“What about the reverie training? How’d it go?” Willow peered at me from behind her gold aviator sunglasses. They matched her yellow and gold Quicksilver bikini perfectly.
“Not so good. I have a long way to go if I’m going to contact Thetis,” I sighed. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it at all.” I wiped some renegade sand off of my leg and readjusted the top of my pink and blue striped bikini.
“Are you still going to try it tonight?” Carmen asked.
“I have to at least try, even if I fail miserably. There’s too much riding on this not to.”
Phoebe abandoned her sandcastle and flipped over onto her stomach. “Did you guys hear anything weird last night?” Carmen’s eyes immediately darted toward me. “I thought I heard talking and then I thought I heard some creaking sound. I could have been dreaming though…”
“I didn’t hear anything. Slept like a baby,” Carmen declared a little too quickly, silently pleading with me through her dark eyes.
“Nope, didn’t hear a thing,” I supplemented, reaching for the chips nonchalantly.
“Huh. I guess I was just hearing things,” Phoebe chuckled and shrugged her shoulders.
“Was it the voices again? You know they aren’t real, right?” Carmen joked with her.
“They aren’t?” Phoebe played along; eyes growing wide with feigned disbelief. “I guess I won’t have to shave your head and smother you with a pillow like they told me to.”
As they continued to bicker over the different ways to kill each other, I thought about my eerie encounter last night with the ghost of childhood past.
“Do you guys believe in ghosts?” I asked them as off-handedly as I could.
“Ohhh, I love ghost stories!” Phoebe cooed.
“I think she meant actual ghosts, Phoebs,” Carmen corrected her and then regarded me. “Of course ghosts exist, silly.”
“How can you be so sure?” I contended.
“It’s a proven fact. They’re the souls that have no place in the Underworld. They’re cursed to roam Earth forever,” Willow explained ominously. I know I stared at her a little too long, as a similar comment from Finn bounced around in my head. Maybe he wouldn’t laugh at me after all.
“Finn should know all about ghosts if he’s destined to be the Prime,” Carmen replied. “You should ask him what he thinks.” Phoebe must have recalled my strange comments from yesterday because she perked up with excitement.
“Did you see her again?” she looked at me, “You know - the girl you said you saw yesterday?”
I brushed my finger over my trace and squinted up at her with loathing. “Yeah. Last night.”
“Awesome!” Phoebe rejoiced.
“It was about as awesome as a razor burn,” I protested with disgust. “She looked normal enough from the front, but when she turned around I could see her bloody skull and slashes in her skin.”
“Who is she?” Willow asked quietly.
“I have no idea. But she actually said something to me last night.” Their jaws dropped as they fervently waited for me to continue. “She seemed scared of something, but then just said
‘Hurry’.” I shrugged my shoulders. Did all ghosts talk in one word fragments? It would be next year before I got a complete sentence out of her at this rate.
“Hurry?” Carmen slathered more tanning lotion on her legs as she spoke. “Hurry and do what?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Maybe she knows you’re going to try to contact Thetis, but she wants you to hurry for some reason?” Phoebe suggested.
“We should see if we can find some history about the island. If she was young, there’s got to be a story about how she died,” Willow analyzed. I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to attach a name or specific story to the ghost. That would make her more real. I was more comfortable with the possibility of her being a rare side effect of heat stroke.
I averted my gaze to the ocean. The guys were sitting on their surfboards talking, occasionally scanning the water for a surfable wave. Finn, shirtless and god-like, ran his hand through his wet hair and my pulse immediately quickened. How was it possible to look that good? The muscles of his chest and shoulders glistened in the sun as it shone down on his wet skin. My body ached to touch him. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and get lost in those soft lips. Suddenly, I got an idea. I smiled slyly and rested my hand on top of the sand next to my towel. I didn’t know if it would work, but I had to give it a try.
I gathered up all of my energy, centered it and focused it down my arm and into the sand. I pulled from my love for Finn, my leftover fear from last night, and my anxiety about contacting my mother; channeling all of it into the feathery sand beneath my fingertips. As I watched on apprehensively, the waves became more frequent and slightly larger. I concentrated harder, blocking out everything else except the waves and the energy flowing out of my fingers. Higher and higher the waves rose, becoming more and more powerful. Finn met my gaze as the other guys cheered at the suddenly larger waves.
A sense of pride filled me when a glowing smile broke out across Finn’s face before he began to paddle out with the other guys. The longer I did it, the easier it was to muster up the energy and channel it. Adrenaline pumped through me each time one of them caught a massive wave and called out to one another in excitement.
“Stasia!”
My name startled me and I instinctively lifted my hand from the sand. The rush of energy that slammed into me knocked the breath out of me and I collapsed into a heap on my towel; reeling with dizziness and panting. I’d forgotten about that unfortunate aftereffect. Several woozy seconds later, I propped myself up on my elbows and tried to focus my eyes on something stable. At the moment the world was spinning at a dangerous pace.
“If you tell me you were making those waves
“Okay, I wasn’t making those waves,” I rubbed my temples and smirked at her.
“I can’t even do it in the water, but you can do it from the freaking beach? Unbelievable,” she muttered, clearly displeased with herself.
“That’s what you call talent,” Phoebe applauded my experiment; making me smile.
“I didn’t know if it’d work…” I admitted shyly.
“Hey, who hit the off switch on the wave machine?” Cage sprinted up to our towels and tumbled down with the grace of a two ton elephant. I noticed a small black ring on his pinky finger that had to be black onyx as he shook his curly hair; spraying cold water all over Phoebe and Carmen.
“What are you? A cocker spaniel?” Carmen scowled in his direction. As you might expect, that only prompted him to do it again while she scrambled to her feet to avoid the water. A cooling shadow fell over me and squinted up to see Finn gazing down at me. The sun was at his back, making him look like a dark angel - just like the first time I had seen him; providing evidence that he wasn’t only in my dreams. My heart quivered at the thought. He held out his strong hand to me and yanked me up from my towel so quick my feet left the ground, and then he caught me securely around the waist. The sudden feel of his skin against mine was magnified by the warmth of my skin contrasting with the cool feel of the water dripping off of him. His eyes swirled with shades of dark and light blue, culminating into one breathtaking color that had me hypnotized. I swept the dark, wet hair back from his brow and pressed my lips to his. He tasted like the salt water rolling down his skin, and my insides turned to mush as he kissed me back with urgency. With our audience groaning and yelling at us to get a room, he released his grip and set me down gently; arms still draped around my waist.
