Wicked Games (25 page)

She surfaced fifteen feet out or so and turned toward where she thought he’d be, right behind her, only to discover that he still hadn’t jumped. She called out to him, “You chicken?”

“No.” What he was was dazzled by how hot she was. He didn’t want to say that, though, so instead, he said, “I’m figuring out which dive I should do.”

“It’s cold in here. Come warm me up.”

One last look, and Carter jumped in feetfirst, bicycling his legs as he went down. He swam out and splashed a massive arc of water at her, just like he’d done that first night at Jeff’s party.

“You didn’t just do that,” she teased him.

She splashed him back.

“Is that how it’s going to be?” he said, splashing her again.

They splashed and splashed, dunked each other, kicked up the water, pushing and pulling and wrestling with each other, laughing the whole time, neither of them able to get enough of this freedom, this being alone together with nothing to do but play. Their slick skin slid under each other’s hands as they grappled and kneaded and inevitably kissed each other.

Pulling back, Carter said, “So, you know that night at Jeff’s house. The minute I saw you, I just knew. You were—I should have just admitted to myself from the start that I was totally—”

“Shut up and kiss me again,” she said. “It’s all over.”

They kissed again, more deeply, bobbing in the water.

Something bumped against the boat. They couldn’t see it—it was on the other side—but they heard the echoing against the fiberglass hull. A fish. A sea bass. A grouper. They’d been seeing them jumping all evening.

They smiled at each other, and then Jules wrapped her legs around Carter’s waist and they went right on kissing. Carter’s hands running up and down Jules’s thighs, hers running up and down his back, finding their way under the waistband of his swim trunks, probing at the base of his spine.

A fish brushed against the back of Carter’s leg. It tickled the sole of Jules’s foot.

They laughed about this. There sure were a lot of them out here tonight.

“You’re positive there’s no sharks?” Jules said.

“No. No sharks. Promise.”

And that was when whatever it was swimming around below them got ahold of Jules’s ankle and yanked her out of Carter’s arms.

Jules screamed. She
kicked with all her might, but the thing tightened its grip. It wouldn’t let go. This was no fish.

She went under. She kicked and kicked. She flailed her arms toward the surface, trying to pull herself away.

Then she was up again, briefly, gasping for breath, calling out, “Carter!”

And she was under again. The thing was crawling up her leg, clawing at her calf, grabbing at the waist of her bikini bottoms.

She was up again suddenly.

“Carter!” Where was he?

He was underwater, swimming straight down with
all his might. Blinking through the salt water, his eyes stinging fiercely, he could see murky shapes wrestling with each other just out of his reach. One of these was Jules. The other one was red. Was it human? Yes, it was.

The knowledge that this was Lilah crawling up Jules’s body, pulling her down, sunk in peripherally as Carter pushed through the heavy water toward them. He had no time for dread. What was called for was action.

He grabbed at Lilah’s arm, but it was too slippery to grip.

He grabbed at her shoulder—pushed at her, pulled at her—but this dragged Jules down, too.

They were—all three of them—submerged now.

Carter managed to tangle Lilah’s hair in his fist. He yanked with all his strength and her head snapped back, but she didn’t let go of Jules. He wrapped himself around the upper half of Lilah’s body and twisted and turned trying to shake her free.

She had to fend him off, at least, which gave Jules a brief advantage.

Peeling at Lilah’s fingers, Carter tried to pry them loose.

All the while, Jules was kicking, kicking, kicking. She kicked Carter in the head. She kicked Lilah everywhere.

Holding on tight, Carter twisted and yanked at Lilah’s body. She had to use most of her strength to wrest herself away from him, and the concentration required
to do this took her attention away from Jules.

One more kick. She was out of Lilah’s grasp.

As Carter continued to wrestle with Lilah, Jules swam for the surface. Her heart beat in her ears. Her tear ducts felt like they were ready to explode.

Then she was up, gulping down air, paddling, swimming like she’d never swum before, toward the ladder hanging off the side of the boat.

It took Carter a moment to realize that Jules had shaken free. When he did, he pushed Lilah deeper into the water. He let go. He frog-kicked, using her body as ballast to propel himself toward the dark shadow that must have been the boat.

He reached the ladder a second after Jules did. They yanked themselves up.

“Pull the ladder up! Carter, quick!” Jules shouted.

But he couldn’t do that. The ladder was bolted into the side of the boat.

And Lilah was already at the bottom rung.

When Lilah reached
the top of the ladder and found Jules barring her way, kicking at her shoulders, trying to push her back and send her falling into the sea, she smirked. This girl was no threat to her—not now, now when she was so completely in her power. She was strong, too strong for Jules. A swipe of the arm, a twist of the wrist—that was all it took to gain the upper hand, to get Jules in a power hold, her arm torqued at the elbow, her whole body pulled down behind it.

Then up, off the ladder, and onto the stable footing of the deck. Lilah rammed her heel into Jules’s neck, stunning her.

Jules’s body curled into a fetal position. It was not
in her control. No matter how much she might want to defend herself and Carter, her body wanted only to protect itself. Her neck stung where Lilah had kicked her. Her trachea went numb. She could hardly breathe. At the very best she was about to be beat up. At the worst, Lilah would kill her, right here, right now. But no. Lilah stepped past her. Why?

She had no use for Jules. Not right this minute. Carter was the prize she wanted right now. He always had been; he always would be. Casually, confidently, she walked the length of the deck, picking up the harpoon gun she’d stashed against the gunwale early that morning while Carter and Jules were still back in Savannah eating Belgian waffles.

He was frantically digging in the compartment where the tools were kept, under the bench at the stern of the boat. There used to be weapons there—knives and lances and harpoons—but where were they? All he was finding was a tangled mess of ropes. And the more he dug, the more tangled they became. He wasn’t watching his back. Yet again, he’d allowed Jules to be out there alone with no protection from him. Even as he kept digging, he knew he should have stood guard at the ladder instead of racing for the toolbox.

Suddenly Lilah was on him, standing at his back, holding the barbed trident head of the loaded harpoon gun to his ear.

“Hi, Carter,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

He turned slowly toward her. She was smiling.

“Where’s Jules?” he barked.

She plumped her bottom lip out into a pout. “The first time we talk in two and a half months, and this is all you have to say to me? I’m disappointed. I’d have thought you’d be more excited to see me.”

He was acutely aware of the harpoon aimed at his face. Instead of saying something that might inflame her, he let his facial expression do his talking. “What did you do to her?” he asked.

“She’s fine.” Lilah nodded toward the front of the boat. “She’s over there. Resting.”

Glancing, just briefly—he didn’t want to take his eyes off Lilah for long enough for her to pull something—he saw Jules’s body curled on the deck.

“Is she hurt?”

“Maybe she’s hurt. Probably. I mean, she’s alive. I just kicked her a little. Why do you care so much?”

“Lilah . . .”

“No, you’re right. You don’t have to answer that. We both know you don’t care about her. I know she’s got you all turned around in your head, but really, I swear, you don’t owe her anything. Don’t you think it’s time to remember who you are—who you really are—and what you really want?”

“What’s that, Lilah?” Carter said sarcastically.
“What do I really want?”

She tipped her head skeptically. “You think I didn’t hear you yesterday when my name slipped out while you were kissing her?”

Carter glanced at Jules again. She still wasn’t moving.

“It’s not too late. We can get through this just like we’ve always gotten through everything else. Forever, remember? That’s what you promised me freshman year, and I know you still believe it. You just have to be brave enough to admit what you want. And then everything can go back to normal. Okay?”

Trapped, Carter waited to hear what she’d say next. But she didn’t say anything. Instead, she fumbled with a snap on the diving belt around her waist. Keeping the harpoon gun trained on Carter’s head, she pulled the knife out by its bright-yellow plastic handle and held it up for him to see.

“Come back to me, Carter. We both know that’s what you really want to do.”

She slowly crouched and laid the knife on the deck. Then she pulled herself back to a standing position, and being careful not to catch herself with the blade, she gripped the handle with her toe and pushed the knife toward Carter.

“You don’t have to be afraid anymore. We can get rid of the whore together, right now.”

“I promised Jules I’d never let you hurt her again. I’ll take you down, Lilah. I swear I will.”

Lilah stabbed the harpoon gun at him, one swift thrust that caught him on the arm, stinging and breaking the skin.

She smirked. “You must know by now that there’s no way I’m going to let her have you,” she said.

Jules was finally
able to breathe again. She sat up and stretched her neck, gulping down air. When she saw Carter walking slowly in her direction, his expression—nervous, full of warning—filled her with dread.

It took her a second to realize that Lilah was still there, too, stagger-stepping forward, a few yards behind behind him, and it wasn’t until Carter was almost on top of her and Lilah had stepped up out of the sunken compartment at the stern onto the high deck on which the mast was mounted that she saw the harpoon gun in the girl’s hands.

She was talking. “See?” Lilah said. “I told you I didn’t hurt her. Why would I hurt her when I can wait
and watch you hurt her for me? It’ll be so much more fun.” Chattering on and on and on and on.

Standing up, Jules reached out toward Carter. If she could get close to him maybe they could communicate somehow, send messages through their fingertips, strategize together with subtle nods and winks and flicks of their eyebrows. They could maybe gain the upper hand.

He shook his head, warning her off.

Lilah laughed. “You think it’s that easy, Jules?” she said. “Your spell’s been broken. He’s realized his mistake. Right, Carter?” When Carter didn’t respond, she shrieked at him, “Right, Carter?!”

He nodded in a distant way, as though the person he was had fled his body and it was now just a shell with nothing left inside.

Then he and Jules were standing, futilely, next to each other.

“You know what to do, Carter. Put it to her neck.”

Carter looked at the knife in his hand. He hedged.

Rage flashed across Lilah’s face. “Put it to her neck!”

He did as he was told. He raised the diving knife to Jules’s neck and pointed the sharp blade toward her jugular vein.

Jules couldn’t tell exactly how close the knife was to her tender skin. She couldn’t feel the prick, but that might have been because of her surging emotions, crowding out all sensation. She concentrated on trying
to pick up the signs from Carter, some psychic communication from him—a pulse in the tip of the fingers that held her elbow and braced her in place, a tingle in her ear as he telepathically gave her the go signal that would send the two of them rushing toward Lilah in one sudden and overpowering leap—but she received nothing.

As long as Lilah had her finger on the trigger of the harpoon gun, there wasn’t much Carter could do but watch her edge closer and closer to the two of them, that psychotic grin trembling on her face, and hope he was ready when she made a mistake.

Lilah wouldn’t shut up.

She’d take one step forward, then remember something, some sweet memory, or some insult from the past, and she’d pause to explain it away. To them? To herself? They couldn’t really tell.

“Tell her, Carter. Explain to her. Tell her about all the promises you made me. How she was just a test to see how much you loved me. How you’re going to come back to me. And we’re going to UPenn and—”

Carter couldn’t hold back. “Lilah! You didn’t even get into UPenn. That’s another one of your lies.”

Tears were streaming down her face.

She took a step closer. “They’re still considering my application,” she said. “They know how important it is that we’re together.”

Carter let loose a cynical laugh. “You’re living in
some fantasy world, Lilah. You can’t admit the truth to yourself.”

She took another step.

Carter waited, watched. He was tense and ready.

There were ropes coiled in piles along the side of the boat, each one connected to a different line, each one controlling a different part of the sails. Lilah didn’t see them—she was focused on Carter—but she didn’t trip, somehow.

“Tell her, Carter! Tell her! Now! Tell her now!”

“Don’t you think you’ve made your point? I don’t love—”

“Tell her! Tell her!” Lilah screamed.

She raised the harpoon gun to her eye and sighted him in it. Her trigger finger tensed. For the moment, anyway, there was nothing Carter could do.

“Jules,” he said. “I . . .”

Jules could feel the knife pressed against her skin. It wavered there, and she sensed that Carter was trying to tell her something, but she didn’t know what.