“I swear, Gram.”
She shook her head and tsked. “You two. Never could give a gift to one of you without giving something to the other one.”
I let out a deep quiet breath. She believed me. Meanwhile, Sean piled eggs and bacon on Gram’s plate, then mine. He shook his hair out of his face and I saw him watching me, a smile in his eyes. His hand brushed against mine when he handed me the salt shaker and fire rushed up my arm.
“I told your grandmother I’d drive you both over to the hospital after breakfast,” he said. “My dad let me use his car for the day.”
“Thanks,” I said, my mouth already full. Knowing that he was going to be with me today calmed me down, smoothed away some of my rough edges. Even Gram seemed more relaxed with Sean here.
But that all changed the moment we walked out the door.
My skin started to itch as soon as the scent of the ocean rolled over the cliff. An unexpected hunger settled in my gut, one that apparently couldn’t be quenched by food. We got in the car and started driving toward the highway and, to me, even the color of the sky looked a shade off. A deep ache thundered through my muscles when I realized I was going to miss my morning swim again.
Just like Friday.
The day I found out I wasn’t really human.
Chapter 53
Caleb:
The sky and the fog and the fast approaching sun all hung askew. It even felt like the tide was flowing in the wrong direction. My feet stood on sand, but it was shifting. Then I saw my kin, thumping down the stairway toward the beach, all wearing their true skin.
Radiant green scales glowing in the pale morning light.
At first I thought they must be heading out for a swim. Then I noticed that Riley stood on the balcony, high above us. I couldn’t see her face from this distance, but her posture told me as much as I needed to know. She was mad, hands on her hips.
Her voice rang out, traveled down to us.
“Cowards!”
That one word ricocheted off boulders and sea canyons, it echoed and thundered around us.
Dylan reached me then. He grabbed me by the arm.
“We have to leave,” he said. “Come with us. Now!”
And then he dove into the water, didn’t even wait for the others to join him. Mare stopped at my side, fear in her eyes as she watched the others plunge into the surf, one by one, none of them caring that they weren’t following our instinctive need to stay together, to swim in a school.
“The beast is here,” she whispered. “It will come hunting tonight.”
“I’m not afraid of it,” I told her. I would have even said its name, Hinquememem, out loud, but I knew that it would terrify her.
“You will not survive,” she said, tears in her eyes. Then she stood on tip toes and kissed me good by. A heartbeat later, she was engulfed in grey-black water, tendrils of fog swirling around her.
Lynn stood before me now, her eyes a mirror of the sky, her hair a crown of rugged gold. “I will see you again, brother,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “Listen for the war drums and know that I am close behind.” She kissed me on the forehead. Then she backed away from me, as if she couldn’t bear to say goodbye. A wave curled over her, swallowed her whole.
And she was gone. They were all gone.
Only Riley and I remained.
I glanced up at her, high above me. She crossed her arms, turned and went inside the house. A chill breeze came then, churning up the last bits of fog until both the cliff and the house disappeared from view. Even the ocean disappeared.
At that moment, I had never felt more alone in my life.
Chapter 54
Kira
I curled up in the back seat of Sean’s Chevy Tahoe and closed my eyes, hoping to sneak in a cat nap on the ride to Monterey. The sunlight felt too bright today, so I hid behind a pair of dark sunglasses. Before long the rolling pitch of the SUV lulled me to sleep.
But I should have known it wouldn’t be restful. Almost immediately, as soon as my breathing slowed and the real world faded away, I found myself back in that underwater cave. Only this time, my mother wasn’t there. It was just me and the Hinquememem. And that monster looked ravenous, like it hadn’t eaten in a year.
In my dream, the beast slithered closer, leaving a glittering trail behind, like some kind of snail. And a smell like a rotting tide pool rushed toward me when it opened its mouth.
There, inside its mouth—like this was a cheap Halloween costume—I could see my mother. Just her head, a terrified expression on her face, her mouth opening in tandem with the mouth of the beast, except she was screaming out a warning.
“Run!”
I gasped awake, sat up, heart pounding, the back of my neck sticky and sweaty.
“What’s up?” Sean asked from the driver’s seat. He turned around and looked at me.
The car wasn’t moving and for a moment, the lack of motion made me nauseous. We had parked in front of the Mission San Sebastian de Creciente. I opened the door, climbed out, filled my lungs with fresh air—grateful that none of it smelled like a rotting tide pool. Blue sky had finally appeared, the fog had been erased, and now the sun warmed my skin.
It was one of those moments when I realized how glad I was to be alive.
“Where’s Gram?” I asked. “What are we doing here?”
Sean got out of the car and stretched his legs. “I dunno,” he answered. “She said we had to stop here, like it was an emergency and she just remembered. Maybe she’s lighting a candle for your dad?”
I shook my head. Gram didn’t do stuff like that. If she wanted to pray for Dad, she did, but she never came here and lit candles. Not even when my mom and Katie disappeared. I remembered that my dad and I had though. Every day. We even put a candle in our living room window, as if that feeble light would help them find their way home.
Every night for a year, we struck a match together, watched sparks fly into flame, then set the wick ablaze.
But it didn’t bring them back.
He still had an empty bed and, until I learned how to cook, I had peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and dinner.
“I’m going inside,” I said. Maybe I’d light ten candles today. I had a feeling that we all needed one. Heck, maybe I should just light every candle in the building. I headed up the stairs, aware of the fact that Sean was coming with me. No need to ask. He opened the weathered and carved oak door, let me walk into the small chapel first, where colored light poured in from a stained glass window that depicted Saint Sebastian. I paid a donation for a handful of votive candles, then lit them, one by one. But when it finally came time to pray, I wasn’t sure what to say.
Help us, God, please.
That was all I could think of.
That was when I noticed Gram talking to Father Sullivan in a nearby alcove. Dressed in a long robe with a crucifix draped around his waist, he looked like one of the church’s carved wooden santos come to life. It was obvious that he had been trying to repair the eighteenth-century hand painted tiles that lined the niche, his hands stained with plaster. He and Gram were arguing, their voices hushed. Gram put her left hand on her hip, then she shook the index finger on her right hand at him.
It was all over now. There was no way he would win, not if Gram was mad enough to shake her finger at him.
I watched the resolute clench of Father Sullivan’s jaw relax until it hung loose, as if somebody had just swung a punch and knocked the words right out of him. He folded his arms over his chest, one last attempt to fend her off. But I knew it wasn’t going to work. She leaned in, fireworks in her eyes. I hoped she didn’t start cursing at him in Gaelic. I had a feeling that he might be the only person in Crescent Moon Bay who could understand what she was saying.
Then, finally, after several long heated minutes, their battle ended. His shoulders slumped. He shook his head, one last effort to show the world that he didn’t agree, but at the same time he slid one hand inside his pocket. He pulled something o
ut, ran his fingers over it and stared down at it with a pensive gaze. Then he lifted it—whatever it was—to his lips, kissed it with reverence.
And he handed it to her.
Gram pursed her lips and nodded, quiet at last. She opened her tote bag, pulled out a piece of white cloth and carefully wrapped the object up, then placed it back inside and zipped her bag shut.
After that, she spun on her heel and headed toward the door, marching right past me in the process. With a brief piercing gaze, she stared at me so hard I was convinced she could see all the way through to my backbone.
“Finish your prayers, girl,” she said in a huff. “We need to leave now.”
•
Today the hospital corridors were too familiar. Brick and mortar and miles of cheap linoleum, flesh and blood and hanging IV bags. Nurses who acted like they had read my journal last night, janitors who polished everything until it sparkled—like that could erase the horror that pulsed beneath it all. Patients in every room we passed, all in beds, all waiting for a private miracle. One that might never come.
I was chewing on my fingernails again, wondering if I should take up another habit.
Gram had insisted on going in to see Dad first, so Sean and I hung out in my favorite spot, the Waiting Room from Hell. We played a game, imagining what was going on back at school right now. Who was ignoring the teacher, who was worried about failing, who was already planning the wildest party of the year—the one that I never got invited to, but always heard about anyway.
Then, right when we were playing The Biggest Loser—trying to decide which kid we knew who would fail the most subjects this semester—Gram came out.
“Your father wants to see you,” she said.
I suddenly felt like I was in trouble. But as far as I could tell, I hadn’t done anything wrong in the past twenty-four hours. Well, except for that run-in with my mom, that almost-hug that could have gotten me locked up in a cage at the bottom of the ocean. But other than that, I’d done a pretty good job.
“Hey, baby girl,” Dad said when I finally rounded the corner, got past the curtain and could see him. He looked better than yesterday. Still weak, like maybe death had haunted him throughout the night, keeping him awake with thoughts of what might have happened.
What if…
Today I hated “what if.” So, I refused to think about it.
I gave him a gentle hug, careful not to press against his chest or the tangle of tubes. His expression looked serious. Apparently he really had something on his mind.
“You took off without saying goodbye last night.”
“Yeah.” I gave a little shrug. “Sorry about that.”
He wrapped his hand around mine.
“Kira, nothing’s different. I still love you.”
I didn’t meet his gaze, but I did raise my eyebrows. Not sure what universe he was living in, but everything was different right now.
“You don’t need to be afraid or jealous of your sister.”
That would be my Selkie sister.
“I know there are a lot things we haven’t talked about—”
Like my mom being a monster.
“—but there’s one thing you need to remember, we’re family. Gram, Riley, you, me. And family needs to stick together. No matter what.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Dad?” I asked. “That Mom was a Selkie?”
His eyes searched mine, like he was looking for treasure that he knew was there. “Because, you’d already been through so much, losing both her and your sister. And none of us knew for sure if you would inherit any of her traits. I kept thinking that you would be like me—”
“Human.” My lip was quivering.
“—but part of me kept secretly hoping that you would be like her.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Because your mother was the most interesting and wonderful and incredible person I’ve ever met. When she smiled, the sun would come out. When she cried, a storm would brew on the horizon. And when she got mad—” He laughed, shaking his head. “—well, I probably shouldn’t talk about when she got mad. But I can say that she had this gift for knowing what people were thinking. And she made me believe in magic.”
His eyes glistened when he said that and I could see it. For the first time, I remembered. That was exactly what my mom had been like. When I would sit with her up in the tree house, her stories would come to life. She could make me believe in fairies and elves and revenants.
And Selkies.
“In a lot of ways, you’re just like her, Kira. Your stories and your poems are filled with magic, your smile makes the room seem brighter. And your laugh—I can never listen to you laugh without laughing too. But part of you is like me. Serious and thoughtful. Maybe a bit too serious sometimes.”
He was staring at his hand covering mine, quiet for a moment. Then he continued, “I guess I didn’t tell you that your mother was a Selkie because I never saw her that way. I saw her as the woman I fell in love with, the person that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. That’s what love is, baby girl. The ability to see past what’s on the surface, beyond all the stuff that everybody else sees.”
He looked up at me then. There was something he wanted to say, something important. I could sense it.
“Kira, I need you to keep an open mind about your sister.”
I could feel the color draining from my already pale face.
“I know you’ve had a rough time the past few days, but she’s had a rough time too. You have to remember that she’s been on her own for a long time. She’s going to have a hard time adjusting to living with us, so she’ll need you to—”
I froze, not believing what he was saying.
“—help her, especially with high school next year—”
He had to be joking. No way that sea witch was moving in with us. And going to my school? I don’t think so.
“Dad, I—I don’t think Riley wants to live with us,” I stammered.
“I know.” He nodded as he spoke. “She’s run wild for a long time. It’s not going to be easy—”
“Have you even asked her?”
His head tilted slightly, maybe examining my words. “Yes, we all talked about it last night. She’s going to move in as soon as I get out of the hospital. Your grandmother and you are going to need to clean out the spare room, maybe put anything we want to keep in the basement. The rest of it we can—”
I didn’t hear anything else he said.
Because as far as I was concerned, my destiny was signed, sealed and delivered.
And it sucked. Big time.
Chapter 55
Caleb:
The morning fog burned away, leaving clear skies. Meanwhile, Brianna’s Mercedes hummed over familiar roads, Riley in the passenger seat, me in the back. And throughout the journey, all the way from Crescent Moon Bay to Monterey, Brianna whined.
“You guys, I can’t keep doing this. I’m going to get kicked out of school. And my parents will freak if they find out I ditched today. They won’t care if it’s ‘because the Selkies needed a ride somewhere.’ They’re just about to walk away from this whole ‘familiar’ plan anyway. Especially after my party—”
Riley ignored her. It looked like she was practicing her Selkie gift, the one she had stumbled on the other night when she almost drowned all those people in that little boat. Right now, with just a flick of her index finger, she spun bone-white clouds across a blue sky. The clouds blossomed like flowers, scattered from east to west as far as I could see. Then, with a lowered brow and her lip in a pout, the clouds darkened and thickened. She tilted her head and, even in the backseat, I could see the glisten of tears on her cheeks.
Rain started to fall, big soft drops that pattered against the windshield.
Then real emotion unexpectedly burst through. Riley turned and glared at me.
“You think you’re all that, but you’re not!” she said, her cheeks flaring pink. Thunder boomed in the background, almos
t in time with her words. Lightning snapped across the sky and then thunder followed again, shaking the ground beneath us. “She hasn’t even noticed you, hasn’t even looked at you! But you still stick up for her, every chance you get.”
“I told you, I’m not on anyone’s side,” I said, although knew it wasn’t true. I’d come here for the Burning—but Kira had captured my heart from the first moment I saw her. Even I didn’t know why.
“Then give me back her cross.”
“No.”
“See. On her side. Just like I said.”
“Whatever.”
Riley turned away from me, focused on a desolated shack on the side of the road. Pointing her hand like a loaded gun, she snapped her thumb like the trigger. “Pow,” she whispered. Suddenly lightning crashed down, struck the building, set it on fire. Even the rain couldn’t put it out. She started laughing then and, as if the universe was in perfect harmony with her, the clouds parted. A strong stream of sunlight poured down on us, just one beam of light in a world of rain.
“I think you picked the wrong side, Caleb,” she said.
Brianna glanced over her shoulder at me, concern on her face.
“Hey, eyes on the road, Little Miss Familiar. Stay focused, here. We don’t want to be late. My father is expecting me. He’s giving the Good News to Kira today.” Riley started laughing again and, like a heavenly sieve, more pockets of sunshine burst through the cloud cover.
“What good news?” Brianna asked.
“It’s a surprise,” Riley snapped. “And I want my dear sister to hear it first.”
Something snarled beneath her anger. Although I wasn’t sure what it was, I guessed that it was jealousy.
Chapter 56
Kira:
I couldn’t wait until Dad stopped talking. I completely tuned out everything after “your evil sister is moving in.” Just nodded my head and pasted a fake smile on my face. Inside I was saying stuff like, you’ve got to be kidding and am I in hell now and what in the world is Dad thinking, is he nuts.
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