“For the rest of her life, she said a ‘gray man’ watched her from the dunes, and others up and down the coast have reported being warned about danger; storms and hurricanes, by a gray, faceless silhouette.”
“That’s all bullshit, Aleta. Don’t fill their heads with that,” Calista grumbled as she blew past us, out the gate, and onto the beach.
“Seriously, what is her deal?” I asked Aleta.
“Her deal, in general, is that she’s Calista Embers. And that could take a lifetime, or several, to explain,” Aleta said. “Her deal, on this particular subject, is that every man she’s ever loved has, out of necessity, lived and died in the relative blink of an eye compared to her. Think about that. It’s natural that the subject of love would cause her pain, no?”
“I never thought of it that way,” Emma said, and I nodded my agreement. It wasn’t like I’d ever experienced any sort of fairy tale or romantic comedy sort of love, and to my knowledge neither had Emma, but the thought of being in love and watching him grow old and die, knowing you had centuries or millennia to live with the pain seemed beyond heartbreaking.
“Now don’t get me wrong,” Aleta continued, “Calista can be an award-winning B-word. Nobody who’s ever spent five minutes with her would argue against that. But there’s a bit more to her than meets the eye.”
“Speaking of Miss Calista, should we join her on the beach, ladies?” Fiona suggested. She was always eager to dispel negativity and keep harmony among the Belles.
By the time our group crossed the dunes and hit the beach, Calista was in waist-deep water. Her fingertips glided across the waves, shaping them to her vision and desire. Emma hadn’t been part of the Belles world much longer than I had, but she confided in me that in the days since Calista had been temporarily robbed of her gifts by Zillah March’s wicked plot, Calista had taken to using her power more often and more flamboyantly, as if to test her limits and be certain she was back to full strength.
We watched as Calista lifted a series of small waves some thirty feet into the air, then spun it around her body like a cyclone before letting it settle back to normalcy. An older man being pulled down the beach by a pair of border collies on long leads stopped and stared.
Aleta rolled her eyes. “Come on, Calista.” With a wave of Aleta’s hand, the man rubbed his eyes, looked at the water again, and seemed to realize nothing was amiss. He returned to his walk.
Josephine ran down the beach and into the water, splashing the ice queen as her legs churned through the surf and carried her deeper.
“How is it, Jo?” Fiona called out. Josephine turned and gave us two grinning thumbs up. Emma, Fiona, and I stripped down to our one-pieces, sprayed on sunscreen, and strolled toward the water.
“Are you coming?” Emma asked Aleta.
“I’m going to soak up some sun first,” Aleta said, spreading a towel and stretching out on it to warm up. She stripped down to a white bikini that looked as if it has been tailor-made to flatter her sleek sinewy form and flawless, shining skin. I wondered if I’d ever stop feeling self-conscious around these girls, and at the same time I thanked the good Lord for my twin, around whom I couldn’t imagine ever feeling that way.
After a lifetime, or lifetimes according to the Belles, apart, we’d fallen right into a groove together, finishing each other’s sentences and finding little quirks of similarity. We both enjoyed only thin crust pizza, and even with the right crust, we were both content to just pick off the toppings and leave the pie a crater-covered mess with holes in the cheese where olives, pepperoni, and sausage had been. We also had the same sensitive skin, which made most makeup off-limits. Hoodies, and cheap Target flip flops, even though they left Virginia mortified, were our first choice in fashion.
All the Belles were unanimous in our appreciation for the ocean that afternoon. The water had the perfect bite of coolness to cut through the Charleston humidity, and we soaked blissfully.
Even Calista had softened and sent a wave crashing over Josephine and Fiona, who’d conspired to splash her.
We swam and chatted, alone but for noisy gulls and gliding pelicans. Eventually, Aleta glided down the beach and joined us.
If this was what it felt like to have sisters, if this was what the road through the orphanage led me to, maybe the reward could end up being worth the suffering I endured. It wasn’t the family I’d prayed for and dreamt of for so many years, but I’d discovered a sort of optimism I hadn’t known, maybe ever.
4 Emma
Splashing in the ocean with the Belles was a happy time. And it should have been. Even Calista allowed herself a genuine smile.
But part of me still struggled to allow myself to let go of the guilt I felt regarding my parents and sister. I hoped getting revenge on Zillah, once I knew unequivocally that she was responsible, would ease my pain and give me some satisfaction.
Letting her die, however good it felt in the moment, did nothing to bring Merritt back. Or my poor parents.
As much as my life had become a non-fiction version of one of my favorite movies, The Princess Diaries, all the affluence, love, and support my new “family” supplied could never fill the hole in my heart.
I sunk beneath the waves, letting myself bob in the water, holding my breath as long as I could, alone with my thoughts. When I surfaced with a gasp, it was to the sound of Briar’s voice.
“What are those? Dolphins? They almost look like people, but they’re too far out.”
Everyone’s attention was turned toward the horizon. I shielded my eyes from the sun and tried to focus, eventually zeroing in on a group of shapes just far enough away to make it impossible to tell what they were. Dolphins seemed like a good guess to me. Or sea birds of some sort.
Before we could reach a consensus, Josephine let out an elated squeal, put her head down, and began swimming straight away from the beach, directly toward the mysterious shapes.
“Palmer Martin,” Fiona called to me over the sound of the crashing waves.
“Martin who?” Briar asked, and I swam close enough to her to explain that Josephine’s true love was a merman.
“Of course, he is,” she replied. “Why wouldn’t he be? In fact, what else could he be? A centaur? Maybe a dragon?”
“Don’t be stupid, Briar,” Calista corrected. “Dragons are extinct. The last one was killed over two thousand years ago. The intelligent ones long before that. And the last ones ate humans. Didn’t date them.”
My eyes flew wide at what happened next. Briar ducked beneath the water and resurfaced right behind Calista. Before anybody could intervene, Calista went heels over head under the water, flipped upside down by Briar.
“Stop!”
The command was telepathic, in Aleta’s voice, and I assumed filled everyone’s head at once. Calista had recovered her footing and was nose to nose with Briar, but they both snapped to attention and turned their heads toward the beach, just as I had. Aleta was knee-deep in the water, hands on her hips, regarding us as a mother does her unruly children.
I was close enough to hear my twin hiss in Calista’s ear. “I may be new to this world of witches and ghosts, but I’ve been around enough to recognize an asshole with a superiority complex, no matter what powers you have or how pretty you are. Show me some respect.”
“Earn it,” Calista replied.
“Enough!” a furious Aleta shouted into our minds. I thought poor Fiona might drown from the indignity of the entire situation. We certainly weren’t acting like the ladies Virginia hoped to help us become.
For the second time during my brief residence in Charleston, Palmer Martin saved the day.
The tension of the moment was broken by Josephine gliding across the water between us, standing on Palmer’s back as if he were a surfboard, and shouting “Wheeeeee!”
Calista appeared nonplussed; she’d probably seen such an act before. Fiona continued to look mortified by Briar and Calista’s behavior, and meanwhile, Briar and I watched in slack-jawed bemusement.
I knew Palmer was tremendously fast and strong in the water from when he’d rescued me, but to maintain his flat-backed stability while accelerating and cornering was impressive, even for a merman.
Palmer’s friends approached less flamboyantly, and as they arrived, Calista rolled her eyes and retreated to the beach, replaced by Aleta. As they passed each other, the two most powerful Belles shared a glare.
Josephine ended her “surfing” with a graceful backflip, landing feet first in the water next to where Palmer surfaced.
Palmer smiled at me, then looked confused when he noticed Briar and wondered if he really recognized me after all.
“I’m Emma,” I explained. “And this is my twin sister, Briar.”
“Right, of course, Jo told me, but somehow I hadn’t made the connection. Nice to meet you, Briar, I’m Palmer.”
He extended his hand, which Briar shook, and then he introduced the rest of his group.
“This is my cousin Sasha, her boyfriend Warren, and my friend Lukas.” Smiles and waves all around. “You know Josephine and Aleta, right? This is Emma and her sister Briar, they’re also Belles, and, finally, Fiona. Did I miss anybody? So good to see you up and around, by the way, Emma.”
“Thank you again,” I offered.
Sasha was clearly topless, but to avoid making anyone uncomfortable she stayed low enough in the water that we only saw her face and shoulders. She was friendly, but quiet. I noticed that the boys all held swim trunks in their hands, I guessed in case they needed to make a quick change back to human form.
“I’m sorry if this is rude, I apologize,” began Briar, “But the four of you are all… what, mer… people?”
“Guilty,” laughed Lukas, before flipping up into the air like a dolphin breaching, showing off his tail before splashing back into the water and coming up behind Briar with a “Boo!”
Lukas had dazzling green eyes and a square jaw, the same muscular build as Palmer, and shaggy brown hair. Merman, werewolf, wizard, whatever he was, handsome and confident were near the top of his resume.
Warren and Sasha excused themselves and swam away, taking off as if jet-propelled. Within seconds, their heads popped up what seemed like two miles out into open ocean. They were kissing, best I could tell.
“Did all of you swim here?” Briar asked.
“We did,” Palmer explained. “Jo told me she might be here having a Belle’s Beach Day, so we thought we’d crash the party.”
“How is she?” Fiona asked Aleta, nodding toward Calista on the beach.
“She’s… how she is. She’s Calista. She’ll be fine,” Aleta replied. “She’s just not used to anyone standing up to her. Or anyone not walking on eggshells around her, honestly. But be careful, Briar, Calista can have a bit of a temper.”
“If I was worried about every girl with a temper, I’d never have survived the group home,” Briar countered. As much as she looked like me, and we’d both felt the “twin connection,” her upbringing had given her a suit of armor that mine never could.
“If anybody wants to get to you, they’ll have to come through me,” Briar’s merman-in-shining-armor, Lukas, said in her defense. Apparently, Briar wasn’t only tougher than me, she was prettier as well. Lukas hadn’t glanced in my direction since our initial introduction, but he was all over Briar, who seemed to mind not at all.
“Ok, well, if I’m in any danger here or in the pool, it’s good to know you’ll protect me,” Briar said playfully.
“Hey, I have legs too, you know,” Lukas replied.
“Show me,” Briar flirted back.
Lukas scanned the beach, and once he was satisfied that nobody but Calista and our group could see him, he swam toward the beach and emerged from the water walking on two legs like a regular person, wearing the red board shorts he’d had looped around his wrist. He turned and bowed with a flourish, like a magician who’d just reassembled a woman he’d sawn in half.
Briar applauded wildly, to which Lukas jogged back into the water, and once it was deep enough, he dove, shucking off his swim trunks just as his legs merged into a tail. He was sculpted and tan everywhere.
Lukas made a beeline for Briar, scooping her up and swimming off with her as she shrieked in mock fright.
“I don’t know Lukas’s family,” Fiona observed, playing the role of mother hen.
“He’s a Fripp,” Palmer answered. “His parents live in Savannah. Mom’s a lawyer, dad’s an architect. Lukas went to Clemson. And Furman. And, well, he’s not the most serious student. But he’s a good guy. He just likes to have fun.”
We watched as Lukas and Briar went south, toward Sullivan’s Island, and disappeared.
“The current there at the inlet is very strong,” Fiona reminded Palmer.
“It is,” Palmer agreed. “But Lukas will take care of her. They’ll be fine, I promise.”
“I just touched base with Briar,” Aleta added, touching her temple with a fingertip. “She’s having the time of her life. They ran into a pod of dolphins over there.”
“Let’s go see!” Josephine exhorted.
“Your wish is my command,” Palmer replied, scooping Jo up in his arms and swimming off in pursuit of Briar and Lukas, leaving Aleta, Fiona, and me bobbing in the water.
“Don’t they worry about sharks?” I asked.
“Mermaids and mermen have a sort of limited telepathy,” Aleta explained. “It’s not like me, being able to communicate directly, mind-to-mind, it’s more of an ‘awareness’, I guess you’d call it. They know what’s in the water around them, within a certain range. Besides, they could probably outswim most sharks, anyway. I never worry about Josephine when she’s out in the water with Palmer. My concern vis-à-vis Palmer is more cultural and societal.
“Like we talked about before, the mers are totally integrated with Charleston society, but they mostly keep to themselves and stick together, almost like an immigrant group, if that makes sense. They’re discouraged from socializing or dating outside their group. The younger ones, like Palmer, are getting bolder, but he knew he was taking a risk when he fell for Josephine. The two of them are head over heels in love, so what can you do?
“I don’t know Lukas, but I took the liberty of gliding over the surface of his mind, as a courtesy to Briar, and his motives are pure enough. I mean, end of the day he’s a guy and she’s a pretty girl, so you know where that leads, but between what I saw and what Palmer said, I think it’s innocent enough.”
“Merboys courting two Belles?” Fiona’s gast was clearly flabbered. “If this were old Charleston, the scandal might threaten to bring down the House of Embers.”
“In many ways it remains ‘Old Charleston’,” Aleta observed. “There are plenty of folks South of Broad who only tolerate me hanging around because they think I must be the help. Although some of them might have an easier time swallowing interspecies dating than interracial.”
“Oh, Aleta,” Fiona looked appalled, and touched Aleta on the shoulder.
Aleta covered Fiona’s hand with hers and smiled. “It’s their loss, not mine. I’m just saying that in many ways, Charleston still has lots of healing to do.”
5 Ella Mae Dixon and Ezekiel Indigo
Ella Mae Dixon and Ezekiel Indigo escaped the Walker Plantation hours ahead of a hastily-formed posse that included bloodhounds and many men with chains, rifles, torches, knives, and all manner of farm implements-turned-deadly weapons.
“You made quite a mess of the Walker Plantation,” Ella Mae observed as they trudged through the woods. Ezekiel quietly reflected on the day. “How did you do what you did?”
“I…” Ezekiel was stuck. He had no idea how he’d done any of it, of what suddenly gave him such fantastic and terrible abilities. “I don’t know.”
“I’m a root doctor, Ezekiel. Do you know what that means?”
Ezekiel nodded. There had been slaves on the plantation who practiced magic, simple spells and hexes, usually for healing or protection, using whatever they
could to make do in place of the proper ingredients they’d have had in West Africa.
Ella Mae opened a bag hanging from her shoulder and withdrew a handful of yellow powder. As they walked, she sprinkled it behind them.
“When they come looking for you, and they will, this will cover our tracks,” Ella Mae explained. “Not a dog in Charleston will be able to track you. It’ll be as if we vanished.”
“Where we goin’, Ma’am?” Ezekiel asked. Ella Mae had given him no reason not to trust her, but he couldn’t remember ever having left the confines of the Walker Plantation. Suddenly, a very large, completely unknown world existed that he’d never even bothered to ponder.
“To my home,” Ella Mae offered. “No white man could find it, unless I wished it so. You’ll be safe there. Safe to explore exactly what you can do and practice your new gifts. I can teach you, you can teach me, and we can plot your revenge, in whatever form you wish it to take.”
“I jus’ wanna be back wit’ my momma and sistuh, Ma’am. Can we get them?”
“According to my scrying, they went to the auction in Charleston this morning, Ezekiel. I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid that for now we have to consider them lost.”
Ezekiel wiped tears from his cheek as they walked.
“I’ve known that same pain,” Ella Mae explained. “My family was torn apart. Before I had the ability to fight back. My grandmother taught me about my gifts, but she’s crossed the water. Along with every other member of my family. Walk with me, and we’ll be a family. You and I and others like us. One day, we’ll be the first family of Charleston, and every knee will bend to us.”
Ezekiel Walker liked the promise of safety, beyond the reach of any white man. And hot meals, when he was hungry and not just when a massa decided he should eat. And a warm bed, for the first time in his life.
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