The Dysasters

by P. C. Cast

  Mark faced Eve, obviously waiting for her input, which usually balanced whatever nonsense Matthew and Luke spouted.

  “Leave Eve out of it.” Stewart’s voice was like death. “And I’ll answer your question, even though you didn’t answer mine.”

  “Oh, I’ll answer yours. When I asked why this is all worth it, especially to you, I meant that you don’t seem to care much about anything anymore except Eve’s crystals. Are you even up to the work you’ll have to do if we wrench these kids from their lives and imprison them here, with us, on this goddamned island jail?”

  Eve took a step away from Father and reached down deep, invoking her element. She did as Mark recommended—as she had been doing for the past couple of weeks. Eve didn’t call what Father would want to syphon from her. Eve called what she needed to ground herself, to think clearly and powerfully. Come, calming, cooling rose quartz. Take away negativity and reinstate love … When she felt the swell of pain under her right shoulder blade, and the wonderful infilling of sweet, soothing calmness and self-love, Eve moved quietly back to her father’s side, willing quartz’s essence to share itself, just a little, with him as her father squared off with her favorite brother.

  Eve saw Stewart’s shoulders relax an almost imperceptible amount, and the reasonable tone in his voice had her feeling waves of relief.

  “I’ll ignore that you slandered your sister. You’re not yourself, Son. Your brothers would tell you that if you let them. You want assurance that the new children—the young pairs I’ve bonded with the elements—are going to help me create an antidote to your Frill?” Stewart chuckled low. “There is no such assurance because there is no such antidote. I never intended to create one. But the children … they are your salvation. They are all of our salvation.”

  “As usual, you’re not making any sense,” Mark said.

  “As usual, you’re not smart enough to keep up with me,” Stewart flung at him. “Listen with your mind, like a man. Not with your emotions, like a child. I created the new elementals in pairs. They are meant to work as a team—to control their element together. Because of how I fashioned them, I know they won’t have the same problems you four do. They share their powers. Now, imagine this—the water pair comes here and meets their benevolent Uncle Mark. You teach them how to call their element, and in return every time they manipulate water, they stabilize you, much like they do for each other. The malevolent Frill fade back into the abyss of your imagination from which they came. But you’re stronger than the two kids, older than them—supposedly wiser than them. You will control the element through them, and there will be nothing they can do about it.”

  Eve watched Mark blink in confused surprise. “Wait, that’s all there is to it?”

  “No, of course that’s not all there is to it,” Stewart said. “Once you’re stabilized, there is nothing stopping you from using your water bond. Think of it, Mark. With the help of those teenagers stabilizing you, water could transform the Mojave Desert into a fertile basin. Or let’s say a farmer in Oklahoma needs rain so his alfalfa crop won’t fail—he calls us and water comes to his rescue.” Stewart’s eyes were bright, almost feverish when he turned his gaze to Luke and Matthew. “Napa Valley’s grapes are threatened by a frost? No problem. Fire works with air and the harvest is saved.”

  “What’s in it for you?” Mark said.

  “My children don’t go mad,” Stewart said.

  Mark’s gaze didn’t falter as he repeated the question. “What’s in it for you?”

  Stewart’s sigh was long-suffering. “Much of the same thing that’s in it for you. It’s only right that people pay for our services. We are, after all, saving them.”

  “And if they don’t want to pay and instead arrest us and perform those experiments on us you’ve been insisting we need to hide from for all these years?” Mark pressed.

  “Oh, well, after we have complete control of the elements, without the threat of the four of you going mad, we will have complete control of the world’s weather. Trying to take any action against us would prove to be as unwise as it is dangerous. You know, Mark, natural disasters can happen anywhere.”

  Eve stared from Mark to their father. Her stomach felt sick. Mark tried to tell me. Tried to get me to see how cruel and power-hungry Father has become, and he was right. I think Father is mad.

  But that didn’t change the fact that his idea was brilliant and that Eve could imagine all sorts of possibilities for their future—opulent, wonderful possibilities filled with freedom.

  Eve moved from Father’s side to Mark. She touched her brother’s arm gently. “Hey, you’ll have what you’ve always wanted.”

  “No, I won’t. I’ll be a pawn. Like we all are now,” Mark said.

  “No, you won’t.” Eve met her father’s gaze. “Tell him, Father. Tell him what he’ll have.”

  Rick Stewart’s expression went from manic to slyly manipulative. He smiled smoothly. “With the money the world will be forced to pay us, you can buy your yacht and live on the ocean like you’ve dreamed since you were a little boy.”

  Eve saw Mark’s start of surprise. He looked down at her. She smiled and nodded. “See, it’s been Father’s plan all along for us to have our dreams come true. Luke can live on Hawaii, surrounded by volcanoes.”

  “Yes, Father! Yes!” Luke exclaimed, downing his beer in one big gulp.

  “Matthew can move to Oklahoma City and live directly in Tornado Alley,” Eve continued.

  “That’s more like it!” Matthew said, though he barely looked up from his computer.

  “And me. I’m moving to Manitou Springs, Colorado, and buying a mansion on the side of Pike’s Peak. It’ll have an Olympic-sized freshwater pool so you can be comfortable whenever you visit,” Eve finished happily.

  “That’s a great pipe dream,” Mark said. “But how are we going to scatter and still control the weather?”

  “Oh, that’s simple,” Stewart said. “The four of you can go anywhere you want, after you bring the eight new elementals here to me. They stay. You go. Everyone wins.”

  “Everyone? What about the kids? I don’t think they’re going to believe it’s a win for them,” Mark said.

  “Father will fix up the island,” Eve said quickly. “They’re kids, Mark. They’re going to love living on a private island with their own cottages and—no bedtimes—no curfews—no rules.”

  “Well, no rules except that they have to remain here, for their safety, and they must do a little weather tweaking when we need them to,” Stewart finished for her. “So, is that answer enough to your question, Son?”

  Mark’s gaze grabbed and held Eve’s. She knew what he was searching for in her eyes. He wanted to see that she was still on his side and willing to stand up to Father with him, but she couldn’t, wouldn’t give him what he needed. Not when her freedom was so close.

  “Everything is going to be okay, Mark. I promise,” Eve told him.

  Mark blew out a long, sad breath and said, “For us, maybe. But for those eight kids and the rest of the world?” He shook his head and pushed past them, slamming the cottage door behind him.

  When Eve started to go after him, Stewart snagged her wrist. “Let him go. You know he’s always been soft. You’re going to have to watch him, Eve.” Then Stewart’s hard gaze included Matthew and Luke. “You’re all going to have to watch him. Or he’ll spoil this for all of us—for all of you.”

  “We understand, Father,” Luke said. “We’ll watch him.”

  “Yeah, he won’t mess this up for us,” Matthew said.

  “Eve?” Stewart turned to her.

  “Father, you know I’ll always take care of Mark.”

  “Yes, but taking care of him and being sure he doesn’t self-destruct and take all of us down with him are two very different things,” Stewart said.

  “Like I told Mark, everything is going to be okay. Now, I’m going to do as you asked and go to him and be sure he isn’t self-destructing.” Eve began to walk past
Stewart, but he didn’t release her wrist.

  “I’ll walk a little with you, my Nubian princess.”

  Eve looked into her father’s eyes and saw there his insatiable need. “Yes, Father,” she answered obediently, allowing him to lead her from the cottage and away from Luke and Matthew and Mark so that he could drain the crystal she had just conjured and get his fix.

  Someday I will be free of Father, and if that means eight teenagers must take our places here—then so be it.

  21

  CHARLOTTE

  Charlotte could barely contain her excitement. Today, in her Intro to Marine Ecology class, she was going to be able to get out on the Gulf for the first time since she’d arrived at the Texas A&M’s campus. She studied herself carefully—oh, so carefully—in the full-length mirror in her dorm room.

  Her hair was good tied neatly back in a high ponytail and woven through the rear opening of her Wildfang cap that declared FEMINIST on the brim. Her makeup was perfect—not too much, but also enough to cover her imperfections and bring out her long, thick eyelashes. She was wearing a long-sleeved swim shirt over her sports bra. The fit was almost as flattering as the turquoise color that reflected her eyes so well.

  The class had been told to wear swim shirts and swimsuit bottoms. They’d be on and in the water all day. But Charlotte couldn’t make herself wear a bikini bottom. All day. In front of strangers. So, she’d opted for one of the oversized swim shirts she always wore and a tasteful pair of pink boy shorts. Still, she studied herself—front, back, side. And had to stifle the urge to cut class.

  “No, you will not cut class, especially a class that is held on the ocean!” Charlotte spoke sternly to herself in the mirror. Then she read aloud from the postcard Grandma Myrtie had sent her. Charlotte had taped it to her mirror so she would see it every single day. It was her grandma’s favorite quote by the timeless Eleanor Roosevelt:

  “… the purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”

  Charlotte kissed her fingertips and then pressed them to the postcard. “Thank you, Grandma Myrtie. That is exactly what I’m going to do.”

  Her phone alarm bleeped, signaling she was out of time, and she grabbed her backpack and sunglasses and hurried from the private apartment her grandma had secured for her on campus. It was a fantastic luxury, especially as her apartment looked directly out on the Gulf. Charlotte was still trying to figure out how to show Grandma Myrtie her appreciation for her love and belief and support—financial and emotional—and she’d pretty much decided that she was going to have to discover a new species of marine life and insist it be called a Myrtie!

  Charlotte giggled musically at the thought as she followed the directions in her syllabus. A half-hour walk down the beach would take her to a dock where her professor and a marine biologist from the Turtle Island Restoration Network would be waiting for their class to join them. Today’s mission—that Charlotte could hardly wait to embark upon—was to count, study, and document the remains of Kemp’s ridley turtle and loggerhead sea turtle nests. And, hopefully, to get a glimpse of some actual sea turtles while they were at it.

  Charlotte took off her swim shoes and walked into the waterline, loving how the warm waves crashed against her calves and swirled sand around her toes. She squinted, staring out at the Gulf, and her happy expression shifted to a frown.

  The waves were insane! Not that that bothered Charlotte. She adored the passionate, wild, untamed waves! She ached to be out there with them—free, without one single care. But most people weren’t like her about the ocean, or at least about heavy waves on the ocean.

  Charlotte picked up her pace, almost jogging, until she got within sight of the dock, where she saw a triangular-shaped red flag snapping in the gusting wind.

  “Well, shoot!” A red flag was a warning. It meant that the surf is high and the currents are dangerous—too dangerous to take a small boat out on.

  She walked the rest of the way to the dock slowly, already knowing what she’d find when she got there, and sure enough, tacked to the cork notice board at the entrance to the dock was a Sharpie-written note that stated: INTRO TO MARINE ECO’S TURTLE STUDY TRIP HAS BEEN POSTPONED—MEET IN CLASSROOM 128 AT 0900.

  Charlotte sighed and glanced at the pretty, waterproof watch Grandma Myrtie had given her last Christmas. It was only 0730. She was early. Very early. “Well, that’s a good thing,” she told herself as she left the empty dock and began to wander along the beach. “Gives me time to relax before class.”

  Relax?

  Charlotte’s frown changed to a slow smile. She had a towel and a change of clothes in her backpack. And she had plenty of time to get to class. There was no reason why she couldn’t swim a few laps, change, and still make it to class on time.

  Feeling lighter just at the thought of being surrounded by water, Charlotte hurried down the beach to a little cove-like indention that was littered with big, black rocks. She tucked her backpack behind one of them and skipped into the water, wading quickly out to where the waves were surging around her waist.

  Charlotte drew a deep breath of damp, salty air into her lungs, and let it slowly out. Then she closed her eyes and listened.

  She didn’t have to wait long, which surprised her. Usually she had to spend most of the day in the water before she began to hear them, but this day—this magical, windy, wavy day—Charlotte heard them right away.

  Within the waves, lifting from deep under the water, the singing voices drifted to her.

  The first time Charlotte had heard them she’d been six. She’d told her parents that she didn’t want to be called Charles or Charlie anymore because she wasn’t going to cut her hair ever again. Instead, she wanted it to be long like Mother’s. And she also wanted to wear pink bows in it and a matching pink dress.

  At first her father had laughed, and six-year-old Charlotte had laughed with him, not understanding he was laughing at her, not with her.

  Her mother hadn’t laughed, but that was no surprise. Caroline Marie Meriwether Davis only laughed when she was at her club with the other members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy—and then only after her second very dry vodka martini.

  Charlotte’s mother had tried to shut her daughter up by slapping the sass out of her mouth.

  It hadn’t worked.

  But that day Charlotte had run to the beach and cried herself to sleep. She’d awakened to find half of her body being gently held by the encroaching tide and the sound of beautiful, harmonizing women’s voices filling her ears.

  She’d stayed there, sitting half in, half out of the water, listening to the ocean’s orchestra for the rest of the day.

  They’d found her at sunset. Charlotte had tried to tell her parents and the rescue team that she hadn’t heard anyone calling her because she’d been listening to the mermaids singing under the water.

  They all said she was lying because no one heard the singing except Charlotte. No one ever heard the singing except Charlotte.

  And now the mermaid chorus lifted alluringly from the turbulent waves, reflecting the passion that filled the ocean as it entered hurricane season.

  Eyes still closed, Charlotte began humming with the ethereal voices, trying to catch words as she always did—and as always, she could hear melodies, but when she tried to isolate voices and words, they slid away from her like waves returning to the ocean.

  “Bastien, dude! I’m bailing! It’s a bomb. No way I can handle that!”

  The rough male voice intruded, first fragmenting and then destroying the mermaid voices. Annoyed, Charlotte opened her eyes to see a young guy trudging to shore not far from her. Tethered to his wrist was a long surfboard that bobbed along behind him. He wasn’t paying any attention to Charlotte. All of his attention was focused out on the water.

  Charlotte followed his gaze to see that an enormous wave had formed and was growing, gaining momentum and height, as it roa
red toward shore. From the center of that wave, in the pretty, curling part that Charlotte thought looked like a lovely water tunnel, a surfer shot into view. He was balancing like a dancer, making it look effortless. His dark hair was blowing behind him. He was tall and his muscular chest glistened with water and sweat—and he was grinning as if he was having the best time in his life.

  “Whoo-hoo! It’s a double overhead, dude! Bastien, you’re killing it!” The second guy had made it to the beach and was shouting at the surfer through cupped hands.

  Charlotte didn’t even glance at him. She couldn’t take her eyes from the surfer. He kept riding and riding the huge wave as it got closer and closer to shore. She could see his eyes now, and was shocked by their brilliant turquoise color—a color that reminded her strangely of her own.

  The wave kept coming and coming … until finally the surfer gracefully stepped off his board and onto the beach as his friend clapped and hooted for him. The surfer turned then, and bowed to the ocean, as if he was thanking it for the ride.

  When he straightened he turned, and his eyes met Charlotte’s.

  She saw him hesitate and even stumble for a second as another wave smacked against him, but he righted himself quickly and nodded to her in a very Southern, very gentlemanly way—something Grandma Myrtie would definitely have approved of.

  “Hello, cher.”

  His voice was deep and rich. And Charlotte thought his accent was the sexiest thing she’d ever heard.

  “Good mornin’,” Charlotte spoke automatically.

  “Aren’t you sweet. Douces comme du miel. I’m Bastien. And this here’s my podna, Dickie.”

  Charlotte almost blurted her name. Part of her wanted to tell him her name, phone number, Social Security number, and her address. Anything and everything she could tell him so that he’d call her and talk to her more in that gorgeous voice. But she couldn’t tell him everything. He wouldn’t want to hear her everything, and because of that she would tell him nothing.

  But he was looking at her. Really looking from her long, bare legs to her boy shorts, to the swim shirt that was soaked and painted to her skin. He wasn’t exactly leering, but his eyes were intense and they reflected his very obvious interest, which sent an all too familiar shiver of fear down Charlotte’s spine.