Tempest Rising (10 page)

Then what? Something was different. Of this I was absolutely certain. “Are
you
okay?” I demanded, unconsciously echoing the question everyone had been asking me for the last five days.

“Yeah.” His eyes smiled at me. “Why?”

“You look …” I stopped. What could I say that wouldn’t sound totally lame?

“Yes?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I moved deeper, and the currents caught me—played tug-of-war. Pushed me closer to Kona then pulled me back. Again and again, until Mark shouted, “We’re going again. Are you coming?”

His voice was strange, strained, and I realized I’d been paying far too much attention to Kona. I knew better—Mark had always been the jealous type, and obviously he’d reached his breaking point.

I couldn’t help the way I responded to Kona, though—every inch of my body (and most of my concentration) was tuned toward him like he was a lightning rod. There didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it.

“Are we, Tempest?”

My mouth was desert dry, so I just nodded.

“You bet!” Kona called back to Mark as he ran to shore to retrieve our boards. And then his hand was cupping my elbow, his strong, calloused fingers relaxed as he propelled me deeper into the surf.

The second he touched me that strange, tingling heat started again—warmth spreading through me, taking me over. Like a rogue wave—unexpected, frightening, dangerous.

But oh so exhilarating.

Pulling my elbow from his grasp, I tamped down on the feeling and pushed toward Mark, who was looking at me when he should have been looking at the wave about to take him out like a total newbie.

“Hey, watch out!” I called. “Mark!”

He just laughed and bodysurfed the thing—board and all. In that moment, his laugh was smooth, uncomplicated, beloved. I laughed with him.

It was either that or scream. Because the farther I got away from Kona—and the distraction he presented—the more I was feeling the elemental changes to my body. My chest was tight, the gills behind my ears straining to be immersed in the water. My skin, where the sun touched it, felt raw, and my whole body was one huge, vibrating guitar string. Waiting, just waiting, for the next note to be played.

I glanced down at the sea, watched as a wave stacked up. It was the one I wanted—a little swollen, a little out of control, a little too big for any sane person to catch.

It was perfect—especially since these days I was definitely on the shady side of sanity.

Pushing off, I rode my board the rest of the way, ignoring Mark’s shouts and Logan’s curses. My blood was humming in rhythm with the wave, my body literally quivering with excitement. As the wave continued to stack up, sea foam flew everywhere, hit me in the eyes, the mouth, the nose.

Don’t let me wipe out, don’t let me wipe out
. The words were a mantra, running through my head again and again as I took off. If my legs wigged out this time, I had no idea what I’d do. No way Mark would buy another lame excuse, especially since we both knew I had no business surfing this wave. No one did.

“Breathe. Everything will be all right.” Kona’s voice was firm, solid. Something to hold on to in the raging maelstrom of the sea and my emotions.

I turned toward him, shocked that I could hear him from so far away, especially over the roar of the ocean. But when I looked, he wasn’t speaking, wasn’t even looking at me. For all intents and purposes, he was completely engrossed in finding the sweet spot of the wave we’d just dropped in on—something I should have been doing as well.

“Move forward a little or you’ll miss it.” Once again, I heard Kona’s voice, felt the intensity behind the words. I followed his directions, focusing on the wave for the first time since I got out there. And of course, he was right—I needed to get going or I was going to end up wiping out again—this time from sheer stupidity.

For the next couple of minutes I forgot about my birthday, forgot about being mermaid, forgot about Kona, and just surfed the hell out of the wave. And when it was done, when we had both ridden the thing into shore (Kona making it even closer in than I could) I felt at peace for the first time in a very long time. Like my body belonged to me again.

Like everything was going to be okay.

Mark met me at shore and I let him pull me into a huge bear hug, concentrating on the feel of him against me, his breath sweet and warm and
normal
in my ear. “That was kick-ass!” he said, his lips skimming over my cheek and down my jaw.

“I know.” I laughed up at him.

He pulled back with a grin, slung his arm around my shoulder, and propelled me up the beach toward home.

We were halfway there before I remembered. Stopping dead, I turned and searched the beach for Kona. He was nowhere to be found. “Where’s Kona?” I demanded. I needed to thank him, needed to … I didn’t know what I needed to do with him. But I burned with the need to see him again. To figure out how he’d managed to talk to me over the roar of the ocean.

“Why?” Mark said, his smile gone so fast it was like it had never been.

“I don’t know. I just thought I’d—” I stopped, unsure of what to say, especially when confronted by the tension that had invaded Mark’s body.

“He ducked out a few minutes ago,” Logan said as he walked by on my right, saving me from having to come up with an answer for Mark.

“Did you see him go?”

He shot me a funny look. “No, but I don’t think he sprouted wings and flew away, do you?”

Logan’s words sparked the memory of when I’d first met Kona, when he’d all but vanished in front of me. Wings? Did I think he’d grown wings? Of course not.

But scales were a whole different story.

PART TWO

T
ake
O
ff

“The cure for anything is salt water—sweat, tears, or the sea.”

—I
SAK
D
INESEN

Chapter 7

I looked down at the piece of pizza with the works and knew I couldn’t eat a bite. Not tonight, not now, when my seventeenth birthday was a few short hours away. Shoving the plate back, I tried to act naturally when Mark gave me a concerned frown.

“What’s wrong, Tempest? You’ve been acting funny all night.”

“I’m not hungry.”

He stared at me incredulously, and I understood his shock. For the last six months I’d been ravenous, eating everything I could get my hands on without ever gaining an ounce. Most girlfriends let their boyfriends have the last piece of pizza in the box, but with Mark and me it had been the other way around for a while now. Yet tonight, I couldn’t even work up the will to eat one piece, let alone my usual four.

“Are you sick?”

“No.” I snapped out the word, annoyed beyond measure with people asking me if I was okay or sick or upset or whatever.

Mark reared back at the ugly tone in my voice, a quick flash of hurt crossing his features before he could hide it. Right away I felt like a bitch, particularly since I’d spent most of the last week thinking of another guy.

Thinking of Kona.

“I’m just hyped up, I guess,” I said in a more even tone. “With my birthday tomorrow and everything.”

Mark grasped the lifeline gratefully. “So, what do you think your dad’s going to get you this year? It’ll be hard to top the Brewer.”

“I don’t think he
can
top the Brewer—it’s the best present I’ve ever gotten.”

“Well, yeah. It’s totally wicked.”

That was one of the great things about having a boyfriend who was as obsessed with surfing as I was. Another guy might get bent out of shape that I liked my dad’s gift better than his, but Mark understood.

In the surfing world, not much could top a custom-designed Brewer—not even the brand-new iPod Mark had gotten me last year when I’d lost mine in the ocean days before my birthday. He’d loaded it with all my favorite songs, had even programmed special playlists into it for me. It had been a perfect gift for me and I loved it—just not as much as my board.

Mark started on his third piece of pizza, and I glanced around the parlor we’d been going to for as long as we’d been dating. Tonight it looked a little different—the red-and-white-checked tablecloths were a little fuzzy, while the pizza- and Coke-shaped neon lamps on the windows were so bright they hurt my eyes. And the familiar smells—garlic and tomatoes and Italian spices mixed with the briny scent of the ocean—had me feeling a little sick.

Was it just my mind playing tricks on me or was something going on with my senses? Was the change starting to happen?

“You ready to go?”

Mark was staring at me with an unusual exasperation, and when I looked at the table I realized why. He’d finished the pizza and paid the check, all while I was taking a little side trip to la-la land.

I grabbed his hand and let him pull me to my feet. “Sorry I haven’t been the best company lately,” I murmured lamely as he guided me out of the restaurant.

“I’m getting used to it,” came his cryptic reply.

“What does that mean?”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to argue, Tempest.”

“You could have fooled me.” I felt like a jerk even as I said the words, but I couldn’t pull them back. A part of me was spoiling for a fight and was really hoping that Mark would give it to me.

But he merely shook his head and started toward his bike, a tricked-out Ducati Streetfighter S that had been his seventeenth-birthday present. He loved the motorcycle, but I knew he’d trade it for my Brewer in a heartbeat.

“What movie do you want to see?” he asked.

“I picked last time.”

“Yeah, but it’s your birthday tomorrow. I figured I could be a gentleman and let you choose tonight.”

“And then you get to choose the next two times, right?”

“Three actually. The offer comes with interest attached.”

I laughed. “Of course it does.”

He drove too fast, as usual, and we got to the theater in record time. I ended up choosing an action movie that I knew Mark had been anxious to see. There was nothing I really wanted to watch and anyway, it wasn’t like I was going to be able to pay attention. It had taken all my effort to keep up my end of the conversation while we were in line.

As the movie raged around us with exploding buildings, car chases, and gunfights galore, I cuddled into Mark and simply concentrated on how good it felt to be curled up next to him, despite the prickles of pain caused by the brush of his hand on my bare skin. His arm was warm and comforting around my shoulders, his chest firm against the back of my shoulder. He smelled like pizza and the ocean and the cologne I had had made especially for him.

I never wanted the movie to end.

But the two hours flew when I wanted them to drag and after the mother of all fight scenes, the film ended with the good guys bloodied but victorious. If only things were as black and white in real life.

Mark drove us home slowly, and I tried to stay relaxed, but the closer we got to my house the more freaked out I got. It was eleven thirty. My birthday was less than one hour away.

Would I change, like Cinderella, as soon as the clock struck midnight? Or would it happen later, in the light of day?

Would I get a choice, like my mother had promised, or would the mermaid thing just happen?

“Tempest.” Mark’s voice was impatient and a little annoyed, and I realized we were parked in front of my house. He’d turned off his bike and was waiting for me to climb down. “Hello? Tempest?”

“What?”

“You did it again—I swear, you were a million miles away.”

“Sorry.” I was beginning to sound like a broken record.

“Do you want to go in, or walk by the beach for a little while?”

For the first time that I could remember, I didn’t want to be near the water. The idea of walking on the sand and letting the ocean kiss my toes made me tremble—not now, not tonight. It had taken enough from me. The idea of it taking what might be my last moments with Mark was too much for me to handle—or accept.

“Let’s go inside.”

He seemed surprised by my answer, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he waited for me to get off the bike, then followed, his arm around my shoulders as we walked toward the front door.

The proprietary way he held on to me was suddenly annoying, though I wasn’t sure why. Usually I liked the way Mark was a total gentleman—he always held doors for me and let me go first, always made sure he was the closest to the curb when we were walking on the sidewalk. It made me feel good to know that he was thinking of me, but something about the way he was wrapped around me—like he was afraid I would run off—bothered me. The fact that his fears were justified only made the whole thing more irritating.

I wrenched my elbow from his grasp, then shouted “I’m home!” as soon as the door closed behind us. I had no doubt my dad was waiting up for me.