Spring Tide (34 page)

“Joel? Joel. Joel! What happened to Sylvia?”

“I don’t wanna go there.”

“No.” I pounded the deck wall with my hand. “You tell me something!”

“She’s gone, Kris. Dead. Joseph had compromised her. There was nothing I could do and I tried. She was so wasted all the time that my whispers didn’t work against her impaired subconscious.”

I felt distress moving up my spine, compressing each vertebra as it went. “He killed her?”

“He or Devon took her soul.”

“Her soul? Literally?”

He nodded.

I pumped my fist against my chest. “A soul can’t be taken. It’s as much a part of me as my heart or mind. It’s me.”

“No one’s soul can be stripped away entirely, that’s true. But souls are energy, love is energy, and hate is energy, and they can be taken and used. And it’s why a dark’s magic is often stronger than a bright’s—they ‘power up’ on human souls.”

Madness.
“How? How are they taking souls?”

“They throw the light from their eyes into the eyes of the victim and suction it out.”

“The eyes are the window to the soul?”

“They are.”

“That’s a proverb. Come on. How can this happen and nobody knows about it. No one opens up the paper and reads that Chosen beings have gone dark side and are taking life.”

“They prey on the weak, those who won’t be missed, those who have problems: people like Sylvia, like hookers, people with mental illness who up and leave home, and I hate to say it, sometimes even the elderly.”

I dropped my face into my hands and scrubbed hard. What he’d said was too frightening for me to think about so I picked at his logic instead. “I thought throwing light was—”

“To cast the ultimate spell. It is for all Chosen. But for darks it’s about mindset. If a dark wants to cast onto someone for a specific reason, they’ll throw their light and use the voice. If the objective of the dark is to take a soul, then the dark’s mindset at the time will make that happen.” He gently pried my fingers from my head. “Now that you’re aware your soul can’t be taken. It’s protected by your magic. However, they can convert you to darkness which is much, much worse.”

I remembered how Troy had told me he worked in human resources: recruitment, orientation, and termination. I stared at the stack of plates inside. “J, I don’t know how much more of this I can handle.”

He took my hand, his thumb sweeping mine. “Let’s go to California, start over. You could go to Berkley or Stanford. Julia can get you in with a whisper or you—”

“What would I tell Mom? No way! I’m not going to Berkley ’cause Julia can get me in. Shit! I need to think.”

He wouldn’t let me do the dishes.

At ten-twenty, he walked into the bedroom wearing his wetsuit and tossed mine onto the bed.

“Are you nuts? I can barely get up on the board during the day. No night surfing.” I snuggled deeper under the blue blanket I’d made for him.

“I’d like to see you get a whole lot more experience before we do that. We’re gonna do a little paddling, that’s all.”

“Oh joy.”

“I wanna show you something. C’mon.” He jerked the covers off of me. “You’re gonna like this, I promise. Have I ever lied to you?”

“You lied to me for nine months straight.”

“Have I ever lied to you about anything that didn’t have to do with magic, the magic you were too busy to see while making my life hell?”

It was futile to argue with him.

Fifteen minutes later the wetsuit was finally on. Unfortunately, no amount of magic could expedite the process.

We waded into the ocean, the coolness of the water causing my eyes to widen. He went ahead, paddling through murky sea under a cloudy sky. Past the sandbars the water was tranquil and moved like a seamless, black satin sheet.

He stopped and sat up on his board. “Ready?”

I pushed up and steadied myself. “Mmhmm. This better be good.”

He lit the surrounding water with a ball of blue light from his palm. The ocean, which had been still and quiet, became alive. Hundreds of small fish skipped over the surface like dragonflies for as far as I could see, their scales shining like sapphires. After ten or twelve seconds, they all went back under. I was looking around in awe when I gripped the board because a slew of large fish began vaulting over us. There were red fish, flounder, sea bass, and others that I’d never seen before, the droplets from their fins and tails making sparkling blue rain. But as with the little fish, the moment a smile began to form on my face, they were gone. A school of needlefish suddenly came zipping across the surface from our left. Silver, thin, and fast, they diverged into two groups and navigated around us but were then lost from sight. A moment later, farther out, marlin and tarpon began dancing smoothly across black and blue water, falling back into the sea in perfectly timed succession. I almost felt like I was beneath the waves and part of the ocean, not sitting on top of it.

“Like it?”

“That was wicked!” I slapped his leg. “I knew it! You
can
talk to fish!”

“I can’t talk to fish. Put your hand out, catch one.”

I did and a small blue fish leapt up and went through my palm. I didn’t feel anything. Another fish flowed through my hand and disappeared.
Impossible.
The surface of the water was untouched, no sound or ellipse showing reentry.
It’s not real. He envisioned it?

I closed my eyes and drew the picture. I opened them and saw a clear sky and a huge, harvest moon. He extinguished his light and smiled. The moonlight soaked us in its blush, glinting off his hair and skin amid a sea of liquid honey.

“Damn, you’re a quick study.” He leaned to me and barely touched his lips to mine. “Look down.”

Sharks circled. Tips of thick dorsal fins arced up and down slowly, too slowly. My mind conjured the image of small black eyes, rows of jagged teeth, and horrible dismemberment. I held my breath and instinctively my fingers straightened. Laughing hard, he put his hand over mine and the sharks went back to the depths. After spasms of terror subsided, I splashed him. Right then, I understood that the squadrons of jellyfish I’d seen all summer were most likely illusions and I splashed him again.

We paddled in and lost the wetsuits.

He wrapped two towels around my shoulders and rubbed my terry-clad arms. “I wanted to show you there are aspects of magic that aren’t scary or combative. I’ve been practicing that little show for months. I’m decent at illusions of fish and sea birds, probably ’cause I’ve been around them so much. I can’t really do anything else. It’s not my thing.”

“The sharks were a nice touch. Cardiac arrest isn’t scary at all.”

“You’re a force. I’m amazed you’re still holding your illusion.” He glanced up at the sky. “Most of us can’t maintain a vision for so long. How’re you keeping your concentration?”

I snapped my fingers and the clicking sound broke the lock in my mind that had been sustaining the moon above us. It disappeared and we were standing on horizontal rows of light coming through the shutters from inside.

With a quick thought, the golden moon reappeared. I mentally arranged the order of the images and let it happen. Thousands of rose petals in every color cascaded from the sky like snow, enveloping the deck in a blizzard of fantasy. But before the petals touched the stone, a whirlwind captured them. They swirled around our bodies and it seemed so real that I got goose bumps. The current rose above us, dispensing the colored ovals across the sky. When they were high over the house, each petal became a shimmering, silver moth that zigzagged the moon until it turned into a falling star.

I snapped my fingers and we were in lamplight again. “Well, that was girly. Hold up.”

Three pink unicorns galloped across the deck, jumped the pool, and disappeared.

I chuckled. “There we go, that’s more like it. I’ll think of something cooler next time like walruses playing trombones.”

“That was awesome! Not gonna comment on the unicorns. Illusions may be your gift.”

I shoved his shoulder. “I thought my gift was to rock your world.”

“It’s on, beautiful.”

“Was it good?”

“More like outstanding. I really thought I felt a breeze.”

“Purpose?”

“Julia says that considering our experiences, illusions are a little vacation for us, a short break from the reality of, well, caring—from seeing people suffer and trying to figure out how to best help them. Illusions give us happiness. We can create what we want to see, if only for a few seconds or, in your case, minutes.”

He kissed my cheek, his hands moving up and down my back. Somehow I had found my way to the water, to him and this world, riding out the ebb and flow of our relationship. He’d never let anyone take me from him.

“I love you,” I whispered.

“I will always love you.”

Sparkles of blue mixed with sparkles of green in his eyes. I’d seen it before but had never understood that the green was the reflection of the magic burgeoning within me.

Over the next week, he talked to me the way Troy did, hypnotizing me. He wanted me to reject his voice from the first syllable that entered my ears. It was a problematic and difficult request because my ears and brain were forged together, unlike most people’s. He’d use “the voice” at odd times, when I was knitting or grooving or brushing my teeth. When he saw that I was affected, he’d slap me on the back or poke me to snap me out of it. If that wasn’t enough fun for him, he’d throw his light in my eyes.

_______

He was describing the beaches of California as Utopian, a promised land for surfers, warm water south and cold water north. That morning’s speech was his third installment in two days for why we should move there.

“Sounds like a lot of time in the car checkin’ the waves. Dude, you don’t understand what this’ll do to my mom. She’ll think I’m caught up in first love, am making the same mistake … it’ll kill her.”

“You tell her we’re visiting my friends for a couple of weeks. A month later, you have her up for a few days and tell her how much you like California, that you want to enroll in classes. A year down the road, she’ll see how happy we are together. You can visit her in Austin as often as you want, but we gotta go.”

“But it’s all a lie.” I mashed my face with my hands. “We shouldn’t go. We can’t. No. Not doin’ it.”

“Are you worried about being somewhere new or—?”

“It’s not that. I just really think we shouldn’t go. I know we shouldn’t go. Besides, who’s to say Devon won’t find me three months down the road, huh? Running only delays the pain.” I swiped a hair out of my eyes. “You gotta tell me more about the darks—”

“I don’t know all that much about them.”

“Bullshit. I know you don’t wanna talk about them because you don’t wanna scare me but, dude, this is how I am. I need the information so I can sort out the problem.”

He crossed his arms on the table. “From what I understand, the darks live together on their grounds unless they’re looking for victims or taking down one of us and before you can ask, no, I don’t know where their grounds are.”

“Is it on this planet?”

“Can we please try to stay on topic? I’m pretty sure it’s on this planet. Ummm,” he twitched his lips, “darks love to party.”

“Seriously? I kinda imagined them all hating each other and being mad.”

“There’s plenty of that.” He drew a figure eight on his wrist with his finger. “From what I know, the dark world is about power and control. It’s a hierarchy with Devon at the top. Under him, being a dark is all about keeping your spot or moving up a notch. Like, suppose by some miracle, a bunch of brights took out Joseph. The disruption in the chain would cause a power struggle and there’d be a period of reordering that would take several months, if not longer, until the strongest dominated and took Joseph’s place. Any high-ranking dark would probably plot to kill off or suppress his competition to secure his seat while trying to win Devon’s favor.”

“Really? They’d fight each other?”

“For sure. But day to day, it’s the hierarchy that keeps the peace among them so they can all self-indulge: drink, smoke, have sex, be bad, party.” He took both of my hands in his. “But, Kris, none of that matters. Devon has too much power, much more power than you and me. And there’s no telling how many darks he’ll bring with him or when that’ll happen. What I do know is that he will take you to his world. He will convert you to darkness. You will be his whore and that’s something I can’t even think about.”

“Whore?”

He gripped my fingers. “He’ll own you, your energy and your body—that’s how it works. He’ll turn your soul to anger and hatred. It will happen. Kris, if there was another way …”

“We can’t win?”

“Not right now. We need some time.”

“Can we stop in Austin on the way to California?”

“Absolutely.”

Two days later, his truck and my car were packed. Jericho had been sleeping sporadically for the previous several weeks, rising during the night to scan every few hours. He hadn’t picked up any dark signatures. He’d talked to Julia and Donovan. They would shut down the house in Corpus and meet us in California. We’d find a new address and the household would be reestablished. Julia and Donovan were my family, my Chosen family—Jericho my man, Julia my older sister, and Donovan maybe a fifth cousin.

_______

We were lying in bed when I put my book down. I made my voice suggestive and the compression waves slackened.
Far out.

“Jericho.” I was astounded to see a sheen cover his eyes. “When will you take off my clothes? Could you do that now?”

“I could now.” His voice yielded to mine.

Holy crap!
I spoke normally. “Really? Right now? Would ya?”

He stared at the ceiling. “Did you entrance me?”

“Yeah, man. That’s off the wall.”

“Damn it, Kris! Don’t do that! It’s dark. You shouldn’t even be able to do the voice.”

“You started it.” I smiled.

“Brights don’t entrance. I only did it because I had to. What’d you say?”

“Freak out. I asked when you were going to, you know, take all my clothes off. I just wanted to see if I could do it.”