you, in the legal sphere and beyond. But Harman will try to use his connections in order to get you back, for his own reasons and possibly on behalf of your parents. I imagine he’s already started working toward finding you and Zeke again. Yet I’d hazard a guess that you can’t simply return to the ocean. Even if that didn’t stand a chance of strengthening the Beast, I assume you left for a reason. And I have gotten the impression,” her gaze flicked over me and Baylie, “that reason was not homesickness.”
I didn’t respond.
“You can try to stay away from them, Chloe, but the police watch for runaways and they will bring you home to your parents eventually. Additionally, you were recently reported as the victim of a kidnapping, correct? That news was passed around among the elders, even before the police chief in your town told us you had come home. We watch out for our own, even if their parents have cut ties with us to a great degree. But technically ‘found’ or not, the point remains you will be viewed as the victim of a crime. The police will be even more motivated to question you and then return you to your parents as a result. However, if you allow us, the elders who value life and knowledge as I do will make certain that does not happen. You’re too valuable to us, and the threat of the Beast is too real.”
“But you want this Beast thing gone too, right?” Baylie cut in, her voice hard. “Why should we trust you won’t just kill her to make that happen?”
My gaze twitched to Baylie, grateful for her question even if I was surprised she’d asked it.
I thought I was the only one finding themselves thinking in that extreme of terms.
“Because it wouldn’t work,” Olivia answered patiently. “And because it would be a terrible idea – ethically as well as logically. Magic… it’s energy, but it is also unique in the world. It can take forms, can affect physical things, much like it causes Chloe’s body to change shape. But when a person with magic is killed, my understanding based on our research is that their death triggers a release of that energy – which, in Chloe’s case, would essentially be giving the Beast an influx of exactly what it needs to grow stronger.”
I swallowed. The Sylphaen wanted to kill me. Thought that they could take what I was and make themselves that way. They thought it would defeat the Beast or at least give them a chance to fight it.
And now I could see how they thought that was possible. At least the ‘taking what I was’ part. If they killed me, if this magical energy thing was released when I died and they knew how to capture that and use it for themselves somehow…
I shuddered. This was madness. My whole life had become madness. And the Sylphaen were mad too. If they did what they planned, it’d just bring this Beast thing back faster.
The urge to run rose up again for the first time in a while, though I knew there still wasn’t anywhere to go.
“Plus,” E
llie added quietly, “if the elders kill Chloe, the landwalkers would never stand a chance of getting our dehaian sides back. It’d be over. By helping her, maybe we can figure out how to become dehaian again and keep the Beast from coming back at the same time.”
Olivia glanced to Ellie, a tinge of pity flashing through her eyes and then swiftly buried.
“There are numerous reasons to help Chloe survive,” the woman said, “so please, know that we are not out to harm you.”
I hesitated. I wished Noah and Zeke were in here. I wasn’t sure why Olivia hadn’t asked them to come for breakfast, except perhaps she’d noticed they hadn’t slept. She seemed decently observant – creepily so, actually. And maybe Noah was listening, if he hadn’t fallen asleep yet.
It would have been nice to have more people that I trusted around me right now.
“No.” Baylie set down her drink. “No, we’re not going to them. We know about these elders, and about their ‘connections’. We know what you guys have really been up to.”
Olivia’s brow drew down. “I’m not sure I understand you.”
“The greliarans.”
“Greliarans?” Olivia looked to Ellie, who wouldn’t meet her eyes. “How do you know about greliarans?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Baylie replied. “We know you all made a deal with them. That in exchange for capturing people like her,” she twitched her head toward me, “you offered to let the greliarans kill them after you got done experimenting. We’re not taking her anywhere – or Zeke either – just so you guys can treat them like lab rats and give them up to the greliarans when you’re done.”
Olivia stared at her. “I don’t know what you heard, but we have no such deal. Greliarans are animals. They’re barely capable of being in the human world – at best, they’re barely even sane.”
Baylie’s face darkened.
At her anger, Olivia paused, a quizzical look in her eyes. “Now, I will admit,” the woman allowed, “that all those things aside, we have worked in favor of the greliarans in the past. We decided long ago that it was best to keep them contained on the coast. They don’t seem to react to us the way they do with dehaians, but that doesn’t mean we’re interested in having them around. Desperation could still drive them to try killing us. And they seem to prefer the area anyway. As such, we’ve used our influence to get zoning decisions in their favor, keeping them isolated and preventing humans from coming near their homes, and we’ve agreed to clean up minor crimes when their tendencies get the better of them. We’ve even helped those that do end up in prison by making certain they are isolated so their secret does not come out, all in exchange for their agreement to stay in coastal areas and away from us. That arrangement could be seen as regrettable and on some level, I would rather we had never created it, but,” she shook her head, “that’s still a far cry from what you’re talking about.”