A Crack in Everything (21 page)

From him.

Bile stung the back of her throat. The sweet scent on the air dissolved to the stench of seaweed rotting in a hot sun, and the sludge of decay, the scum of pollution that ringed the shoreline, the carcasses of dead things. She looked down into the water. Pale figures swept through the water, like bleached corpses, rising higher and higher, their mouths open in song. And in hunger.

The first one broke the surface just in front of Jinx. Golden hair spilled down her back, spreading out in the water like tendrils of sunlight. She smiled at his adoration, such a beautiful expression, until her lips parted and Izzy saw her teeth. There was nothing human about them. The only place she could recall seeing anything comparable was in the grinning maw of a shark. The creature's eyes were dull, opaque, dead eyes. Beautiful she might be, this mermaid, on the outside at
least, but it didn't take a second glance at the seaweed tangled in her hair, at her dead eyes and the ragged and razorlike teeth to know that there was nothing Disney about her.

Lifting her long hands from the water, the mermaid reached for Jinx, tilting her face as if ready to receive a kiss. Between her splayed fingers, thin webs of white skin –
corpse skin, dead
skin
, Izzy's brain screamed at her sluggish body – spread out as well, so tight that it might tear at any moment.

A second movement in the water beneath her revealed another face, hauntingly similar, beautiful and terrible. Dead and rotting, seeking sustenance, the hungry mouths of the sea.

‘Jinx.' Fear made her voice thin and desperate, a harsh and reluctant thing. ‘Jinx, they're—'

‘Merrow,' he whispered and even the word sounded like a spell on his lips. He smiled, such a wistful smile, not marked by his usual cynicism and bitter doubt. This was an expression of wonder, of innocence she'd never seen in him before. He bent lower and the merrow's hand touched his skin at last. A sigh shuddered out of him as she stroked his cheek and jaw, leaving a trail of shining wetness behind. Jinx leaned in closer again, his lips parting, and his hand lifted from the rock, reaching out, over-stretching his balance.

Izzy whimpered in alarm as the merrow nearest her was joined by another. Dead things in the water, corpses, white and waxy of flesh, their beauty only a mask for the monster beneath.

‘What do I do?' A whisper was all she could manage. Just
like Jinx, her treacherous body was leaning towards them, drawn by the song, lured towards the water. ‘What can I do?'

‘
Don't let them touch you
.' Sorath's voice tore up from the back of her mind.

A deep-throated groan of pleasure sent all thoughts of mermaids and danger from Izzy's mind. She stared at Jinx in abject horror.

The merrow was half out of the water, her catwalk-perfect upper torso pressed to the rock and her arms entwined around Jinx's neck. His hand tangled in her golden hair. Their lips met in a strangely savage kiss and slowly, so very slowly, she began to draw him forwards, over the edge of the rock and down.

‘Jinx!' Izzy yelled. She grabbed his shoulders, tried to pull him back, but he felt like the rock that was their only hope of safety. ‘Jinx, stop! Please!'

Bloody man! Stupid bloody man. Sure, he wouldn't kiss
her
, but give him some waterlogged dead thing, half-supermodel and half-Jaws, and it was tonsil-tasting time. She thundered her fists on his back, pulled at his clothes and hair.

The other merrows laughed. She could hear it in their song. They bared their teeth and the long, razor-sharp nails on their fingers, ready for blood, ready to kill, to tear him apart as soon as he was theirs.

‘
Are you going to listen to me?
' Sorath said petulantly. ‘
Trust me, Isabel. I haven't failed you before, have I? Listen if you want to break the spell.
'

‘Tell me!' Izzy screamed as Jinx edged nearer the water, as
the merrow pulled more insistently, as others joined it, their hands snaking up from the water to claim him. ‘Tell me what to do!'

‘Silver.'

‘She isn't here!'

‘The metal. You're wearing silver. Different fae creatures have different desires. Different addictions. Merrow love silver. Throw it into the water. As far as you can from here.'

Her necklace. The one Dad had surprised her with on her birthday, a little Celtic knotwork fish. The Salmon of Knowledge. She loved it and it was all she had of him right now. Wincing, she ripped it from her throat and dangled it out over the water. It glinted in the sunlight.

As if someone had flicked a switch, the merrow released Jinx. Izzy pulled him too hard, eager to get him out of their clutches, and he fell back against her. She went down on the rock beneath him, her hand flung out over the water clinging to the silver necklace. A merrow jumped, made a grab at it, but Izzy snatched it back just in time.

Their song stopped now and they hissed at her, milling about under the necklace like sharks in a feeding frenzy.

‘Throw it, Isabel. As hard and as far as you can.'

She hurled the necklace away from her. It arced out over the mirror-like sea and fell. The merrow took off after it, pushing past each other, tearing skin and scale in the effort to get there first until blood stained the water. They plunged under the waves after the necklace, still fighting each other,
ripping each other apart.

And everything went still again.

Jinx lay on his back, pinning Izzy's legs beneath him, dazed. He stared at the sky and gasped for breath like a drowning man. His face and hair were drenched. So were his arms and shirt, everywhere the merrow had touched him. He was half-drowned already before he'd even reached the water.

‘Are you okay now?' Izzy asked, wishing she didn't sound so scared. She'd just saved him. She shouldn't sound terrified. ‘Jinx, can you hear me?' She twisted around, pulling her legs out so she could bend over him.

His gaze moved to her, shell-shocked and unknowing. She tried to study his eyes, tried to see if his senses were finally returning or if the merrow had robbed him of far more than kisses.

Jinx surged up before she realised what was coming. His hand cupped her face, his thumb sliding along her jaw line until it settled at the back of her neck where the mark turned molten beneath his touch.

It didn't matter. Not when his lips brushed hers in as tender and tentative a kiss as she could ever have imagined. No boy's kiss this, fumbling and uncertain. No rude clash of lips and teeth. Even in this state Jinx knew how to kiss. It left her stunned.

The first kiss was a question. Too surprised to react, she let it happen to her. The second was an exploration, an elaboration on that first question, and when his lips parted, hers were
compelled to mirror them. What else could she do?

Jinx kissed her, and all conscious thought fell away in shock as she found herself, impossibly, kissing him back.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Tears for a Selkie

J
inx tasted sweet and yet spicy too. A strange cocktail of maleness and the forbidden, which made Izzy’s heart lodge at the base of her throat and beat a furious rhythm there. Blindly, her hands ranged over his shirt, across his skin, exploring in the same way as her mouth did, wanting, needing so much more from him, terrified that she might get it. But wanting everything nonetheless. She needed to remember this, to memorise every sensation, every millimetre of him because it couldn’t last, it wouldn’t. Eventually, inevitably—

He broke the kiss and she opened her eyes. Her face heated beneath his bewildered stare. When their eyes met, she saw the flood of shame wash the silver in them away to dull and horrified stone.

‘Ancestors,’ he breathed. ‘Oh no, Izzy …’

If he had other words to say, he didn’t use them. He extricated
himself from her, shaking himself free, and stood up.

‘Merrow.’ The word sounded like a curse. ‘Damn it, I should have been more careful. It seems I owe you my life once again.’ It wasn’t thanks. Not exactly. It sounded more like an accusation.

His meaning dawned on her and Izzy closed her eyes, wishing the rock would just swallow her up. Bad enough that she’d saved him once and broken his geis, now she’d done it again. Just to rub in her ownership of him, she’d made him doubly indebted to her.

And that sparked off her anger. Well, hard luck. Would he rather be dead? Would he rather be merrow food?

‘We need to get out of here, before they come back.’ Her voice sounded far more self-assured than she felt.

‘The selkies might help.’ He couldn’t quite hide the tremble at the heart of his voice. ‘For a price. I was going to ask them before …’

‘What price?’

‘Well, they like silver.’

Oh, he couldn’t have told her that before? Or at least before she’d used the only bit of silver they had to save his miserable hide. And what right did he have to be like this now? He’d kissed
her
, not the other way around. Not at first anyway.

‘I’m all out of silver.’ She couldn’t keep the coldness out of her voice.

He looked down as if to ask a question, but then seemed to think better of it.

‘Tears then.’

She stared back at him, at the guilt that crossed his brow, wondering if the merrows had stolen his mind as well. He loomed over her, his shoulders pushed back, his arms folded across his chest.

‘Tears?’

‘It’s what you do, isn’t it? At the first sign of conflict, dissolve into tears. Any kind of danger, have a good cry until someone comes to the rescue. Don’t get your way—’

Her traitor eyes stung as if he’d thrown acid at her. ‘Wh—what?’

Jinx’s mouth twisted into a sneer. That same mouth that just before now had been kissing her like all her fantasies had finally arrived. It was bad when she kissed him on the hill and he didn’t kiss her back. This was a whole new version of hell.

She tried again, tried to make her voice strong. ‘Jinx, what are you saying?’

‘Only the truth.’ Raw truth, just like Marianne had always said, hurt so much.

But Marianne was dead. And it was her fault.

The bridge of her nose tightened, stinging like needles thrusting into her brain. Tears made her vision blur. They gathered on her lashes and spilled down her face. She dashed them away, furious with herself, furious with him. How dare he be right!

He pulled her to her feet, holding her upper arms too tightly and shook her. ‘Come on, Izzy,’ he went on, relentless.
‘This is how you deal with conflict, isn’t it? Cry or hide. God forbid you’d ever fight back. It’s not the done thing, not civilised. And that’s all-important, isn’t it? To be civilised. To be human. To be normal. Well, you’re not. You’re not normal at all. You’re Aes Sídhe and Grigori, you’re angel and shades, a half-blood, mixed-up freak.’ He leaned in, face to face. ‘Come on,’ he snarled. ‘Show me those tears.’

‘Why?’ She lashed out at him, struggling in his grip. ‘Because you can’t shed them yourself? Is it a purely human thing? Or maybe it requires having something like a heart and a soul to begin with.’

He froze, just for an instant, and she knew one barb at least had sunk in. Pain flashed like forked lightning over his face and then, just as quickly, he put it away and that hard mask returned.

‘Oh,’ he told her in arctic tones. ‘I have a heart, little girl. And one that feels more than you could ever imagine.’

‘Shame,’ she spat back at him, ready to fight now, desperate to fight. ‘You never show it.’

Jinx released one hand, still pinning her before him with the vice-like grip of the other. He was too strong for her to pull away. He gathered her tears on his fingertips as best he could and shook them out into the water. She gasped as he gently enfolded her in more careful arms. She could feel his heart beneath his chest as he pulled her to him, so fast, so angry, so hurt. Just like her own. His touch softened and he lay his head atop hers. ‘Oh, Izzy,’ he sighed. Pain filled his voice,
the pain she was feeling, but she didn’t care, didn’t understand, didn’t want to.

A seal head popped up out of the water, watching them with limpid eyes. Jinx let Izzy go and she slumped down, back onto the rock, her misery complete. He’d used her, said those dreadful things to get the tears he needed. She cried to herself now. For herself. Who would care if they heard her?

‘We mean no harm,’ Jinx was saying in calm, respectful tones. ‘We just need to get to land and be on our way. It’s Sídhe business and I have no wish to be here when the merrow return. Nor do you. Please. There’s nothing in either of us to threaten you.’

Izzy’s vision blurred as more tears poured from her eyes. The things he’d said – was that really how he saw her? Nothing more than a pathetic little girl? And how was she acting now, her own voice raged inside her.

‘Hush, Isabel,’
Sorath tried to soothe her pain and anger with soft words of comfort.
‘Pay him no mind. He’s but a fool. I’m here. Hush now.’

The seal’s face blurred, sank back beneath the water and when it re-emerged, it wasn’t a seal anymore, but a man. A handsome man with the clearest brown eyes she’d ever seen. He reached up and touched her lips, and then her cheeks. He came away with her tears and rubbed his fingers and thumb together as if testing the liquid. He brought it to his mouth, his full, sensual lips tasting her pain.

‘Why would you do this?’ His voice resonated deep inside
her, like music, but he wasn’t speaking to Izzy. All his attention was upon Jinx.

‘It was necessary.’ So cold, so formal, and withdrawn.

The selkie stroked Izzy’s cheek again with his cold, wet hand. ‘Many things are necessary, but this was not kind, Cú Sídhe.’ He cast solemn eyes over Jinx’s body, glinting as his gaze alighted on his various piercings.

Jinx hesitated for a moment. There was a hitch in his voice as he spoke again. ‘But still necessary.’

The selkie pursed his lips as if he didn’t quite believe it and wondered whether to call Jinx’s bluff. ‘Your names and your kin, if you will.’ He looked back at Izzy again and she gazed at him, bewitched. She’d never seen anything quite so beautiful. Unless she counted Jinx.

Which she didn’t. Couldn’t. Not now.

‘Jinx by Jasper, Holly’s kith.’

The selkie’s nostrils flared and he raised his perfect eyebrows.

‘Your father means little to us, your matriarch less. We aren’t dogs. Who gave you life, Jinx by Jasper?’

Again, Jinx hesitated, reluctant. This time even Izzy turned to stare at him. He looked like a child caught in a lie. He shifted his feet, knotted his hands together. ‘Why does it matter?’

The selkie scoffed. ‘Don’t you know? Did she deny you? Are you bastard in fact as well as in action?’

Jinx snarled at him. ‘Belladonna.’ The word came out of his gritted teeth like a curse.

There was silence, but for the lapping of the sea against the rock and the rise and fall of their breath.

The selkie sighed. ‘Ah. Son of a traitor then. Son of a turncoat. Suddenly so much makes sense. And you, sweet one?’

Izzy opened her mouth but her voice failed as, unbidden, Sorath surged to the forefront of her mind.

‘Tell them nothing. They’ll use such information. Use it against us both.’

‘Izzy?’ Jinx prompted, his tone wary with concern. ‘We need to get off this rock, remember?’

As if she’d listen to him after what he’d just done. As if she needed him. She didn’t. She could make her own way to shore. In her mind’s eye she could see it, standing tall and proud with her arms stretched out to either side while behind her eagle wings would spread out, wings spun of gold and light and divine will. Wings which would carry her aloft and beyond the realms of mortality. She could stand up now, take to the air and soar like an—

‘Izzy!’ Jinx’s hand closed on her shoulder, fingertips brushing the edge of the mark which burst into incandescent heat. She hissed, recoiling from both his touch and the selkie.

She was standing on the edge of the rock, arms outstretched, ready to jump. The sea boiled beneath her. A step back put her right against Jinx’s body. The heat, the hard lines of him, the scent – it was almost overwhelming. Her head lurched inside, as if something it couldn’t hope to contain struggled to get out and then withdrew, to wait for another day.

Jinx slid his arms around her waist, held her loosely against him, and she shivered. Why did it feel good? Why when he could reduce her to tears with just a few well-chosen words? How did he have that sort of power over her?

Other guys had never made her feel anything at all. The guys her age, the older brothers of her friends … sure, she knew the other girls fancied them, talked about them, but they left her indifferent. She’d wondered if she’d ever find someone to match her ideal, who could make her feel so strongly, so passionately, and now she had … and everything was pain. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.

‘Isabel Gregory,’ she told the selkie with more force than she thought left inside her. ‘I’m just Isabel Gregory.’

The selkie frowned, his gaze lifting to meet Jinx’s over her shoulder, and then returning to her face, to study her. ‘Then you may go,’ he said gently. ‘But beware, Isabel, of a man who would use your tears thus. No good will come of it.’

She shook herself free of Jinx and stepped out of his reach, folding her arms tightly across her chest, hugging her jacket close around her. The slim shape of the phone in her pocket reminded her of Dylan and suddenly she longed to talk to him, even just to hear his voice. To reach out to someone normal and embrace reality again. To take back her normal life.

The selkie had fixed his attention on Jinx and after a moment he spoke again, his voice less kind, his words harder. ‘And beware too, son of a traitor, for you will and must pay for
your actions here today. In pain, in regret, aye, and in blood. It came too easily, didn’t it? Cruel words. We Oracles speak cruel words and you’ve heard too many yourself. It’s a small thing to turn them on another, but no less cruel for that. More perhaps, knowing their poisoned barbs so well.’ He waved a hand and the sea withdrew from the shore like a time-lapsed film, sweeping him away in its embrace. ‘You should tell her you are sorry.’

The Cú Sídhe hung his head. ‘You know I can’t. None of the Sídhe can. Our ancestors swore it when they were expelled from heaven. Don’t you recall?’

The Oracle’s voice drifted back to them across the water. ‘What I recall … you couldn’t imagine.’ Jinx and Izzy watched him go, until they could see him no more, and the rocks revealed a path to the shore. Jinx jumped down, testing the footing.

‘Oracle of the sea, my arse,’ he muttered and then held his hand out to Izzy, who stared at it as if it was poison. ‘Let’s go,’ he snapped. ‘You want to help your father, right? And Silver needs us.’

The sun shone on him, glinting off the silver piercings decorating his body, binding him.

Izzy’s body froze there, trapped by what she saw, what she realised.

He’d had silver all the time.

His words still reverberated through her mind. Any tender feelings she’d been developing for him twisted in on themselves
like a plant starved of water, baking in the hot sun. Was he going to pretend nothing had happened? That he hadn’t kissed her like she was his only salvation? That he hadn’t used her to call the selkie? That he hadn’t said all those terrible things? When he could have just taken out one of the rings piercing his flesh and used that? She shrivelled inside.

‘Izzy, we don’t have time for this.’ He thrust his hand at her again. ‘What do you want, an apology? I’m Sídhe. Let’s get moving.’

‘The Sídhe can’t say they are sorry for anything,’
Sorath whispered.
‘Not until they say it before the Creator, and they took blood oaths that none of them would ever do so. And because they can’t say they are sorry they can never be forgiven. They are rebels, eternally cursed. Listen to me, Isabel and I can help you get the grail. We’ll heal your father together. I can do it, if you let me take charge, just for a while. And perhaps … perhaps we’ll make Jinx sorry.’