Blueisland (Watermagic Series, #4) (15 page)

“Thank you, Jewel Razzen,” he called over his
muscular shoulder and winked as his lithe, cut body swam away. Oh, boy, how could any living creature be so perfect? “Go back to the island and join with your school. You’ll be safe there.”

My school? I swallowed hard. So I didn’t get to be with him?
His last words seemed more like they were in my mind than actually spoken aloud. How the hell did he do that? It seemed like he communicated with me telepathically. I felt a slight burning sensation in my eyes and I wondered if I was crying.

Chapter Nine

I am tied against a round knife throwing board like an X with my arms over my head and legs spread. Marcel walks over the white sandy shore with a wry grin on his perfect face, his blue eyes sparkling under the moonlight. “Ready, friend?” he asks in a seductive voice.

A tear rolls down my cheek, but I nod anyway, eager
, excited. He runs his hand up my bare thigh stopping at the edge of my bikini line. My body quivers at his touch, aches. His eyes are boring into me. “Here we go,” he murmurs in my ear and then spins the round board with me fastened to it.

R
ound and round I go watching his sexy bare back as he walks several feet away and turns around to face me. Round and round. My head spins. He picks up a silver glistening knife from a black velvet cloth on the sand holding several blades of the same kind. He touches the tip and raises an eyebrow before throwing it suddenly—quick and fast.

It pierces the spinning board right next to my arm. My body flinches. The next one comes hard and fast skimming the other arm without injuring it. My heart is slamming against my chest. Holy shit! The next knife pierces through the air and stabs into the board right between my
legs.

I wo
ke up screaming at the top of my lungs. What the hell? I rubbed my eyes. I was in a familiar place—lying on a makeshift bed under some sort of metal covering.

“It’s okay.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder. “You’re okay… You’re alright. It was just a dream.”

I thought it was my mother. I was panting.
At once, I grabbed onto her, pulling her into my arms. But it was not Mom; it was Savannah. I felt so hot. The heat was overwhelming. Tears streamed down my flushed face.

“Let’s get you into the water,” she said, helping me up.

My breathing was heavy as I nodded incoherently. The room was spinning around me. I stumbled to the ground, falling onto the pile of leaves that served as a bed. What a klutz.

Savannah swept me up into her newly strong arms and carried me out of the dwelling across the beach. “Y
ou need the water, Raz,” she said in an expressive voice. I felt like I was burning up. The sun was so damn hot. As we crossed the beach, me in her arms, I looked out at the horizon. I must have been hallucinating.

Everything looked so fucking blue the way the sky blended with the ocean like a big force field of energy like there was nothing else in the world now but blue. Blue
Island. Blue water. Blue sky. Blue heat. It was all there was. I gazed out, my head in a whirl of hot vigor, and saw a huge, grand version of Marcel Paradis with a crown on his head wading in the burning sky holding out his scepter to me like he ruled the world.

I felt a splash.
Suddenly, water surrounded me. Savannah dropped me in the ocean. Immediately, I came back to my senses. Oh, it felt so good to be back in my natural habitat. My body temperature normalized.

“Dang, you scared me, girl,” Savannah said, studying me as
we waded fully submersed in the brilliant blue water. Sunlit bubbles rushed up around us.

“I scared myself,” I sighed. “It was so scorching out there.”

She nodded brushing her long black waves of hair out of her pretty face that I didn’t think I could ever get used to. “Now that we are mers, we need regular dippings. We are cold blooded creatures. That means if it is hot out, we have to cool off somehow. Our body doesn’t perspire in such cases.”

Apparently, I was right about the cold blooded thing
. “Do we ever sweat?” I asked.

“We only perspire
as a reaction to internal emotions not from overheating.” Her arms waded out to the sides of her body. She was in a long white sheer dress. So feminine and lovely, not at all like her. I wondered where she got such finery on this island. Her skin shimmered slightly in the water.

I looked down at my arm and saw that it had a slight shimmer to it too. How beautiful, I thought.

“How do you know this?” I asked, surprised at her confidence in the matter. I knew very little about being a mer.

“I met with the Ancients.”

My eyes widened. “Holy moly, are you serious?” Maybe that’s where she got the dress.

“Yes, we all did except for you.”

I was shaking my head. “Who is ‘we’?”

“Logan, Andrew, Steve, and Jane
—the other members of our family, or ‘school’ as they call it. After our first killings, we heard the mer song of the deep and followed the music to the Ancients. It was a beautiful chorus of sound. They can really sing.” Her eyebrows pulled together as she seemed to study my face.

“I wonder why I wasn’t called to them.” I felt a nauseous sensation in the pit of my stomach like maybe I was alone in all this.

“I heard that Marcel asked to be assigned to you.”

I bit the side of my cheek. “Why?”
If I had been on land, I’m sure that piece of information would cause me to perspire.

“I can only guess.” She frowned, her arms pushing
out to the sides holding her body in place in the water. Because we were close to the surface, light from the sun glistened in her long flowing hair. “I spoke with Pascal Beaudoin. He is one of the French exchange students. They are all mers.

I nodded knowingly. “Yeah, I figured that out.”

Her nose crinkled, causing me to wonder what she was about to say. I felt nervous wading in the water there up close to the surface. I kept looking down feeling like someone or something was watching me from below. My eyesight was superb now, but all I saw through the darkness beneath us were black jagged boulders with sea grass edged into the cracks. Something could be lurking down there, I thought, maybe hiding.

“Well,
Pascal warned me to keep you away from Marcel,” she finally said.

My body tensed. “Why do you think he said that?”

I expected her to say that he was Brigitte’s husband, but instead she said, “There is speculation that he is the successor to the royal throne.”

“What?!” My head flew up, my eyes meeting hers.
I felt dizzy at her admittance. “He is going to be king of the mers?” I thought of the image I had just seen of him in the sky with a crown and scepter. How strange.

“Yes, he is going to rule all the mers both converts and Ancients alike.”
She nodded, her face unreadable.

I
couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Marcel, the rogue?” My voice lifted with disbelief.

She put her hand to her lips, suppressing a smile
now. “Supposedly he is different than everyone else. I’m not sure how. I don’t think the exchange students really know, but I imagine the Trident Court does.”

My adrenaline rushed as I thought about what Marcel had confided in me earlier.
I assumed his difference was that he craved mer blood. “Go on, please,” I encouraged, feeling utterly confused. Shoals of tiny fish glided and weaved around us before swimming away.

“
There was a prophesy that a dangerous French convert named Paradis will rule the mers after the world tsunami that will happen sometime in the future. If he does not take his rightful place at that time, all the Ancients will die. So you can see that they are invested in the scoundrel.”

I didn’t know if I believed in prophesies, but apparently the Ancients did. Did Marcel know about this oracle? That would be a great responsibility to be a king. I wondered if his rebelliousness was a reaction to that. “What else do you know about Marcel?” I asked. “I heard he was rich.”

Her eyes lit up. “Damn strait. I heard the dude is loaded.” She cracked a grin reminding me of her old self. “He’s some kind of zillionaire! But apparently, the guy had a rough upbringing.”

I still felt uneasy wading in the water up so close to the surface. My
intuition was gnawing at me. Intuitively, I just knew we were being watched…or maybe hunted. I looked down below and saw a small sea snake swim out from what must have been a cave created by the boulders. It weaved around the sea plants. Maybe something else is in the cave. I bit down on my fist. Pull yourself together, girl, I thought. Nothing is after you. I brushed the idea away.

“What happened to Marcel as a kid
?” She had no idea how much I wanted to know.

She shook her head side to side. “I don’t know all the details, but when he was seven and playing out in their vineyards
with his brother, Marc, his three-year-old sister, Anne, fell in a fire pit where the vineyard workers burned refuge.”

My hand flew to my heart. “Oh, my
—poor child. Poor Marcel.” I remembered the locket Marcel was holding with the name “Anne” engraved on it. That must have been his sisters locket.

“
The guy’s tough—he can handle it,” she sighed. I was surprised at her callousness. “But, yeah, it’s a real shame. His poor sister. Every bad boy has his story.”

My eyes narrowed. She didn’t seem to like him.

Her lips pursed together as she watched me. “And the story’s not over.”

“Go on,” I encouraged
, anxious to hear about him.

“
Marcel’s father kicked him out of the house and made him live in the garage after that. It gets very cold there in France.”

My eyebrows drew together. “
What a jerk,” I said about his father. I felt so frustrated. I couldn’t stand how he suffered like that. “He was just a little kid.” My eyes drifted down below us. The snake had passed, but my discomfort was still ever present.

“
Apparently, he didn’t give him food, blankets, or anything.”

I felt the blood draw out of my face. I’m sure I looked as pale as a ghost. “That’s awful.”

She shrugged, maybe out of exasperation or maybe because she didn’t care. I wasn’t sure. “He had to go out onto the streets and beg for money.”

I gasped. “Hi
s father sounds horrible. Did he expect a seven-year-old to be responsible for a three-year-old? That’s not right. It wasn’t Marcel’s fault.”

“
That’s for sure. Horrible, isn’t it?” Her eyes seemed to gloss over. I wondered if that was tears. Being in the ocean made it difficult to tell.

I nodded
, glancing out to the side at the vast blue sea. It seemed endless. “If it wasn’t enough to lose his little sister…” My thoughts drifted off. “And on top of that, his family rejected him. He was so young too. Who told you this story?”

“It was Pascal.”
She blushed, giving me the feeling that she liked him. Maybe it was because he was the one who turned her. A kiss like that from a sexy hot guy can send a girl over the edge. I knew that all too well. But like Marcel, he was married. And from what I gathered, he was totally into his wife. Apparently, Pascal and Marine were already newlyweds when they were turned into mers.

I nodded. “I guess he and Marcel are close.”
I felt something brush past my leg. I screamed, my head turning this way and that. When I saw what it was, my shoulders fell—it was only a red colored fish with a long wavy tail, very pretty actually.

Savannah laughed.
“You okay?”

I nodded, embarrassed.

“They’ve been a school since the 1700’s,” she explained.

“That’s a long ass time.” I bit my bottom lip. “Do you know anything else about him?”

Her ocean blue eyes narrowed. “Yesssss.” She drew out the word, lowering her voice. I observed her eyes searching mine. Maybe she was uncomfortable with my implorations. I wondered why. “Marcel’s father had a wealthy friend who was a business man and a banker,” she continued. “Maybe he felt sorry for Marcel because behind his father’s back he got him a job at one of the bars in town. They had to keep it a secret from his father…”

“They let
him work in a bar at the age of seven?” I interrupted.

“I guess so,”
she said. “Maybe they paid him under the table to keep him off the records—who knows. He probably worked in a back room doing dishes or inventory, but I don’t really know.

“Anyway,” she continued. “The friend of his father’s taught Marcel to invest his earnings and by the time he was f
ourteen he had made a small fortune.”

“Really?” My eyes widened.

She nodded, blinking her big blue eyes. “Yeah, and then Marcel bought the bar that he worked at…”

“
Damn! That’s so cool.”

She grinned. “
And then by the time he was fifteen he bought up several bars in the nearby towns.”

My chin jutted out involuntarily. “Unreal!”