“I understand.”
“What do you understand?” I asked, annoyed not to be a part of their silent conversation.
“I understand why you need to improve quickly. If you can manipulate the mist like Lily thinks…if Cruz and Ace know…” He let his voice trail off, but his unspoken words chilled me down to my very core.
25
Drowning
Kajika’s stories spun on a loop inside my mind, weaving themselves into vivid images. I’d slept fitfully, and not because of dream marriage proposals this time. My nightmares had pulled me out of bed long before my alarm would ring.
I pulled on running gear and left my house under a pearl-gray sky. Night lifted as I ran through the forest, past the cabin where Ace’s friend had been killed and a new emerald-green vine coiled through a broken windowpane, past the cauliflower-lake. I erupted from the entrails of the forest onto the beach just as the sun peeked over the horizon. Sweat cooling, I stood unmoving on the white sand, watching the orange ball of fire rise over the lake, tinting the water blue.
I studied the water with apprehension and curiosity. I needed to know. This would either confirm I was indeed losing it or it would confirm I was part Daneelie.
After making sure the beach was deserted, I tugged off my T-shirt, rolled down my running shorts, kicked off my sneakers and socks. In my running bra and black underwear, I approached the cool surf. My toes sank in the wet sand as I walked farther. Green algae stroked my ankles and bare legs as I went deeper.
A violent shiver rocketed through me as I plunged in. Like millions of tiny needles, the water prickled my skin. I broke the surface and trod water until a minute amount of warmth trickled into my icy limbs.
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. And then I let my body sink. The air snuck out of my nose in a stream of tiny bubbles. I sank deeper as my lungs emptied. When they ached, I parted my lips. A jet of freezing water flooded my mouth. I gagged as it slid inside my throat. I clamped my lips shut, and even though I was dying to return to the surface, I powered through my desperate craving for oxygen. I opened my mouth again. Again, water shot down my throat, which clenched and contracted. It was no longer frigid but hot and thick, like boiled sap.
I needed to get out. With my prickling fingertips, I touched my arms and squinted through the water at my legs. No scales had formed. Lily had been wrong. Or if she’d been right, I had too little Daneelie blood for it to affect me.
Something splashed next to me. I jolted backward, pushing against the water to tread out of the way of whatever feathery beast had decided to dive in.
Lungs on fire, I kicked to break the surface just as two arms scooped me up and rocketed me up and out. Cold air slapped my wet skin. The arms released me over the beach.
I gasped as my body collided onto the sand. And then I choked on the burning strip of oxygen that shot down my throat. I lurched onto my hands and knees and gagged as lake water spilled out of me. My body spasmed, and it felt like a boat was crushing my organs. Another spasm. Water laced with bile shot out of my mouth. How long had I been under? Two, three minutes?
When the coughing stopped, I sat back on my heels, whipped my hair out of my eyes, and turned to thank the person for coming to my rescue even though I hadn’t needed rescuing.
Piercing eyes stared down at me. Angry. Narrowed. And blue.
So blue.
“What the hell were you attempting?” Ace’s voice sounded far away, even though his body was close, inches from mine.
“Why…you…here?” My teeth chattered.
“I’m here because your fucking brand went haywire. Were you trying to drown?”
I locked my gaze on the foaming wavelets licking the shore. My experiment had failed. I couldn’t breathe underwater. The texture of my skin hadn’t altered. Since I didn’t want to tell him I’d attempted to breathe underwater, I asked, “Why did you…have me spied on?”
“Pietro wasn’t spying on you. He was looking out for Lily.”
“You swear?”
“Were you trying to drown?”
“Pietro wasn’t there fo—”
“Were you trying to drown?” he yelled.
“What does it…matter to you?”
He shuffled backward, palming his hair. “It doesn’t matter. Your life doesn’t matter to me. You don’t matter to me! The same way I don’t matter to you.”
I wanted to tell him that he still mattered to me, but I couldn’t admit that.
His body vibrated with fury. It rose off him like the tendrils of steam from his clothes. His jeans were almost dry, just like his white button-down shirt.
“You were right.” I spoke slowly, evenly. “I tried to kill myself.”
He tensed. If someone were to sketch his body at that moment, they would only need to draw angles and straight lines.
“Because I’d rather die by my own hand…than at yours.”
His eyes shone so bright in the cool morning they looked like glow-sticks.
“So next time…please don’t come…don’t save me.”
“Next time?” He gasped, then shook his head wildly. “Fine. Fine. Kill yourself! Giving up is so human.”
“Why are you angry…if you don’t care?”
“Because, Catori, it’s fucking selfish of you, that’s why! My sister would give anything to live, and you would give anything to die. Do you realize how fucked up your logic is?” he bellowed. “Do you?”
Ah. He wasn’t angry because he cared about my life, he was mad because he cared about his sister’s life.
Returning my gaze to the vast body of water beyond me, I said, “Go away, Ace. Just go away. I can’t take your disdain right now.”
He didn’t go away.
My eyes stung. I closed them, then whispered, “Vade.”
When I opened my eyes several minutes later, he’d heeded the Faeli word he’d taught me a long time ago.
He’d left.
26
The Swim
“I can’t breathe underwater,” I told Lily in a low voice, when she dropped by Astra’s later that morning. “And my skin stayed…normal.” I placed a mug of steaming, spicy tea in front of her. Chai, her favorite. “I tried this morning.”
She wrapped her hands around the warm porcelain and peered into the milky brown liquid. After a second, she picked up her phone and typed, Maybe it’s a skill your body needs to learn.
Making sure no customer was trying to get my attention, I dropped on the bench opposite her. “How am I supposed to pick up a skill without someone to teach me?”
Kajika might find out something useful.
“Or maybe you’re wrong. Maybe I’m not that at all.” I plopped my elbows on the table and cradled my achy forehead in my hands. Between not sleeping enough and my altercation with Ace, I felt like roadkill. I looked like it too. After getting home, I attempted to camouflage my under-eye circles with concealer, but however much I smeared on, the purple tint of my skin remained.
Lily touched the back of one of my hands. Pointed to her phone. We’ll figure this out.
I nodded just as the door chimed. Faith waddled in, stomach first. I stood up lightning-fast. I didn’t want her to think I was slacking. “Hey.”
She stopped next to me and frowned at Lily. “I heard you two are living together now. Is that true?”
I nodded.
Faith made a face as though she’d sucked on something sour. “Why? Don’t you have a way nicer house on Beaver Island, Lily?”
“She’s not talking to her parents,” I explained, hoping this was okay to share.
“Because they took Cruz’s side after you cheated on him with Alessandro Bloom?” Faith asked.
Lily nodded, then sighed, while I blinked at her.
“Was it to get back at him for playing tonsil-hockey with your new roommate?” Faith tipped her head toward me.
Lily typed. No. Alessandro was just irresistible.
“He is real hot. Anyway, gotta drop off this b
ag. This pregnancy is killing my back, and my ankles have become kankles. Ugh. Three more months to go…”
Once she left, I hissed, “You cheated on Cruz with an actor?”
Lily rolled her eyes. Of course not, but that’s what the papers are saying. Better that story than the real one.
I must’ve still looked aghast because Lily grinned and added to her message, I have a type, and that type is dark-haired and handsome. I would never go for a blond guy. You can have all the blonds, Cat.
I didn’t want all the blonds. I wanted one blond, and that blond no longer wanted me.
Faith swung back into the room, so I left Lily to her reading and went to see if there was anything Faith needed me to do. Nothing beat menial jobs to rid my mind of thoughts of Ace.
That night, Kajika stopped by as Lily and I were getting dinner ready. Dad was hosting a wake at someone’s house, but would be home soon.
I poured the hunter a glass of water and set it on the kitchen island. He drank deeply, then leaned against the kitchen island and folded his arms.
“Gwenelda remembered a story about Mishipeshu. Apparently their scales were made of metal, like an armor. Unlike armor, though, the scales were an aphrodisiac, so often times, faeries harvested them and ground them into a fine powder they would ingest or sell for profit.”
“You mean, they plucked off their own scales?” I wondered if it equated waxing or peeling off skin. And then I shuddered at that contemplation.
“Sometimes. But more often”—Kajika eyed Lily—“other faeries would remove the scales against the Mishipeshu’s will.”
Horrified, I stared at Lily. “Is that true?”
She shrugged. Did she think it was no big deal or had she shrugged because she didn’t know the answer?
“She has heard of it,” Kajika said. A beat passed. “It is the rarest commodity on the Neverrian marketplace nowadays, apparently.”
Lily narrowed her eyes at Kajika.
The hunter slanted his dark eyebrows right back. “Catori should know, especially if she truly is part Mishipeshu.”
“Maybe I’m not.” I stirred the tomato soup on the stovetop, a recipe Blake had taught me a long time ago. “This morning, I went for a swim in the lake and tried breathing underwater. All I got was a lungful of water. And my skin didn’t change.” The creamy, tangy aroma propelled me back to a time and place when life was simpler. When skin didn’t morph, corpses didn’t rise from graves, and fire didn’t run in people’s veins.
“No!” Kajika’s harshly spoken word brought me back to the here and now.
I set the wooden spoon down and turned. “No, what?”
The hunter’s eyes were leveled on Lily like a double-barreled shotgun. “Nothing.”
“Oh, come on!”
Lily grabbed her phone and started typing, but Kajika whisked it out of her hands. Instead of going after him, she walked toward the drawer where we kept the takeout menus. She took one out, uncapped a pen, and touched the tip to the paper, but Kajika ripped it from her.
Lily folded her arms and glowered at him.
“I imagine you will tell her after I leave, but it is a dire idea. Not to mention dangerous. What happens if she cannot come back, or if others notice her? Have you considered that?”
Small grooves splintered Lily’s glare, swayed her certainty.
“Are you kidding me? One of you better tell me what’s going on or I’ll—”
“Knowing how reckless you can be, it is better you do not know. For your safety—”
I folded my arms in front of me. “I’m not reckless.”
Lily pursed her lips.
My experiment slotted back to the forefront of my mind. “Not that reckless. Please tell me.”
Neither spoke.
Lily’s eyes dipped to the kitchen tiles.
“I’ll find out sooner or later. I’d rather sooner than later.”
“Fine. Lily would have told you anyway.” Kajika let out a gravelly sigh and gave Lily back her phone. “She believes that you have to visit Neverra for your powers to manifest. Apparently bazash who are born in the human world do not have fire in their veins until they visit the baseetogan.”
My arms untied and plummeted against my sides like limp ropes. “You guys seriously think I’d risk going into the baseetogan to activate powers that could potentially enslave me or get me killed? I might be reckless, but I’m not on crack. I would never willingly leave my world and my father to become a faerie mermaid. Especially not after all the stories I’ve heard about the place. I mean, I have freaking faerie dust stored in my neck.”
“Faerie dust you can use,” Kajika said.
“It’s still a hunter marking,” I said, at the same time as Kajika said, “You did not tell Lily?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me.
“No I haven’t told her. I was trying to forget about it,” I mumbled.
“She killed Stella Sakar with it,” he said point-blank.
A gust of air escaped through Lily’s parted glossy lips.
“It happened once. For all I know, it was a total fluke and will never happen again. I don’t even know how I did it.” I pressed both my palms against my face and heaved a frustrated sigh. “All these weird things are happening to me, and I have no control over them. Sometimes I want to scream.”
Thin fingers wrapped around my wrist and pried my hands away from my face. Lily stared up at me, her expression gentle.
“She says she can help you control it,” Kajika said, shoulders squared tightly.
“I’d rather you help me remove it,” I told her.
Her face scrunched up in disappointment.
“She says it is a great gift,” Kajika said.
“It might seem like a gift, but to me it’s a constant reminder of the life I took.”
“That is because it is the first life you took, Catori. You always remember the first life you take.” Kajika rubbed his hands as though he were washing away invisible blood…or dust.
“Even more reason to get rid of it. Is there a way, Lily? Please tell me there’s a way.”
She released my wrists, then turned to Kajika.
“She says that if the faerie dies, her dust should have vanished. There is no precedent for why you were able to use it, or why it is still inscribed on your skin if it belongs to you.”
“So basically, she’s saying there’s no way to get rid of it?”
“She is saying that if there is a way, she does not know it.”
“Ugh.”
“You should take her up on her offer, Catori. Learning to use it will be another weapon in your arsenal.”
I was not interested in collecting weapons or waging war. I was not interested in killing more people. I wanted to study. Become a doctor. Save lives.
Why was the world adamantly giving me tools to take lives instead?
27
Revenge
In the end, I decided to take Lily up on her offer to learn to control Stella’s dust—my dust. Originally, I hadn’t wanted to learn, but then Kajika said, what if you inadvertently killed someone you love with it? That was motivation enough to learn to wield the undesired power safely.
So the following day after work, I drove to the barn with Lily. It seemed like a remote enough place to manipulate poisonous dust.
“How about a gasmask? Would that keep the dust out?” She wasn’t worried about teaching me, but I was worried for her.
She shook her head.
“Or a bandana?”
She grinned and rolled her eyes, then signed that it would be okay. I wasn’t convinced. Not in the least.
“How about you stay in the car and text me directions?”
She signed, stop.
But I didn’t. I came up with tons more ideas that sounded way more brilliant in my head than spoken aloud.
Once we arrived in front of the barn, the sky had darkened so much I almost missed the rusty pickup truck parked on the side of the building. “Did Kaj
ika know we were coming?”
She shook her head. I didn’t tell him, she typed, just as her phone died. She grimaced, then dropped it in the cup holder with a sigh.
We parked next to the barn that glowed and colored the uneven land yellow. The door creaked as I pulled it open.
Kajika was training on the punching bag in the corner, an Eminem rap song blasting from a portable speaker. He was so focused, he didn’t notice us at first, but it didn’t take him long to sense he wasn’t alone. The second he picked up our scents, his head snapped in our direction.
Sweat dripped down the sides of his concentrated face, down his ropy arms, down his carved pecs. Even though hunters didn’t glow, he was so slick and flushed he looked lit from within.
“Hey,” I said. “We didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Kajika trod toward us, unwrapping his gloves as he moved, but froze midway, one glove off, one glove on. His gaze zeroed in on Lily. So of course, I stared at her too. Spots of color stained her face.
I stared back at Kajika, frowning. His Adam’s apple jostled in his glistening throat as he focused his attention on his hands. He pulled off his second glove, then, in a voice that was as tense as the line of his shoulders, he said, “I was just leaving.”
“You don’t have to go.”
“I need to get home. Gwenelda has just returned.”
“Returned from where?”
“A trip.”
His vagueness didn’t sit well with me. Gwenelda wasn’t the type to take a vacation, so where had she gone?
Kajika crouched to retrieve his little speaker that was still spewing music. Once he powered it off, the barn became stiflingly quiet.
The stubborn set of my mouth or the hands I planted on my hips must’ve alerted him that I wouldn’t let him leave without a better explanation.
As he flung everything inside his duffel bag and rose, he said, “She is still trying to locate other Gottwa descendants.”
Rising Silver Mist Page 14
