by Dean Murray
Chapter 23
I stepped out of the bathroom with Bethany floating next to my ear, and had the satisfaction of seeing Jace's eyes go wide as he took in my swimsuit and shorts. Mission successful.
Breakfast went by in a flash. Ari agreed to do the cleanup—probably hoping to win some points with Jace—and then frowned when Jace headed outside to pull the SUV off of the trailer. I thought about staying inside the RV to avoid pissing Ari off even further, but then Jace knocked on the window and asked for help.
I'm pretty sure that Jace could have done it all by himself, but I wasn't going to complain about the chance to spend a little time with him, even if it was still crazy cold outside.
As soon as the SUV was down on the ground I jumped inside and turned the heat on full. Jace stowed the ramps back on the trailer and then disappeared inside the RV again. I wanted to follow him, but I wasn't quite up to facing the cold again. When he reappeared ten minutes later he was wearing board shorts and carrying a black hoodie.
A few minutes later Ari was done with the dishes and both vehicles were on their way to the lake. It was a short drive, and once we arrived Kat parked the RV and Jace proceeded to move the trailer over to the SUV while she changed into her suit.
Within fifteen minutes of our arrival Jace was using the SUV to back the jet skis down into the water and Ari was bouncing up and down in excitement. Kat reappeared with life jackets as I was pushing both watercraft into the water. She tossed the second life jacket to Ari and then jumped on the closest jet ski and took off like a bat out of hell. Ari was only a few seconds behind her and Bethany was a glittering green streak zipping around Ari's head.
"I'm sorry you're not going to get much time on the lake, Selene."
"Are you kidding? As cold as it is out there, I'm not in any hurry to get on the water."
Jace grinned. "We are far enough south now that it will warm up pretty quickly, but you're right, if either of them go overboard right now they're going to turn into popsicles. Let me get the SUV parked and then I'll meet you over on the beach."
It wasn't much of a beach, but it was big enough that there was a chance nobody would be bothering us this late in the year. I walked across the cold, wet sand until I found a spot where the sand went up high enough that it was dry.
Jace appeared a minute later with towels, drinks, and a bottle of sunscreen. "I parked the SUV in a different spot so if your dad shows up it will look like I showed up at a different time."
"That's a good idea—I wouldn't have thought of that."
He laid the two towels out next to each other and handed me a bottle of water. "Yeah, well, I've got a few centuries of experience at being sneaky under my belt. I am sorry though that we backed you into lying to your dad."
I shrugged. "I don't like it, but I need to get comfortable with the idea that I'm going to have to do a lot of deceiving over the next little while. As long as I'm unwilling to tell them everything about what's going on with me, there just isn't any other option."
"I'm sorry, Selene. That really sucks."
"Yeah, it feels like every step I take lately puts an even bigger rift between my family and me, but there just isn't a good way to tell them this. I guess I should just be grateful that I have you and Kat. I can't even begin to imagine how much it would suck to be finding this all out through trial and error, all the while not having anyone to talk to about what was going on."
Jace nodded. "Obviously neither Kat nor I remember that far back, but some of my earliest journal entries seem to indicate that was what it was like for me. It doesn't sound like it was much fun. There are however some offsetting benefits."
He pulled a thin silvery bar out of his pocket and dropped it into my hand. "Like this."
"What is it?"
"It's a bar of solid platinum. That particular one is worth about eighty thousand dollars."
I'd had a good hold on the bar, but when he said how much it was worth I nearly dropped it. I tried to give it back to him, moving like it was hot to the touch and burning me, but Jace refused to take it. He seemed amused, which just made the whole thing even more frustrating.
"That's worth as much as my dad makes in two years of working, Jace. Please take it."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want to break it. There's no way I could ever replace it and I don't want to be even further in debt to you."
"You're not going to break it, Selene, it's a solid bar of metal. Besides, it's not mine—it's yours."
I shook my head as his words started to sink in. "No, it's too much. It's a nice sentiment, but I can't accept a gift like this. Really, the clothes were too much, but this is—"
"It's not a gift, Selene. It's yours. It was in the box of stuff that you gave me to hold onto before you died. There are five more in there, but it's a moot point because you're going to be able to make them all by yourself shortly."
I held up the bar and shook my head in amazement. "You're just giving me a half-million dollars' worth of platinum? Do you know how crazy that sounds?"
"It's just money, Selene. How did you think that Kat and I maintained our lifestyle?"
"I don't know. Kat talked about successful stock investments. I guess I figured that was basically right, that you had spent the first part of your lives working and earning money so that you could invest it and then live off of the interest and dividends."
"Yeah, there's a little of that, but mostly we're careful not to tie up too much of our money in stuff like that because no matter how careful you are there is always a way for someone to tie it back to you. Mostly we just transmute clay into platinum, silver or gold, and then sell it on the black market. Like I said, you're almost to the point where you'll be able to do that yourself, at which point you'll never have to worry about money again—at least not in the long term."
For the second, or maybe third time that day I wanted to cry. "I don't even know what to say. You have no idea what this means to me."
"Actually, I do. Kat and I have hired private investigators to look into each girl we found online who looked like you. Nothing too intrusive, but enough that we would know the lie of the land if it turned out that you were…well, you. We know that your dad is up to his eyeballs in debt right now and that he's maxed out his earning potential there at the factory. I was planning on doing something for your family even if you turned out not to be who we thought you were, but this is even better because it's the old you helping you out—so there's no reason not to accept the assistance."
That soured my mood. "What if you're wrong, Jace? What if I'm not really the latest incarnation of the girl you knew? Maybe all the signs that you think point to me being her are just dumb luck."
He grabbed my hand before I could get all of the way to my feet. "They aren't. I knew they weren't all along, but Bethany's arrival seals the deal. Fairies aren't wrong about their creators. Besides, you've stopped sleeping as much and I can feel your gift flaring up from time to time as it tries to make the switch to being fully active."
It was hard to say whether his words or his touch was more calming, but the two combined were more than sufficient to do the trick. I relaxed back down to the beach towel he'd laid out for me and took a couple of deep breaths.
"Okay, sorry for freaking out."
"It's perfectly normal at this stage. It gets easier to accept everything once you use your power for the first time."
"I guess we'd better get started training then. There's no telling how long the jet skis will keep Ari entertained and I'm making us waste time."
"I could always do a minor time bend—something like two or three times normal speed wouldn't cost me much in the way of baseline memories and it would make a big difference with regards to how much time you have to practice…"
"Nope, I've wised up to your tricks now. There isn't any reason to bend time. It would just mean that I'll end up falling asleep at the same time as Ari. We'll probably have to do that kind of stuff later, but not right now
—not since my dad isn't expecting us home before he goes off to work again. What do you want to start with?"
"I was thinking we should try a transmutation. We can always change things up later if the transmuting doesn't work. Go ahead and immerse yourself in your new default emotion."
I blushed. Unlike Kat, Jace didn't seem to mind that I'd picked a positive emotion for my new default, but he would mind if he realized that I'd stopped practicing. There had been a lot more excitement and disruption than normal over the last twelve hours or so, but I still needed to hold up my end of the bargain.
I closed my eyes and let the memory of Jace saving me from Sandra well up inside of me until it had pushed the embarrassment away. I felt a surge of relief at how easily the memory came back to me and at how strong the feeling was, but the relief was just a flicker around the edge of the happiness. It didn't interfere—I was ready.
"Okay, I'm feeling it."
"How strong is it?"
"Um…strong? How do you describe the strength of an emotion?"
Jace's laugh was so clear and happy that it actually managed to add to my sense of wellbeing and happiness. The feeling spiked to new heights and for the briefest of instants I almost reached out and took his hand. I was pretty sure that would make me even happier, but there was also a possibility that doing that would introduce other feelings that would overwhelm the happiness I was trying to cultivate. I decided not to risk it.
"What next?"
"Okay, hold the platinum bar in one hand and hold out your other hand so I can put some sand in it."
I waited while Jace picked up some sand and poured it into my palm. Under other circumstances I would have felt silly sitting there with my eyes closed, but with my default emotion surging through me I was perfectly content to just sit there and wait.
"There you go, enough to get excited about, but not so much that it should be a hard transmutation. Now, keep your eyes closed and think about the differences between the two materials."
"What, like one is a bar and the other is a bunch of tiny granules?"
"Sure, that can be part of it, but if that's all you notice, it will just mean that you'll fuse the sand into one piece. You're trying to fundamentally change the nature of the sand—that means that the more differences you notice, the more likely you are going to be to succeed in making the change."
I nodded and started trying to catalogue the differences. Texture, density and color were all easy. I already know what sand tasted like from playgrounds as a child, but I put the platinum bar up to my mouth and carefully licked it. Taste, check; smell check. After that I didn't know what else to try. Did they conduct electricity in a different fashion? Did platinum respond to magnets?
I gently knocked the platinum bar against my other elbow, trying to establish if it carried any kind of vibration, and then shrugged.
"That's all I can think of. Is there anything I'm missing?"
"Probably, but that's okay, it works best if this all comes from you rather than trying to hold a bunch of stuff in your head that Kat or I tell you. Now think about how sand makes you feel."
"Happy, and relaxed. Sand feels like playtime, but a little like I need a shower."
I felt silly saying it, but verbalizing my thoughts was making it easier to keep the sand feelings from knocking my default emotion off of kilter.
"Good, Selene, that's good progress. This is where we started having problems last night. Now try to hold the physical differences in your mind at the same time that you're holding onto your default emotion and your feelings about sand."
"It's difficult, it all just wants to squish together, or barring that my mind wants to think about something else."
"I know, but you're almost there. Now think about how platinum makes you feel."
"Happy, secure, safe—it's like knowing that nobody can ever touch me again. Sandra won't have any power over me anymore, her dad won't be able to force my dad to work himself into the grave, it's like a little piece of heaven."
"Okay, now amp your default feeling up as high as you can and then take all of the platinum attributes and feelings and force them to overwrite the sand feelings and attributes."
I felt like my mind was trying to split itself into five different pieces, but I gritted my teeth and yanked on the sand feelings, squishing them into the platinum feelings. The attributes followed almost as if of their own accord, and I felt something break free of my mind, streaming out the front of my head like steam from a kettle.
It was so surprising that my focus wavered at the last second and the sand in my hand went hot for a split second before exploding out of my hand.
Jace yelped in astonishment, and I looked down to see that my entire torso was splattered in white gunk.
"Crap, I thought I almost had it."
"You did it, Selene, that's great!"
I took a sniff of the stuff coating my right arm and made a face. "I'm pretty sure that platinum doesn't stink like this."
"Oh, you're right, that isn't platinum—in fact we'd better get cleaned up in case it's caustic—but you did manage to transform something. That means your ability is fully functional and it's just a matter of practicing."
I started to respond and then realized that he was right, my skin was starting to itch. I jumped to my feet and charged to the icy water, jumping in and scrubbing at my suit and body in attempt to get it all off. Jace followed along at a more sedate pace, chuckling.
"Hey, it's not funny. I think this stuff is burning me!"
"You're right, I shouldn't be laughing, it's just that I've never seen you move that fast. I was going to suggest running back to the RV and having you shower there, but I guess you're right, the water here is a lot closer and this way we don't have some kind of unknown substance trying to eat a hole through the plumbing system."
"Is any of it on my face or in my hair?"
I was already starting to drop further down into the water, but Jace had waded out far enough that he was able to grab my arm and pull me back up.
"You're fine. It didn't get on your face or in your hair."
Jace calmly washed the white splatters off, but even after they were gone there were red spots on his chest.
"I'm so sorry, Jace."
"Don't be, watch, I can make it disappear."
He concentrated for just a second and a handful of red splotches faded away—it was like watching a time lapse sequence of someone healing.
"I'd get rid of all of them, but we should probably change our swimsuits and it's going to be best if we have a reason for that other than the one that Ari's going to assume when she first sees us."
"You're right—I never would have thought of that."
"All right, let's go back to the RV."
Jace had been right. The cold temperatures had disappeared even in just the short time we'd been on the beach training. Now that the sun had made it up high enough to clear the mountains and we were no longer in the shade, it was warm enough that I was mostly dry by the time we made it back to the RV.
Jace offered me the choice of changing in the bathroom or changing in the bedroom. I picked the bathroom just so that I would have a mirror. I'd entertained thoughts of trying to salvage my tankini, but once I was standing in front of a mirror I realized pretty quickly that wasn't going to happen. Whatever I'd changed the sand into had been caustic enough that it had eaten through the fabric altogether in several places, and even where it hadn't made holes in my swimsuit it had still made the material so thin it was almost see-through.
That left me with a difficult choice. I had exactly three swimsuits left, which was two more than I'd usually brought. My first instinct was to just put on the other tankini and my last pair of board shorts, just so I showed as little skin as possible, but that could backfire on me if another transmutation went badly.
I was uncomfortable being around Jace in either of the two bikinis he'd bought me, but I would be absolutely mortified if my dad saw me in either of the
m. They were pretty tame as far as bikinis went, but they were still way more revealing than anything he would have approved of.
If I put on the tankini and ruined it then I'd have no choice but to wear a bikini and potentially face my dad later on. On the other hand, if I put on a bikini now, there wasn't any guarantee that I was going to be able to change back into my last tankini before my dad showed up—if my dad showed up.
I heard the bedroom door open, indicating that Jace was done, and decided to see if he had any ideas.
"I don't suppose that you have any mystical means of knowing if my dad is going to show up here?"
"Actually I sort of do. I haven't told you this, but I've got Kregor keeping an eye on your dad."
"Who's Kregor?"
"He's my fairy assistant. He's quite a bit older and bigger than Bethany, but he's still not much use in a fight. He can, however, watch your dad and let us know if anything happens to him."
I suddenly felt like the worst daughter ever. Less than twenty-four hours ago I'd been worried out of my mind about my dad and sister, but all it had taken was for Jace to kiss me once and all of that went flying out of my mind.
"I'm sorry, Selene. I meant to tell you earlier that I'd left Kregor there with your dad—I know he's not the best option, but I couldn't think of another way to make everything work. I would have stayed, but that would have ruined any chance of training you this weekend because you and Kat would have spent the whole time babysitting Ari. If Kregor sees something happen to your dad, he'll tail Sandra back to wherever she stows him and then he'll zip out here and tell us so we can go get him."
I took a deep breath and reached for just enough of my default emotion to balance myself out without completely washing away my concern for my dad.
"No, you're fine, Jace. It's like you said yesterday—my dad is the one who's probably the safest right now. Sandra isn't going to be able to overpower him physically. Using Kregor was a good idea. I'm just feeling like crap because I forgot that I needed to be worried about my dad."
Jace was silent for a second before responding. "Maybe you didn't forget, maybe you just remembered that I promised to take care of things."
"I think you're being too easy on me."
"I don't think so. I think that I'm just counterbalancing your tendency to be too hard on yourself."
That made me chuckle. Even through the door I could still envision the earnest expression on Jace's face, an expression that always made me want to believe him regardless of how unlikely his explanation might be.
"Well, thank you for the vote of confidence. It means a lot, even if I don't deserve it."
"I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. Why did you want to know if I had a way of knowing if your dad was going to show up?"
"Because this swimsuit is going to have to be thrown away, which means I have exactly one more swimsuit here that wouldn't give my dad a heart attack if he saw me in it…"
"And you're worried it's going to get ruined too if you wear it now."
"Right."
"Well, Kregor is supposed to let me know if your dad heads this way. He'll follow your dad until he's almost here and then he'll come find me and give me a heads up. Kregor is still young enough that he's a little flaky sometimes, but not nearly as much as he was fifty or sixty years ago."
"So I should be okay to wear whatever then."
"Yeah, but if you're worried about it maybe we should just work on something else instead. Transmutations can be a little tricky to get right the first few times. Usually the failed attempts result in something that isn't hazardous, but there isn't any point in taking a chance on a repeat."
There was a lot of sense to what he was suggesting, but part of me was unwilling to let go of the opportunity of learning how to make precious metals. Maybe I'd just been poor for too long to have a normal sense of perspective, but I just couldn't bring myself to agree with Jace.
"No, I want to learn how to transmute stuff. Hold on just a second and I'll get changed into one of the other two suits."
Once I made the decision to wear one of the more sexy swimsuits it wasn't quite as hard to envision Jace seeing me in it, but it was surprisingly hard to strip out of my ruined tankini when I knew there was nothing more than a thin door between us. It wasn't that I thought Jace would walk in on me or anything, but there was something incredibly sensual and exciting about knowing he was just on the other side of the door, that he might be thinking of me the same way that I was thinking of him.
I was all shaky and nervous, but I double-checked the door to make sure it was locked and then I took a deep breath and slipped out of my clothes. I grabbed a washcloth and scrubbed myself down to make sure that I'd really gotten all of the burning goop off of me, and then I reached into my suitcase and pulled out the dark blue bikini, the gauzy white wrap, and the matching blue board shorts.
A few seconds later I was dressed and looking myself over in the mirror. It wasn't as bad as I'd been expecting. I'd eaten a small enough breakfast that my tummy didn't stick out much at all, and the board shorts hung off my hips in a sexy way I hadn't expected. In fact, it was a lot like the way Jace wore his jeans, like gravity might win and pull them down at any second. Normally that would have made me terrified, but for all they looked like they were about to fall, they actually felt pretty solid. Besides, at least I would still have my swimsuit bottom on even if the shorts fell off.
I debated the wrap for a second, but I knew I was going to end up taking it off as soon as we sat back down anyway, so all I'd be doing was prolonging the moment of truth. Better to just get it all over with now.
I slid open the door to the bathroom and stepped out to find that Jace had moved over to the couch. I found myself oddly disappointed. The thought of him standing just outside of the door had been terrifying, but it had been a strange kind of connection between the two of us, and I hungered for any kind of bond tying me to Jace.
As disappointing as that was, Jace's reaction to seeing me for the first time in my new swimsuit more than made up for it. He was still Mr. Nice Guy, but there was a fire behind his eyes that I'd never seen before. I imagined that was how he'd looked last night when we'd kissed, but it had been too dark to see it then.
He took in all of me with one long look and then stepped forward to within arm's reach of me before stopping.
"You look absolutely amazing."
"If by amazing you mean splotchy, then I totally agree."
I took in the red spots across my stomach and upper chest with a gesture. They'd been mostly covered up by my tankini before, but now they were clearly visible and clearly hideous.
"No, I still use standard English where splotchy means splotchy and amazing means amazing, but if they are bothering you then that's an easy fix."
Jace reached forward and placed his hand on my stomach. I felt his energy reach out towards me, warm and welcoming, and then my skin heated up nearly to the point of pain before cooling in a sudden rush that brought goose bumps out on my arms. When Jace removed his hand the splotch he'd been covering up had disappeared and there was nothing left behind but my normal white skin.
The situation seemed to call for some kind of response, but I couldn't seem to get any words out. If I opened my mouth to thank him I wasn't sure what else would come out. The feeling of him touching me had been beyond euphoric. I wanted to grab his hand and press it against every inch of visible skin on my body, wanted it badly enough to almost disregard Kat's warning about not letting things go any farther with Jace until I knew the full story.
It was crazy. She'd said herself that Jace was perfect, that he was the kind of guy she would normally be pushing me towards rather than cautioning me against.
The silence between the two of us stretched out in long, heavy seconds, weighted down with tension that we both desperately wanted to act on.
Jace eventually took my lack of response as permission to continue and rested his hand lower down on my stomach. Once agai
n, the sensation of heat building and then breaking into a cool wave nearly caused my knees to buckle, but this time he didn't give me any time to recover before he repositioned his hand, again and again.
At some point I kind of collapsed into him and he wrapped his free hand around my waist while his right hand continued to slowly work its way across the warm, bare skin of my upper chest. When he was done only two red marks remained, one high up on my right shoulder and the other on my left arm just above the elbow. More importantly, by the time he was done I wanted to kiss him with every trembling fiber of my body.
The feel of his hard muscles against me as his hand had smoothed away my hurts had been more than enough to make me throw caution to the wind. I wanted it, and he knew that I wanted it, but rather than kissing me he steadied me on my feet and then stepped back.
"I'd like to, more than you can possibly know, Selene, but I can't. Not yet. There are things that you need to know first."
"Then tell me. There's never going to be a better chance than now, because I don't think there is anything you could possibly say to change how I feel about you."
That made him grin in the way that only a guy could, a mixture of boyish pleasure and manly satisfaction at knowing just how desperate you were for their touch.
"It's mutual, but sometimes what you think about one person doesn't make a difference in the bigger scheme of things."
I wanted to demand an answer, or beg for one, but Jace switched gears and the moment passed.
"Sorry, I would have erased them all, but we need something to explain the change of clothing."
"I know. I don't suppose you could have given me a tan while you were at it…"
"I could have, but I love the way you look, Selene. Always."