Beautiful Monster

by Heidi R. Kling

  “Solid plan.” She pressed the throttle, and we sped off again, gliding over the inky waves. The full moon reflecting off the water made it look like an animation. About twenty minutes later she said, “Gas is sort of low.”

  “Can we…open the sails or something?”

  She laughed. “We could. If this was a sailboat.”

  “Hey, I told you I know nothing about boats.”

  “And now I believe you.” Lily smiled. “Seriously though, we have enough gas to get back to Melas and to Orchid. I hope she’s okay. Leaving her in the cave like that…it was so cold. And she was so…out of it.”

  “Catatonic.” My jaw tightened. The last thing I wanted to do was head back toward land but we were close now, and we had promised to go back for Orchid. Then, we could be on to our real destination: the Isle of the Sisters to find the cure that would save Chance.

  2. THE SEA WITCH

  ………………

  LILY

  LOGAN PUT HIS FEET UP on the dash and leaned back.

  “What are you doing?”

  Head tipped back under the stars, he said, “Thinking.”

  “K. While you think, I’m going to look around for more supplies. I’m starving.”

  “Me too.”

  I found an old cooler. Cracking open the lid I found, to my dismay, a half-eaten granola bar and an empty water bottle. Excellent emergency rations. “You want half a stale granola bar?” I asked sarcastically. “Yummy.”

  “You sure are a cheap date,” he smirked and I smiled, but then he added: “As well as nefarious.”

  My expression must have displayed my hurt feelings, because Logan mumbled, “Sorry.”

  I hadn’t meant to hurt the guard back there. He was in my way. And we had plans.

  “I was joking.”

  “You didn’t smile while you said it.”

  “Deadpan?” he tried.

  “You smile when you joke.” My eyes stung with unshed tears. Logan didn’t understand. He didn’t understand I did what I had to. “Just eat your rations,” I tossed him half the granola bar and looked away. I didn’t want him to see how upset I was. We needed food, water, and blankets. If we were going to try to get anywhere, we needed a hell of a lot more than some stale granola crumbs and a swallow of water. But we couldn’t exactly head into Melas Market and shop.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I could tell he meant it. He was sorry. But he was also concerned. I shot that guard. And I hadn’t explained it at all. The darkness I felt when I found out Jacob was my real father seeped through my veins like thick oil. I couldn’t shake those feelings. As hard as I tried to act normal, I was irritable. Crawling out of my skin. I tried to resist, but this new impulsivity I felt was too tempting to ignore. I wanted to do bad things. Only two days ago, I would’ve come up with a different way. I never would’ve hurt that man, but he was threatening me, threatening Logan, threatening our plan—and ultimately, the very existence of our Spellspinners. For the greater good, he had to be eliminated.

  Rationalizing what I had done was too easy, and that made me nervous too.

  I watched Logan: sweet, gorgeous, darling Logan. I watched him watching me, scanning me for clues, wondering why I did it. Why I was different. Back there, when Logan said he couldn’t feel Carriag’s presence anymore, I didn’t tell him what I felt: looming, endless, all-consuming darkness. The darkness. I felt it all the time now. It was growing…and I had no idea how to fight it.

  Soon, there would be no difference between them and me. Nothing at all.

  Logan could never learn my secret.

  He’d never look at me the same way again if he knew I was the daughter of the man he detested. The man who treated him so cruelly.

  He wouldn’t love me if he knew what I truly was: a monster.

  We needed to get Orchid and get out of here. The Seven Sisters could help me rid myself of the wicked side, and let the light take over. Only the Seven Sisters could make me Lily again. Make me whole, pure, good—the girl Logan fell in love with.

  My thoughts were interrupted by a flash of light careening over the sky, arching over us and landing with a shrill blast in the water.

  “Duck!” I yelled.

  “What is that?” Logan asked. The water sizzled and sparked.

  “Another one coming right at us. Logan, jump!”

  Holding hands, we jumped off the side of the boat and swam as fast and as hard as we could. We couldn’t see what was shooting at us, the bolts seemingly appeared from the darkness, each one bigger, louder, and more deadly than the one before.

  “Go under.” I pulled Logan down. We swam twenty feet under water, dodging one bolt of lightning after another and watched in horror as a huge firecracker hit our little escape boat. With a tremendous boom, the thing went up in flames. Ash and flaming wood and pieces of metal scattered on the surface. Clutching hands, we swam further, narrowly avoiding a door that sank fast, almost hitting us. We breathed underwater for over a half a mile before we came up for air, sputtering, opening our mouths, and filling our lungs with fresh oxygen.

  “Carriag. He found us,” I gasped. “Now what? We can’t go back to shore to get Orchid now.”

  “They’re probably waiting for us there anyway. Using her as bait.”

  “Shoot, what are we going to do?”

  “We need another boat.”

  “Where are we going to find that?”

  “Let’s just float for a bit and think. We’ll come up with something, we always do.”

  We floated on our backs for a while, under a spray of stars. I told Logan that the night sky reminded me of the Lite Brite that Daisy and I played with as kids. Pinpricked stars in shapes and spheres I never saw back in Melas. The town’s lights prohibited this sort of view, but here, it was a different story. Our bodies slowly rocked up and over the waves, a cradle of water, rising and falling, rising and falling. Logan was right. It was relaxing. I felt my heart rate slow a bit though I was continually aware that at any moment, we could be attacked again, from the sky, from under the sea.

  Beside me, Logan’s hand was in mine. Floating. Thinking. Floating.

  When our bodies started to chill from lack of movement, and my hand swelled from too much time in the sea, and our stomachs started to rumble from lack of food, I heard a sound. A chiming. The first few notes of one of my favorite songs.

  “Do you hear that?” I shifted from my back and began to tread water, looking in the direction of the upbeat music.

  “Yeah. Isn’t that the song you were playing on the guitar at the beach bonfire that night?”

  “The night you found me,” I said, flushing, remembering. “Yes, it is.”

  “Hey, there are headlights.”

  “It’s a boat!” I exclaimed.

  I started swimming toward it, a craft, a medium-sized ship about a quarter of a mile from us. Logan stopped me. “What if it’s the Coast Guard? What if it’s the place Carriag attacked us from?”

  “Playing ‘Hey There, Delilah?’”

  “Yeah. That would be weird.”

  “You said we needed a new boat, maybe you somehow conjured it into existence?”

  “I know I’m a powerful wizard, Lil, but I’m not sure my powers include conjuring yachts into existence. Not yet anyway.”

  “Weirder things have happened. Let’s go.”

  “Approach with caution, Lil.”

  Why was he being so stubborn? “I have a good feeling about this, Logan. Trust me, okay?”

  Logan’s handsome face looked at me incredulously.

  “You big wimp,” I teased for emphasis. Then, after giving him a quick peck on the cheek, I dove underwater and headed for that rescue boat. He had no choice but to follow.

  3. OCEAN OF THE LOTUS EATERS

  ………………

  LOGAN

  “OHMYGODDESSES, LOGAN, THIS BOAT IS GORGEOUS.”

  Lily, more excited than I’
d seen her ever, scurried up the exterior ladder of a sparkling white yacht without any fear whatsoever about what may be waiting on the other side. Conflicted, I hung back a little. She might be totally into this, but I was waiting for it to blow at any second. A yacht playing her favorite song in the middle of the ocean right when we were about to sink from saltwater bloating? How could that be a coincidence?

  “It’s fine, Logan. No one is here.” She called, her wet hair flipping over her shoulder, a huge grin on her face. “And it’s stunning.”

  “You sure it’s not a trap?”

  Dumb question. How could she be sure?

  Was she a highly trained member of the nautical bomb squad suddenly?

  “Positive.” She emphasized. “Get those cute buns up here.”

  Cute buns?

  Why was she suddenly so carefree?

  I climbed up the ladder and sucked in an impressed breath, a calm feeling immediately rushing over me. Lily wasn’t kidding. The yacht was stunning. Little white lights illuminated the deck, making it look like a decorated floating resort. She said it was clean: no Congression members on board. My worries started to disappear, and a smile replaced my previous skeptical scowl.

  “It’s like it was waiting here for us,” I said, pleased.

  “She.” Her eyes danced.

  “She?”

  “She was waiting for us. Like most good things, the Sea Witch is female. Like I’m sure her owner is. Look at the décor. So well executed.”

  With wide, impressed eyes, she pulled open a little door with a round window. I followed her into a bright, fancy kitchen that was full of modern appliances. She ran her hand over the marble counter top and its butcher block chopping board. Fajita makings were there, sliced and ready to go: slivers of beef; red, yellow, and green peppers; steaming, hot, homemade tortillas.

  “Logan, you’ve conjured up a magic boat for us. You are the best boyfriend in the whole world.”

  She was even more beautiful when she was happy, and right, now she was grinning from ear to ear. She swiped a smooth chunk of guacamole out of a white porcelain bowl and licked it off her little finger. “Yum,” she said. “Oh, my goddesses, I’m starving. Logan, you have to try this. It’s so delicious. Better than Iris’s and that’s saying a whole helluvalot because she makes the best guac this side of New Mexico.”

  “It is good. But do you really think I conjured this up?”

  Although I was starting to feel content with the idea of this yacht, I still wanted to learn a little more about it. How exactly did it get here? What if it wasn’t here to help us? My head was so foggy though—like I sucked up happy gas and suddenly didn’t have a care in the world.

  “You worry too much,” Lily said, stuffing a guacamole-saturated chip into my mouth. As soon as it touched my tongue, that same feeling of calm from before washed over me again. Lily was right. I did worry too much. I needed to relax and enjoy for once. What was wrong with that?

  “Good, right?” Her eyebrows danced.

  “Yep.”

  “Now, if we die, we die together in style, like Romeo and Juliet.”

  “I thought they died in a church?”

  “Whatever.”

  She flushed, biting her lower lip, with the cutest shrug I’ve ever seen. Leaning forward, she kissed me.

  “You’re killing me.”

  “That’s okay, we’re dead already. So what do you want to do first: eat these fajitas or see if there’s a bedroom?”

  “Option two,” I said. I was hungry, but I wasn’t dumb.

  “So follow me.”

  I did. Down a short, narrow hallway toward the back of the boat, where a full-sized bed was built into a narrow room. The bed had freshly-ironed white sheets pulled tight under red and blue nautical pillows, but the most notable part about the space was the long, rectangular window that looked out over a shimmering black sea.

  “Oh. This. Is. Awesome.”

  “Sure is. Damn. Especially the super moon reflecting off the ocean.”

  Her body faced opposite mine in the narrow hallway. “And to think,” she said in a low, sexy voice, “Just yesterday, we thought we were going to die in that cold water, and now, here we are together, like rich people, rich ADULTS, on a yacht.”

  “Hey, we would have lived like kings on that speedboat too.” The memory of the speedboat felt hazy, like we’d been there years ago, or as if it were a flash from a dream.

  “If it hadn’t been blown to oblivion, yes, we would have. Until it completely ran out of gas. And it didn’t have this!”

  Arms open, and eyes dancing, she sprang onto the bed, flopping onto her back, spreading her arms like she was making a snow angel.

  “No, it didn’t.”

  She was so hot. So beautiful. And she was so…happy. This night, which started so terrible, now had plenty of potential.

  “What is that delicious smell?”

  I followed ecstatic Lily back into the kitchen where — sure enough— a blue blown-glass pitcher of margaritas sat on the counter next to a pair of matching glasses, again, as if waiting for us, with a steaming plate of taquitos.

  “I love this magic boat!” Lily poured us each a drink, a taquito dangling from her mouth like a cigar. “Come on, let’s go sit outside on the deck.”

  Outside was even more beautiful, if possible. The moon so full and bright, we didn’t even need the decorative lights to see three overstuffed couches around a low, white table where tall glasses of water with lemon slices, a plate of olives, cheese and crackers, and a bottle of red wine waited. Next to that, a small table of margaritas.

  “What kind of tomfoolery is this?” I asked the universe. “That stuff in the kitchen was just the first course?”

  “Tomfoolery is such an underused word,” Lily eyed me sidelong, her eyes flirty, her lips moist. I remembered how her body almost pressed against mine last night in the sand. It felt like forever ago.

  “Agreed. I plan to use it often on this voyage.” I flung down on one of the couches, splaying my legs in front of me, and took a long slurp of the margarita. Its cold contents ran down my throat and numbed my brain in a highly agreeable way. I took another sip of the delicious cocktail, the salty edge of the thick glass tasting fine on tongue.

  Jude used to sneak booze into the Academy and I’d had it a time or two. This was much better than that harsh liquor store stuff.

  Lily lay opposite me on the couch, with her legs curled up under her, carefully not touching me, contentedly sipping at her drink. I wondered if she’d had any alcohol before, and if yes, how much. Her face, so pale when she’d hurt that man out on the dock, was now flushed pink, and she was looking and acting more like the Lily I knew. I exhaled. When she was happy, I was happy. Maybe it was the amulet, maybe it was the prophecy, or maybe it was just tried-and-true romantic feelings, but damn if it weren’t the truth.

  “Good, right?” Her eyes shifted appreciatively toward my glass.

  “Yep.” The more I drank, the less apprehensive I felt about being on this boat. About eating its food. Drinking its drink. My mind felt woozy. My arms thick. All that adrenaline I’d been running on for hours and now my body was finally giving into the exhaustion. If I could just take a little nap…

  Lily flicked off her sandals and grabbed a handful of green olives, plopping them into her mouth. “OHMYGODDESSES. I think these are stuffed with feta.”

  “Better than my grilled fish last night?” I arched an eyebrow in her general direction.

  Her smile was as warm as the sweet drink slipping down my throat. “Your grilled fish was wonderful, Logan. Did I not tell you that? I’m so sorry. Thank you. You’re an absolute gem.” She leaned forward and cupped my cheeks. “An absolute gift from the goddesses.”

  “You’re welcome.” I grinned back at her and we had one of those goofy moments between two people who think the other is the cat’s meow tend to do. On the couch opposite me she was positively
glowing. She inched a bit closer to me and I felt alive and right.

  “So where do you think we should sleep?” she asked slyly, kicking at my ankle with her toes.

  “I claim that bed with the window. You can sleep out here. Or in the kitchen.” I punched at the seat. “These sofas feel pretty comfy.”

  She laughed. It was great to see her laugh.

  Without knowing exactly where the table was, I reached out and set my drink down on the edge. Naturally, it slipped off, spilling all over the slick, sparkling floor.

  “Oops,” Lily giggled. “Time to cut you off, Mister?” Breaking eye contact, she leaned over and picked up the glass, setting it upright. Then, with magic, she swept the liquid off the ground, swirled it around in the air, and poured it back into my glass. “The floor’s clean enough, yes?” she asked with another giggle.

  “Are you drunk, Miss Lily White?”

  “Not sure. Possibly. No. I’m just…happy Utterly, unbelievably happy.”

  Her cheeks were so pink and, underneath, her eyes so red. Under her barely-there shirt, her chest rose and fell with her sped-up breath.

  “Should we…”

  “Want me to?”

  Locking eyes, we grinned again.

  After last night, we shouldn’t be so shy around each other, but I felt like she was an entirely different girl and I felt like a different guy too. I felt older, somehow. Wiser. More weathered, but at the same time, younger and more adventurous. Now that I had that thought, I noticed her face looked a little older too, more mature somehow.

  With a grin that could send a group of men running, she stood up and pulled her shirt over her head. Just like that. She shook out her long hair and stood in front of me in her little lacy bra.

  I swallowed, sure that my ink was rising up all over the place.

  Since I wasn’t wearing a shirt, I couldn’t match her brazen move. So I stood up and pulled off my pants. Laughing, she nodded at my boxers in appreciation.

  I raised my eyebrows like, “You’re up.”

  She pulled off her pants slowly, one leg at a time.