by Cassia Leo
“I’m not going to hurt him. I want him to do well today, probably more than you do. I love Frankie.” Once the words slip out I realize there’s no taking them back.
Kira grins before she wraps her arms around my waist and lifts me out of the sand with a giant hug.
“Whoa!” I cry as she sets me down and I regain my balance.
“I knew it,” she whispers before she skips over the sand toward Scott. She links her arm in his and he shakes his head before he kisses her forehead.
I’m glad I made Kira so happy. I’m also glad I managed to placate her worries about me ruining Frankie’s chances of winning and securing a sponsor, but I’m even more nervous now. What is Kira going to think when Conor shows up in a few hours?
Chapter 54
My thirst for an icy mocha frappe reaches epic proportions by ten o’clock. The sun penetrates the flimsy shade covering our station on the beach. The heat multiplies, radiating up from the sand, until a merciful breeze carries the ocean spray in our direction and we all sigh with relief.
Frankie comes bounding out of the water as they announce the first heat will take place in less than thirty minutes. Scott takes Frankie’s board from him and begins prepping another board. Frankie grabs a bottle of water and collapses onto the beach chair next to mine. He chugs half the bottle of water and pours the other half over the back of his head.
“Is your head hurting?” I ask.
“The salt stings a little,” he says. “Did you get your coffee?”
“No, not yet.”
Frankie throws me a sideways glare. “Go get your coffee before you pass out. I’m not in the first round. You have at least an hour before I hit the water.”
I swipe my hand over the sweat dripping down my neck. “I promise I’ll be right back.”
I set off toward the pier feeling a whale of guilt bearing down on me for not mentioning Conor, but I don’t want to distract Frankie. I scoot around the backside of the bleachers, so I’m out of Frankie’s line of sight, and I dig my phone out of my back pocket. I immediately dial Conor’s number. I need to make sure he’s not wandering the beach looking for me at this very moment.
The phone seems to get louder with every ring that Conor doesn’t answer. “Come on,” I mutter to myself. “Pick up.”
“If you insist.”
I whip my head around and Conor is standing behind me holding his cell-phone to his ear. “Oh, my God! You scared the shit out of me.”
He looks different. His skin is paler and his hair seems blacker, but he’s still gorgeous. He tucks his phone into his back pocket and when his hand reappears he’s holding a single hibiscus flower. It’s a fiery coral that glows in the sunlight. He reaches up and tucks the stem behind my left ear and the petals tickle my temple.
“It’s pretty,” I say. “But… where have you been? Are you okay? What’s going on?”
“Hush, hush, settle down,” he says as he cups my face in his hands, which are refreshingly dry and cool for such a hot day. “I’ll tell you everything, but not here. Where were you off to?”
His face is so close and he smells so good. “The pier… to the café. Want to come?”
“Let’s go.”
He grabs my hand and leads me toward the pier. I want to pull my hand away, in case Frankie is watching, but I don’t want to upset Conor. I can’t imagine what he’s been through. Though he is behaving strangely calm. I make a quick decision and pull my hand back. He raises an eyebrow at me as we approach the pier.
“My hand’s sweaty,” I lie, and he seems okay with this explanation.
We walk along the pier in silence. The pier is packed with a long crowd of people lining the right side of the pier to watch the first heat and a few fishermen on the left side. The benches along the center of the pier are all occupied; mostly by children and elderly people who don’t want to stand for hours in this blistering heat to watch a surf competition.
When we reach the end of the pier, the café is bustling with people savoring the air-conditioned air. Conor grabs my hand before I walk into the restaurant. “It’s too crowded in there. Let’s go to the back so we can talk.”
The dining area in the back of the café doesn’t open until dinner time, when the local bands come out to perform and everyone gets drunk enough to enjoy the amateur music.
“We can’t go back there. It’s closed.”
He reaches up and runs his finger along the flower in my hair then down my jaw. “Live a little.”
A chill passes through me. Something feels very different, but I allow him to lead me around the side of the café toward the dining area in the back. The beige umbrellas that sprout up from the center of the iron dining tables are cinched closed. Conor helps me over the waist-high gate enclosing the dining area. This is the end of the pier and the view of the ocean is breathtaking out here.
“It’s stunning, isn’t it?” Conor says as he sidles up next to me at the pier railing.
“Conor, what happened to you?” And can you please tell me quickly so I can get back to watch Frankie?
“A lot,” he responds simply as he leans over the railing. “But the most important thing is not what happened to me, but what I got out of the whole experience.”
He looks at me sideways with a devilish grin that makes me uneasy.
“What did you get out of it?”
He turns toward me and looks me in the eye before he answers. “How much Mara believes in you?” he says as his hands shoot up and clasp tightly around my neck.
“What are you doing?” I try to shout, but it comes out weak and strained under the force of his thumbs pressing on my larynx.
I dig my nails into his forearms, but the focused look on his face never waivers. My eyeballs are prickling with pressure as he leans me over the railing, tightening his grasp on my throat. I reach for his face, to poke his eyes, but he throws his head back and out of my reach.
I’m going to die. Conor is going to kill me and it’s going to be hours before anyone finds me in the back of this café.
I try to kick him in the crotch, but my limbs are heavy. I can hardly lift my foot off the wooden pier and I’m afraid if I lean back any farther, I’m going to tip over the railing and plummet to the ocean below.
Better to die on my own terms.
I kick with all my might. I dig my feet into his shins, pushing my way up to his thighs, then I stomp hard on his crotch and I’m over. A look of triumph spreads over Conor’s face as I fall away.
Chapter 55
Listen
The sunlight fractures on the tumbling surface of the water as I plummet deeper into the shadows of the ocean. I wait for the instinct to come; the reflexive struggle against the ocean’s embrace, the flailing, the kicking toward the surface, but it never arrives. I am at peace here and, for a moment, I imagine sinking all the way down to the seabed and closing my eyes for the last time.
But the moment passes as soon as Mara takes over. She kicks inside me as if she’s trying to fit herself into this taut human suit. I shoot upward, zooming toward the shattered light on the surface. I explode out of the water and come down with a loud crack on the pier railing.
I’m Mara and myself all at once. I’m in control today.
Conor stops in the center of the dining area with his back to me. Before he can even turn around I stretch my hands toward him and a beam of blue light blasts him in the back. The blast launches him forward over the pier railing where he disappears in midair.
I glance around and at the ocean below. The water roils beneath the pier with the force of my rage. The rage is so overwhelming. I’m awake inside Mara and I know what I’m feeling is a combination of Mara’s and my senses swirling together into a potent mixture of rage and misery.
The salty air crackles with Darius’s energy. It’s everywhere, lifting the hairs on my arms and twitching inside my muscles.
A melodic voice whispers in my ear. “I didn’t want to hurt Belinda, but you left me no c
hoice, Mara. I helped you get back to this world. If you give up now, I’ll let her go on breathing in this one.”
“Bad news, Darius,” I say as I balance on the pier railing, my eyes darting back and forth, searching the empty air for any sign of him. “I’m not Mara.”
The railing splinters and explodes beneath my bare feet and I leap onto the surface of a dining table. The rage returns and the force of it rattles the pier. Screams assault my ears; the screams of frightened humans scattering away from the café as the pier rolls with the force of the churning ocean.
The pier shifts beneath me and the table I’m standing on tips over. A closed patio umbrella soars at my head like a spear and I roll away in time for it to clatter onto the wooden floor of the pier. I leap to my feet and another umbrella strikes the side of my head so hard arcs of color explode before my eyes. I blink back tears and hold my hand up to block the sunlight. The metallic tang of blood fills my mouth and gushes from the corner of my lips. Probably not a good idea to get in a fight a week and a half after suffering a concussion.
Then it finally hits me.
The palm tree. The behemoth that mysteriously uprooted and toppled over at the exact moment Frankie and I drove past. The accident was no coincidence or anomaly. It was Darius trying to get rid of me.
And now he wants to pit me against Conor. The longer he squats inside Conor’s body, the weaker Conor will become and eventually he will die. I have to get Darius to leave Conor’s body. Mara has to convince Darius that she’s giving up this quest to get her body back.
As this thought crosses my mind, Conor appears before me. His face is contorted in a strange fury, a slack anger that I can’t quite figure out. It’s almost as if the only thing holding Conor upright are the puppet strings of Darius’s obsession.
The pier rumbles beneath our feet and off in the distance, near the shore where I left Frankie, hundreds of people are fleeing the beach. A few surfers remain trapped in the sway of the ocean as the spectators scramble over each other to escape the monstrous wave forming in the water. Even from here, I can see Frankie’s red board shorts and yellow surfboard. He’s paddling toward the crest of the wave. He’s going to ride it.
“Tell him you’re giving up, Mara!” I scream the words aloud so Darius can hear me over the cyclone of water beneath the pier.
Mara awakens inside me and I can feel her fury coursing through me. “I’m not giving up!” she shouts. “I’m giving in. Release him, Darius, and I’ll do as you please.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to need a little more than your word to believe you,” Darius replies through Conor’s lips.
“How’s this for proof?” she replies before she exits my body and my jaw drops as she melts into Conor’s body.
Conor’s eyes roll back in his head as I can only assume Mara is attempting to force Darius out of his body. First his shoulders twitch then his leg and his hand, like a zombie coming to life. They’re going to tear him apart from the inside.
The bright sunlight abruptly flickers out, blocked by an enormous wave barreling toward us. My eyes flit back and forth between the struggle going on inside Conor’s body and the swelling ocean that will surely bury us both in a watery grave. The terror aches in my limbs and I’m frozen, rooted to the wobbly pier, until he appears.
Frankie digs the tail of his surfboard into the wave and kicks off. He’s soaring over the broken railing and I flinch as his surfboard lands on the pier between Conor and me. The water crashes down on the pier as Frankie grabs my hand and the back of Conor’s shirt.
I take a deep breath just before I’m engulfed in the weight of the rolling ocean. Something, probably an iron chair, slams into my back and I nearly gasp as the pain erupts like fire in my ribs. The violent tumbling of the water threatens to wrench me away from Frankie as we kick toward the surface.
My body is exhausted. I’m desperate for air, but I continue kicking as I grasp tightly to Frankie’s hand. We finally reach the surface and I gasp as the ocean thrusts me up and down like a carousel horse. The salt stings my eyes and nostrils, but it’s the sight of Conor’s unconscious body draped over Frankie’s stomach that makes me want to throw up.
“Are you alright?” Frankie shouts as I pull Conor between us to share the load with him.
The thundering waves have calmed. Mara and Darius and their overwhelming rage must be gone.
“I’m fine,” I shout as I attempt to hold my head above the water while clinging to Conor’s sinking body. “Is he alive?”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
Chapter 56
Click Here
Darius stands at the edge of the cliff facing the water; the same position I was in 372 years ago. If I had known then what I know now I never would have taken that leap. I know now there is nothing more precious than the pain of heartache. Just the way love shines a light on every painful insecurity, pain shines a light on everything beautiful. All the moments we long for, all the love we hope for, they wouldn’t exist without the darkness.
The biggest mistake I ever made was thinking I could make the pain of Reno’s death, the utter hopelessness, disappear by jumping off a cliff. I’ve experienced a million times more hopelessness in the spirit realm and in the residual longing left behind whenever I exit a human body. If I knew then what I know now, I would choose hope.
Darius turns to face me and his expression is solemn. He knows I won’t give up this fight.
“You didn’t save me,” I say as I look him in the eye. “I made it out all by myself. I was waiting for you to come to me. I was waiting for you to think I was broken so you could sweep in and put me back together. I know you better than you know yourself, Darius, and you won’t stop me from becoming human. I know your weakness.”
“Of course, you know my weakness. It’s you.”
“No, it’s not me. It’s your certainty. You thought you were so clever taking Conor to the other side. You were so sure you would have me begging for an escape route, but you forgot two things. You forgot I made it out of the realm twice and you forgot that I killed you. And I can do that twice, as well.”
Darius shakes his head as his hand reaches toward me. I don’t flinch. He can’t touch me in this state. And I can’t kill him in this state. But there is one way I can kill him, and he knows what it is.
“My love, you would never do that,” he says with so much certainty I wish I could shove him off the cliff. “I know you don’t believe in fate, and you’re entitled to feel shortchanged by this world, but my certainty is not my weakness, it’s my strength. I trust that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I’m with you.”
“You don’t trust fate.”
“I fight for it.”
“You fight for yourself.”
I think of doing it, killing Darius, truly killing his spirit so he will never revel in his own smug certainty again. It would take considerable effort, but no more courage than it took to leap off that cliff 372 years ago.
The problem is, killing Darius would mean killing myself… and I don’t want to die anymore.
Chapter 57
Between Frankie and Mara’s special abilities, the enormous wave that Frankie created managed to cause minimal damage to Payne Bay Beach. And no innocent bystanders were injured, unless you count Conor and me.
“Mara?” I whisper, my voice hoarse from all the saltwater I consumed today.
The darkness of my room makes me uneasy. Truthfully, I’m afraid.
“You don’t have to be afraid anymore,” Mara’s voice materializes as she does at the foot of my bed. “It’s over. Neither I nor Darius will be bothering you again.”
It takes considerable effort to sit up in my bed. My muscles, in particular my chest muscles, ache from today’s trauma. I was told by the emergency room physician that I would only be allowed to go home on the condition that I go straight to bed. I’m not allowed to exert myself for at least forty-eight hours. I have no intention of exerting myself. Graduation
is in three days. I should have enough strength to walk onto the stage and smile as I shake my diploma over my head. I have to at least pretend to be normal.
“What does that even mean: bothering me? Is that what you think it’s like when you possess me, just an inconvenience? And what about Conor? Is Darius going to leave him alone?”
Mara closes her eyes and I get the feeling that if she could, she’d be crying right now. “I’m going to get my body back, Belinda. But I am not going to use you or Conor. I’m not giving up. I’m moving on. Darius is never going to stop trying to thwart me. I have to try a different approach.”
“What does that mean?”
She shakes her head as she glides to the window and gazes out at the backyard; or maybe she’s staring beyond the houses and all the way to Frankie’s house.
“It means that you, Conor, and… and Frankie are safe. I’m going back to Oregon.”
“Why? Do you think you’ll find something there? Something that will help you get your body back?”
Part of me wants Mara to leave and never again darken my world with her danger and misery. A much larger part of me wants to know that she will be okay.
She turns to look at me and I know by the look on her face she can hear the concern in my voice. “I will miss you,” she says. “But I hope to return soon, if only just to tell you one last goodbye.” She smiles and I swear there is a tinge of hope in that smile. “I should go now. I have a lot of work to do to convince the ECHOES that I am worthy of a new body. I hope to return with good news soon. But if I don’t return….” Her smile disappears and I’m filled with despair at the thought of Mara spending eternity as a shadow spirit. “If I don’t return, please know how grateful I am to you. You are a rare soul with a spirit stronger than you may ever know. You are destined for greatness.”
