Awaken (6 page)

“No,” I protested. “No, I am
not
–”

“Yes, you are. We’ve already spoken with a
realtor on the phone, and we have appointments to see houses in
Salina when we get back.”

“You’re leaving
town
?”

“
We
are,” Mom corrected. “I don’t know
what you expected here, Chloe. You ran away from
home
,
thanks in no small part to that girl. There are consequences to
that kind of behavior.”

I couldn’t believe this. It was like some
bizarre nightmare where people told you things more horrible than
you could have imagined in your waking hours, all while acting as
though those things were somehow completely acceptable to say.

“You can’t do this.”

They didn’t respond. Mom just turned around
to face the front and Dad kept driving like nothing had
happened.

I stared. They didn’t care. They thought they
were right, and that was all there was to it. Yet surely that
couldn’t be all, because there was no
way
they’d move simply
because I’d–

But of course they would, I realized. Of
course
they would. They were insane. Utterly, completely,
and all otherwise insane.

And now they were going to take me away from
one of the only friends I had in the world.

I looked back out the window, my mind reeling
as I tried to figure out what I was going to do now.

Chapter Six

From the bushes by the edge of the yard, I
watched as a man and woman loaded the girl into a car and then sped
away like they were fleeing a tidal wave. Whipping around the turn
of the drive, they barely slowed as they reached the main road, and
in only a few heartbeats, they were gone.

And on my list of bizarre things in the past
day, that ranked pretty high.

Not that it mattered.

I muttered a curse. Weirdness upon weirdness,
and now she was gone. I didn’t know how to follow or where to
search for her next, either. I’d managed to find her here only
because it seemed a safe bet the humans would return to the place
they’d been the day before, and because she’d gone on a walk with
that blond guy and another girl in the park. She’d never left their
company though, meaning I’d had no chance to ask her what was going
on.

I looked to the house, but the humans hadn’t
come back outside. And it wasn’t like it’d do any good to ask them
about her. She’d been hiding what she was from them, and I was a
stranger. I didn’t even know the girl’s name.

There was no way they’d volunteer her
whereabouts or have answers about what happened today.

Frowning, I left the bushes and walked back
the way I’d come. I should have just interrupted her. Gone over and
asked to speak to her privately or something. But when she’d
spotted me on the far side of the park, fear had come into her
eyes, as if the sheer sight of me terrified her. It’d gotten better
after I moved to another location where I couldn’t be spotted as
easily, but still, she’d looked really shaken.

And as with everything else, that made
no
sense, and left me with even more questions than
before.

I scowled. There was nothing for it. Mystery
or not, she was gone.

And I’d put off looking for Ina long
enough.

I headed into the park. People shot past me,
wheels on their feet that it took me a minute to remember the name
for, and others walked along, being led on ropes by dogs. The sun
was bright overhead, and hot too, and it cooked against the t-shirt
and shorts I’d retrieved from my stash of supplies farther up the
coast.

“Hey!”

I turned to see Ina jogging toward me. Her
long, black ponytail bobbed and flashed in the sunlight and she
wore denim shorts below a scale-formed imitation of a bikini
top.

“Be right back!” she called over her shoulder
to a group of guys standing by a small cluster of trees.

“Where the hell have you been?” I demanded as
she came closer.

“Whoa, take it easy,” she laughed. “Dad have
you out looking for me?”

“Since yesterday.”

She winced. “Eesh.”

“Ina…”

“What? Look, I’m sorry, okay? It’s just… Egan
and I had a fight and–”

I groaned. Her boyfriend again. The latest
one, in any case. I should have known.

“I needed some time away,” she protested.
“And honestly, I don’t get the big deal. I’m a big girl. I can take
care of myself.”

Grimacing, I looked to the coast. She and I
both knew that where Dad was concerned, that wasn’t the point.

She shifted around uncomfortably. “Did you at
least get to do anything fun while you were out looking for me?”
she asked, clearly trying for a peace offering. “Meet some surfer
girls or…”

She trailed off hopefully.

I gave her a dry look. “Not exactly.”

Her eyebrow rose. My mouth tightened.

“Were you out oceanwise last night? Maybe two
hours after sunset?”

She nodded. “Luke and I both were.” She
glanced to one of the muscle-bound surfers standing near the trees
and then grinned at me. “For a human, he’s pretty decent in the
water.”

I ignored the comment. I knew she was smart
enough not to lose control and take things too far with a human, no
matter how much Dad worried she would. “You feel anything strange
happen around that time?”

Her brow furrowed. “You know, now that you
mention it, there was something that felt kind of odd. It went away
pretty quick though.”

“I found what it was.”

She waited.

“There was a girl. Dehaian, but staying with
a bunch of humans in that white mansion by the park. I saw her on
the beach last night and when she touched her feet to the
water…”

Ina looked at me like I was joking. “No
way.”

“Seriously.”

“It had to be a coincidence.”

“It stopped the minute she went back to
shore.”

Ina’s brow rose.

“There’s something weird about this girl. You
hear someone screaming earlier today? Dehaian, I mean.”

She shook her head. “We were in a surf shop
downtown.”

“The waves attacked her, Ina. I was there. I
saw it. The latter part, at least. It was creepy as hell, and when
I came closer, it just went away.”

“She see you?”

“Yeah. She seems afraid of me, though. She
spotted me just a little bit ago and looked terrified.”

“And you’re sure–” Ina glanced back at the
guys under the tree and lowered her voice, “you’re sure she’s
dehaian?”

I nodded.

“Huh.” She thought for a second. “You want me
to try talking to her? Maybe she’s just scared of guys or
something.”

“A man and woman just came to the house where
she’d been staying and took her away in a car.”

“A car.”

I nodded again.

“She was staying in a house and they took her
away in a car,” Ina repeated.

“Yep.”

“Okay, yeah, that is weird. I mean, weirder.
Or…” She shook her head.

Silence fell between us for a moment.

“You going to head home now?” she asked
me.

I hesitated.

A grin twitched her lip. “You want to figure
this out, don’t you?”

“The girl electrocuted the ocean by stepping
into it, Ina.”

Her grin broadened. “So what are you going to
do?”

“What can I do? She’s gone, and from the way
those people drove out of here, I doubt they’re thinking of coming
back.”

“You don’t know that.”

I looked away. This was true.

“Hang around a few days,” Ina suggested. “See
if she shows up somewhere nearby. If she’s really dehaian, it’s not
like she’ll be able to stay out of the ocean forever, and if she
does stuff like that every time she’s in the water…”

I grimaced.

“Oh, come on,” she teased, “you know you want
to.”

I didn’t answer.

“Zeke…”

I sighed. “A few days. And what’re you going
to do?”

She grinned.

“Ina…”

“Okay,
fine
. I’ll go home. Just let me
say goodbye to Luke.”

I glared as her expression took on an impish
tinge.

“I’ll be back in Nyciena by morning,” she
assured me, still grinning.

“
Tomorrow
morning?”

“Yes, tomorrow morning.”

I shook my head, but I couldn’t stop my mouth
from twitching as well.

“So this girl…” Ina prompted. “She cute?”

I made an exasperated noise. This wasn’t
about that. The girl electrocuted the ocean. Yes, she was
attractive. She was damn near gorgeous when she wasn’t staring at
me like I was a two-headed shark. But she was also a total unknown
and, again, she
electrocuted
the
ocean
. I needed to
find answers to that before I let myself get caught up in anything
else.

“Oh, come on!” Ina protested at my silence.
“Since when are you so uptight?”

My grimace returned. “Yes, she’s cute,” I
admitted. “Cream-scaled, by the look of it. Reddish hair. Green
eyes.”

“Sexy.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Damn straight.”

I chuckled, shaking my head again.

She smiled and took my hand. “Take care of
yourself and I’ll see you when you get home, okay?”

“Okay.”

She gave my hand a squeeze and then turned,
jogging back to the surfers. Muscle-bound Luke slid an arm around
her the moment she came close, and tossed me a warning look for
good measure.

I tried not to scoff. He really had no idea
how much trouble he’d be in if he tried to push things with Ina.
And that was just from her.

Giving them a wide berth, I walked back
toward the water. Hanging around a few days wouldn’t be hard. I
just hoped the girl would come back soon, because Ina was
right.

I’d hate to leave with this still a
mystery.

Chapter Seven

Dad drove on long after the sun had set,
tracing a winding path through the mountains and the Mojave desert
and then onto the interstate through Nevada. Las Vegas swept by,
radioactive in the darkness, and sometime after that came Utah.

And beyond brief pauses for gas, he didn’t
stop.

Mom hadn’t said a word to me since we left
Santa Lucina, and Dad only occasionally looked back at me in the
rearview mirror. I’d taken to ignoring them both, and eventually
just pillowed my head on my bag and stared out the window. The
white-noise drone of the tires lulled me, pulling my eyes closed as
the hours crept along, until I finally drifted off to sleep.

The first thing I saw was water.

I wanted to flail, to scream as I plummeted
into it, but the ocean just closed over my head, swallowing the sky
and the clouds. Water engulfed me as an invisible force propelled
me down, driving me onward till the sea surrounded me
completely.

And then it slowed. Stopped. Spreading my
arms, I hovered in the water, at a loss to know how deep I’d
fallen. The current wrapped around me then, and my skin tingled as
it carried me gently through the endless blue twilight.

But I wasn’t frightened anymore.

I paused, struck by the realization. The fear
I’d felt at first hitting the water had vanished, and now I just
knew I was safe. Even under the water, even without any air, I
wasn’t in any danger at all.

Because I belonged there.

Confusion filled me at the thought, which was
impossible and yet true.

I was where I was supposed to be.

On the heels of that understanding came hurt.
An ache in my chest that didn’t seem to want to go away. I was
where I was supposed to be, yet I wasn’t. I was leaving, even as I
floated in the infinite deep, because this wasn’t reality.

This was just a dream.

My eyes opened. The world was dark. The only
light came from the pale orange-red glow of the dash and the twin
beams of the headlights on the empty stretch of road. Dad was still
driving, while in the passenger seat, Mom slept with her head
pillowed on her curled arm.

Air escaped me. Tears stung my eyes and in my
chest, I could still feel an ache like someone had stabbed me in my
sleep, and everything I had was bleeding out through the wound. My
body was tense, and as I twisted in the seat to look out the rear
window, I felt like invisible threads extended from my skin, over
the mountains all the way to the sea, each of them growing thinner
and weaker the farther Dad drove.

And if they snapped, I wasn’t sure what I’d
do.

Swallowing, I turned back to the front, and
my hands wrapped around my elbows to hug my middle. It was
ridiculous, getting so upset over a dream. But it had felt so real,
and the sense of the water around me had seemed so right…

So beautifully, wonderfully
right
…

In my chest, the ache grew worse and I bit my
lip, trying to keep myself together. I needed to go back. Not
because my parents were moving, or because I’d always wanted to
visit the ocean. But because I
had
to.

The alternative made me feel like
screaming.

I looked at Dad, willing him to stop. He and
Mom seemed committed to driving back to Reidsburg at top speed, and
given the time on the dashboard clock, they didn’t intend to stop
at all.

But I couldn’t handle that. I needed to
leave.

And Dad just kept driving.

Minutes trickled by, while the miles
stretched like rubber bands on the verge of breaking. I wanted to
crawl out of my skin.

And then the lights of a city came into view.
Barely holding back a gasp, I glanced to Dad again.

Reaching over, he nudged Mom. With a sharp
breath, she woke, and then a grimace twisted her face and she gave
an uncomfortable groan.

“Drive?” he asked, his voice strangely
tight.

Mom swallowed, and then she shook her head.
“Not doing well,” she murmured. “Medicine wearing off. I… I can
watch.”