Revel

by Maurissa Guibord

  “Sorry, I wanted to make sure that the Glaukos guards were being sent out. Where were you going?”

  I pointed down the passage. “I heard footsteps down that way.”

  Jax looked around as if he was calculating our position, then strode forward into the passage, disappearing into the blackness for a few moments. When he emerged, he shook his head. “It’s as I thought. That passage is blocked off only a few meters in.”

  “But someone was walking that way,” I insisted.

  “Perhaps you heard my steps. The echoes can be very deceiving,” Jax said. He took my arm. “I’ll take you home now. You must be very tired. By the way, you dropped this.”

  Gently he put the pearl-studded crescent moon in the palm of my hand.

  CHAPTER 30

  The next day I went into town and stopped at the docks, hoping to see Sean. I wanted to warn him about the break in the reef, and the Icers. It was also a good excuse to talk again and maybe smooth things over after the awkwardness of the other night. The Widowsong was moored but empty. I went to the Snug next. I didn’t see him but sat down at an empty table and ordered myself iced tea and a lobster roll. I’d have something to eat, then head over to Sean’s house to find him.

  A young woman walked into the Snug, took a book from the shelf and sat down in a booth. I only glanced at her at first, until I realized it was Zuzu. She looked different somehow.

  She was dressed in loose-fitting jeans and a pink button-down cotton shirt and sneakers. Her hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail.

  I practically ran across the tavern but stopped short when she looked up at me coldly.

  “I don’t want to talk,” she said in a dull, expressionless tone. “To you,” she added. She turned a page of the book.

  “That’s okay,” I said, sitting across from her.

  Zuzu’s delicate features looked thinner and there were faint purple shadows beneath her eyes. She wasn’t even wearing makeup.

  “Are you okay?”

  Zuzu didn’t look up, but her eyes stopped moving across the page. She put a finger at the spot and regarded me. Her green eyes were cold, distant. “You could have told me that you were one of them. You could have trusted me. I thought we were friends.”

  “We are friends. And you’re right,” I said. “I should have told you. I’m sorry. I just—I didn’t want to believe what was happening at first. I hoped it would stop, that I could make it stop. I didn’t want to be different.”

  The pages of the book flipped under Zuzu’s impatient fingers. “But you are different. You’re a First One, a demigod.”

  “I guess so.”

  Her eyes shot up to me, red-rimmed but dry. “I suppose we’re all just petty mortals to you.”

  That felt like a knife in my belly. “No,” I said firmly, “you’re not. Why does this have to separate us? Why can’t we still be friends? I want to be here for you. I heard about the punishment that the Council ordered for your family and I’m sorry. How can I help?”

  “We’re fine,” said Zuzu, turning a page. “I’m fine.”

  I didn’t believe her. Something was gone from inside Zuzu. She looked pale and sad.

  “Has someone hurt you? Darius didn’t come after you, did he?” I asked quietly. The thought of him trying to hurt Zuzu made me want to practice my siren-focus thing in a big way.

  Zuzu looked down at her book. “No. It’s just that Revel wasn’t the way I thought it would be.”

  “I spoiled it, didn’t I?”

  She shook her head. “No. You were right about it all along; maybe that’s the part that makes me mad. I just didn’t listen. You were right about the First Ones too—they’re cruel and cold. I’m done with all of them. From now on I’ll stick to my own kind.” She returned to her book. “Maybe you should do the same.”

  “I can’t do that. I care about you, and about Sean and Reilly.” I drummed my fingers on the table. “In fact, I need to find Sean. I saw him the other night, during the storm, and he acted …” I hesitated. “Different. Do you know what’s going on with him?”

  Zuzu closed her book and sighed. “Of course I know,” she said. “Everyone on the island knows. Maybe if you weren’t so busy with your own stuff, you’d notice what’s happening.”

  My fingers went quiet and I dropped them to my lap. “I don’t understand. Tell me.”

  She shook her head. “He told us not to say anything to you. And I promised him I wouldn’t. But now it probably doesn’t matter anymore. It’s too late to do anything about it.”

  “Zuzu, you’re scaring me. Tell me. If there’s anything wrong with Sean, I want to know. I want to help.”

  Zuzu bit her lips and her green eyes filled with sadness as she looked at me. “He’s undergoing the transformation.”

  “Transformation?” I stared at her. “What transformation?”

  “Sean’s becoming a Glaukos.”

  CHAPTER 31

  The floor wasn’t solid. Neither was the bench I sat on. They both rose up beneath me and fell, making my stomach lurch. And even then Zuzu kept talking, relentlessly, saying words that just couldn’t be possible.

  “Every few years a boy is chosen to be a defender of Trespass. They go through training, initiation and finally a treatment to transform into a Glaukos.”

  “No.” I closed my eyes tight at the image of the Glaukos creature that had been chained to the rocks. That hideous thing could never have been a man. But even as I tried to deny it, small things tugged at me. The misshapen head that did somehow remind me of a human skull, the clawed fingers grasping, looking almost like someone’s hand reaching …

  Was it possible? Was everything on this island a nightmare?

  “Sean wouldn’t do it,” I insisted. “He’s happy here. He loves this place.”

  “That’s why he will do it,” said Zuzu. “And in exchange for his sacrifice, his mother will be cared for by all the islanders and the First Ones. For the rest of her life. It’s already begun.”

  Dazed, I recalled small clues that I probably should have wondered about. The way Sean was treated around here. The “Your money’s no good here, Sean” refrain, the pats on the back. Yes. He was treated like a soldier, about to go off to war.

  And even the mayor’s comment at Revel came back to me.

  We’re all depending on you.

  Reilly walked in and sat next to Zuzu. She took his hand.

  “I just told Delia about Sean.”

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I asked. I felt sick to my stomach. Like crying and screaming all at the same time.

  “These guys give up their lives for us,” said Reilly. “We respect that. It’s not anyone’s place to go talking about it. We didn’t know that you had a relationship with Sean. And even if we did, it should have come from him.”

  “We don’t have a relationship,” I said in a quiet voice. “Not like that. But I care about him.”

  “Sean chose to serve,” said Reilly. “He could have said no, and another name would have been picked.”

  As if Sean would ever do that, I thought. The way people were raised here, it was probably unthinkable. Dishonorable. Never in a million years would he have backed out.

  Just like no young woman says no at Revel.

  “How is it done?”

  “They take trapweed,” said Zuzu. “They start during the summer, and by the time winter comes, they’re transformed. It’s a gradual process. And not easy.”

  “Then he can stop taking it,” I said, sitting forward.

  Reilly shook his head. “Nobody stops taking trapweed once they start. Supposedly it’s an incredible high. Like a combination of testosterone, cocaine and adrenaline. Increased muscle mass, reflexes, focus, along with sense of well-being, confidence. So basically you feel like Superman,” he said. “The only downer is, you turn into a Glauk. Which, uh, pretty much eliminates any recreational use,” he finished in a low voice.

  “So the creatures out there, all of them were me
n from Trespass,” I said. “And how long can they live … like that?”

  Reilly shook his head. “Nobody knows for sure, but longer than we do. A hundred years. Two hundred.”

  “And the names on the monument in the cemetery. Those are their names.”

  Zuzu nodded. “Some were fishermen who died from normal causes, but a lot of them are Glaukos. And we honor all of them.”

  “A Trespass sailor never dies,” said Reilly.

  “He’s only lost at sea,” I finished in a dry whisper.

  CHAPTER 32

  Sean was at home, sitting hunched over a desk in his room with his back to the door. His clothes were rumpled, as if he’d slept in them, and his unkempt hair lay at odd angles. As I walked in he shut the lid of a wooden box that sat on the desk in front of him.

  I came and stood behind him, putting a tentative hand on his shoulder.

  “Sean?”

  He didn’t answer. In fact, he didn’t even seem to be aware of me at all. I leaned over him to see his face.

  “There’s a sugar maple out in the yard there.” Sean gazed out the window in front of his desk, his expression trancelike. “It’s always really pretty in the fall. It doesn’t get cold enough for us to have a lot of color on the trees here, but that one turns red. I think I see a couple of leaves changed already.” He rubbed at the corners of the carved box in front of him with the pads of his thumbs. “How are you doing, Delia?” He glanced at me, his eyes roving. He bounced his legs, tapping his feet on the floor.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Oh, great,” he said, looking away. “You know.”

  “Why, Sean?”

  He pinched the inner corners of his eyes and rubbed at them. “I was chosen by lottery, but I agreed to it. And I was chosen long before you came to Trespass.”

  “And you never told me.” It was hard to keep the hurt out of my voice.

  Sean slid the wooden box closer to him on the desk, circling it with his arms. The wood was shiny and dark, as if it was old and had been handled a lot. The box was carved with symbols. The largest of these was a dagger, circled by coiling vines.

  Just like the tattoo on Sean’s arm.

  “I didn’t tell you because I promised myself there wasn’t going to be anything between us. There couldn’t be. And I didn’t want things to get all weird.” He glanced at me. “Too late for that, I guess,” he added with a hint of the gentle humor that was him.

  “Listen to me. You have to stop.”

  He shook his head doggedly. “No one can stop the transformation once it’s begun.”

  “The hell you can’t,” I said in a shaking voice. “Who’s doing this to you? Who do we have to talk to? That creepy mayor? The Council? We’ll just stop it.”

  “Nobody’s doing it to me, Delia.” Sean’s laugh was dry. “It’s the trapweed. You start eating the trapweed and you start changing. It’s part of me now. I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to.”

  “Just slow down,” I begged him. I grasped his arm and felt the thick biceps bunch and recoil against me. “I need to understand what’s going on. We can figure this out and fix it.”

  He pulled away from me. “No.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want to?” I said, searching Sean’s face. Was it my imagination or had that changed too? It didn’t seem so boyish. His skin was deeply tanned and his blond hair didn’t look as thick as it had.

  Sean sighed. “I’m saying …” He threw up his hands. “Hell, I don’t know what I’m saying. This is my life. This is what it is. I can’t change it suddenly, just because you decided to come. This is what I’m supposed to do. Protect this island. And the people I love.”

  “By turning yourself into a monster.”

  “Nobody here calls us that”—his eyes were hard and flat as he looked at me—“except you.”

  “It’s just a drug.” I paced away from him, looking at the disarray in his room. Dirty clothes and half-eaten food littered the floor. “They get you hooked and then they own you. You’re a slave.”

  Sean’s face hardened and his eyes glinted up at me from his slouched position. “You don’t understand,” he said. “You don’t know what it’s like to grow up here. It’s not the soft life you’ve had. People out there in your so-called real world? They live like sheep, doing the same old jobs, earning money to buy more stuff. It’s different here. There’s actual danger here, do you understand?” His voice kept rising as he spoke, and he stood up, pushing the chair away with a jerking motion that nearly toppled it over. I stepped back quickly. “We have to fight to protect what’s ours. Haven’t you heard? The Icers are coming. Some people even say you’re bringing them here, Delia.” He gave me a calculating look. “That true?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Sean. Have you lost your mind?”

  “Maybe,” said Sean. “But they’re coming. They want this island and they want to kill everyone on it. A war’s coming, and I’m going to fight.”

  Sean’s eyes were hard, defiant. The pupils were hugely dilated, the black almost obscuring any color at all. He was breathing hard, his chest expanding and filling his shirt like it would tear the fabric with the next breath. He looked savage, and excited.

  “You sound almost happy about it,” I said.

  “Yeah. Clarity makes me happy. I was confused for a while. About you, about how I felt. Now everything is simple. It’s better this way. I’m a soldier, Delia. And you’re going to need the Glaukos for this fight. You’re going to need me.”

  Sean’s eyes blazed and I thought I saw a flicker of yellow in the brown. For the first time I was truly frightened. I didn’t know who this was. But it wasn’t Sean.

  Maybe he saw the fear in my eyes. He blinked, swallowed and shook his head as if trying to clear it. He looked down at the box and placed a hand over the top. Was it possible that his hands had grown larger? His fingers draped over the edge as he clutched it.

  “See, when I take this,” he said in a low voice, “I feel like everything is going to be okay. I feel like I can do anything.”

  The pain in his voice made my heart break. Somewhere inside there was the guy who was so kind and gentle. The guy who took care of everyone else. But he was drowning. And I felt like there was nothing I could do about it.

  I took a deep breath. “Everything is going to be okay.” I stepped closer and touched his arm gently. Beneath my fingers the overtaxed muscles twitched and pulsed spasmodically. “And you can do this.”

  I reached for the dark box and tried to pull it away from him.

  As if he’d anticipated the movement, his arm shot up. He snatched the box from my hands and pushed me.

  It happened so fast. The slam of his hand against my shoulder felt like a sledgehammer. I flew backward, striking my head against the edge of the door. For a moment my vision went gray as my knees buckled. There was a trickle of warmth on the back of my head. And blood on the door.

  Sean’s face was a sickening gray color. “Oh my God. Delia. I didn’t—” He let out a low moan and reached out a hand to me.

  I ran out the door.

  CHAPTER 33

  I sat on the sand, watching the sun go down and fingering the smooth piece of blue glass at my throat.

  “Jax, I need your help.”

  Jax sat beside me, elbows resting on his bent knees and his hands clasped loosely together. His face was so still, so composed, that I couldn’t tell what he was feeling. “This thing you would ask me to do, you know that it betrays my own people. And yours.”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything,” I said. “Just tell me. What happens if the Glaukos stop taking the trapweed? Can they stop? Can the changes be reversed?”

  “It’s because of him, isn’t it?” Jax said in a low voice. “The Lander Gunn who is undergoing the transformation. Are you in love with him?”

  I closed my eyes. I’m in love with you. You chowderhead. We weren’t in the water, so I thought it was safe to think it. And to use one of Gran’s favorite e
xpressions. But my feelings for Jax, and his for me, weren’t the most important thing right now.

  “I care about Sean,” I told him. “And this is wrong.”

  Jax nodded. “The Glaukos will suffer if the trapweed is withheld. They’ll become violent and unmanageable. But there’s no reason to think that it would kill them.” He grimaced. “Though they may well kill each other.”

  “And the changes?”

  Jax broke his hands apart in a gesture of uncertainty. “I’ve never heard of them reversing. Ever.”

  “That’s not very encouraging.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be,” said Jax curtly. He rose. “I have to go.” Before he had walked two paces toward the water, he stopped and turned. “If this is what you believe to be right, Delia, then do it. I will defend your actions, and you. Always.” He raised a hand and touched his chest briefly. “Kardia mou.”

  He was gone before I had the chance to ask him what that meant.

  I knew what I had to do and I was going to do it before anyone tried to stop me. The next day, I found Ben Deare at the docks and told him what I wanted: gasoline, and lots of it.

  “Miss Delia, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  “Do you know what I am?” I asked him, searching his face.

  Ben nodded. “Ayuh.”

  “Then you know you don’t want to mess with me, right?”

  “I’ll have you stow that fresh talk, missy,” Ben snapped. “Course, I knew from the start. Who do you think helped your poor mother get away from this accursed place? You’re a siren. A dangerous piece of work,” he said, nodding to himself. “And shouldn’t old Captain Deare know it.”

  “Captain Deare,” I repeated. I looked at the brown wrinkled face and his keen blue eyes. And suddenly remembered those same eyes twinkling out at me from a picture in a book.

  “Ben,” I said slowly, “how long have you been here on Trespass?”

  “Pshaw,” said Ben. He squinted skyward as if calculating. “Let’s see. Lost track a few years back. Well …” He shrugged. “Ever since the Dover sank and tried to take me down with her.”