Blueisland (Watermagic Series, #4) (10 page)

Who was
that girl? I didn’t think I had ever seen her before. She had a black rubber tube dress on that laced up the front showing her flesh beneath. What a body. I kept looking for the hand cuffs and whips, but didn’t see any. Maybe she was in jail with Marcel and that was why I had missed her on campus. The idea of a bombshell like her in the slammer almost made me laugh. Sometimes I had a weird sense of humor.

The red head draped her long wet hair over her shoulder and
said to Emily in a snappy voice, “You better get blasted ass out because Brigitte is going to be here any minute.” I guess she was a bit rough around the edges. She looked a little like a non-animated version of Ariel from
The Little Mermaid
, but much hotter. She was like Ariel gone naughty.

In the shadows,
Emily’s lip quivered as she ignored her and continued talking to Marcel. “You should just tell Brigitte.” Her voice was pleading which surprised me.

Shirtless, Marcel was dressed in some light
sweat pants, grey in color, which hung low on his hips in a sexy way. I could barely even look at his naked, cut chest, broad shoulders, and washboard stomach without feeling week in the knees. “I told you I was drunk,” he said sternly to Emily. “You begged for it, but I warned you it would only be one time.”

“I didn’t think you meant that,” she whispered, searching his blue eyes.
“It was so good; don’t you agree?”

“For you.”
He shook his head and took a step back. “I couldn’t have been clearer. I was drunk off my ass and you pushed yourself on me, saying you just wanted me to make you feel good.”

“Please,
Marcel.” She put her hand on his lean, muscular arm, but he pushed it away.

“Get out,” he said coldly
, looking her deadpan in the face. I was surprised how he was treating her. Emily was used to every guy alive falling for her.

“You better go.” Pascal said as he stood up in the pool.
Like the others, his body was perfect and tan. His hair was thick, long, and black like the night, darker than Marcel’s. “We don’t need you making a mess of our lives.” Gosh, these guys could be cruel. Who the hell did they think they were?

Marine got out of the pool and took Emily’s arm. “Come on. I’ll walk you back to the beach.”
Her voice was soft and nurturing. Like her friends’ voices, there was a slight lyrical quality to it that sounded so beautiful. At least
she
had some compassion.

But
Emily pulled away. Apparently, she didn’t want her comfort. Sometimes phonies like Emily made me so mad. What was she doing chasing after the one guy who wasn’t interested in her? She had her choice of practically anyone else in the world. Stupid. But as she stepped back, Brigitte walked in.

Oh, damn.
I felt a sudden lump growing in my throat as I stared at her. She moved with the grace of a ballerina. I wondered what she had heard. She looked at Emily and Marcel a little too intensely as her stunning blue eyes narrowed. “What is going on?” Her mesmerizing voice was harsh.

“Nothing,” Marine interjected as she pulled Emily away
again this time with a little more force. “We were just leaving.”

But Emily started crying
, brushing her blond locks out of her face with her fingers. “You’re boyfriend got together with me.” Her voice was hoarse as she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand now. Oh, that was not smart. Emily shouldn’t mess with a girl like Brigitte.

Brigitte’s nostrils flared as her eyes widened. “Is that true?” she asked Marcel.
I felt my hands ball into fists. If Emily didn’t shut up, I’d have to take on Brigitte for her. I sure as hell didn’t want to do that, but I couldn’t let her hurt Emily even if she was a stupid phony. We had known each other way too long for me to just stand back and watch her fall. Brigitte’s eyes looked glassy, reminding me of the surface of the ocean just before a storm breaks. It looks so still, but kind of shakes underneath. Holy moly.

My body tensed looking at her. Her expression
seemed deadly. But Marcel just stormed away to another room in the tree house. I doubted if he felt the kind of fear I experienced in her presence. Brigitte’s eyes trailed after him and away from Emily.

“Of course it’s not true,”
Laurent said, to my relief, as he rushed between Emily and Brigitte. “Just a crush.” He motioned to Marine. “Get her out of here.”

My hands un-balled as I watched Marine sweep Emily
up into her arms. Damn she was strong. “You better come with me or she’ll kill you,” she whispered to Emily.

Emily looked stunned at the warning and didn’t fight her off this time.
Without delay, Marine whisked her away.

But even though Emily was gone
, Brigitte wouldn’t listen to the other French exchange students who were trying to calm her down. She darted much too fast for a normal human into the room where Marcel was.

Though I couldn’t see what was happening, I heard
a lot of whispering that turned to shouting. I perceived a struggle. Brigitte started crying, “I despise you! You’re a horrible beast!” It sounded like she pushed Marcel and he stumbled back to the floor. “We are through. You got what you wanted. I knew you hated that the Trident Court matched us together. It’s obvious that I’m not your type. But I loved you.” Her voice was gravelly as she screamed. Then she rushed down the ladder of the tree with her natural agility and ran away through the jungle.

I hurried back to the tiny room I had woken up in and crawled onto the bed. It would be uncomfortable for me if the others in the tree house knew I had been eaves dropping on them.
My body trembled a little. I just felt so out of sorts. But now that my attention was off the others, I began to wonder how I had ended up in this tree house.

Did Marcel bring me
to this place? I only wondered because he was the one who carried me to the beach earlier and left me in that makeshift bed under the hull of the yacht. It was hard to imagine a guy like him saving me from unconsciousness and taking me to his place to recover. But I couldn’t imagine any of the other French exchange students doing it. And Emily was too much of a weakling to lift my body out of the ocean let alone carry me to some tree house in this tropical rainforest.

Oh! Right! It came back to me. Just as Savannah started to eat Jessica, Marcel showed up. My mind was in such a whirl of confusion that I nearly forgot that. He must have brought me to this tree house because he was looking at me when I fainted. His body shimmered and light exuded from his hand. So awesome. My mind reeled back to the time I saw the guy in the ocean while I was looking out from the mast of the yacht. Maybe the lights were from those peoples’ hands that pulled him under. My toes curled. What kinds of powers did these people possess?
Maybe Marcel was one of them? And maybe I was too.

Then I started to think of Savannah.
It was so horrible how she joined in with those water villains in devouring Jessica. How could Savannah do such a thing? Disgusting. Gruesome. And why would she even want to? My heart rate sped up at the thought of both Lisa’s and Jessica’s deaths. I bit my lip hard. My stomach felt hollow inside and I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t.

A
s much as I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I was pretty sure I understood Savannah’s loss of control because at the time, I felt strange urges especially at the strong scent of blood that had washed through the water during the killings. It was like an intense hunger imbued my essence. There was something almost erotic about the sensations rushing through my body at the time. I released my lower lip from the clutches of my teeth. The idea of it made me feel ashamed. Terribly, terribly ashamed. Savannah must have felt something similar, yet gave into the longings.

Even b
efore all this strange stuff started happening to us on the island, Savannah often lost control when it came to food. I don’t know, but maybe that was why she had a harder time than me controlling her urges in the ocean than I did. Even though she was thin, she loved to eat. Every year she would go through something like thirty boxes of Girl Scout cookies just for herself. It was crazy. And when it came to pizza, she always ordered an entire large one just for herself. And worse than that, whenever we went to the ice cream shop, she usually gobbled down at least six scoops and topped them with all sorts of candies and syrups that would make anyone else besides her sick. It was kind of funny and our friends and I often teased her about her insane appetite.

But an appetite for human flesh? That was just not right. It was flat out creepy. Had we turned into cannibals? After seeing those mer people under the water, I might have considered that we had changed into the same somehow, but it couldn’t be because we
didn’t have fish tails like they did. I chewed on my fingernail now. Apparently, I was wrong. And who would have thought, mers were so violent and fierce?

I reached under my t-shirt to feel the suctions under the flap on my lower stomach. The round fleshy circles were so weird. I wondered how I could use them. They must
have some sort of purpose.

As my mind reeled with confusion,
I felt around on the sides of my torso and discovered other thin flaps of skin. Oh, gross. At first the recognition startled me. It was like there were lines cut into my body, but there wasn’t any bleeding. What the heck. Startled, I felt around more. Because there wasn’t any dried blood in the slashes, I was inclined to believe they were supposed to be there somehow. Were they pouches of some sort for holding things? I thought about it for a minute. No. They were straight lines. Anything I put inside would likely slide out the sides.

My mind re
wound back to when I was in the ocean. I was able to stay under water without coming up for air. How was that possible? I had to figure that out. In that sense, I was like a mermaid. Legends said that mers could breathe under water. But did they really breathe? Maybe they were more like fish and instead of breathing, they…

Then it came to me.
For a moment I chuckled under my breath. Could these strange folds and lines be gills? I think they must be. They certainly looked like gills. They were hardly noticeable unless I ran my hand up them in the opposite direction from how they lay. Another lump grew in my throat. If I wasn’t a mermaid, then what was I?

Just then, the gorgeous red head walked in.
I could tell she wasn’t the friendly type. She had a certain bitterness to her that made me uneasy. “You should get out of here,” she said. “It would be a mistake to get involved with Marcel.” It was hard not to stare at her—she was so pretty.

But m
y eyebrows knitted together at her words. “I don’t even know Marcel,” I snapped at her. Why the heck was she making such an accusation?

“That’s not the opinion
around here.” Her eyes narrowed as she smiled lightly. “You think you can sleep around in a dream and that’s not the same as cheating?”

“Whoa!” Was she referring to the reoccurring dreams I had had? How the hell did she know about them? “I don’t
know what you’re talking about,” I managed to mumble, my stomach knotting.

Tossing her wet
hair, she smirked. “Oh, yes you do.” Now she was smiling again. “You’re not as innocent as you pretend to be.” Her eyes seemed to search mine. I got the feeling she was suspicious of me.

“I don’t think I pretend anything,” I said smartly.
Even if she scared me, I wasn’t going to put up with her crap.

“Marcel is dangerous for you—way over your head.
” Her expression was unreadable, but she had a certain glint in her blue eyes that hinted at excitement. “He’ll hurt you good.”

I tried to steady my breathing. “What are you getting at?”

Then Marcel walked into the tiny room. My breathing sped up again which surprised me. Man, my body was doing a number on me. The space was so tight that if anyone else stepped in, we would look like sardines pushed together in a can. “Leave,” he said to me. His eyes had a cold, detached look to them.

A
t that, my teeth gritted involuntarily. I don’t know why, but my eyes welled up. Damn, he was good at making girls cry. I sure as hell wasn’t going to though. What a prick. I swallowed hard and fought back the tears. “I want some answers.” My tone was rough.

Sabine held back a giggle.
What was her problem? Stupid bitch.

Trying to ignore her,
I matched his coldness. “You’re going to tell me what the hell has happened to me. My body is not normal.”

“Get out,” he said unwaveringly
to me.

A shiver ran down my spine. “Make me.”

Sabine crossed her arms over her ample chest. “You’ve met your match. Brigitte might be my best friend, but this girl is as psychologically disturbed as you are. You deserve each other.” She scowled now. “I can’t wait to see the fires of hell burn up the night.” With that comment, she turned on her heal and left the tiny room.

“What do you want to know, little girl?” Marcel asked in a condescending tone as he leaned back languorously against the bamboo wall now. “You want to know why I kissed you in the ocean after you fell overboard?” Amusement danced on his lips.