Dangerous Creatures

CHAPTER 4 Learning to Fly

By the time the last burnt marshmallow dropped into the fire, no Mortal or Caster was still awake to see it. The two hybrid Incubuses watched in protective silence as their four friends slept around the campsite.

Ridley could hear them murmuring as she drifted off to sleep. Her last waking thought was of Link, just to know he was there.

Like the old days.

After that, Ridley’s dreams were filled with old memories. She wasn’t thinking of good-byes or boys or rings coming from the embers. She couldn’t know that plans much more dangerous than any fire—and infinitely stickier than any marshmallow—had already been set in motion.

How could she?

Instead, she slept on, dreaming of things that were far eerier than a ring. Even eerier than an unknown Cast—forever Binding a Siren, a Natural, a Keeper, a Wayward, and two Incubuses—under a full summer moon in a Caster county.

A full moon was for making magic.

Magic and memories.

A little fair-haired girl sat tucked between the twisting branches of the oldest oak on the grounds of the infamous Ravenwood Plantation, reading a book that was even older than that. She hooked her scrawny legs around a bark-covered branch thicker than her waist, but all the same, it wasn’t really the safest spot for either a little girl or a big book.

“You know you’re not supposed to be reading that, Rid,” a girlish voice called up from below.

“Baby,” teased Ridley, without looking up from the book. “You know you’re not supposed to change your own diaper.”

“Auntie Del’s going to skin you when she finds out you’ve been stealing things out of her closet again,” Lena, with a dark mess of curls and bright green eyes, shouted up from the safety of the grass beneath the tree.

“Tattler,” said Ridley, flipping another page. “Where’s your tail?”

The pages were so enormous, they brushed against her faded blue jeans when she tried to turn them, nearly ripping. The book’s spine was almost as long as hers.

“Your funeral.” As she spoke, Lena flung herself down on the grass, sliding a notebook and a pen out of her pocket. She pulled the cap off the pen, flipping to a clean page in her book with a sigh. “Well, go on. What’s happening now, Rid?”

“There’s a ship, Leanie-Beanie.” Ridley twisted a blond ringlet around one finger absentmindedly.

“Don’t call me that. And?”

“And three mermaids. Only they’re not mermaids, because they have wings. And they’re singing—at least, one is. And another one is playing a kind of strange flute. And the last one is playing a little gold harp.”

As Ridley watched, the figures on the page moved through the story, exactly as she had described.

“Go on, Rid,” breathed Lena, bright-eyed. “Tell the rest.”

A ship came into view. A ship with sails. Surrounded by waves and rocks.

“There are sailors. And they come to visit the mermaids. They think the mermaids are the most beautiful creatures they’ve ever seen. I think they want to marry them. I think they’re in love.”

“Eww.” Beneath the tree, Lena giggled. “And now?”

“Now the mermaids are singing more loudly. Can you hear them? Close your eyes.” Ridley closed her eyes. Beneath the tree, her cousin Lena did the same.

“Can you?”

Lyrical music blew up from the pages of the book and into Ridley’s face. It grew louder and louder, filling the whole tree with harmonies, until the branches began to shake and the leaves fluttered to the ground beneath it.

Ridley didn’t care. She felt like she was a million miles away.

Lena covered her head with her hands, but the leaves and branches pelted her all the same. “Rid! Are you okay?”

But Ridley was transfixed. She sat clutching the book with both hands, a golden light radiating from its depths onto her face.

The music was beautiful, even hypnotic. Until hypnotic became horrific.

The sopranos turned to screeching, and the operatic melodies might as well have been nails scratching against stone. The noise was deafening, growing louder by the second, until it hurt to hear.

Ridley still didn’t move. She couldn’t. It didn’t even look like she was breathing.

Beneath the tree, Lena pressed her hands over her ears, as hard as she could. “Stop it. Make it go away, Rid. Stop it now!”

Ridley froze.

She opened her mouth and closed it again, without a word.

It was as if everything she’d ever wanted was trapped right there, in those pages—but the longer she listened to them, the more certain she became that she’d never have any of it.

The sorrow was more than she could bear. Her eyes brimmed with tears as her fingers curled even more tightly around the page.

The song intensified into a howl. The breeze became a fierce wind, blowing in circles around the golden-haired little girl.

“Hold on, Rid!”

Lena crawled slowly up the tree trunk, a finger in one ear, the other tucked down against her shoulder.

She pulled her finger from her ear, yelling like what their Gramma would call a banshee. “I can’t hear you I can’t hear you I can’t hear anything and I especially can’t hear you!”

She reached up and up until her fingers were scrabbling against the gold-edged paper. With one last burst of energy, she yanked on the book as hard as she could, knocking it out of Ridley’s arms and sending it flying down and out of the tree in an explosion of bright blue sparks.

It landed, facedown in the dirt, with a thud.

Then silence.

Ridley opened her eyes to see Lena pulling herself up next to her. The girls clung to each other, trying to catch their breath, trying to slow their hammering hearts.

“What were those things?” Lena’s face was pale. “And don’t say mermaids.”

“Sirens,” breathed Ridley. Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. “They’re called Sirens. Dark. With wings and claws and fangs. They ripped the sailors’ hearts right out of their chests.” Her eyes were stricken. “I saw them.”

Lena shook her head. “I would never, ever want to be one of those.”

“Me neither,” Ridley said. Her eyes were beginning to pool and prickle with tears.

“We won’t be.” Lena reached over, patting her cousin’s cheek. “Don’t worry, Rid. Gramma says if our hearts are good, we’ll grow up that way, too. Light as sunshine.”

“Yeah? How do you know if your heart’s any good?” The tiniest wet streak wobbled past the corner of Ridley’s eye.

“Yours is,” Lena said solemnly. “I just know it.” She drew a linty red lollipop out of her pocket and handed it to Ridley. “Promise.”

For a minute, the younger cousin almost seemed like the older one.

They traded the lollipop back and forth, up in the branches of that old oak tree, until Ridley didn’t remember the gnashing teeth or the jagged claws or the heartless sailors anymore.

Not one bit.

Promise.

When Ridley woke up, she was crying and she didn’t know why. She remembered that she’d been dreaming, but the details had already begun to fade.

“What’s wrong, Rid?” Lena was next to her, hugging her close in the morning light.

“Nothing.” She tried to think, but it felt like she was pressing on a raw nerve.

“You hate good-byes, you big ball of mush. You barely said a word last night.” Lena frowned, pulling her faded blue quilt tightly around the two of them. “Is that the only thing bothering you?”

“I told you. It’s nothing.” Rid looked around, taking in the dead campfire and the abandoned blankets. Only Ethan was still there, his face half buried in Boo’s fur. “Where is everyone?”

“Link still had packing to do. John and Liv, too. I told them not to wake you up.” Lena smiled. “Knowing you.”

Ridley was relieved.

Lena brushed a long pink strand behind Ridley’s ear. “You know, it’s not too late. Just because you didn’t finish high school with us doesn’t mean you can’t finish it at all. You could get your GED, go to night school—”

Mother of all that is holy in the world—

Rid grabbed Lena’s wrist with five dagger-like glitter nails. “Wait a minute. Are you suggesting that you think it bothers me that I haven’t graduated from Stonewall Jackson High? Have you lost what little is left of your mind?”

Lena gently detached Ridley from her arm. “You just don’t seem like yourself.”

Rid was furious. “You mean I don’t seem like a cold witch? Or I do? Because last time I checked, that’s what I was.”

“Ridley.”

“I don’t know why everyone in Gat-dung has such a hard time remembering I’m not like them. I’m not even like you. I’m a heartless Siren.”

“You are not heartless.” Lena was matter-of-fact. They could replay this conversation all Ridley wanted, but she was never going to change her position on this particular matter.

“How do you know?” Ridley sounded as miserable as she felt.

“I just know.” Lena kissed her cousin’s cheek. “Trust me.”

Truthfully, Ridley didn’t trust anybody. But if she had, her cousin would’ve been first on her list.

They sat like that, arm in arm in the silence, for a long moment.

“Promise,” Ridley whispered. She hated herself for saying the word—for cracking like that, the moment she did it—like always.

“Promise,” Lena whispered back, reaching in the pocket of her sweatshirt and pulling out a bright green lollipop.

“Green?”

“Change is good. Live a little.”

Ridley took the lollipop, waving it in her cousin’s face. “You rebel.” She stood up, awkwardly stretching her long, bare legs. “So, yeah. I gotta jet.” It was as close as Rid could come to saying good-bye to her only real friend.

“I know,” Lena said. She knew everything. What Rid was saying—and what she couldn’t. She held out a set of car keys. “I just Cast a Manifesto. It’s on the corner.”

Ridley shook her head. “You’re good.”

“I know,” shrugged Lena, her eyes twinkling.

“Say good-bye to Ethan for me. And you behave, Cuz.” Ridley smiled, in spite of everything.

“I always do. I’m the good one, remember?”

Ridley never forgot.