This didn’t really make any sense. He was suddenly acting like he cared about me almost as much as Sean did, but Sean had known me for ten years. Caleb just met me a few days ago.
“So, you’re a pack of Selkies. Why did you come to Crescent Moon Bay?”
Then a sea of flames danced in his eyes and heat filled the room like a canyon fire. A sweet fragrance wafted off of him, made me feel light-headed and I took a step backward, tried to clear my head. It was almost like being hypnotized and I remembered when he had walked across the room at the party, how I had hardly been able to take my eyes off him.
“We came for the Burning,” he answered and even his words carried heat. Flames licked my skin and a deep longing came with it, something I couldn’t ignore. The ocean would quench this heat, and I wanted to push past him, to run down the street to the beach, to jump in the surf.
I suddenly knew that there was one other thing that would quench it. But I refused to even think about it.
“You should leave,” I told him, my voice low and deep.
“I will.” He moved away from me, each step lowering the temperature. “But there was something that I needed to tell you, the reason I came to see you—”
The door to the shop pushed closed then, scraped against the floor and the sound of heavy boots on tile forced me to look. A familiar face, a welcome voice—
“Kira, it’s time to close up shop and come home.”
My father stood between us, as if he were protecting me. His eyes were hooded in shadow and I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but Caleb turned and left without saying another word.
Caleb had come to tell me something and the tone in his voice made it seem very important. But he had left without telling me and I found myself wondering when I would see him again.
Chapter 30
Caleb:
All the way back to the house, I kept going over my conversation with Kira. There had been so many things I wanted to tell her, but one in particular burned in my mind. The words felt like a stone on my tongue.
Don’t take off your cross.
Wouldn’t that have been the easiest thing to say? I wouldn’t have had to reveal the legend or her destiny. I wouldn’t have broken any of my Selkie vows. And yet even those words had refused to come out.
Stay away from the cliff.
Maybe that would have been easier. Vague enough that I wouldn’t anger the gods, yet precise enough to prevent the ending I dreaded. Still—knowing Kira—either one of those warnings could have made her even more curious. They’d probably have the opposite effect on her.
I was almost back to the house when I saw all the other Selkies gathered on the beach, twilight silhouettes that grew more recognizable as I drew closer. Mare stood apart from the others, waist-deep in the ocean, staring off into a hazy distance. Her long auburn hair fell loose, spilling around her shoulders and anchoring in the water.
“The rumors of war are growing stronger, like a sickness,” she said. “I can feel them in the currents, in every breath of wind.”
She didn’t seem to notice that the rest of us waited on the shore, listening to her. Riley glanced at me as I joined the group, some unknown torment hidden in her eyes. I couldn’t help looking at the tattoos on her arm again and noting that many of them were symbols used only by our enemies, the Na Fir Ghorm. I had a feeling that she knew more about this approaching battle than she would admit.
“We should leave. The Elders are calling us,” Mare said, her voice drifting over the lapping waves. She stood with her back to us, absorbed in the gift of the Burning, the revelation of her special talent—that of seer. It’s possible she wouldn’t even remember what she had said in a few minutes.
“She’s right,” Patrick said, stepping forward with a boldness I hadn’t seen him display before now. “If there’s war on the horizon, they’ll be needing us back home.”
“Our future lies in the Burning,” Riley told him, a vehemence in her words that was hard to deny. “Our race will die if we don’t breed. Life is always more important than war.”
Sorcha and Dylan nodded their heads, agreeing with Riley.
Until this moment both Lynn and I had remained silent. She watched me with eyes the color of summer sky, her blonde hair recently shorn in mourning. It spiked in wild chunks about her pale face, giving her an eerie look, like she was some exotic flower. I had been waiting to learn what her gift would be, but without Ethan at her side the Burning had subsided. It was possible she might never fully mature now.
She might spend the rest of her life as a wraith, slender and pale, ever the servant of others.
“I’m willing and ready to fight,” Lynn said then, her words surprising me. “I can handle a harpoon and a spear as well as any man.”
I thought of my father, preparing his men for battle. I longed to fight at his side, but I knew it wasn’t time for me to leave yet. Some unknown desire had been borne in my heart last night as I crouched in Kira’s yard, knowing that she had no familiar to protect her.
“I’m ready to fight too,” I said, taking Lynn by the hand, hoping that my strength would flow into her. “But I’m not ready to leave Crescent Moon Bay. We came here for a mission and it’s not over.”
Riley smiled at me, as if glad for my vote of approval. She lifted her chin high.
“That makes four votes in favor of staying,” she said, making the decision for us all. “We’ll remain here until the Burning subsides.”
Chapter 31
Kira:
Monday morning—time for my scheduled trip to the Underworld, otherwise known as high school. I had somehow survived the weekend, the lectures, the chores and why in the world hadn’t anyone ever told me how awful a hang-over could be? Made a note to myself to never drink again. Grabbed my knapsack and my lunch and turned to head out of my room when I almost ran into Gram.
Her morning scowl looked deeper than usual. I ran over a mental check list, trying to figure out if I’d inadvertently broken one of her cardinal rules recently. Couldn’t think of anything—although I’d broken nearly every rule in the universe on Friday. Got drunk, got arrested, turned into a Selkie. The only thing I could have done worse was come home with a tattoo, although those words written in sharpie still hadn’t washed off my arm.
Right now she blocked my doorway. She held two of Dad’s shirts in her hand like she was helping him decide what to wear. Then her scowl darkened even more.
“Don’t forget you have a meeting with your English teacher today at three fifteen,” she said.
My heart thudded loud enough for the neighbors to hear. I nodded. I wished I could have forgotten about it, but in reality it had kept me up half the night. I’d gotten up at about four in the morning, unable to sleep and started cleaning my room—something I rarely did. Right now, all my shoes were put away and all my clothes were hung up.
Gram glanced into my room, scanned it and made an assessment.
“Don’t worry about it, Kira,” she said then, all the hard angles in her face softening. There was an awkward pause before she continued, “Remember, you can talk to me, child. About anything. If your mother was here, well, she’d probably be the one you would talk to—about all of this.”
Was she talking about boys or school or something else?
“Promise me that you’ll let me know if there’s ever any—problem.” She raised her eyebrows. “You hear me?”
“Yes. I will.”
Suddenly, without meaning to, I wrapped my arms around her neck, once again realizing how small she was. We stood like that for a long time, my eyes brimming with tears that I didn’t want her to see. Finally I bent down and kissed her cheek.
Then I pulled away and headed out to face the world.
Hoping that none of the kids from school had noticed me at that party on Friday night.
Chapter 32
Kira:
Nothing could have prepared me for what waited at school. At first glance, everything
looked normal. Throngs of people milled about, chatting and doing their best to avoid walking inside the building until absolutely necessary. Then, the moment my right foot touched the stairs, every student turned and looked at me. Almost as if they had felt a tremor when I drew near. A moment passed, then the girls did their best to ignore me—nothing really unusual about that. But the guys, that’s what was really freaky.
They smiled. Every single one of them. One guy, I think he might have been at the party, nodded at me. Another guy actually held the door open long enough for me to squeeze in behind him. And all the others continued to watch me with a curious gaze.
Since when did this pack of small-town losers realize I wasn’t a leper?
I walked through the front door, immediately engulfed in that pre-morning madness where everybody skitters around, fumbling through lockers, dropping papers, joking about what they had done over the weekend.
And every time I passed a guy, his eyes would follow me, sometimes with a half smile, sometimes with another look that I couldn’t quite identify. When I pushed my way through a huddle of upper classmen, two of them actually said, “Hey, Kira.”
As usual, the Paper Dolls were whispering too. The sun would have to explode to stop them. But now it was stuff like:
“Did you hear what happened at the party?”
“The two cutest guys there were hanging all over her—”
“I still don’t think she’s pretty.”
I paused in the hallway and glanced over my shoulder at the gossiping group of under-dressed, over-lip-glossed girls and they all stopped talking. Apparently, they still weren’t quite as brave without their leader, Lucy. The group dissolved while I stared at them, heads turned away from me, each of them slipping into the crowd like shadows.
This place was giving me the creeps. I hadn’t seen either Sean or Brianna yet, which was strange. Usually if we all went somewhere together, like the mall or the movies, we couldn’t wait to see each other at school the next day and talk about it again. I hated to admit it, but it was possible that they were both here and avoiding me.
Everything was turned upside down. The people who usually avoided me were being almost friendly. But my friends were nowhere to be seen.
I stopped by Sean’s locker and leaned against the wall. He had to be running late today. Normally he hung out by his locker, waiting for me. Just then, the crowd thinned and I saw him jogging in my direction, his head down. He didn’t look up until we almost collided. He skidded to a sloppy stop, slammed his arm against a bank of lockers to avoid hitting me.
We hadn’t been this close to each other since I’d kissed him.
I swallowed nervously, tried smiling but it didn’t work.
We both said ‘hey’ as he inched awkwardly past me, his long hair hanging in his eyes, and then he fidgeted with the combination on his locker. When he finally opened the door, an avalanche of papers and books tumbled out. At the same time, the bell rang—the final warning that you better drop whatever you’re doing and dash to homeroom. But instead of heading to class, I was helping Sean cram all the junk back into his locker so he could slam it closed. Then we both accidentally grabbed the same book at the same time, his hand was on top of mine and a flush of heat ran up my arm.
“You better get going,” he said as he transferred the book to his other hand.
“I don’t care if I’m late. I need to talk to you about something.”
“I—I can’t, not now. I already missed first and second period two days last week because of my science project.” He didn’t look at me. Instead, he stared into his locker as if the secrets of the universe were in there. “I didn’t think my meeting would take this long, but—”
And then he didn’t say any more.
“What meeting, Sean?”
I could hear it in his voice and when he glanced at me, I saw it in his eyes. Whatever was going on, it was bad.
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“That’s not fair,” I mumbled.
I wanted to punch him in the arm. What a time to pull the old “nothing” clause. I needed to talk to him about Friday—needed to make sure that he knew I hadn’t been making out with Caleb, no matter what Riley had said. On top of that, now something else was wrong, but he wasn’t going to tell me what it was.
Just then two guys on the track team walked past. They both smiled and nodded at me, a gesture Sean couldn’t see. Ratchet up that creep factor. I was beginning to wonder if Riley’s rumor about me and Caleb had been circulating over the weekend, buzzing around Facebook and Twitter; maybe all the Paper Dolls had been texting each other and their boyfriends.
“I gotta go,” Sean said, his voice thick, his head down again.
“Guess I’ll see you at lunch.”
“Yeah.”
Then he dashed off. He didn’t even finish putting away the rest of his stuff.
“Hey!” I called after him, my voice echoing through the nearly empty halls. But he didn’t turn around, didn’t answer, didn’t stop.
So then I was stuck all alone, cramming his junk back inside his locker and shutting the door.
•
The morning slid by in a blur. I could barely remember sitting through any of my classes. I think my geometry final asked something about congruent triangles, but I don’t know if I answered it right or not. And I accidentally turned in my history homework to my chemistry teacher. Then somebody laughed when I told Mr. B that hydrochloric acid was an oxidation agent. After that I made sure not to talk to anyone, no teachers and, well, the other students weren’t talking to me anyway. The boys were still giving me weird looks and the girls were giving me the standard upturned nose.
Without realizing it, I wrote a poem about secrets between history and French. Sixty-five words to the drinking fountain, turn, fifteen words to the classroom door.
I bumped into some guy and he grinned, mumbled something about how great my perfume was, except I wasn’t wearing any perfume today.
He almost made me forget what I was doing.
Eight words to my desk. I carefully sat down, got out my books and papers and pen, then I chewed on my right thumbnail, opened my notebook and started writing.
Meanwhile, all I could think about was Sean.
Why was he keeping a secret from me? Didn’t he trust me anymore?
And then, somebody opened one of the windows and the sweet fragrance of the Pacific drifted in and my thoughts instantly shifted to Caleb.
What was it he had wanted to tell me yesterday?
I had a feeling that he could answer a lot of the questions that kept bouncing around inside my head. Stuff like, why does hawthorn make my skin burn, and why won’t Brianna admit that she saw me as a Selkie? And why was Riley such a beast? That girl had some serious issues. Every time I thought about her, my skin caught on fire and my thoughts turned dark and primitive. I wanted to take her out into the deepest part of the ocean and hold her under until she begged me to—
I sat up straight and my pen fell out of my fingers.
The skin on my right hand was covered with tiny green scales.
Just then, at that exact same moment, the teacher called on me, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I felt dizzy and my stomach was rolling. A rush of heat flowed from my gut to the top of my head and all the angles in the room turned sharp. I stood up, fought against a flood of panic—I can’t be turning into a Selkie, I just can’t, not here, not now—and then I was running out of the room, no explanation, no hall pass, just scrambling down the hallway as fast as I could, my head down, hoping that my hair would cover up my face and that nobody would look at me.
I flew into the girl’s restroom, smashed the door against the wall with a loud bang, hoping that no one else was in here. Please, God, let everyone be in class, don’t let anyone be skipping, not now.
I ran into a stall but just before the door closed, I saw my reflection in the mirror. Me, as a Selkie.
Long wild, black hai
r. Pale green skin that glittered like iridescent eye shadow. And crazy pale blue eyes. They glowed in the dim stall, like I was a super-hero from a graphic novel.
I yanked the stall door closed, locked it, my stomach heaving. I swiveled, just in time, dumped the contents of my stomach in the toilet. Then I threw up again. When it finally seemed like my stomach was calm, I flushed, wiped my mouth with toilet paper. I pressed my forehead against the stall door.
And I started to cry.
What in the world is happening to me?
Then I sank to the floor. I was crying and I was shaking and I couldn’t stop.
Chapter 33
Kira:
I crouched on the floor, knees pulled to my forehead and tried to figure out what to do. Unfortunately, all the stuff that kept running through my mind was stuff that I couldn’t do—like go see the school nurse or call 911 or call one of my friends. Right now I wasn’t even sure whether Brianna and Sean were still my friends and, if they were, whether either one of them would know what to do.
There was only person left who might be able to help.
Gram.
I lifted my head and pulled out my cell phone.
Nothing quite like turning into a monster during finals.
I dialed our home number, hoping she wasn’t out in the yard or down at the beach, or even worse, sitting around the table drinking shots with her friends from the local paranormal society. The phone rang six times, was just about to go to voice mail when she answered.
“Gram?” I whispered.
“Is that you, Kira? Speak up!”
“Gram, I can’t talk any louder—”
Fathom Page 13
