Beautiful Monster

by Heidi R. Kling

Expecting to find Jude doing something malicious, I was surprised to find the two of them staring, slack-jawed, at Orchid. Eyes rolled back in her head, she rocked on the floor in the corner as if she’d never woken up at all. A necklace of bones was splayed across the bed.

  ORCHID

  Bones and blood and bones and bones and blood and blood and bones.

  Blood and bones and bones and blood and bones and bones and blood.

  Blood and bones and…betrayal.

  LILY

  Orchid was curled up into a ball, rocking, rocking, rocking—mumbling some creepy thing about blood and bones and, what was that? I swore she said betrayal. Maybe she felt guilty, somewhere in her subconscious, for what she’d done to me. It was creepy and sad, this sight of her broken body.

  I wasn’t sure which was worse: the moaning sound she made when she wasn’t yelling, or the yelling sound she made when she wasn’t rocking. Her room smelled now, of that rank, thick poison we had choked out of her at The Gleaning. When I saw her this way, all white-eyed and possessed, it brought me back.

  Scooping the talisman off the bed, I held up the string of bones in my fingers. “What are these, exactly?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Jude said.

  I turned to Orchid. “Orchid? Orchid. Get up.”

  Rocking. Cackling. Moaning.

  “Orchid. Come on.”

  Moaning, moaning. Blood and bones and betrayal. Shut up, Orchid. Shut the…

  “Orchid. Come on, wake up.” The same inexplicable irritation from earlier began to burn through my veins.

  “She can’t hear you. She’s in a…trance. Put the necklace back on her.”

  “I want to make sure it’s the necklace.”

  “Of course it’s the necklace,” Jude said, so sure of himself, which shattered my patience. Rushing over to her, I yanked her up by her underarms, dragging her to her feet. Her egg-white eyes remained rolled back in her head, her body was limp like the underbelly of a dead fish. I tossed her onto the bed, the weight of a dried-up sponge. This would be hard to fake. Still.

  “Orchid!” I screamed in her face. “Wake the HELL UP.”

  Rocking. Moaning. More. Hideous. Moaning.

  I shoved her bony chest back, I guess a little too hard. She bumped her head on the wall, then resumed her rocking—sideways—like a child curls up to sleep.

  “Lily, calm down.” Logan’s hand was on my wrist, pulling me back. Grounding me to reality—or trying to. Blinking, I looked at him, furious.

  “She can’t help it, okay?” he reasoned. “She just needs the necklace.”

  “If it were up to you, we’d have left her in Melas to die, Logan. Back off.”

  He blinked, surprised that I’d talk to him like this.

  “I’m just saying, yelling at her is not helping anything. She’s under some spell—like a person in a coma. How can you expect her to hear you?”

  “Why are you suddenly on her side?”

  His eyes bore into me. “Because you aren’t acting like yourself—and to be honest, it’s kind of freaking me out.” He looked at Jude and back at me. Eyes narrowed and judging. He was mad about more than how I was treating Orchid. He was pissed about Jude. I didn’t want to get into this right now.

  I knew I should defuse the situation. Help Orchid. Soothe Logan. But instead, I put my hands on my hips and growled.

  “Oh, yeah? Who am I acting like then?” I snapped.

  He just stared at me.

  Jude took the necklace and looped it over Orchid’s head.

  The bones seemed to glow from within, beautiful violet purples and cherry reds and lemon yellows. The flashing colors reminded me of the jellyfish in the sea. Orchid blinked. Sat up. With clear eyes, she looked from Jude to Logan to me. “What? Am I late for dinner?”

  Screw this.

  Shoving past the boys, I ran up to the deck and leaned over it. Above me, the sky burst with a million stars on this cloudless, complicated night.

  I let out a slow breath.

  I had to calm down.

  I imagined tossing Orchid over the edge, watching her sink down, down, down. What was wrong with me? I rubbed my head, slumping onto the rail.

  The coolness of it invigorated me a little, helped fight the heat of the darkness that coursed through my veins. The darkness that I could barely contain. If Logan hadn’t been there to stop me, would I have hurt Orchid?

  The sea breeze and the slow exhales quieted my rage.

  Iris, can you hear me?

  I needed my mom. I needed her cool, logical guidance, but she had lied to me about Jacob. About my father. Damn. I was a mess.

  And I was all alone out here

  11. DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU

  ………………

  JUDE

  LOGAN, NATURALLY, PUSHED PAST ME to run after Lily.

  So I, naturally, was even more put out by Orchid’s childish display. “You took your talisman off,” I said, dryly.

  “Yeah,” Orchid replied. “To shower.”

  “You can’t take it off.”

  “Why not?”

  She had no recollection of what had happened.

  “When you remove your talisman, you turn white-eyed, go catatonic, and essentially cause your best friend to turn psychotically angry with you. And for very good reason. So my advice,” I said, leaning in and looking directly into her eyes, “ is, leave. It. On.”

  “Okay. Jeez.” She made a funny face, like I was overreacting. Then her hands began to tremble.

  “You okay?”

  “I t-think so. I feel a little…tired.”

  “Please just do as I say. Leave that talisman around your neck. It seems to be the only thing keeping you, you.”

  She fingered the shimmering white bones with weary hands.

  “What do you think they are?” She cocked her head. Her hair was a tangled mess, but her eyes were clear.

  “I don’t want to guess,” I said, but I knew very well what they were.

  “I was thinking they look like the fingers of a child.” The face I made must have given her the idea that she was right because she shook her head. “Dude. I do not want to have to live the rest of my days with a chain full of baby fingers around my neck.”

  “Then moan and deal with the wrath of Lily. Your choice.”

  LILY

  “Hey, are you okay?” Logan’s hand was on my shoulder.

  “Yeah, I’m great.”

  Logan wrapped his arms around me. “Come on. Let’s go get a drink of water. I need to get back to the helm and watch for giant sea jellyfish and/or Coast Guard and/or Carriag’s cronies.”

  I gave him a little squeeze. “I’ll meet you in a bit. I just need a minute.”

  “You got it.” Logan kissed my head and left, the words we’d had down below temporarily forgotten.

  I stared back at the sea and wondered what I should do to control my anger. I needed to do better. It was like magic. I had learned how to control that, hadn’t I? This darkness, though…it was much harder to manage. It affected my moods, my ability to wrangle my patience. It affected my thoughts. That scared me.

  I wanted to hurt Orchid.

  “She was wrong to take the talisman off.”

  I spun to face him. It wasn’t my boyfriend this time. It was Jude. Stars above us. Inky sea below. “But I just went off on her for something she can’t help.”

  “You were angry. It happens.”

  “Don’t make excuses for me. I can’t act like that again.”

  “You can’t be human?”

  “I can’t be…like him.”

  The look we exchanged ran deeper than the one earlier, which ran deeper than the one before that. Why did you have to follow me out here? Time alone with Jude was never a good idea. “I shouldn’t have yelled at her.”

  “Maybe not,” he said.

  “Is there anyway to fix it?”

  “Fix it?
You can’t fix your darkness anymore than a shark can. It’s not something you can fix. But you can learn to control it.”

  “Can…never mind.”

  “What?”

  “Can you…help me?”

  “Of course.”

  He held my eyes, and even though I shouldn’t have, even though it was the worst possible thing, I felt better.

  Jude got it. Jude was a warlock with darkness coursing through his blood. Logan was good. Jude was bad. I was both. At the time, as mad as it made me, I needed them both.

  “I wanted to do worse to her,” I confessed.

  “Yes.”

  “I know.”

  My shoulders slumped. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “It’s just your nature.”

  He didn’t tell me to do better next time. He didn’t condemn me. Instead…he understood me. He quietly understood me and offered to help. Tears burned in my eyes, scorched through my throat. Jude got me. He looked me in the eye and he didn’t look away. My temper. None of it scared him. None of it even gave him pause. The result of which was incredibly soothing…even though I knew it was also incredibly wrong.

  “What is that thing anyway? The necklace?” I asked.

  He raised an eyebrow and spoke in a mischievous voice like we were conspiring together. “Don’t say anything to the others.”

  I nodded.

  “I heard it’s faerie bones.”

  “Faerie bones? For real?”

  He glanced around to make sure our conversation was private. “That’s what I heard.” His voice was low. Now we had another secret.

  I quieted my voice too. “That’s why they’re so small?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they are keeping her…grounded in reality?”

  “They are keeping her from disappearing into the darkness that’s trying to pull her under. Fairies are like you witches,” Jude said, grasping the rail and then leaning back, stretching his arms and looking at the stars. “Well, the majority of you witches.” He met my eye for a brief second. “They are goodness and light. They are rainbows and unicorns. What Orchid dabbled with…that is us.” He pointed from him to me and back to him again. “Warlock. Darkness. Absence of light—devil’s fodder.”

  “Gee, devil’s fodder, that makes me feel better.”

  “Sorry,” he elbowed me sweetly. “I’m trying to make you understand that the poison in her lungs is trying to drown her and will continue to. She dabbled with the demons and now that they’ve got a taste of her witchy goodness, they want it. The goodness in the faeries is trying to drag her back to the light.”

  That made sense. “The faerie bones. How do they work?”

  “Magic? I don’t know. I suppose we’ll find out.”

  LILY

  “This boat is flipping outraaaaageous,” Orchid, back to her pre-doppelganger, post-faerie-bones-necklace self, said at dinner. We were seated around the table, eating, and breathing in the mind-clearing scent of the black flowers. “Are you telling me this incredible food just magically appears at meal time?”

  She popped another deep-fried calamari into her mouth and groaned happily.

  “More like, whenever we’re hungry,” I said.

  “Or think about food,” Logan said, glancing at her from the magical map he was examining.

  “Or want a drink,” Jude added.

  “This is heaven. I’ve died and gone to heaven.” Orchid smiled a wide, toothy grin.

  “It’s definitely a magical place,” Logan said, his eyes on the map. “So I think if we cast a spell together, all four of us, to keep this yacht at hyper speed, we can get to the other side of the Panama Canal by dawn. It’s important that we get there fast—we have four days left to get to the Isle of the Sisters and back to save Chance.”

  “Sounds simple,” Orchid said, wide-eyed.

  “Sounds good,” I said, agreeing with Logan.

  I felt weird about my on-deck exchange with Jude, so it was easier to keep my focus on Orchid as she dipped another tentacle into the spicy red sauce, and, afterward, took a long drink of pink champagne. Another trippy thing about this boat. No matter how much we drank, we never got beyond a light-hearted tipsy. No matter how much we ate, we didn’t seem to feel full. Melas County, the harbor patrol, and Congression may hate us, but the Sea Witch? She loved us.

  “So who gave us the boat?” Orchid mused.

  “No one knows.”

  “I think I do,” Logan said. “I think it was my father.”

  That was a conversation stopper.

  Jude glanced at me over his glass; Orchid’s eyes widened more. I felt sick.

  “Why would Jacob give us a magic ship?” Orchid said. Thankfully she was oblivious to the connection.

  “I’m not sure. It’s just a gut feeling I have. And he helped me and Lily escape Congression after The Gleaning. And someone or something magical had to send the jellyfish to help out with Carriag’s cronies. And who else would have access to this million-dollar yacht, not to mention magic intense enough to keep it stocked with magic food?”

  “The witches could do it. Camellia. Or the Seven Sisters?”

  “No offense,” Logan said, “but your witches don’t seem like the yacht types.”

  “A dilapidated houseboat full of sixties posters is a much more likely possibility for that crew, yes,” Orchid agreed.

  Logan laughed. “Exactly.”

  “Well, it can’t be Jacob. Monsters have no capacity for love,” Orchid said.

  Monsters had no capacity for love.

  Monsters had no capacity for love

  I set my drink down.

  Was that my problem? Why I was tempted to bond with Jude now, because I was a monster and had never loved Logan?

  “He’s my best guess,” Logan said, eyes still on the map.

  I thought about Jacob and my mother. He seemed to love her. But he had been so cruel and abusive toward Logan. I shivered, then chugged my pink champagne.

  Jude and Logan both looked at me with their equally beautiful eyes. So bright. So much. Too much. I blinked and returned my gaze to Orchid.

  “I can buy the Jacob boat theory too,” Jude announced. “I heard him tell Carriag he couldn’t feel Logan’s presence anymore. That he thought you guys might be dead.”

  “Seriously?” Logan asked, momentarily forgetting his map.

  Jude nodded. “He said the witches couldn’t feel you either.”

  “Did they buy it?” I asked.

  Logan again turned his attention to the map. “I guess it doesn’t matter, as long as we get to the Isles in time, but what I don’t get is why Jacob is trying to protect us.”

  A dark flush tingled up my back.

  “We are Rognaithe,” I said, quickly. “He wants to protect his investment.”

  “He suddenly wants a united Spellspinner community?”

  Avoiding Logan’s eyes, I took a long sip of my pink champagne. The glass had magically filled back up after I’d drained it. Gee, thanks, Dad! “Maybe.”

  Or maybe he was simply looking after his daughter.

  And his son.

  Jude watched me like he could read my thoughts.

  Flushing, I took another sip of champagne, felt it bubble into my brain. “I need some air,” I said.

  “Are you okay?” Logan reached out and touched my hand.

  “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “That’s Lily,” Orchid said, playfully. “We’d be having a sleepover, robbing Iris’s liquor cabinets during “Truth or Dare” and she’d excuse herself, go up to her room, and write poetry or something.”

  “I wasn’t writing poetry.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Thinking.”

  “See?” she said to the boys with an I-told-you-so shrug. “Weirdo.”

  Moments ago, she was convulsing white-eyed and I’m the weirdo?

  “Just stay,” Logan said, his
eyes earnest, his tone serious.

  “Okay.” I squeezed his hand.

  More food appeared on our plates. Steaks and lobsters. Creamy potatoes. Fresh ears of summer corn buttered and salted to perfection. Watermelon. I decided to just enjoy this moment, as hilariously, ironically awkward as it was.

  Me. Logan. Jude. Orchid. Sitting around a table. One big happy family.

  A week ago—enemies.

  Scratch that: a day ago—enemies. A day ago, the four of us would have been strung up for even talking, never mind cohabitating on a stolen boat heading toward a mysterious cure that we knew next to nothing about.

  I watched the boys as I guzzled more of the rose bubbly. They weren’t boys anymore. Not really. They were almost men at this point: Gorgeous. Strong. Funny. Articulate. Two of the finest warlocks in Melas County, if not the entire world, and they were just…sitting here…on either side of me. Up for grabs. Up for my grabs.

  The air grew heavy with heat, scented like coconuts baking in the sun. I flashed back to the conversation Orchid and I had had before all of this began. She had dared me to find and make out with a warlock. Well now, obviously, Logan and I had done more than make out, and Orchid had made out with Logan—whether she admitted to remembering it or not. And who knew what she and Jude were up to during all their pre-doppelganger meetings? And I’d kissed Jude.

  Twice.

  We were like a merry band of incestuous magicians.

  “Lily?” Logan asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re staring.”

  I was. Staring. At Orchid and Jude. At Logan. At them all. They were all so…beautiful. I needed another drink. As soon as the thought appeared in my head, pink champagne filled my glass, bubbling over and onto the table in a mad, magical rush.

  “I LOVE this freaking boat!” Orchid picked up the full bottle and tipped it into her mouth. Before she had a chance to wipe the pastel froth dripping down her chin, Jude reached up with his shirtsleeve and gently dabbed at it, pausing at her full, beautiful lips.

  “Thank you, kind sir.” A half-smile oozing from her lips.

  “Any time.” His accent was crisp and proper.