It felt like time was standing still. He leaned farther down and she felt herself drawn to him. His lips touched hers and a warm sensation coursed through her. They pulled away for a moment to look into each other’s eyes. Arista knew that, no matter what Kellen said, there was no way she was going back to the water. Not now.
“Do you want to stay here, with me, tonight?” he asked.
Arista nodded and Gavin shuffled over in the bed to make more room for her. He rolled over and switched off the light before welcoming her back into his arms.
“Can I ask you something?” he whispered.
“Of course,” she said, trying to discern the outline of his face in the faint light coming in through the window. The crack under the slightly opened window allowed a pleasant breeze to waft through the room.
“What will happen if you do find your mother?”
Arista rested her head on his chest as she settled on an answer.
“The truth? I don’t know. I’ve thought about that moment for so long now, what I’ll say to her when I see her again. Sometimes I’m angry, other times I’m sad and I miss her terribly. More than anything I guess, I want to know that she’s safe. I mean, there were so many times I was convinced she was dead. I think knowing for sure that she’s out there, somewhere, will help me.”
Gavin stroked her hair and was quiet for a minute before he spoke again.
“My parents died years ago in a boating accident on the lake. I have always wished I could have even one more minute with them to say ‘I love you’ one last time and to hear them do the same. I’ll never have that, but I’ll do all I can to help you get that minute.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. With that, the pair drifted off to sleep.
…
Arista tossed and turned in her restless sleep. Since coming to the surface, the dreams happened constantly. But they were more than dreams — more frequently, they were nightmares.
Many of them took her back under the water, back to the night she first came ashore. Blood fills the water and she’s unable to breathe. She keeps swimming and swimming, trying to reach the surface, never able to get there. Moonlight shines through the bloodstained water, keeping her trapped as if inside a piece of red glass. Then she takes a breath, her lungs fill with water, and she sinks to the bottom.
Birds fill many of her other nightmares. She walks along the beach as feathers fall from the sky. They float through the air and she stops to watch them fall and hit the sand. Then, one by one, the birds come. They circle overhead at first, but then one flies straight down for her necklace. The rest follow and she can feel them beating against her with their wings, biting and clawing at her flesh. She keeps screaming for Gavin, for anyone, to come. But she is alone.
Arista awoke in a panic after having these nightmares yet again. Beads of sweat pooled on her forehead and her hair stuck to the sides of her face and neck. She sat up trying to catch her breath and gently moved Gavin’s arm out of the way so as not to wake him.
A cool night breeze blew up against her arms, giving her goose bumps all over. She glanced at Gavin and was reassured to see him sleeping and snoring softly. She leaned back against the headboard, still trying to calm down enough to fall asleep again.
She shivered as she thought back to her nightmares. They seemed so real. She could still see the images in her mind every time she closed her eyes. She gulped down the cool air and realized her mouth was extremely dry. Thinking water would help, she kicked her legs over the side of the bed.
The light from the street lamps coming through the partially open window was enough for her to see most of the room. All was quiet and nothing seemed amiss until she took a closer look at the window. Near the open space at the bottom where the air swirled inside, a pair of gleaming red and black eyes stared back at her.
Arista tried to scream, but nothing came out. She clutched at the blankets on the bed, as if they could protect her from what lurked on the other side of the window. Then, it was as if the glass was gone. Suddenly the eyes were in the room and hovering in the air. A shape materialized around the glowing orbs. Before Arista had time to react, Salazar was standing in front of her.
“Hello, Arista,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
She gasped and reached behind her, trying to wake Gavin. Salazar took a step towards her. Dark black hair framed his face and his mouth twisted into a wicked grin. In her mind, Arista saw Kyla in those last moments, trapped in the glass cage — warning her to run. But now, face to face with the man who had locked Kyla in there to die, she felt helpless. She looked at Gavin, who was still sleeping soundly. She couldn’t believe he wasn’t awake.
Salazar was inches away. His eyes locked with Arista’s and she froze, unable to move. He brought his hand up to her neck and brushed her hair away.
“You are weak,” he whispered. “Unlike your mother.”
A tear rolled down her cheek as he sank his teeth into the curve of her neck. She felt her life draining away and a wave of dizziness overwhelmed her. He looked at her with dark eyes ringed with a blood-red hue.
It was the last thing she saw before passing out.
˜
{ Chapter 16 }
Gavin tossed around in the bed pushing a pillow to the ground. He awoke from his fitful slumber with a start. He groaned as he realized it was still the middle of the night. When he rolled over to go back to sleep, he moved his arm to hold Arista and instead pulled a pillow against his body. Gavin opened his eyes once again to find she wasn’t in bed next to him.
Wide-awake, he sat up and looked around. He didn’t see her anywhere. He flung the covers back and slid his feet to the floor.
That’s when he found her.
Arista was lying face down on the carpeted floor underneath the open window. Gavin fell to knees beside her and rolled her over. Her eyes remained closed and her head fell listlessly to the side.
“Arista, Arista, please wake up,” he said, the panic growing in his voice as he shook her shoulder. He placed his hand on her chest and her heartbeat gave him some reassurance. He leaned in close and felt her breathing as well. Carefully supporting her head and neck in the crook of his arm, he lifted her off the ground and placed her back on the bed.
He left the bedroom and hurried to the living room where Clarissa was fast asleep on the couch.
“Clarissa, I need you,” he said, shaking her awake.
“Gavin? What is it?” she asked, sitting up with a yawn and rubbing her drooping eyes.
“Arista, I found her on the floor and now she isn’t waking up.”
Clarissa’s eyes widened with alarm. She followed Gavin back to the bedroom and saw Arista on the bed. She also felt for a heartbeat, but lifted her hand in alarm after touching Arista’s chest.
“Something is very wrong,” she said in a panicked whisper.
“Yes, I know, she won’t wake up,” Gavin responded irritably.
“No, no. It’s more than that. I can’t tell much about it, but I can feel it — there’s magic inside her that’s not her own. It has a darkness to it.”
“Magic,” Gavin repeated flatly. “How could magic do this to her?”
“I don’t know,” Clarissa said with a sigh. “I can only sense the magic. My abilities are incredibly limited; I don’t know how to fix it.”
The pair turned when they heard a noise behind them. Kellen stood in the doorway with an apprehensive expression on his face as he looked at Arista’s prone form on the bed. He pushed past the others and crouched beside Arista. He laid one hand on her forehand and the other on her stomach, then closed his eyes. Clarissa and Gavin glanced nervously at each other as they watched. Finally, Kellen stood up and nodded.
“She’s right, it’s magic. I hoped it was something wrong with her necklace, as if her own power was affecting her. But Clarissa is right, I feel the same dark magic. It’s not something I’ve felt from a mermaid before. It must have come from something else.”
Gavi
n exhaled deeply as he clenched his jaw in frustration. “There must be something we can do. We can’t leave her like this and hope it goes away.”
Clarissa shifted her gaze from Arista to look at Gavin. “There is one person we know with experience in magic…”
Gavin stared at her a moment before he understood. He closed his eyes. “First, you have us visit your degenerate lover who tried to take Arista to Salazar. And now, you want us to ask my sister for help?”
“Well, she is a witch,” Clarissa began.
“No, she thinks she’s a witch,” Gavin retorted.
Kellen, who had been standing over Arista, turned to look curiously at Gavin. “Did you say it’s your sister? We should go if she can help.”
Gavin sighed despondently and lowered his head into his hands. “There’s no other way?”
Clarissa raised an eyebrow as she answered. “As you so tactfully pointed out, we have to find someone who we can trust. I don’t know anyone else who knows as much about magic as she does.”
“I can’t believe we’re even talking about this, as if her so-called power is something to take seriously,” he said, shaking his head.
“You don’t think it makes the most sense to use your witch sister to help your mermaid girlfriend?” Clarissa said with a soft laugh. Gavin grunted in acknowledgment.
“I still don’t understand why you’re resistant to seeing your sister,” Kellen remarked.
Gavin raised his head to look at Kellen. “She hasn’t spoken to me since our parents died six years ago. She still blames me for their deaths.”
˜
{ Chapter 17 }
Gavin and Kellen carefully carried Arista down to the truck and laid her across the back seat. Clarissa climbed in afterwards, holding Arista’s head in her lap so it wouldn’t rock around while they drove. It was still well before dawn, but it would take a few hours to reach Valerie’s home.
The two men sat together in the front of the truck. Kellen shifted uncomfortably in his seat and glanced in the back to check on Arista.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” he asked.
“We don’t have any options except hope,” Gavin answered, making eye contact with Clarissa in the rear view mirror. “We have to hope Valerie will even agree to help us.”
“She will,” Clarissa said firmly.
“Really? She hasn’t spoken to either of us in years. It’s not unreasonable to think she’ll slam the door in our faces.”
Clarissa sighed. “I suppose so.”
“Why does she blame you for the deaths of your parents?” Kellen asked, glancing at Gavin.
Gavin stared ahead at the road in front of him as he answered. “Six years ago, my parents took our boat onto the lake. Valerie was staying at a friend’s house and Clarissa and I were supposed to go on the lake with my parents. But, at the last minute, we decided to take it easy and hang out on the beach. So we went into town and my parents took the boat out on their own.
“The Coast Guard said the boat capsized in a storm, although they never found the exact cause. The boat was on its side, barely on the surface of the water when they found it. My parents’ bodies were never recovered.
“My sister has always blamed me. She thinks if I had been there, it may have ended differently. Maybe we would have gone somewhere else on the lake and there wouldn’t have been an accident, or maybe I could have rescued them.”
“Or maybe you’d be dead too,” Kellen said.
“To Valerie, I may as well be. She’s never forgiven me for any of it.”
The three sat quietly in the truck for a while, each gazing out a window lost in their own thoughts.
…
It was a few hours before they arrived in Covington, a sleepy Indiana town that stood in sharp contrast to the busy streets of Chicago. They drove past several family farms then traveled along a rural road with only a few scattered houses. Gavin turned into a lane that crossed through a cemetery, driving underneath a crumbling stone archway.
“She still lives here, right?” he asked Clarissa, glancing into the rearview mirror.
“Last I heard,” she answered absently as she looked down at Arista. She hadn’t woken up or given the slightest indication of improvement since Gavin first found her.
The truck meandered down the winding path between the derelict and long-forgotten headstones. The path continued the length of the cemetery and into the nearby woods. There, slightly off the road, sat a squat stone house that had weathered decades of time. Clarissa was awestruck by the home, which looked as though it had been ripped out of the pages of a storybook.
“This is just like her,” Gavin muttered. “Pick the creepiest place she can find.”
“Gav, remember we need her help,” Clarissa admonished. “You need to be nice.”
“I know, that’s why I’m letting it out now,” he said with a sigh.
He parked the truck in a small plot of dirt along the side of the house. He was unbuckling his seatbelt when his sister walked out to meet them.
“Do you want me to talk to her first, while you and Kellen get Arista out of the car?” Clarissa asked.
Gavin nodded and Clarissa lifted Arista’s head off her lap and lowered it onto the seat before climbing out of the truck. She stopped walking a few feet in front of Valerie. Years had passed since they’d been this near to each other, and they hadn’t spoken much since the funeral. Valerie reached up and tucked a strand of purple-highlighted black hair behind her ear. She eyed Clarissa cautiously — as though assessing the threat of a wild animal.
“We need your help,” Clarissa started.
Valerie raised an eyebrow over her violet eyes. “I know. Why do you think I was outside waiting?”
“How could you have known?” Clarissa asked.
Valerie gestured casually around her. “I learned you all were on your way here. I figured I’d at least hear your story before throwing you out.”
“Val, come on, we’re serious. There’s no one else,” Gavin pleaded as he walked up behind Clarissa, holding Arista in his arms.
Valerie’s eyes widened as her gaze drifted to Arista. “What have you done? I mean, I know you’re goddamn stupid, but what on earth…”
Valerie walked over to where her brother was holding Arista. Muttering profanities at Gavin under her breath, she reached past the collar of Arista’s shirt and pulled out her necklace. She shook her head when she saw the bloodstone and glared at Gavin, letting the amulet fall against Arista’s chest.
“I’m not even going to ask what you’re doing with a mermaid, but if you’re going to saddle yourself with one of these creatures you should at least take care of it. You should have bought a dog if you needed a pet that badly,” she said, her voice dripping with obvious disdain.
Gavin and Kellen both opened their mouths to protest but fell silent under her stern expression. She stopped suddenly, noticing Kellen for the first time. She let out a laugh. “I stand corrected. You burdened yourself with two of these worthless things? You really are stupid.”
Gavin glared at her, but refrained from speaking. She smiled at her older brother. “At least it seems you’re a quick learner now. Paying attention never was your strong suit. If you want me to help, keep your mouths shut and bring her inside.”
With that, Valerie turned and stormed away. She paused and directed her piercing gaze at Clarissa. “How on earth did you end up in this motley crew? Oh, don’t tell me, the silly mermaids believe you’re a psychic?” Valerie rolled her eyes into a glare. “Even more than my idiot brother here, you’d better stay on your best behavior.”
She punctuated her final words with two jabs of her index finger into Clarissa’s chest. Each poke felt like a burning knife searing right into her. Clarissa winced with the scorching pain. Valerie grinned.
“That’s just the beginning.”
Valerie continued into the house. Clarissa and Gavin made eye contact and he tightened his jaw, shaking his head. Clarissa shut her ey
es against the still burning sensation in her chest.
This had better be worth it.
˜
{ Chapter 18 }
When they walked inside, an unpleasant smell greeted them, permeating through the entire house.
“What is that?” Gavin exclaimed.
Valerie looked at him. “It should fix your ill pet there. It’s a mix of rosemary, eucalyptus, and sage… along with some other odds and ends like snake tongue and fish scales. It’s all soaking in the bathtub.”
Gavin and Clarissa both made faces at the description and he shot a strange look at his sister. “How can you already know what’s wrong with her?”
“I’m not the stupid one here. I’m not gadding about with two mermaids,” she said. “And if I were to unwisely take in some mermaids, I’d at least give them the proper care.”
She shifted her gaze to Kellen. “Like a houseplant, you need to water them on a regular basis.”
Kellen frowned. “I don’t appreciate how you’ve been…”
With a single small twist of her wrist and a flick of her finger, he was silenced. Kellen frowned again and moved his mouth, but no words came out. His eyes opened wider in alarm as he looked at Gavin and Clarissa.
Clarissa turned to Valerie with a horrified expression on her face. “What did you do?”
“I warned him,” Valerie said with a smile. “I warned you all to keep quiet. He didn’t listen. Now I’m forcing him to follow my rules.”
Clarissa and Gavin both got the hint and snapped their mouths shut. Kellen continued to move his lips, trying to make any audible sounds to no avail. Valerie pressed her finger against his lips to stop him and brushed her hand down on the side of his face.
“As I was saying,” Valerie continued. “These things might walk and talk like a person, but they belong in the water. Creatures don’t like to be removed from their natural habitats. When you take an animal from the wild and drop it into a tiny cage what happens? They get depressed and forlorn; they act out and are unhappy. They don’t belong there. So what do people do to keep those animals happy? They create fancier cages that look and feel more like their natural space. It makes them happier, even though it isn’t real.
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