Beautiful Monster

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Beautiful Monster Page 7

by Heidi R. Kling


  I looked from one to the other: Logan, Orchid, and, finally, Jude. “So we need to decide where we’re going to sleep.”

  12. BROKEN BONES

  ………………

  LOGAN

  “LILY AND I WILL TAKE the first watch, and Jude can take the second. I figure, if we’re passing through Central America, we need to keep an eye out.”

  “Lions and tigers and bears,” Jude remarked sarcastically.

  “Oh, right. You weren’t with us for the first attack of bolts that blew up the ship.”

  “Are you accusing me of something, brother?”

  “I’m saying we need to stay awake and keep watch. We’re all exhausted, so we should do shifts. That’s it.”

  “Your plan is sound, Captain,” Jude said. “I’ll just take a nap in the nautical room…isn’t that what you call it?”

  “That’s our room. Stay away from it.”

  Jude saluted and I wanted to punch him.

  “Logan?” Lily asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “I need to talk to Orchid. And maybe I’ll get a little nap in,” Lily said.

  “Sure.”

  She kissed me on the cheek.

  “Don’t let the bed bugs bite, eh, Lily,” Jude drawled in that annoying, attractive British accent of his, his words trailing after me as if he was the bug that just might bite, as I rounded the corner and disappeared below deck.

  LILY

  “You are playing those two boys like they’re blue and pink faeries, Lily. It’s just not right,” she said, once we were tucked away in the nautical room for our rest before keeping watch.

  I choked on the swig of water and put the cap back on, wiping my mouth.

  “Blue fairy and pink fairy? For real?”

  “Yeah. You know, when we were six and played that Forest Faeries game, remember? I said one of the dolls should be green but you insisted that one be pink and one be blue. You remember. You could never let me have one.” She eyed me pointedly. “So you’d take them both until I got your mom to come and straighten it out.”

  “Was I that selfish as a kid?” Maybe I’d always had darkness in me.

  “You still are.” She looked me dead in the eye. I watched the faerie bones on her neck swing back and forth, grounding her in a better place than she was before we even entered the stones. Right now, Orchid was the Orchid I knew. My best friend. The one who called me out on my shit. I was beyond grateful to have her here, if only magically and albeit temporarily.

  “Why were you even friends with me?”

  “You have your charms,” she teased. “Besides, Iris let us make a mess and my mom wouldn’t.”

  “Ah. True. Gotta love Iris’s hands-off approach to housecleaning.”

  “Helps when you have spells to do the work.”

  We were quiet for a moment. Remembering simpler days.

  “Do you really think I’m like that? Selfish like that?”

  “What you’re doing with the guys isn’t exactly fair, Lil. Logan is definitely noticing the vibe between you and Jude. I can’t imagine why you’d risk messing that up, especially after how hard you’ve worked to be together.”

  She was right.

  What was wrong with me?

  Sighing, I leaned back on the bed. Orchid leaned back too, lying next to me. She linked her ankle around mine. Solidarity. I wiggled our linked feet gratefully as we both stared up at the low ceiling.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I confessed, fighting the lump in my throat. It was the first time I was honest with her about this. Honest with anyone.

  “Logan loves you.” She said this as if that was the only thing that mattered.

  “And I love him. But he…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. It’s like…oh, I don’t know. Jude’s just easier, somehow.”

  “I know I’ve been out of it, but since Jude gave me this medallion, I’m seeing everything so clearly and you don’t seem so worried about doing everything perfectly anymore. Not worried about being perfect. Is it because you aren’t under Iris and Camellia’s watch or because you aren’t at home, expected to be a good example for Daisy? What is it?”

  “I found out something, Orchid. On the cliffs.”

  “What?”

  Her eyes were so open, her voice so kind, her curiosity so earnest and non-judgmental. I wanted to tell her. I had to tell someone or I’d split open and all the darkness would fall out anyway. And it couldn’t be Logan. It had to be Orchid. She would understand. She had to.

  “I found out Frank isn’t my real dad.”

  “What?” Her mouth fell agape.

  “I know it sounds crazy, but Iris told me she had an affair with someone before…someone…someone not good, Orchid.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t even say.”

  “You want me to guess? God, Lily. This isn’t one of your Forest Fairy games.

  This is real life.”

  I stared at her. Come on, Orch. Don’t make me say it.

  In a breath, his name puffed from her lips in a cloud of red smoke, “Jacob.” She clutched the faerie bones for dear life.

  I swallowed while she sized me up, her brain churning with this horrific information, everything she’d thought of me since we were playing with dolls changing. “Jacob—Jacob?” Orchid clutched the bones, her voice was laced with anxiety. “You haven’t told Logan. That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this is why you think it’s ‘easier’ to be with Jude?”

  “Yes. He knows. Jude knows…and he’s keeping my secret. He told me he’d help me control the dark magic.”

  Orchid was looking at me like I was wielding a weapon she wasn’t sure how to deflect.

  “You need to tell Logan! You should’ve told him right away. You can’t keep something like this from him.”

  “Orchid… I can’t. He’ll never look at me the same way. He won’t understand. How Jacob treated him all those years. He abused him, Orchid. He killed his parents and abducted him as a child. Jacob is the most evil creature Logan knows and I’m half him? He won’t…” I stuffed the tears back harshly, swallowing them, forcing them away. I was barely able to say what I knew to be true. “He won’t. He won’t love me anymore.”

  Instead of comforting me, instead of understanding why I needed to keep my secret, Orchid moved, slowly, toward the other side of the room. Toward the exit. Incredulously, I turned and faced her. Leaning against the door, she said softly, her voice no more than a tremble, “He has every right to know.”

  I frowned, hearing my voice rise. “Whose side are you on here, anyway? I needed to talk so I asked you to come. You, of all people, should understand, Orchid.” I took a step toward her, heat raging in my belly, my voice rising in frustration. “You betrayed me time and time again. You tricked me into divulging my secrets about Logan so you could tell Camellia. You planned the betrayal with Jude. I thought you, of all people, would understand.”

  Ugly emotions bubbled up in my core. My hands shook with anger. Why didn’t she get that I needed her to help me? To make me feel better about this. After all she’d done, she owed me this. “I’ve forgiven you again and again and again! You went after Logan. You KISSED MY boyfriend in the clearing. MY boyfriend. Yet, I saved your life!”

  She held up her palm as if trying to block my words. The words she knew damn well were true. “I didn’t want to do those things! I was tricked. Persuaded!”

  “Oh, sure you were. Remember the Nuremburg trials? ‘We were just following orders’ that shit doesn’t hold up in court, my friend.”

  “You’re comparing what I did to a Nazi solider?”

  “If the boot fits.”

  I shrugged. Livid at her hypocrisy.

  Outside, I heard footsteps, then Logan’s voice calling my name, asking if we were okay. Knowing we weren’t.

  “You need to tell hi
m. Let him in and tell him right now, Lily.”

  “Be quiet,” I sneered, lowering my voice.

  “I’ll stay with you. I’ll be right here. It will hurt him, sure, but he’ll understand. He’ll still love you, Lily.”

  “No.” I clenched my fists, a hard resolve forming in my gut. “Once he knows, he will never love me again. This isn’t just about me, Orchid; it’s about the future of the Spellspinners. Logan and I need to be together to find the cure for Chance. Once we bring it back, once we wake him from the spell, I’ll tell him. I’ll have saved Chance, and maybe he’ll forgive me. It can’t happen now.”

  Orchid looked at me, her eyes fierce with determination. “No, Lily. There are only four of us on this ship and we all have a right to know that the enemy, the very person who is chasing us…may have been right here all along.”

  She poked at my chest.

  I shooed her hand off. “If anyone is the enemy on this ship, Orchid, it’s YOU.”

  “Lily? Open the door! What’s going on in there?”

  Logan.

  “Just a sec,” I yelled back. “We’re fine. We’re just discussing something.”

  Orchid turned, grabbed the doorknob and I elbowed her out of the way. “Tell him or I will!”

  Before she could ruin my life again, I reached out and ripped the necklace from her neck, breaking the chain, scattering the bones. I stood there and watched them fall, as Orchid had in the Stones.

  Fragmented. Fractured. Crushed.

  She fell forward onto the bed, her torso hitting the mattress as her knees slammed onto the floor. In a few seconds, she’d be rocking, chanting, and the horror would begin again.

  Bending over, I scooped the individual faerie bones into my pocket moments before Logan kicked the door open.

  “What the hell is going on in here?”

  “Orchid.” I shook my head and pointed at her.

  “What happened? Is she okay?”

  Obviously, she wasn’t okay. She looked like she was dead.

  Logan’s expression was a deja vu—I’d seen it when he realized I’d shot the security guard. He knew something was wrong—very wrong—but wanted to believe I was innocent. His face broke my heart. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded, shaking.

  The shaking was truth.

  Pretending like I had no idea what happened was the lie.

  Logan checked Orchid’s pulse and her cheek for warmth. Fingering the broken chain around her neck he looked at me. “What happened? Where are the bones?”

  “I don’t know.” Another lie. I hated this. Why did Orchid make me do this? Silence her like this? It was her fault I had to lie—again!—to my boyfriend.

  “Lily, I heard you guys fighting.”

  I shrugged. I had to come up with something. Something…excusable. Something forgivable. But what?

  Crap.

  His eyes locked on mine. He suspected. After the security guard, of course he suspected! He wanted the truth. I went on the defensive. “Why do you think I did something?”

  “I’m not saying you did…I’m sure it was an accident but…”

  “She freaked out and ripped the necklace off.”

  He looked skeptical. “Help me move her up to the bed, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  We pulled her up onto the bed. She hadn’t started groaning yet but her knees were already curling in toward her chest. It was only moments away.

  Logan grimaced, looking at her. It was a gruesome sight, this Orchid Zombie state. No one wanted her to stay like this. I hated that I had no choice but to put her back in it. But I couldn’t risk her telling Logan. He couldn’t know. Not yet anyway.

  “I…need air.”

  “Lily!”

  I ran for the deck and he went to Orchid. Outside, I leaned against the rails. I could jump, disappear under the inky cold water. The sea beckoned.

  I stepped onto the first rung, my white skirt whipping my ankles in the cool breeze.

  Maybe I didn’t have to jump in myself.

  Maybe I could take care of the problem another way.

  Fingering the faerie bones in my pocket, I knew what I had to do, and once I did, it would solidify everything. It would make me his daughter not just in blood, but also in behavior. Not just in DNA but also in gesture.

  I would be him.

  I would be Jacob.

  I held the bones out over the side of the boat.

  “Don’t do it.”

  The gig was up. It was time to confess everything. I had no choice.

  I turned around, guiltily, mortified. Tears bubbling up from my aching chest into my eyes, I turned to face him. To confess—and then lose him.

  “Don’t toss them overboard, all my hard work would’ve been wasted.”

  I blinked. It wasn’t Logan. It was Jude.

  Everything shifted again.

  Sighing with relief, I rolled the tiny bones through my fingers. It would just take a second. A snap of my wrist and they’d be gone. Orchid would be quiet forever. Nothing had to change.

  “We’ll find another way,” he said. He approached me slowly, reaching out his palm, closing the distance between us. “Give them to me.”

  I watched the bones sitting in my palm. I thought of the Forest Faeries.

  “When I was very young, I didn’t know I was a witch. I didn’t truly believe in faeries. It was all pretend. But now I’m holding the bones of a dead one.”

  Jude nodded.

  “I wonder how it died.”

  “Faerie bones only revive consciousness if the faerie was killed in a traumatic way. The spirit of the faerie, gasping for life, that’s the magic.”

  “That’s heavy.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  We exchanged a look. A look that made me uneasy. He kept talking:

  “It’s a small boat, love. I know you. I know how far you’d go to protect Logan from learning the truth.”

  I glanced over my shoulder, closing my fist around the bones, shaking them a bit.

  “You’ll never forgive yourself if you toss them into the sea,” Jude answered, reading my thoughts. “We’ll find another way. You can’t leave her like that just to protect your secret. It’s inhuman—it isn’t you, Lily.”

  I swiped the hot tears coursing down my cheeks. “My instincts are screaming to toss them overboard, to keep her quiet, to keep Logan from learning the truth.” I could.

  “No. Please, Lil. Give them to me. I promise I won’t put them back on her unless, or until, you tell me to. I won’t even put them on a chain. Give them to me.”

  “I should…I should just tell him.” My voice was no more than a tremble in the wind. Jude steadied me with a strong hand.

  “Tell him when you’re ready.”

  “Why are you being so nice, Jude? Why don’t you want me to tell Logan? He’ll break up with me for good…and you and I could be together, ruling over the darkness, isn’t that what you want?”

  He blinked with surprise. “Don’t change the subject. Besides, I don’t want you to be with me because you can’t be with him. I want you to come to me when you don’t want to be with him anymore. I want you to choose me.”

  “Choose you over Logan?” My laugh sounded more wicked than intended.

  “Yes,” he said, his mouth firm. Nothing about this was funny and we both knew it. And I was changing the subject. “Now, may I please have the bones so I don’t have to dive after them into that freezing water?”

  He moved his hand down my arm until it was over my closed palm. I opened my hand, and he took the bones.

  “There, was that so hard?”

  I felt equal parts defeated and grateful. “Don’t be patronizing.”

  “I was trying to lighten the mood.”

  “Ah. Well. Good luck with that.”

  Leaning forward he kissed me gently on the forehead. I didn’t lean in but I didn’t exactly move away either. “T
here. You feel better already. Oh, and she won’t be motionless for long. Surely the rocking and that bloody chanting will present itself in no time.”

  Beside myself, I laughed. “I’m a horrible person.”

  “You’re a witch, Lily. You have to know it’s not all light and magic boats? You have to know there’s a dark side to everything.”

  “Even to magic.”

  “Especially to magic. Come here, it’s going to be okay. Everything will be okay.”

  Shaking a little, I answered by tipping my head into his chest, letting this evil boy comfort me.

  “How’d you know about me?” I whispered into his steady, beating heart.

  His confident hand stroked my hair while the heat of his whisper circled around my ear. “I’ve always known.”

  ………………

  I woke up alone.

  Groaning, I remembered everything wasn’t okay. Remembered my fight with Logan. Remembered how I’d come to bed alone, slept alone. Remembered the moment with Jude on the ship when he kissed my forehead and I let him convince me to hand over the faerie bones, and most importantly—no, most dreadfully—remembered what I’d done to Orchid. And I’d forgotten to take my shift on watch. I was the worst.

  Jumping up, I slipped into a cute white and blue sundress that lay fresh and pressed on a chair. “Thanks, Sea Witch,” I said aloud, although I was likely thanking him. Thanking Jacob. It made me want to toss it overboard.

  Now to check on Orchid.

  I knocked quietly on the second bedroom door before entering, but there was nobody inside.

  I backed out and went to the main part of the cabin and there was Logan, sitting with Orchid, spoon-feeding her oatmeal. He glanced up at me, barely, and didn’t say good morning.

  “Open.” He prodded Orchid, then gently moved the spoon into her mouth, dropping some of the oatmeal onto her pink tongue.

  “Good,” he said, like she was a baby. Like he was her father, or worse, a caretaking spouse.

  This was seriously messed up.

  “Good morning,” I said. “I’m sorry I overslept…I didn’t mean to leave you out here alone to keep watch all night.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, without looking at me.

 

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