by Mimi Cross
“Nick!” I shout.
“Ari!” Bo’s voice trails over his shoulder. “Get back!”
But I can’t move. Is it Nick’s spell? Or am I simply too saturated with seawater and despair?
Nick’s mouth curls at one corner. His Song sings under my skin.
My faith begins to fail. How can we win against Nick Delaine? I’ve looked into his eyes—I’m looking now. The annihilating rage is there. He’s a murderer.
Sheets of rain lash my face, but it isn’t the pain that makes me cry.
This is how we’ll die.
A bolt of lightning cracks the sky, and a peal of thunder rolls across the water. Then, for a split second, there’s a lull in the storm.
“Nick, please.” The words slip through my lips, two notes of an unwritten hymn.
Amid the chaos of their terrible dance, Nick’s black-ice eyes keep me captive. But he says nothing. And when Bo risks a quick glance over his shoulder at me—Nick slams a fist into his face.
Blood gushing from his lip, Bo stumbles—
With both hands, Nick grabs his head. Slams it to the stone beneath their feet.
“Bo!” I strain against the invisible bonds. “Please! Nick! Please don’t hurt him!”
Nick’s gaze holds steady, flares bright—
Then, amazingly, the current between us shifts. The forceful energy pushing against me doesn’t stop completely, but it lightens, like the ocean at a time when the tide is neither ebbing nor flowing but slack, about to turn.
He’s changing his mind. He’s going to let us go! I suddenly wonder—if we’d met before, when Nick had been human, when he’d been Logan’s twin—Would we have been friends?
But Nick laughs now. Swings again at Bo—
Who’s on his feet, and this time dodges Nick’s flying fist, springing at the silver-eyed Siren—a flashing blade in one hand. His other hand is a fist that connects with Nick’s jaw—
Bo thrusts the knife—
And misses.
Nick doesn’t waste time. He grabs Bo’s outthrust arm, twisting it up—forcing Bo to his knees and the knife from his hand—
The weapon spins through the air then clatters on the granite, jouncing, tumbling, and finally catching in a crevice midway between us. Then Nick is on his knees as well, bending Bo backward, sealing Bo’s lips with his own—
“No!” I scream.
Bo’s hands fly to Nick’s throat—then both boys are prone. They roll over and over as I leap toward them—
But Nick pins Bo beneath him, and all at once they go still. I scream again.
Bo’s hands drop from around Nick’s neck—
His legs go limp.
Even as I shout, “No, no, no!” other words—my own words to Bo—ring in my head: “Maybe you could kill someone if your life were being threatened, but wouldn’t we all? If we possessed the skill and the strength and our lives were at stake? Anyone would kill, to live.”
My life is being threatened—I can’t deny it, and as Bo’s Song vanishes like morning mist over the sea, I feel as if I might disappear as well, might die from the loss of it, of him, if Nick doesn’t kill me first. Bo! But I can’t help Bo—I can only save myself. My strength is nothing compared to Nick Delaine’s, and I don’t have the skill—
But I have a knife. It shines at my feet.
And all at once, I remember. I’ve seen it before. Held it. Begged Bo not to carry it.
But that was in another life. Lightning glints off the blade now, off the slim handle slick with rain. And as Nick comes reeling toward me drunk with Bo’s breath, I swiftly scoop it up.
He laughs when he sees me holding the weapon. “This was never your fight. And besides”—his full lips push into a pout—“I don’t want to ruin my dessert.” He laughs again, Logan’s grin on his face, his head tipping back—
Which is why he doesn’t see the blade coming.
And if a wall of water hadn’t slapped my back, maybe I wouldn’t have moved at that very moment, but I did move—I’m moving now, propelled by the Atlantic, and wondering—wondering in this split second that stretches into an endless eternity—where to aim the knife.
But then in my mind’s eye I see Jordan’s hand coming down on his thigh—hear the smack of it, loud as a gunshot in my memory’s remix—and I know. The windpipe.
Surely to slice it will take Nick’s breath more quickly even than a Siren’s kiss.
FREEDIVERS
The hand that knocks me from the seawall is bloody—Nick’s hand.
My forward momentum sank the knife deep into his throat—
But he still had some momentum of his own.
My shoulder strikes rock. My back—slaps water. Then the sea—
Swallows me.
My heart thrums in my chest. Swim up, swim up, swim up—
But the water is frigid, and I’m exhausted.
Too late, too late—My pulse beats a frantic rhythm, as I sink . . .
Into darkness . . .
Until I’m back in San Francisco, with Lilah, the bright turquoise of the public pool surrounding us. Diving in the deep end, wearing underwater smiles. She makes it to the bottom first, like always.
We swim one lap together, two—Lilah pulls ahead—always ahead—and vanishes.
Now my body is a submarine, lost on maneuvers. My heart is a butterfly, caught in the net of my body. My heart . . . is a rhythmic tattoo, fading . . .
The blackness behind my closed eyes becomes an infinite space. I gaze into the inky darkness . . . find a theater stage, velvet curtains drawn open to reveal a black screen.
Pictures appear. Lilah, Mom, Dad . . .
Images form faster now, flickering on the screen . . . more family, and friends. Mary, and Logan. I’m so sorry, Logan. Further back now, steep streets, in our old neighborhood, blue skies and boats, Mom and Dad, holding hands, running on the black sand of Stinson Beach.
Beach—sand. Ocean—water.
Please, let it be quick.
But my body falls slowly, drifting through watery twilight.
My hair floats around my face in a dark cloud, like the tentacles of a jellyfish swirling around itself. My tears are the sea . . .
The curtain closes now. Darkness descends . . .
Nighttime, time for sleep . . .
Only suddenly, I feel heat, and a petal-soft scalding touch—the sun—on my mouth.
I try to open my eyes—
No longer know how.
I’m dreaming. No, dying.
The sun presses against my mouth more urgently now, until my lips part, and warmth surges through me, springtime entering me. A breeze from a hot summer day swells my lungs with sweetness, fills them with air impossibly fragrant with grass, sea spray, and flowers. I breathe in rosemary and sage—the desert, after rain. I inhale deeply—feeling a sort of shock that I can, but it’s a buffered, far-off feeling, surreal as the scent of sun-warmed pine needles and August evenings.
Breathe. I hear the word in my head, and open my eyes.
He surges away from me, and I follow, mesmerized by his beauty, by the tiny beads of water covering his body, catching what little light there is. His wings have transformed, have become like the undulating fins of a fish. Nearly translucent, they shine with a subtle rainbow of iridescence and sway with each movement of the current. Above us, the storm may still be raging, but down here, the water is calm. Peaceful.
Will my wings look like his?
Like him, I’m able to breathe underwater. When he spins toward me, possibly to make sure I’m following, his hair drags across his face, rippling like seaweed. I mouth, How?
But even as I ask, I realize—we’re connected. There’s no need to articulate my questions by forming words with my lips; words aren’t necessary—the water is once again our conduit.
I’m confused, though, by the darkness of his thoughts, by my inability to comprehend them all, by so much—static.
But he holds out a hand to me—and this I unders
tand. Staring at his diaphanous appendages, his animal beauty, I take it.
Through the hair that drapes his face, his eyes are two dark mirrors reflecting the sea. A sea that is such a dark green at this depth, it appears almost black.
And yet it teems with life. Schools of fish glide by—scaled bodies smooth and supple. I imagine swimming off . . . marvel at his torso instead, as he tugs me along behind him now, my attention torn between the strange world around me and his graceful, nearly naked form. His shoulders look broader, stronger, than ever.
But— Oh! A strangled cry issues from my lips along with a stream of bubbles. My lungs feel tight, a horrid sensation. A sharp pain causes me to bring my hands to my rib cage. I squeeze my eyes closed.
He tightens his grip on my hand, and we begin to ascend faster, pausing every few feet so he can blow his honeyed breath into my mouth. But the sharp pains continue. Diver’s disease? The bends? In the back of my mind, I hear Jordan Summers’ words. “I lost her. I never even had a chance to begin the Deepening.” Then I remember another scrap of the same conversation:
“How exactly does Deepening work?”
“Or not work.” Bo’s words.
He pulls me faster through the darkness.
He sent the first sweet breath into my lungs, and my senses exploded, expanded, but now, in the reverse, they begin to shut down, a lotus flower, closing at dusk. I open my eyes, but my vision fails. Then, I can’t hear, can’t hear anything except my heartbeat, loud and slowing in my ears.
Until there is nothing . . .
Except his hand . . .
Holding mine . . .
Then even the sensation of his touch is gone, and all that remains is a futile feeling, that the vast body of water washing over me is winning, and that I’ve lost.
That he—has lost me.
BLINK; FLASH
Cloth slides over my skin.
Not water, cloth.
Cotton sheets, on a bed.
“Arion?”
Mia’s voice. More sharp-edged than I remember. Broken.
Slowly, I blink my eyes open.
The light in the room is bright—too bright.
“The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.”
I close my eyes.
KILLER
“. . . Neptune knows if she’ll . . .”
Voices. My senses wing around my body, checking like an anxious parent. Hands? Okay. Spine? Fine. Throat. Raw. I try to speak—my eyes snap open.
Mia stands next to the bed gazing down at me, her eyes like the winter sea.
“Lilah—” My voice is a dry rasp, and in my gut—a strange hollowness. “Is she here?”
“She’s at the lighthouse with your mother. They know you’re with us.”
“I’ve got to go—”
“The storm delayed their flight—it’s Tuesday. Their plane didn’t get to Bangor until yesterday afternoon. I left your father a message last night. I told him you fell asleep over here, while you were waiting for them to return.”
I am waiting.
I try to sit up—
Pain fires through my chest.
Mia pushes me back on the pillows. “It’s too soon,” she says shortly. She’s holding something else back besides me.
“The seawall.” Pain shoots through my limbs. “Bo. He heard my Call. He came—”
“Nick Delaine got his last wish, then, didn’t he?”
Not quite. Because as beaten as Bo looked on the breakwater, he survived.
But I just nod, staring past Mia at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on the far side of the room. They’re overflowing with CDs. But besides the shelves and the bed I’m lying in, the space is empty. It’s like whoever lives here hasn’t unpacked yet, or is about to leave. Still it’s a deeply welcoming space. Late-afternoon sun fills even the corners with glowing amber.
I’m in Bo’s room, in his bed. I feel my whole body relax.
But then my stomach twists.
We’re safe—because I killed Nick Delaine.
Black water closes over my head.
DRUG
Music can be a seductive thing. Sexy.
Music can fill a need. Addictive.
Music can be a mind-numbing, soul-numbing, heart-numbing drug. Anesthetic.
An hour? A day? A week? In my dreams, I hear singing. Hear Sirens.
When I wake, Mia is once again standing over me.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” I lie. It hurts to breathe; plus, a flood of questions is threatening to drown me.
She simply nods, Bo’s nod. I’m about to ask where he is, when she says, “Really?”
Apparently coming close to death hasn’t made me a better liar.
Then she begins to sing, and reality becomes a flickering thing . . .
Time is fluid . . . Time is stuck. But then I wake again, and think—There is no time. I have to get home.
“Wait.” This time it’s Cord. His face is so pale the smattering of freckles across his nose stands out in sharp relief. “This won’t hurt a bit.” While singing what he tells me is an ancient Welsh melody, he puts thirty-three stitches in my calf. I don’t feel even one of them. In fact—I don’t feel anything.
As he watches me hobble into the living room, the side of his mouth lifts in a wobbly grin.
“Now I have an excuse,” I say, testing my weight on the wounded leg. “For why I didn’t run home right away. My folks will easily believe I did this on the jetty between our beaches.”
“Lying like a Siren. C’mon. I’ll drive you.”
“You’re not old enough to drive,” I scoff. “Where’s Bo?”
Cord blinks. Then all at once his face crumples.
“What’s wrong?” I grab his arm. “Cord, where’s Bo?”
“He’s—gone.”
At the same moment Cord chokes out these words, a tall man strides through the front door of the cottage. He has to be Professor Summers. His eyes are the same blue green as Bo’s—except they lack the flare of gold and instead gleam with the cold fire of phosphorescence.
He studies me with a detached air, and the edges of my vision seem to darken.
“What do you mean, gone?” I manage to rasp out.
Jordan appears in the doorway behind his father. Backlit by the afternoon light reflecting off the ocean, he’s nothing but a dark silhouette. He must have just come from the water; droplets cling to his skin, the sun hitting them so they shine, highlighting his broad shoulders—
Shoulders broader, stronger, than Bo’s.
The shoulders I’d been looking at as I was pulled to safety.
“No!” I cry out. “No! Bo came to me under the waves. Bo—blew magic into my mouth!” Frantic now, I look around the room. Bo’s family watches me with their Siren eyes. I jab a finger toward Mia. “You—you were singing! And Cord. How can you sing, if, if—”
“How can we not?” she answers coolly.
It can’t be true. It can’t be true, it can’t be true, it can’t be true!
But the Sirens aren’t lying. Not this time. Bo hadn’t lost me. I’d lost him. And it was Jordan, with his dark eyes, his wild hair washing across his face, who had saved my life, not Bo. I’d just been too disoriented to realize it.
“I—I want to see him. I want to see Bo! I don’t believe he’s dead. I want to see his body!”
“You can’t,” Mia snaps. “The sea took it.”
THRESHOLD
Cord follows me outside where I sink onto the sand, staring with disbelief at the sea, hating it.
He says, “My Song, Mia’s—they’ll hold for a while. You’ll be okay. But you’d better let me take you home. Your folks have probably been worrying about you. They know you’re here, but still.”
Too shocked to speak, I only look up at him. He extends his hand, and finally, I take it.
But my parents aren’t worried, not about me.
“Hello?” I holler as I come through the front
door. There’s a wheelchair in the hall.
“We’re in here,” Dad answers softly from the bedroom at the back of the cottage.
Lilah is lying in his bed, sleeping, her raven hair strewn across the pillows. My parents are sitting on chairs they’ve brought in from the kitchen and—there’s something wrong with Dad’s face. His mouth looks—small, his eyes nearly lost in the swollen folds of skin that surround them. Mom’s eyes are like a wall of bluestone.
“What is it?” I ask. “What happened?” My parents look at each other. “Tell me!”
“Shh, Arion. Nothing happened. I mean, not here. It’s—” Mom breaks off. Bending down to hug her, I take a closer look at Lilah. It doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with her. Of course I know there is. But I don’t know everything apparently.
“Sweetie.” Dad takes my hand. “Lilah . . . isn’t going to have the procedure next month.”
“What? Why not?” I yank my hand away, bring it to my stomach.
“When your mom phoned and said she was coming for a visit and bringing Lilah, she . . . told me a few things. None of them good.” He wipes at his eyes.
“What things?” He had been sick, heartsick. “What things? Just tell me! Mom?”
“Arion.” Mom closes her eyes. “We’re going to lose Delilah.”
“What? No! What are you talking about?”
“Ari, your mom’s trying to tell you, we’re going to have to say goodbye to her.”
“To Lilah? Why?” My attention ricochets back and forth between my parents. “Why?”
“About ten days ago Lilah had an MRI,” Dad says. “She’d been, well . . .” Dad looks questioningly at Mom.
“Behaving differently,” Mom says. There’s a choppiness to her voice. “She—she was still . . . in her own world much of the time, but . . . she was acting differently.”
“Acting differently how? What was she doing?”
“It doesn’t matter, Arion. I decided she should get another scan. I—I wasn’t so sure that the surgery was the best idea anymore and—your dad was here. I just went ahead. Scheduled the MRI. It showed some blood clots. In her brain. There’s nothing they can do. The clots are . . . precarious. Any type of procedure, even something exploratory . . . could kill her.”