Shining Sea (31 page)

BLINK; FLASH

Cloth slides over my skin.

Not water, cloth.

Cotton sheets, on a bed.

“Arion?”

Mia’s voice.
More sharp-edged than I remember.
Broken.

Slowly, I blink my eyes open.

The light in the room is bright—too bright.

“The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.”

I close my eyes.

KILLER

“. . . Neptune knows if she’ll . . .”

Voices.
My senses wing around my body, checking like an anxious parent. Hands? Okay. Spine? Fine. Throat. Raw. I try to speak—my eyes snap open.

Mia stands next to the bed gazing down at me, her eyes like the winter sea.

“Lilah—” My voice is a dry rasp, and in my gut—a strange hollowness. “Is she here?”

“She’s at the lighthouse with your mother. They know you’re with us.”

“I’ve got to go—”

“The storm delayed their flight—it’s Tuesday. Their plane didn’t get to Bangor until yesterday afternoon. I left your father a message last night. I told him you fell asleep over here, while you were waiting for them to return.”

I am waiting.

I try to sit up—

Pain fires through my chest.

Mia pushes me back on the pillows. “It’s too soon,” she says shortly. She’s holding something else back besides me.

“The seawall.” Pain shoots through my limbs. “Bo. He heard my Call. He came—”

“Nick Delaine got his last wish, then, didn’t he?”

Not quite. Because as beaten as Bo looked on the breakwater, he survived.

But I just nod, staring past Mia at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on the far side of the room. They’re overflowing with CDs. But besides the shelves and the bed I’m lying in, the space is empty. It’s like whoever lives here hasn’t unpacked yet, or is about to leave. Still it’s a deeply welcoming space. Late-afternoon sun fills even the corners with glowing amber.

I’m in Bo’s room, in his bed.
I feel my whole body relax.

But then my stomach twists.

We’re safe—because I killed Nick Delaine.

Black water closes over my head.

DRUG

Music can be a seductive thing.
Sexy.

Music can fill a need.
Addictive.

Music can be a mind-numbing, soul-numbing, heart-numbing drug.
Anesthetic.

An hour? A day? A week? In my dreams, I hear singing. Hear Sirens.

When I wake, Mia is once again standing over me.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” I lie. It hurts to breathe; plus, a flood of questions is threatening to drown me.

She simply nods, Bo’s nod. I’m about to ask where he is, when she says, “Really?”

Apparently coming close to death hasn’t made me a better liar.

Then she begins to sing, and reality becomes a flickering thing . . .

Time is fluid . . . Time is stuck. But then I wake again, and think—
There is no time. I have to get home.

“Wait.” This time it’s Cord. His face is so pale the smattering of freckles across his nose stands out in sharp relief. “This won’t hurt a bit.” While singing what he tells me is an ancient Welsh melody, he puts thirty-three stitches in my calf. I don’t feel even one of them. In fact—I don’t feel anything.

As he watches me hobble into the living room, the side of his mouth lifts in a wobbly grin.

“Now I have an excuse,” I say, testing my weight on the wounded leg. “For why I didn’t run home right away. My folks will easily believe I did this on the jetty between our beaches.”

“Lying like a Siren. C’mon. I’ll drive you.”

“You’re not old enough to drive,” I scoff. “Where’s Bo?”

Cord blinks. Then all at once his face crumples.

“What’s wrong?” I grab his arm. “Cord, where’s Bo?”

“He’s—gone.”

At the same moment Cord chokes out these words, a tall man strides through the front door of the cottage. He has to be Professor Summers. His eyes are the same blue green as Bo’s—except they lack the flare of gold and instead gleam with the cold fire of phosphorescence.

He studies me with a detached air, and the edges of my vision seem to darken.

“What do you mean,
gone
?” I manage to rasp out.

Jordan appears in the doorway behind his father. Backlit by the afternoon light reflecting off the ocean, he’s nothing but a dark silhouette. He must have just come from the water; droplets cling to his skin, the sun hitting them so they shine, highlighting his broad shoulders—

Shoulders broader, stronger, than Bo’s.

The shoulders I’d been looking at as I was pulled to safety.

“No!” I cry out. “No!
Bo
came to me under the waves. Bo—blew magic into my mouth!” Frantic now, I look around the room. Bo’s family watches me with their Siren eyes. I jab a finger toward Mia. “You—you were singing! And Cord. How can you sing, if, if—”

“How can we not?” she answers coolly.

It can’t be true.
It can’t be true, it can’t be true, it can’t be true!

But the Sirens aren’t lying. Not this time. Bo hadn’t lost me. I’d lost him. And it was Jordan, with his dark eyes, his wild hair washing across his face, who had saved my life, not Bo. I’d just been too disoriented to realize it.

“I—I want to see him. I want to see Bo! I don’t believe he’s dead. I want to see his body!”

“You can’t,” Mia snaps. “The sea took it.”

THRESHOLD

Cord follows me outside where I sink onto the sand, staring with disbelief at the sea, hating it.

He says, “My Song, Mia’s—they’ll hold for a while. You’ll be okay. But you’d better let me take you home. Your folks have probably been worrying about you. They know you’re here, but still.”

Too shocked to speak, I only look up at him. He extends his hand, and finally, I take it.

But my parents aren’t worried, not about me.

“Hello?” I holler as I come through the front door. There’s a wheelchair in the hall.

“We’re in here,” Dad answers softly from the bedroom at the back of the cottage.

Lilah is lying in his bed, sleeping, her raven hair strewn across the pillows. My parents are sitting on chairs they’ve brought in from the kitchen and—there’s something wrong with Dad’s face. His mouth looks—small, his eyes nearly lost in the swollen folds of skin that surround them. Mom’s eyes are like a wall of bluestone.

“What is it?” I ask. “What happened?” My parents look at each other. “Tell me!”

“
Shh,
Arion. Nothing happened. I mean, not here. It’s—” Mom breaks off. Bending down to hug her, I take a closer look at Lilah. It doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with her. Of course I know there is. But I don’t know everything apparently.

“Sweetie.” Dad takes my hand. “Lilah . . . isn’t going to have the procedure next month.”

“What? Why not?” I yank my hand away, bring it to my stomach.

“When your mom phoned and said she was coming for a visit and bringing Lilah, she . . . told me a few things. None of them good.” He wipes at his eyes.

“What things?” He
had
been sick,
heartsick
. “What
things
? Just tell me! Mom?”

“Arion.” Mom closes her eyes. “We’re going to lose Delilah.”

“What? No! What are you talking about?”

“Ari, your mom’s trying to tell you, we’re going to have to say goodbye to her.”

“To Lilah? Why?” My attention ricochets back and forth between my parents.
“Why?”

“About ten days ago Lilah had an MRI,” Dad says. “She’d been, well . . .” Dad looks questioningly at Mom.

“Behaving differently,” Mom says. There’s a choppiness to her voice. “She—she was still . . . in her own world much of the time, but . . . she was acting differently.”

“Acting differently how? What was she doing?”

“It doesn’t matter, Arion. I decided she should get another scan. I—I wasn’t so sure that the surgery was the best idea anymore and—your dad was here. I just went ahead. Scheduled the MRI. It showed some blood clots. In her brain. There’s nothing they can do. The clots are . . . precarious. Any type of procedure, even something exploratory . . . could kill her.”

Mom looks like she wants to hit something. Then her shoulders slump. “They said discovering the clots was like finding a . . . a series of land mines. She has a few months, maybe less. She’s going to die, Ari.”

“But—” MRI results? Some technician reading an MRI? That’s all it took, after all this time? “They
have
to operate. Then she’ll come back, from wherever she is. She can’t
die
! They’re wrong!” My shoulder slams into the doorframe as I spin around and run from the room.

Out in the living room, I dial Summers Cove, then wonder why. Why am I calling?
Bo’s dead. And Lilah—this can’t be happening.
I still have the receiver pressed to my ear when Jordan bursts through the door, his eyes pools of night. Dressed only in jeans, he has a T-shirt clutched in one hand. He grabs the phone out of my hand and tosses it on the table, pulling me outside.

“What is it? Your Signals, they’re spiking. Cord’s Song, Mia’s, they should have—”

His obvious concern floors me, but I don’t give a damn about any Songs. “It’s my sister. She, she—” I tell him everything, can’t stop the flood of words. When I’m finished, the only sound is my jagged breathing, strangely syncopated with the wash of the waves hitting the seawall. It’s that sound—the sound of the ocean entwined with my breathing—that makes me think of Bo, that makes me suddenly ask Jordan, “Why are you here? Why don’t you hate me?”

“I do.” A searing melody invades my head, Nine Inch Nails in every sense, pinning me in place. “You must know by now I’d like nothing better than to empty you.” Abruptly the music stops. “But I loved my brother, and he would have wanted—forget it. You have another question. Ask it.”

But I hesitate. It’s as if one of the cold waves has made its way up from the sea and is trickling down my back.

“How—how can I ask you now, ask any of you, for anything?”

“Ask,” he demands. His voice is a nighttime seaway, tempting me to travel to a dangerous place.

“Will you? Will you do it? Will you Deepen her?”

“Not me,” Jordan says quickly. “My father.”

“What do we do first?”

“First,
you
tell her. Everything. Everything you know about Sirens, the little you know about Deepening, as much as she can stand to hear—”

“She won’t understand. Not a word.”

Something gleams in the depths of his eyes. “Don’t expect her to be as enthusiastic about the idea as you are.”

“You don’t get it! It’s her mind. She won’t
understand, she can’t—”

“Arion.” The wild sea of his gaze impossibly comes to stillness, and holds mine. “Words are limited. They’re—containers, incomplete by themselves. Since your sister’s accident, have you ever really known what she can and cannot understand?”

UNDERTAKING

The next day, Jordan’s handsome face is free of its usual scowl as he carries Lilah to the top of the lighthouse. The rest of us trail behind them in a silent, snaking line—Cord, Mia, and Professor Summers; my mother, my father, me—all of us spreading out as we wind our way up the spiral stairs, until each of us is alone with our thoughts.

One by one, we emerge from the watch room, stepping out onto the deck and into the waning light of a blood-red sunset, the wind hitting our faces, lifting our hair. Everyone gravitates to the rail, to the view, to the ever-unfamiliar sea. It feels like someone should say something meaningful. Like we should throw something over the edge. Rice. Flowers. Ashes.

The ocean. If it attracts me like this—me, who has a love-hate relationship with the sea—what does it do to the Sirens? Spread at our feet, a relatively thin railing of wrought iron between us, does it Call to them like some roiling Romeo? And what about Lilah? What is she feeling? I wish I knew.

To an outsider, it might look as if she’s had too much to drink, the way she stares at Jordan, eyes wide as the sky. The way Jordan supports her so carefully. The aura of instant intimacy that surrounds them, even as he sets her on her feet—a stranger couldn’t be faulted for thinking a few drinks have played a part; after all, it’s cocktail hour.

But this is far from a party, and none of us are strangers, not anymore. Bo is dead, and now, as we arrive back at the keeper’s cottage, the sky losing its light, early evening pressing in on us, the talk is of nothing less than Lilah’s life.

Jordan leans against the mantle looking down at Lilah, who doesn’t appear to register his presence at this point, and is gazing into the fire. Still, for some reason I imagine them connecting, becoming a pair.
Breaths come in pairs . . . except for the first breath, and the last.

My head is a mess of emotions. I take a deep breath—Cord waggles his eyebrows. Part of his indefatigable efforts to make me feel better, this comic intimation only makes me want to cry. And if not for the almost inaudible susurrations of Song that he and Mia breathe into my ear at every possible opportunity, that’s probably what I’d be doing instead of passing a tray of sliced salmon and crackers to Mom.

Mom, whose current state of calm seems almost pharmaceutical in nature, is sitting with Dad and Professor Summers. He’s telling my parents that Bo is out with friends. That he’s sorry he can’t be here.

The necessary secretiveness of Sirens won’t allow the Summers to tell anyone that Bo is dead, at least not yet, and before I left the Cove yesterday, they’d started to explain just what they will say. But I’d excused myself and gone back to Bo’s room, burying my face in his pillow.

Lilah’s gaze shifts from the fire to the windows, and something about her eyes—some subtle change—convinces me: she actually sees what’s out there.

“Look,” I whisper to Cord as he hands me the tray of hors d’oeuvres that no one has touched. “She sees the ocean, she
sees
it. It’s so ironic, it’s like the only thing she can really grasp about her surroundings is the sea.”

“She seemed to grasp Jordie pretty well when he carried her up to the top of the tower.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I didn’t say it was,” Cord replies with a seriousness I didn’t know he possessed. “I take it you didn’t tell her yet. About Deepening, about us.”

“No, I didn’t. I’m grateful,
so
grateful. It’s just, what’s the point of telling her a bunch of stuff she’s not going to understand? Plus, it’s not like she can respond, or say anything back.”

But Cord isn’t listening. His attention is on Lilah. Now it shifts to Jordan.

The two boys exchange a look I can’t decipher, their Siren eyes swirling. I shift my weight. Will Lilah’s eyes become even more beautiful? Show every imaginable shade of blue and green? I imagine my parents staring at her heightened beauty with disbelief. But then again, they probably
won’t
stare, at least, not into her eyes.

“Arion, may I speak with you?” I follow Professor Summers outside. “I’ve discussed the arrangements with your parents. Of course we can’t tell them everything; revealing our true nature for instance would most likely be counterproductive. It appears as if they may need a little more time to adjust to the idea of me treating your sister. I can’t say that I blame them. They’re desperate, but I’m a scientist, not a doctor. However, based on what I’ve discerned of Lilah’s condition, time is not on our side. I’m leaning toward being slightly more persuasive.”

He’s going to Siren Song my parents.
I nod. “Whatever it takes.”

The professor returns my nod. “It’s paramount that we leave as soon as possible. I suggest we go tomorrow evening. Our absence won’t arouse suspicion; the Institute knows that extended travel is necessary for me, in order to make new discoveries and acquire new plants and animals for our collection, for my studies.”

My face grows hot.
Is that what Lilah is to him, a new specimen?
The only person he’s Deepened—that I know of—is Beth. Is Lilah just an experiment to him?

“I understand,” I say, swallowing hard.

The professor glances away, then back to me, as if he’s growing impatient. “Your sister will be safe with us,” he assures me.

Us.
My heart constricts. The definition of the word is so changed now, so horribly altered.

“I’ve told your parents that Lilah will be spending some time at a rehabilitation center that uses—alternative therapies.”

“Mom loves any kind of therapy,” I say. “You’ll get zero objections from her.”

“Good. I’ll choose one of our centers where the communication is known to be sketchy, on the Indian Ocean.” He looks up, as if he might find further inspiration in the sky. Fitting.

“Dad will definitely think that’s a good idea. He’ll wish he was going himself.”

The professor nods again. “We’ll be in touch—but not often. We’ll return in June—”

“
June?
But that’s—”

“Yes. It’s a significant amount of time.” He glances at the door of the cottage. “I’ve got to get back to the Cove. I’ll phone your parents tonight. Why don’t you come over in the morning? We’ll be able to speak more freely and—”

“Say our goodbyes. Yes. Thank you.”

And before the professor can say anything else, I duck into the house—

And sit by my sister.