Page 47 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
Yes.The word rose in my head.
Yes. Because itwouldbe safe. With Alistair.
But I chewed that sentence up and swallowed it.
Jackson said nothing.
“Hmmm. Well, here.” Alana thrust the beaker of bubbling, bright green liquid under my nose. “Drink that—all of it,” she added when I sniffed and recoiled.
It wasn’t theworstthing I’d ever smelled, but it was a bit like rancid seaweed that’d washed ashore and festered in the sand and sun for days.
The taste was worse.Because the liquid was bubbly, so it couldn’t be tossed down like a shot, and it was so salty, and bitter, and…Yuck.
I took a sip. Squeezed my lips shut when the bubbles fizzed against the roof of my mouth, and swallowed the biggest mouthful I could manage.
“Good.” Alana turned away, placing her vials back into the cabinets.
I took another gulp. And then another. The drink didnotget better with repeated exposure.
“You’ll want to take it easy for today,” Alana added.
“We were just going to see the alicorn stables,” Jackson said.
I glanced up at him after I downed my next sip. “We were?”
“Yeah, remember we were talking about it at dinner. I booked us for a tour.”
Had he told me that? Cold sweat prickled my temple—either a reaction of the fizzing drink making my insides feel poppy, or the realization that I had some blind patches in my memory from last night. Like, Irememberedthe night. All the events of it. But little details—like what we’d talked about at dinner—were fuzzy.
“I wouldn’t push it, even for a tour. Not with the state your feet are in,” Alana said. “It’ll hurt when they start healing. My advice would be to take the day to sit at the bar andread your welcome brochure.But you do whatever you feel is best. I’ll just warn you that it’ll be painful, the healing. And that’s all I can do. Butcertainly”—she paused, and pivoted, giving us another haughty down-the-nose stare—“donotmake any further attempts to swim in the inlet. I know the waters are shallow there, and it’s tempting. I know we have a tidal chart. But if you had read the fine print, you’d know that the tide is not always accurate on the isle. There’s too much magic”—she twirled her finger above her head, indicating the air around us—“it messes with the force of nature.Drink up.” She turned that twirling finger to me.
Because I had stopped drinking the tonic. It’d made my stomach feel funny and I’d hoped a little break would settle it.
It didn’t. So I downed the rest as fast as I could and handed the beaker back to Alana, who whisked it out of my hand and stuck it into a bin for cleaning. “There now, you’ll be all healed up in a few hours. The front desk takes cash or check payments—no credit cards on the isle. Ihopeyou’re aware of that, but we get a good number of people who aren’t.”
“I brought a checkbook.” Jackson patted his pants pocket.
We’d both put money into our shared checking account for this trip. Enough, we figured, to cover everything we wanted to do, twice over.
But the number we got hit with as we checked out of the clinic…Well,I wasn’t sure if it was the tonic that made my belly feel as though it’d sprouted jumping beans, or the realization that our little skinny-dipping venture had eaten a quarter of our vacation fund.
Alana had not been lyingwhen she’d said the healing would hurt. Boy, did it.
It had started at the breakfast buffet, when the potion fizzing in my stomach had left me so bloated and gassy, I’d almost retched trying to force down a piece of toast. We’d hung out at Brew & Bites for at least an hour afterward, waiting for our tour, which had a 10:00 a.m. start. By the time we left, the burbling in my belly had eased.
Nothing had healed, though. The wound on my thigh hadn’t even started to scab. I had to rewrap it in the bathroom when blood seeped through the bandages and made small ink blot patterns on my frilly skirt. Teal paired well with most colors. Crimson was not one of them.
Thankfully, I was able to flag down a staff member who got me a tin of dust—magicaldust. I sprinkled it over my skirt, waited exactly sixty seconds, as directed, rinsed it off and…Voila.No more bloodstains.
“Ye can keep that,” the robust female staff member told me when I stuttered my thank yous and tried to give the tin back. “We get shipments of ‘em near weekly, so ye’ll not be putting us out none.”
I smiled, patted her arm in thanks, and tucked the tin into my pocket, mentally calculating how much use I’d be able to get out of the dust. Magical stain removers would come inveryhandy.
With my dress saved, and the bloat deflating, I felt better when we headed for the tour.
But a scorching ache crept into my bones—the sort of deep, gnawing pain you’d get with a fever—as we lined up outside the alicorn stables. And it sharpened, until it felt like I had glass shards burrowing into my feet, razor blades peeling the flesh off my thigh, and a chain saw grinding my ribs.
I’d smiled, though, at the gathering crowd, and had managed to dig up some laughter when our enigmatic tour guide chucked some cheesy jokes at us.
