Page 70 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
“Do you…Can…” he blustered. Took a moment to collect himself and said, “There is a word for you…for what youfeel.What you are. But it has slipped.”
“There’ve been a lot of words used for me. Depends on who you ask. My dad probably had about the best of the bunch, though.That,”I added when the slit in Alistair’s eye narrowed, “is a story for another time.”
Never.
It’s a story for never.
“It’s not c-c-c…” A gusty sigh quivered the water around him. “Normal.It’s not normal. To feel what you feel.”
“No. It’s not. Which is why I generally don’t advertise it.” I crossed my arms over my chest as a cold wash of reality trickled over my head.
It suddenly wasn’t arousing to have his gaze expose me,study me, like this.
It was humiliating.
“I’m sorry,” Alistair’s whisper caressed my brain, soothing the nerves his stare had flayed raw. “I didn’t mean to u-u-upset you.”
“You didn’t. I’m tired. And cranky, I think. And…”
“Unhappy?”
“Worried,” I said. “Aboutyou.I felt you earlier, Alistair, when the Brady Bunch?—”
“B-Brady. Bunch.”
“—arrived.”
“Brady Bunch. I know this.” His eye bobbed behind another wave.
“It’s a show.” I shrugged. “Another of Mom’s favorites. About a dysfunctional family. So I’m being ironic when I call the motley crew of snobby Sorcerers the Brady Bunch. I’m really talking about Rune Bloodworth and all his henchmen and henchwomen. Like Onyx.”
Pain squiggled in my chest.
Alistair’spain.
He seemed to realize the agony worm had escaped, though, because he immediately clamped down on it, drawing it away from me.
“You know her?” I asked.
His eye closed, and the world got a little bleaker, scarier without its light. “I do.”
“Did she?—”
“I w-wish…want…don’t…don’t want to speak of Onyx.” Alistair’s eye opened a small, weary crack. “Not now. I’m sorry, Pippi.”
“Don’t be sorry. I get it. Believe me. So I guess we’re both leaving stories for another time, huh?”
He hummed in agreement.
“We’ll have to meet again then, right?”
He said nothing.
“Tomorrow night?”
Good grief, Pippi, get the hint and leave the poor guy alone!
But before my brain could shoot those needly barbs of doubt into my bloodstream, Alistair said, “I’d like that.” In a voice filledwith hope—the sort you held your breath for, because you were afraid that any slight movement, even an exhale, would pulverize the thing you’d been clinging to.
