“If the fever doesn’t drop,” the doctor said, “put him in cold bath or shower. Give him aspirin and water. I will check on him later.” She spoke to the other woman in Greek for a moment, nodded at Olivia, and left.
Olivia watched the doctor go, her heart racing, and clutched the pebble at her throat.
“What did you do?” Panos was standing behind her. “Let me see.” He examined the pebble, scowling. “Stone broken.”
“I tried to smash it,” she said in a small voice, fear pressing on her shoulders. “You said I should break the spell. I tried.”
“No good.” Panos rubbed his chin. “This no good. I find professor.” He muttered something more she didn’t make out, and left.
Kai moaned and the matronly woman made a clacking sound with her tongue, wiping the water running down his face. His cheeks were flushed with fever and his chest rose and fell fast, his breathing shallow.
Olivia had a lump in her throat and couldn’t swallow. Tears burned behind her eyes. She couldn’t just sit and watch him suffer. She had to find a way to help him.
“Panos, wait.” She rushed out of the room and ran after him. “I’ll go with you.”
If she’d brought this on Kai, she had to discover how to fix it.
***
Professor Skein was indeed skinny and short with a receding hairline and tiny glasses perched on his snub nose. He looked like an aged child, although his deep voice dispelled that impression as soon as he greeted them at the door.
“Ho, Panos.” His face broke into a grin. “Welcome. Is everything all right?”
He ushered them into a messy living room with huge French windows and piles of books and notes on every surface. He cleared the sofa and went to call for coffee. He came back inside as Olivia and Panos were taking a seat, rubbing his hands together.
“So then,” he said, pushing some books aside and perching on the armchair across from them. “From Panos’s expression, I can tell something happened.” His grin fell. “Something bad, maybe?”
“Tell him,” Panos muttered, nudging her in the ribs. “Tell what you do.”
Feeling like a reprimanded child, she started to tell the professor what happened, when he clapped his hands and exclaimed.
“Oh my. A mermaid scale! May I see?”
Pressing her lips together, Olivia took off the pendant and handed it to him. The professor oohed and aahed, turning it over, moving closer to the French doors so he could examine it in the light.
Olivia stole a glance at Panos. His expression was dark and closed off.
“Did you find it like this?” the professor asked, returning to sit with them. “With this crack?”
So Olivia told him everything — how she’d thrown her ring into the sea and found the pebble, how the sea reacted to her angry words, how she’d seen scales that appeared and then vanished on Kai’s skin, how she’d been asked by Panos to break the spell and how she’d cracked the pebble. Told him about the towering wave that disappeared afterward. Everything.
It didn’t make her feel any better when she thought of Kai barely conscious back at the hotel.
“Excellent,” the professor said, which prompted a tirade in Greek from Panos. He stopped when the professor said something else in Greek and looked sheepish.
“What is it?” Olivia demanded.
“It’s excellent to have that much information,” Professor Skein said gravely. “I’m truly sorry for what has befallen Kyler, and I mean from the beginning. For the magic in his blood, for losing his family, for having to live with this curse. And for this new hardship. Although...” He stared down at the pebble in his hand. “I believe that this talisman is connected to Kyler. By smashing it, you affected him as well.”
Her eyes burned as she thought of how his body hurt without a mark, of the odd timing between cracking the stone and finding him on the beach. That couldn’t be. And still... “Oh god, I almost killed Kai, didn’t I?” Would she have killed him if she’d managed to break the stone to pieces? Her breath caught in her throat.
“Maybe the way you interpreted Panos’s words wasn’t entirely wrong.” The professor pushed his glasses up his nose. “Sometimes you have to break something to fix it.”
“Something?” she muttered. “We’re talking about Kai.” He wasn’t a dish you could just glue back together.
“It’s exciting to finally see it happen.” The professor stood and paced, waving the pebble in the air. “A ritual exchange. Gold for a favor. Alcohol and blood libations. One more sacrifice may be needed.”
“Sacrifice. For what?”
“To complete the ritual and give you the power to do what you want to do.” He stopped and turned toward her, frowning. “What do you want to do, exactly? You could ask for Kyler to be bound to the land, to a person, or to forget the sea completely.”
It was so weird to hear the professor use Kai’s given name, the one Kai never used. “I want to free Kai,” she mumbled, looking down at her hands. “I want him to be able to choose.”
“And if he chooses the sea?” The professor observed her keenly, and she also felt Panos’s eyes on her.
“Then that’s his decision. Right now he’s not allowed a choice. I want him to have it.”
The professor nodded, as if this conversation didn’t sound like a parody from one of the paranormal novels Olivia had been reading. But she was in too deep now to dismiss this curse or whatever it was.
“What happened, then?” Her hands twisted in her lap. “What’s wrong with Kai? How do we fix it?”
“You accepted a deal with the sea,” the professor said, sitting down and placing the pebble on the low coffee table. “Took the scale, gave the gold, and made a libation of alcohol. But instead of following the ritual as prescribed, you did nothing for a while. Then you gave blood by mistake and wasn’t prepared for the next step. And then you tried to break the stone, angering the sea. Respect is needed when dealing with the sea people.”
“The sea or the sea people? Can you make up your mind?” Olivia took a shuddering breath.
“The sea people belong to the sea. They don’t think like we do. They have one collective mind and act as a swarm. The sea magic directs them. Of course, they also have individual thoughts sometimes.” He chuckled. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have had children with humans over the centuries.”
“But why was Kai hurt? Why is this pebble connected to him?”
“Ah, this is a good question. This is just a thought, but...” The professor picked the pebble up again and offered it to her. “Maybe this is one of his fish scales.” He snorted when she gaped at him. “He’s merfolk. I thought we were clear about that. Half-breed, of course, so he’s not in his fish form all the time, but occasionally he must be.”
Kai. A merman. Scales and fins. Breathing under water. “Why would I be given one of his scales?”
The professor shrugged. “Maybe the sea wants him to be free. Maybe it doesn’t know how, so it gave you a means to try.”
Olivia pondered this for a moment.
“Why her?” Panos asked.
Indeed, why her?
The professor clasped his hands together and leaned forward. “Well, it sounds like you started it by giving it gold. Gold laden with emotions, aren’t I right?”
Olivia winced.
“Maybe it sensed a need in you, a reciprocal need, a similarity between you and Kyler.”
A struggle with the past. A need to break its hold and move on. A need to trust and find someone who might understand.
“Or maybe it wasn’t just your need it saw. Maybe it saw in you what Kyler saw.”
“And what’s that?” she whispered.
“The ability to do something nobody else can. Maybe you’re the one who can break Kyler and put him together again.”
***
“Why here?” Olivia looked down at the Navagio Beach distrustfully. She couldn’t help but remember the day the sea had snatched her, the fear of almost drownin
g until Kai had pulled her out. And she couldn’t get the image of Kai facedown in the surf out of her head. “This isn’t where I found the scale.”
“But it’s where you found Kyler today.” The professor shrugged. “Maybe the sea is giving you a clue.”
“A clue to what?” she muttered darkly.
“You want to be by his side, don’t you?” the professor asked.
“Yes.” She wanted to return to Kai, take care of him.
“If his illness isn’t natural, the best you can do for him is to fix this before you go back to him.”
And before she left Crete. It made as much sense as anything in this mad world.
They took the path down to the beach. “This is where the sea almost killed me,” she said.
“Be nice this time,” said the professor. “It seems to sense you, perhaps through the scale. Be respectful. She’s a goddess of old.”
“And what should I do?”
He was pensive as they skidded to the sand where they’d found Kai only an hour or two ago. “Just say what you desire. Try to keep your feelings clear, your voice low and calm. And I think you should give back the scale.”
“But you said it’s Kai’s.”
“The sea gave it to you.”
She stared at his hunched shoulders, his glasses that reflected the blue. “You’re playing by ear, aren’t you? You have no idea what I should do.”
“It’s never happened before,” he admitted. “There are stories of fishermen who found such scales and asked for favors, but no mention of how they went about doing it, apart from the usual ritual: gold, wine, blood and tears. No details are given.”
Panos skulked after them, hands in his pockets, his face a thundercloud. “Now?”
“Now she does her thing and we wait,” said the professor.
My thing. She took off her sandals and walked stiffly down to the water’s edge, fear making her shake. What if the sea didn’t listen? What if it got her again and nobody could save her this time?
Taking a deep breath, she unclasped the pendant’s chain and pulled off the pebble. She stared at it.
For you, Kai.
The waves lapped at her bare feet, cold and ticklish. She knelt on the wet sand and held out the pebble. Be calm. Be clear. What do you feel?
“I’ve brought it back,” she said, feeling goddamn weird sitting there with the two men watching her, talking to the water. “I didn’t know what it was.”
A wave crashed, sprinkling her with foam, wetting the pebble. It glittered in the palm of her hand like a jewel.
Be respectful. Be honest.
“Thank you for giving it to me. I’m afraid of you. I don’t understand you.”
Smaller waves, licking her knees.
“You love Kai.” She paused. “I think I love him, too.” She lifted the pebble, feeling like a pilgrim of old kneeling in an ancient temple. “I want Kai to be free to choose. Free to live as he likes. Let him go. Please.”
The sea heaved a few feet away. Deeper inside, the water moved as if forms frolicked and arched up right under the surface, swimming up and down.
Behind her, the professor exclaimed in surprise. She did her best to ignore him, focus on the pebble in her hand. It seemed heavier now, so heavy she let it drop and roll on the beach. Pain streaked up her arm. She clutched it.
“I know you want him,” she said. “He’s your blood. You tried to take him but took everyone he cared for instead. Maybe you don’t realize how much you hurt him. How that tore him apart.” The tears that had been stinging her eyes all morning slid down her cheeks. “You hurt him, but he’ll never stop loving you. Don’t you see that? He’s your child, but he’s also of the land, and you keep dragging him back, tightening the leash. He needs to live and be happy. Let him go.”
Her arm throbbed as if she’d been hit with a club. A sob caught in her throat as she reached for the pebble which shimmered among the other stones, a deep blue.
She thought of the blue streaking Kai’s eyes, of his laughter, of his faint smile.
“I know you want him to be happy. Maybe that’s why you gave me this. I was told I should give it back to you. So there you go. Take it and release Kai.” She drew back her aching arm and flung the pebble into the waves.
It sank without a sound or ripple. The sea spread flat as a mirror, the waves ceasing their come and go on the sand.
Olivia held her breath.
Nothing happened.
She turned toward the professor, not knowing what to do. He looked puzzled, too, and a little sheepish.
“Maybe this wasn’t how we were supposed to do it,” he said quietly. “Maybe—”
“Maybe, maybe!” Panos threw his hands in the air. “No use. No work.” He turned to go.
She sat, exhausted and drained. She’d thrown back the pebble — Kai’s scale. She didn’t have leverage anymore. Should she dive into the waves and find it? Her goggles were at the hotel. Tears kept sliding down her cheeks and she wiped them on the back of her hand. She scooted closer to the water and washed them off her.
The sea stirred. A wave rose in the bay and rolled toward the shore, coming right at her. Olivia blinked at it, stunned, as it reared higher and fish jumped out of it, twisting in the air and splashing back into the sea.
Fear rooted her to the spot. She couldn’t feel her limbs. Suddenly, hands were on her arms, pulling her up.
“Back,” Panos hissed, hauling her on the beach.
It wasn’t the wall of water she’d seen earlier that morning. This one was smaller. The wave crashed on the beach, drenching her, then withdrew, another wave following it, and another. The middle of the bay was boiling, the water rising and falling.
Then the waves died out and the water calmed.
Something glittered on the beach — a heap of gems.
“I’ll be damned,” the professor breathed, stepping toward it. “Never thought I’d witness something like this.”
A pile of mermaid scales, light blue and crystal bright. She let the professor touch them, scoop them up, examine them in the sunlight.
She thought she knew what they were. The sea had returned Kai’s scales, and she wasn’t sure what it meant, but she had a faint hope that it was good news.
That Kai was now free.
***
The professor carried off the scales to study them, and Panos drove her back to the hotel.
When she entered the room, she found Kai sitting in bed, propped on a mount of pillows. He looked pale and dazed, but he smiled at her.
God, she loved his smile.
“How are you feeling?” She went to sit by his side.
He grimaced. “Like hell warmed over, and nobody will tell me what happened.”
She felt his brow and it was cool. Relief made her light-headed. Good thing she was sitting. “What matters is that you’re all right now.”
“Marina said you found me on the beach.” At Olivia’s uncomprehending look, he added, “Marina is Panos’s mother.”
The matronly woman. “Together with Panos, yes. We were worried when you didn’t show up for work.” She took his hand and stroked his fingers. They were skinned and scratched. “What do you remember?”
He frowned. “I went to swim. I remember that. I remember pain.” He looked down at his bare chest. “I don’t know anything after that.” Panic entered his eyes and he tugged on her hand. “Is everyone okay? Did anyone—?”
“Everyone’s okay.” She smoothed down her blouse. She’d changed after the strange ritual on the beach and combed her hair, but she felt like she couldn’t get the grit out of her eyes.
“But you’re not,” he said, his hand lifting to cup her face. “Were you crying?”
“It was nothing.” She couldn’t help leaning into his touch. “I was worried.”
“You cried for me?” He sounded incredulous.
“Of course I cried for you, dummy, I’m...” In love with you, and you scared me to death and I didn’t know what
to do. “You had a fever,” she said instead, “and you were in pain and the doctor didn’t know what was wrong.”
“It doesn’t hurt now,” he whispered, his gaze soft and warm, and she had a feeling he was talking about something else, something far more important that the strange bout of illness.
She smiled. “I’m glad.” So glad, and bone tired and empty like a bottle out of which someone had shaken the last drop of wine.
He tugged on her hand. “Rest with me.”
She didn’t need much persuasion. She toed off her sandals and curled against his side, her head on his shoulder, her hand on his chest to feel his heartbeat. He was all right, she hadn’t fucked up, hadn’t let him fall. He was alive and warm in her arms.
Everything was fine with the world. The thought made her shift uncomfortably, because she had a feeling there was something she should be doing, something not fine with the world yet — but he kissed her and she melted, losing her trail of thought. She lifted her hand to his face and traced the curve of his jaw, and he deepened the kiss, drawing her closer until she was lying halfway on top of him.
She jerked back. “I’ll hurt you.”
“You can’t hurt me,” he said, his voice rumbling in his chest underneath her, and he stroked her back. His eyes were hooded and dark, smiling.
Couldn’t she? There it was again, the feeling she was forgetting something important.
Then he tilted her face up and covered her lips with his mouth once more, erasing the world.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Having nothing, nothing can he lose.
Shakespeare
To gain love, he may choose to lose the world.
Myra Crow
Voices woke her up. Familiar voices, which was why they’d managed to pierce the dark fog of sleep hanging over her. Groggily Olivia raised her head from her warm and nice smelling pillow, which turned out to be Kai’s shoulder.
Kirsten’s voice. And Markus’s. And a male voice she was sure she knew, but couldn’t place.
Azure (Drowning In You) Page 20
