The Dysasters

by P. C. Cast

  She schooled her face into what her mother would call “acceptable politeness, but not an invitation” and in her best Southern belle accent said, “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Bastien. Have a lovely day.”

  As the very sexy, very handsome Bastien opened his mouth to say more, Charlotte gave him a dismissive wave, quickly turned her back on him, retrieved her backpack, and without one glance over her shoulder she hurried away from him, retracing her steps down the beach.

  Maybe someday … Charlotte thought wistfully. Maybe someday I can talk to a handsome young man like Bastien without being afraid, but today is not that day …

  Bastien

  “Didn’t know all we had to do was get you in front of a beautiful piece to get the words to roll right out of ya.” Dickie clapped his arm around Bastien’s shoulders. “What’d you say back there, anyway?”

  Bastien shrugged away from the brotherly embrace. That young woman hadn’t been some piece. She was an ange. An angel. Her hair and the way the salt-licked breeze had twirled it around her head had been her halo. And those arms, long and delicate and goose-down white, would at any moment reveal the wings he knew were tucked up inside her, waiting to lift her from this cruel world. She’d landed right in front of him and he’d talked to her in the only way he knew how.

  “Douces comme du miel.” Dickie’s attempt at Bastien’s line tumbled around his mouth and came out battered and broken. “I’ll have to remember that one and use it sometime. You probably just rake ’em in with that accent and all that foreign-sounding shit. Why the fuck couldn’t I have grown up in Arcada?”

  “Acadiana,” Bastien corrected, promising himself that this would be the last time he did so without using his fists. Dickie was all right, once you got used to the dick part of his personality. Unfortunately, Bastien had discovered, this was 99.9 percent of ol’ Dickster, but he’d decided that having the boss’s little brother mad at him all the time wasn’t how he wanted to live this part of his life, however brief it was before he got too restless and the sea called him away.

  “Yeah, Acadiana. What’d I say?”

  Bastien ran his tongue along his teeth to keep from grinding them into paste. How many times did he have to explain it to this boy? His sister had even given him an article about the origin of the Cajun people and the parishes making up the Acadiana region, but nothing stuck.

  “You gonna tell me what it means, douces comme—”

  “Couillon,” Bastien grumbled, unwilling to listen to Dickie butcher his language again.

  “Say, what?”

  “Sweet as honey.”

  “Damn, that’s slick.”

  Slick was right. Slick like oil. Slick like sludge. Slick like all the things dumped and leaked into the great big abyss named ocean, coating and suffocating and poisoning until there’s nothing left—only silence, only stillness.

  Board under his arm, Bastien charged back to the sea. He waded out until the rough waves licked his bare chest and drowned out Dickie’s shouts and questions. He needed to see them, his ocean creatures, to feel them beneath and all around him to remind him of who he was.

  He was not the slick before the silence.

  That had been his father.

  That had been the way the rich Mr. Tibadeau had lured young women into his marital bed. He’d wrap them in satiny words and silky promises. Who cared if he got caught?

  Money made everything go away.

  Everything except Bastien’s mother.

  Money kept her glued in place with foul liquid in her glass and hate stitched to her lips. But Mr. Tibadeau could hardly notice. He’d sweep in and out, sweet nothings spilling into his wife’s outstretched hands. And then, like a dream, like a nightmare, he’d be gone again, returning coated in glitter and smelling of vanilla, of sweetness, of lust and secrets. And the silence would cloak their home in its funeral shroud.

  This family is dead.

  May they rest in pieces.

  Belly pressed against the glowing phoenix, Bastien paddled toward the break and its barreling waves. He gripped the edge of his board and, with surprising ease, punched through the rippling, tourmaline blue, glass-like center of the wave. He took a deep breath and he cut under as another wave surged overhead.

  It has to calm if I’m going to see them, he thought, taking a quick inhale before another wave could crash against him. But it didn’t come. The ocean mellowed, absorbing the treacherous conditions as if a whole day had passed while Bastien was busy blinking. He sat up, wiggling his toes in the water as his legs draped over the sides of his board.

  They would be here soon to ground him, reassure him that although he was of his father, he was not his father.

  Bastien felt them before he saw them. The water cooled and thickened, but only for a moment as three majestic, shadowy creatures rose from the depths to greet him. They should have scared him, giant beasts surging close to the surface, their huge, whale-like bodies encircling him as he sat alone, on a surfboard, bobbing in the Gulf. It was the beginning of so many shark attack movies, but he could never bring himself to leave. He’d first seen them on one of their family trips to the Gulf, sitting, much like he was now, on a paddleboard atop the ocean while his parents snorkeled around him. He’d asked if they could see them, feel the cold thickness of the water, but they’d laughed and splashed and told him to stop trying to scare them, for the ocean was a vast and frightening place.

  But that had been in the before.

  Before the slick and the silence.

  And Bastien didn’t like to linger in the past.

  Although, he’d never really understood what they meant about the vastness or the scariness of the sea. As he got older, it became more and more apparent that this was a real thing, thalassophobia, fear of the sea. Dickie had even said that he didn’t like to go out too far without a boat. That the ocean was like Jupiter or Saturn, “a whole ’nother planet that we’ll never completely explore or understand.” It had been the smartest thing that Dickie’d ever said. But if that was the case, if the ocean was like an unexplored planet, then Bastien was Neil Armstrong.

  Submerged, he could feel all the slopes and edges, caves and lightless depths, ebbs and flows.

  The ocean was not unknown. It was misunderstood.

  The water cooled again as another creature appeared and joined its brethren as they continued to circle Bastien.

  “Tell me,” he dipped his fingers into the water, “how to wash clean of mon père.” My father.

  They were always silent, his creatures, and, for the first time, Bastien wondered if someone out there could hear them.

  22

  FOSTER

  Foster was going to kill the chickens. All of them. Dead. With a groan she rolled onto her belly and covered her head with her pillow. It felt like all she’d done was collapse into bed, close her eyes, take a deep breath, and then it was morning. And she knew it was morning not because of the sun. Oh, no. Foster had blackout curtains to keep that early-rising bastard firmly on the outside of the house. She knew it was morning because of the squawking, or crowing, or whatever word described the god-awful noise that had woken her up.

  “Fucking chickens,” she moaned, tossing her pillow onto the floor and sitting up. With a yawn, she stretched her arms overhead and squinted at the glowing red numbers on her alarm clock. Eight twenty-three. It wasn’t that early. At least, not now that she’d adjusted her schedule so that she and Sabine could hang out before Sabine went off to class while Finn fed the menagerie, which would be in about thirty minutes.

  Foster flipped off her alarm clock before it started blaring at her, and shuffled out her door and around the corner to her bathroom. She squirted a blob of toothpaste onto her toothbrush, weighing whether or not thirty minutes was enough time to get rid of toothpaste mouth. Toothpaste mouth ruined vegan scones, and they were really the best part of Sabine coming over nearly every morning.

  No, she wasn’t being honest. Sabine was the best part of
Sabine coming over. She liked their new routine. It pushed her one step closer to feeling like she was truly at home and part of a family. And that’s all she wanted. It was simple, really, just wanting to belong. But so much time had passed and so many bad things had happened since she’d truly felt at home on her rooftop or having s’more nights with Cora that Foster had begun to wonder if it had all been an illusion. That maybe she’d made the feeling up. Maybe she’d only convinced herself that she belonged. But all the days at Strawberry Fields with Tate and now Sabine and Finn had brought with them that fuzzy warm rush of comfort and home, like she’d just been on a long trip and was only a few miles away from her front door.

  Foster stuck the toothbrush into her mouth.

  September was a month of Foster firsts: first best friend, who she refused to call bestie no matter how many times Sabine insisted; first “boyfriend-ish dating guy” type person; first time float flying; first time living without someone over the age of twenty-one; and first time having to possibly save the lives of two people who were also mutant freaks and who had some kind of water ability.

  She spit, gargled, and then spit again.

  She’d leave that last first until the very final possible moment. Those two wouldn’t be eighteen for another two days, and maybe there wouldn’t be any freak water event and there would be no reason to go around saving two fellow teenagers. Yep, she’d let it go. Remove it from her mind. Poof. Gone. A problem for Future Foster.

  Her stomach grumbled, reminding her that Present Foster couldn’t wait half an hour for vegan scones.

  She trotted down the hall, peeking into Tate’s room before heading downstairs. Sure enough, he was gone. Bed was made and everything neatly in its place like it magically reset itself every morning. If only Foster could get a little bit of that magic. She practically hopped down the stairs, finally feeling energized as the dark of her room slipped off of her like a skin and the sunlight, casting fun house–mirror shapes along the floor and walls, kissed each patch of her bare flesh.

  “Eggs,” she said with a chipper sort of finality. “I’ll make eggs before Sabine gets here and has a chance to look at me all vegan and disapproving about my life choices.” She rushed into the kitchen and grabbed a bowl from the cabinet before stuffing her feet into her tennis shoes. “And this has nothing to do with those chickens who woke me up,” she said to whichever deity might be listening. It wasn’t spite. It was her stomach.

  On her way to the coop Foster paused, flailing her hands, and the bowl, above her head in an attempt to get Tate’s attention from across the vast pasture. It was no use. He was out there with those, she cringed, horses. Or at least that’s what everyone kept calling them. She sighed and continued her short trek to the chickens’ living quarters. To Foster, those two mares would always be dinosaurs and the people who rode them would always be crazy.

  Foster stopped short of the coop with its pale gray siding, cheery white shutters, and fully fenced-in yard area where the chickens could chicken about without fear of being eaten by some wild animal. It was a perfect playhouse-sized version of the main house, which is exactly what Finn had intended when he’d built it. And it was nice. Really nice. Like, nicer than the vast majority of the motels she and Cora had stayed at. But those hadn’t been filled with chickens.

  “Hi. Hello. Hi,” Foster said, bending over and ever so quietly tiptoeing to the small and open front door of the coop. Gingerly, she waved at the hens sitting sleepily in their nesting boxes. “How’s it going?” Foster set down the bowl and rubbed her sweaty palms on the butt of her shorts. “So I’m just going to grab this right here maybe.” She tentatively reached into the chicken coop.

  “Bwak!” The chicken fluttered its wings and seemed to puff to twice its original size.

  Foster yanked her hand back before the chicken had the chance to peck her to death. “Sorry, ma’am. Sorry.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and crouched into a squat. “It’s just that you happen to be sitting on something that I need.”

  The hen let out a short cluck of protest.

  “But, see, that’s kind of why you’re here—so we can have your eggs. I mean, there’s that whole debate about which one came first, the chicken or the egg, but what if neither came first and they both came at the same time and you, being the chicken, were like, hmm, I guess I should sit on that, but me, being the human, is telling you that you don’t have to. I’ll take it for you and … sit on it. You know, so you can have a break.”

  “Are you trying to rationalize to that hen why you’re taking her eggs?”

  Foster could almost hear Sabine’s eyebrow arch sardonically. “No.” She picked up the bowl as she rose to her feet. “We were just talking about … things.”

  A bee buzzed around one of Sabine’s Princess Leia–style buns and she shooed it away with a calm wave of her hand. “Sure you are.” Her smooth eyebrow arched even higher, if that was possible.

  “So, scones.” Foster eyed Sabine’s hands, which were empty except for the iPad she clutched against her stomach. “Where are they?”

  “The kitchen. I left them in there when I came out here to get you.”

  Foster’s mouth watered. “Are they chocolate chip today? Man, I love it when you make chocolate chip.”

  “It’s starting.” Sabine thrust the iPad in Foster’s direction. “All morning I’ve been trying to figure out a better way to tell you, but I guess that’s why they say you can’t polish a turd.”

  Foster couldn’t force herself to grab the device. She didn’t want it to be real. It couldn’t be real. Only a few minutes ago she had told herself that she wouldn’t think about those other kids, and that there was a chance that everything would be okay—that Doctor Rick, the Fucktastic Four, the entire outside world would leave her and her new family alone.

  Sabine moved next to Foster, pressing the triangular button glaring up at them from the darkening screen. Foster stared speechless at the purples and reds and oranges and yellows swirling on the screen.

  “Hey, Sabine!” Tate pecked Foster on the cheek before giving Sabine a friendly hug. “Finn’s out feeding, but said it was important I—”

  “It’s happening.” Foster wiped a stray tear from her cheek before Tate or Sabine saw that it had fallen. “Heading for Texas,” she passed the iPad from Sabine to Tate who was back by her side. “Galveston if I read the map correctly.”

  “No, no, that can’t be right.” Tate stretched his fingers across the screen, zooming in.

  “Foster’s right,” Sabine said. “It’s not very big, actually it’s the opposite—small, powerful, deadly, and completely focused on its trajectory. It’s heading straight for Galveston.”

  “Foster,” Tate’s voice was almost a whisper, and he took a deep inhale before continuing. “There’s, uh,” the way he avoided her gaze made her heart feel like a trapped lightning bug. It knocked wildly against the confines of her chest, only slowing as the realization set in.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  There was no place to fly to.

  “Something I should have told you…”

  Her light dimmed then, the way the bug would have after it lost all hope.

  “Well, I should never have kept it from you.”

  Dimming. Dimming. Dimming.

  “I shouldn’t have lied.”

  It went out.

  23

  EVE

  “There he is.” Eve spoke under her breath as the old man entered the Corner Café. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Eve had chosen a booth that gave them a clear line of sight to the front door of the little café. The newspaper clipping hadn’t specified at what time old man Bowen had breakfast every day, so the four of them had been there since the café opened at six a.m. At first they’d hung out in the parking lot trying not to look conspicuous, and then at about seven-thirty Eve had had enough and they’d gone inside. Happily, they hadn’t had to wait long because at eight o’clock sharp, Bowen had entered the café wi
th a book under his arm and an endearing smile on his face.

  Eve leaned in and lowered her voice. “Okay, eat slowly. We need to time this so that we leave when the waitress brings him his check. That way we’ll be out in the rental car when the old man exits—we follow him.”

  “Hey, we got it, sis,” Luke said, giving her a sassy wink. She sighed. Of course Luke’s in a good mood. He’s eating. He’s always in a good mood when there’s food or fire involved.

  “Yeah, don’t worry. This will be a lot easier than dealing with rogue kids and their elements,” Matthew said.

  “He’s an old man,” Mark said. “Let’s be sure that we keep that in mind and be careful with him.”

  The four of them ate slowly while they watched Grandpa Bowen’s daily café ritual.

  After a few minutes Luke snorted. “Mark, your frail old guy is wolfing down three eggs, a rib eye, fruit bowl, short stack of pancakes, and an entire pot of coffee—extra cream and sugar—while he flirts with the waitresses, who seem to like it. I’m not thinking we need to be very careful with him.”

  “He’s seventy-nine. That’s old whether he’s in good shape or not. Don’t be an ass, Luke. We’re not here to hurt him. We’re only here to get the water kids and find out where Tate and Foster are,” Mark said.

  “It’s okay,” Eve said softly, holding the gaze of each of her brothers, one at a time. She was the only mother the boys remembered, and she took full advantage of the soft spot they had for her. “We’re going to talk to Mr. Bowen. Talk. We aren’t criminals. We aren’t going to do anything wrong. Can we all please remember that it’s for the best that we find Tate and Foster, as well as Charlotte and Bastien. They could hurt themselves and others. That was already proven in Missouri. Once the old man understands that, everything will fall into place.”