Underwater (13 page)

Chapter Thirteen

There was an eerie feeling inside of Sandpoint high when Evey and I arrived the next morning. Students and teachers alike stood in clumps, their heads together as they gossiped in hushed voices, their eyes hooded as we passed. Though I couldn’t make out everything they said as I rolled by people in silence, words stood out here and there. Words that sent a chill whirling up my spine and set my hair on end. Words that made Evey squeeze the handles on my chair so tightly the plastic groaned under her grip.

Missing. Hypothermia. Drowned.

My stomach knotted even tighter than it had been all night. I hadn’t been able to get the thought of Isolde—and whomever she’d taken as her mate—out of my thoughts. Saxon hadn’t known any details to tell me, but it felt as though the whole school knew something I didn’t.

“What’s going on?” I asked a girl who had tears rolling from her darkly lined eyes. She didn’t answer. She wiped her nose on the end of her sleeve.

In an uncharacteristically bold move, Evey yanked on the girl’s arm. “Hey! My sister asked you a question.”

“Geez.” The girl scowled at Evey, then looked down at me. “Oh,
sorry
.”

She wasn’t sorry at all, but I resisted the urge to run over her toe. “What’s going on?”

Another tear escaped her eye, taking a long streak of mascara with it. “There’s three cop cars outside of the McClendons’ house, and, um, Mrs. and Mr. McClendon are at the police station right now. There’s, like, divers searching Garfield Bay, because they found a shoe and some blood on the rocks at the edge of the water.”

My sister’s breath caught in her throat, so I spoke for her. “Hayden?”

Reaching out, I laced my fingers with my sister’s. Her hand was shaking and ice cold.

Eyeliner girl swiped at her tears. “Hayden’s OK. He’s with his folks. It’s…it’s Ian.”

My stomach hardened into cement, and my fingers turned as chilly as Evey’s. Sure, Ian was a bonehead, but he didn’t deserve this. In an instant, a memory of Ian and me laughing on my dock the spring before the accident, unfolded in my mind. It was the first time he’d kissed me, and in those last few seconds before our lips had touched, he’d whispered, “I’ve wanted to do this since eighth grade.” I’d laughed before we’d melted into the kiss. I don’t know why that memory was the one that shoved its way to the front, but it made my chest feel tight and cramped.

“He’s missing?” Unexpected emotion pricked at the backs of my eyes.

She nodded. “My dad says it doesn’t look good. If he fell and, like, hit his head on the rocks before rolling into the lake, he probably drowned.” A few of her friends choked on muffled sobs from behind painted fingernails.

Drowned.

My head started to buzz, as I turned my chair around and rolled in a straight line toward the ladies’ room. Evey’s heavy footsteps fell behind me. This couldn’t be happening. It was like my brain couldn’t process all the information coming in, and it now flickered like our old TV.

Ian was missing. Likely dead. And Isolde had done it. Last night, before pressing a rushed kiss on my lips and sending me home, Saxon announced that Isolde had taken a mate. Sure, Ian could have tripped on the rocks and fallen in the water on his own, but he was no Pend Oreille novice. He’d grown up on the banks of this lake.

But if I knew anything about Ian—and I was pretty sure I did—he could easily have been beguiled into the waves by a beautiful,
naked
woman. Ian was the type who went into a partial coma if a Victoria’s Secret commercial flashed on the television.

As soon as I slammed into the room, a few somber-looking underclassmen scattered like mice, and Evey and I were alone. Pulling on Evey’s hands, I brought her down so she and I were face to face. Her freckled skin was pale, and her lips stretched into a thin line.

“It’s OK. Hayden’s OK.” My voice cracked, and I swallowed what felt like a ball of broken glass in the middle of my throat.

“But he… His brother is missing. He must be so…” She started to cry. “I know you hate him, but this is so sad. I feel so bad for Hayden.”

“I don’t hate Ian. I…I was just hurt.” I waved her words off. “This is terrible.” Pulling Evey in, I hugged her fiercely, grasping her sweatshirt in my fists. “I’m so glad it wasn’t you.”

Evey pulled back a few inches. “What? Why would it be me?”

Biting my lip, I looked at our hands clasped together. There was so much I wanted to tell her. She was there when I bought my first bra, she knew every spiteful thought I’d ever had about anybody in our school, and she’d been the first person I’d asked for when I woke up in the hospital. It killed me to keep Saxon’s secret from her.

It was a miracle she’d not pressed to know more in the woods last night, but I was pretty sure Saxon had something to do with that. After I’d squeezed the back of his neck and made him promise to help Evey relax, he’d put his hand on her shoulder and simply said, “You should go home now, and get some rest.”

She’d stood up and walked back to the house with me trailing behind.

I’d been too on edge to care if he’d used mind control on my sister. Besides, how was I supposed to explain why there was a woman running around in the buff, my boyfriend was covered in lake water, and Ev could hear his unspoken thoughts. That was a conversation best left until…oh, I don’t know…
never
?

I pulled her close again, feeling her blonde waves tickle my cheek. “I’m just glad, that’s all.”

“I don’t want to be here,” she whispered against my shoulder. “I want to talk to Hayden.”

Nodding, I pushed my hair behind my ears. “OK. Um…well…let’s call Mom.”

Evey wasn’t the only one who needed to get out of the school. I needed to find Saxon. Like, now.

* * *

The planets must have aligned and a truckload of rabbit’s feet must have overturned on the road outside of the coffee shop, because when I called to ask if we could go home from school early, she actually said yes. Of course, the fact that the entire town of Sandpoint had all but shut down as soon as the news that the oldest of the McClendon boys had gone missing helped. In our smallish neck of the northern Idaho woods, people didn’t often just go missing. Considering the fact that it’d been happening so much lately—and most recently to the son of one of the wealthiest families in town—the people of Sandpoint were in a tizzy.

Evey emerged from her bedroom fingering the buttons on her cell phone. “Hayden’s going to try to sneak away tonight after dinner. He said he needs a break. Things at his place are pretty suffocating.”

“I can imagine.” I chewed my lower lip and watched Evey flop onto the couch. “Any word about Ian?”

She shook her head. “They’ve had divers in the water since five this morning. The only thing they found was another shoe and his cell phone.”

I literally felt all of the color drain off of my cheeks like water down a tub drain. “In the lake?”

She nodded and her eyes filled with tears. “Uh-huh.”

When Mom picked us up and drove us home, she said the police told Mr. and Mrs. McClendon the likelihood of Ian being found alive dropped with every passing hour. It’d taken everything I had to keep from telling Evey and my mom that Ian wasn’t exactly dead, but was probably sitting at the bottom of Pend Oreille growing a fin and some gills right now. I’d gripped the sides of my seat, my fingernails biting into the fabric, fighting inexplicable tears the whole drive.

“How’s Hayden holding up? Was he…” I paused long enough to swallow the sharp, uncomfortable lump in my throat. “Was he there when it happened?”

Evey wrapped her arms around herself and laid back on a pillow. “He said that Ian was hiking about fifty feet ahead of him. Hayden heard Ian talking and called out to him. There was a thud and then a splash.” She shuddered. “By the time Hayden caught up, all that was left was a shoe. He said there were rings in the water where Ian had fallen in, but that was all.”

I looked down at the five crescent shaped scabs on my wrist and thought about Isolde’s face as she tried to drown me. The menacing sneer. The rage-filled eyes. Long hair that wrapped and tangled itself around my limbs as I clawed for the surface. It turned my stomach. Ian’s last few minutes of life must have been terrifying.

I swung my chair around abruptly, hitting an end table and making the lamp sway.

“Where are you going?” Evey tugged the afghan off of the back of the couch and covered herself.

“I need some air.” I had tunnel vision, and the only thing I could see was the backdoor. I wished there was some way to get a hold of Saxon, but it wasn’t like he could carry a cell with him. This is what I got for falling for a guy from another
species
.

I rolled through the kitchen. As soon as my hand touched the doorknob, Evey’s voice stopped me. “Luna?”

“Yeah?” My stomach was in complete knots.

When I turned and looked at her, she tried to smile, though her lower lip quivered. “Don’t be gone long, OK?”

I pulled open the door and rolled down the ramp onto the driveway. “Saxon, where are you?” I wasn’t saying it to anybody in particular. It wasn’t as if he could hear me. But as I pushed myself across the driveway, I couldn’t help but start calling out at the top of my voice. “Sax? Saxon!”

I reached the trail, and my wheels stuck on the root. Instead of backing up a foot and charging it with all of my strength, I hunched forward in my chair. Covering my face with my hands, I released the sob I’d been fighting since arriving at school. All I could picture in my mind was Ian being pulled beneath the water, his lungs burning as Isolde’s fingernails dug into his skin.

Holy hell. His last few minutes of life must have been terrorizing. It made every hair on the back of my neck stand upright.

“This can’t be happening.”

A breeze waved the trees above my head. Warmth spread through the skin on my back when a hand touched me lightly. I smiled into my hands. Being touched by Saxon felt like the moment that the Idaho sky opened up, letting the sun shine down. There was nothing quite like it.

“I’m glad you’re here.” I didn’t lift my head.

Saxon didn’t say anything. Instead he pushed my chair down the trail far enough that we were out of view of my house. After bringing me to a stop under the veil of pine tree branches, he lifted me out of the chair, cradling me against his chest. He was wearing my father’s old shirt, but it smelled like him now. Grass, water, and fresh air filled my senses as I pressed my face against his neck. Fallen needles from the trees crunched underneath Saxon’s boots when he stepped carefully around trees, forging a path into the woods between our house and the Rogersons’. Once we were about twenty feet back, he settled down on the needle-covered grass and placed me reverently across from him.

Pressing a kiss to my forehead, Saxon released a long, drawn-out sigh. “I’m assuming you know who Isolde took.”

Nodding, I used my sleeve to dab at my eyes. “How’d you guess?”

“Just a hunch.” Saxon’s short laugh was humorless. “I’m sorry. I know you have a history with him.”

I looked away. “That’s not why I’m upset.”

He picked up a handful of brown needles and started to crunch them between his hands. “I understand.”

“No, you don’t.” I pulled my hair back from my face and quickly knotted it on the back of my head. My heart hurt, but I felt weighed down with guilt at the same time. It was hella weird to grieve for an ex-boyfriend while I was sitting with another. “I know that this is how your kind survives, but where I come from, drowning someone is murder…even if he’s being turned into a Mer.”

He connected his sorrowful eyes with mine and nodded. Just once. “And now you know why I refuse to do it.”

The realization punched me in the gut. “I can’t imagine what it would be like. To have people expect something so horrendous of you.”

Saxon looked off in the distance, flexing his jaw.
When you see your kind dwindling because they are no longer able to multiply within their own clan, it becomes clear that utilizing humans this way is the only answer. It’s either this or face extinction.

My heart clenched, and I put a hand over his. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult Mer. I’m just having a really hard time processing all of this. I mean, why? Why Ian? Of all people, why him?”

I don’t know.
Saxon turned his hand palm up and let me brush the broken pine needles off of his skin.
I mean, I knew this was coming. She’s of the right age, and there’s been a lot of pressure from the Council to take a mate. But usually we venture further away from the towns to find one. Some even travel up the river into Canada to find someone. It’s less conspicuous to take a mate from farther away. But like I told you, Isolde has made a sport of toying with humans on the surface. Taking a mate so close to home, and acting so dangerously, will be a badge of honor for her.

“She’s mental.” My hoarse voice added to the gravity of my despair. Talking about this while Ian rotted at the bottom of the lake made me sick to my stomach. “But there have been so many missing people reported lately. Missing boaters, missing fishermen. There’s been at least four drownings since last fall.”

Saxon tickled the inside of my wrist with his fingers, making my skin tingle and bake pleasantly.
Our situation has become dire. My people have acted without thinking. The Council is trying to control the situation, but the Mer coming of age now are stronger and more ruthless than ever.

“All of the people who’ve died? Are they Mer now?”

Not all of them. We have a new member of our clan, but there were two failures as well.

I scrunched up my face. “Failures?”

He hardened the corners of his mouth and knit his brows together tensely.
The process of altering a human into a Mer is intricate and has to be completed fully, otherwise the human is lost.

“Lost how?”

Lost from the human world and the Mer world.

“What exactly happens when a human is altered?”

Saxon brushed a strand of my hair back behind my ear.
You don’t want to know.