Ripple

Chapter Nineteen

After I leave Cole’s house, I drive to the lake, and the anticipation is more like dread. Erik can’t be there in the tree line. He just can’t.

I shake my head and tighten my grip on the wheel. I was probably imagining it last time. My mind played tricks on me, imagining him there. It had been so dark.

It makes perfect sense.

Sort of.

I shut my car off and park it in its usual spot in the shadows of the big fir tree. But then I stall. I sit and stare out at the raindrops sliding down the windshield, and I wonder if I could possibly skip swimming tonight.

But I have to know if what I saw was real.

I slide out of the car and head toward my lake, walking slowly, letting my sneakers sink in the mud. The closer I get to my destination, the edgier I feel. When I step out into the clearing, the hairs on my arms stand on end, and I stop abruptly.

He’s standing next to my tree, darkly silent in the shadows. Right under the limb where I normally hang my clothes.

“I’m sorry,” he says, so much louder than the sounds of the surrounding forest. His tone is smooth as honey, a deep, beautiful baritone.

I stop several yards away from him, hoping the darkness is enough to conceal the fear shivering through me. “For what?”

He looks out at the lake for a long silent moment. Part of me wants to pick up and run. I can’t escape the feeling that he knows something, something I don’t want to know. That whatever he says next is going to change everything.

Then, finally, he answers me. “For scaring you last night ... and then running. Until last night, I wasn’t totally sure you were what I thought you were, and so I had to follow you. Then when I saw you . . . I panicked.”

I take another step backward. He knew what I was ... before he saw me swimming?

He furrows his brow. “Are you actually afraid of me?” His head tips to the side, his blond hair sliding off his forehead.

I don’t answer. I just stare at him, willing my posture to relax, but I can’t seem to shake off my fears.

The concern melts into awe. “You really don’t know, do you?”

I fake anger, the one thing that’s gotten me through these last two years. “You have five seconds to tell me what you’re doing here or I leave.”

He twists away from the tree to face me fully. He leans his head to the side, a crease appearing between his brows. “I’m your match.”

I raise an eyebrow and try not to snort. “No, you’re just some guy who transferred to my school this year who likes to stalk people in the woods.”

He sighs and breaks eye contact. His voice lowers, cracks a little. A tremor of sadness wrenches through him. “All this time, I just sort of assumed you were looking for me, too. No wonder it was so hard to find you.”

It’s hard to fight the urge to step closer to him when he looks so vulnerable. He reminds me of me. But I didn’t manage thus far by being weak. “I don’t understand.” I cross my arms and hope it’s enough to muffle the thunderous sounds of my heart.

He takes one more step and when I look at him up close like this, I have to fight to stay where I am.

Erik’s eyes really do look like mine. Is this what he meant by match?

“I’m like you. I’m . . . drawn to the water,” he says.

All I can do is stare, until the silence and the questions spinning in my head are too much. How does he know what I am? I’ve never told anyone.

“You’re a siren?” I ask.

Erik laughs, a throaty masculine sound. “No, of course not. Sirens are women. I’m a nix.”

He waits for my reaction, but I just stare.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says. “You don’t know what a nix is?”

I shake my head, try to ignore the fluttery feeling in my stomach.

Erik sighs and runs a hand through his blond hair. “Why don’t you know any of this? No one told you?” He pauses long enough to take in the confused expression on my face. “Wow . . . I . . .” He blows out a long slow breath. “You’re cursed to swim, right? A literal curse. Hundreds of years ago, there weren’t many of you. A few dozen, at best, cursed by the angry, the jealous, the spiteful. For some, a gypsy curse, others, voodoo or spells.”

He turns to look at me, takes in my wide eyes, and then nods. Erik knows he’s right. But how does he know this stuff?

“Nixes, we’ve been around centuries longer,” he says, motioning to the lake. “Our curse dates back to medieval times. It’s a little different than yours. We’re drawn to rivers, rather than just swimming. We get ... a sense of peace from being around them.” He pauses and stares at me. “Why don’t you sit down?”

I shake my head. It wouldn’t be a bad idea, but I can’t seem to move. Finally, he pulls his jacket off, lays it on the ground beside the tree, and forcibly maneuvers me so that I’m sitting on it. Then he kneels in front of me.

“Don’t freak out, okay? I’ll explain it all. Just bear with me here.” He pauses, checking to make sure that I’m not about to run off. Then he continues. “The original cursed nixes were vain, proud kind of guys. Normal men, not creatures of the water. They lived hundreds of years ago, and many were noblemen.

“Then there were these witches, sorcerers, voodoo women—whatever term you want to use—who would disguise themselves as beautiful women. They’d go to the balls, the parties, whatever it took to get men to notice them. They’d court these guys, wait until they men were nearly in love with them, and then they revealed themselves as the disfigured, outwardly ugly women they were.”

He blinks a few times, staring off in the distance as if he can see it playing out on a reel in his head. “If they were turned away—scorned by the men who had fallen for them—they would curse the men to the same fate. To be unloved, hideous, a lonely creature who would live a life of misery.”

“But there’s something no one ever thought of. If you get us together, a nix and a siren . . . it can be different. The idea of our curses is that no one could ever love us—that we could never be accepted for what we are. They didn’t account for the fact that if you put two . . . cursed creatures together . . . we no longer see the curse, but the people we are.”

My face is numb, and all I can feel is the bark digging into my back. Erik can’t be right. It sounds so simple, so straightforward when he says it. But the curse is too complicated, too impossible to fix. “That’s not possible,” I say, my voice more like a whisper.

“But it is. I’m your match. We can cure each other.”

“How? When? Why?”

A dozen questions spin around in my head. “And if you knew this, why did you spend the last few weeks just sitting there in class?”

“I’m sorry. I just didn’t know for sure if you were a siren. It’s not like you advertise it. It was a little nerve-racking to realize I was right.”

I swallow, my breath shallow.

“Your curse will break when you, a siren, love someone like me, a nix, and if I in turn love you. So . . . we spend some time together. See if it can become what it needs to. See if it leads us to . . . fall in love.”

I shake my head. “But I don’t know you.” A second thought occurs to me. “Have you killed?” A chill races down my spine, and I jerk back so fast my head smacks into the tree behind me.

Erik’s bright blue eyes flare wider as understanding dawns. “No, I haven’t killed. Not yet. It’s what’s driven me to find you. I needed to find you before that happened. Before the curse sets in on my eighteenth birthday.”

Me? I can stop his curse? I try to calm my racing heart. Keep my hands from shaking. “Eighteenth? But for me it was—”

“Your sixteenth. I know. Nixes are different. We don’t sing either.”

“Then how do you . . .?”

He looks away for a second. “I wish . . .” He clears his throat. “I wish it were simply singing. Nixes don’t lure women into the water. We linger around rivers, can’t seem to leave them behind. We . . . we . . .” He sighs and stares up at the stars. Moments of silence tick past. “We drag women into the river. Drown them by force.”

My mouth goes dry. My breath comes faster and faster.

He turns to look at me, pulls my hands into his. “Please don’t be afraid of me. I don’t want to be this either. No more than you want to be a siren. I hate knowing what I’m capable of, and every day I’m more worried about what I could do. I need you. You’re the only one who can help me avoid this terrible fate. Together . . . we can be normal.”

I shake my head and inch backward, until I’m fully backed up against the tree.

“I’m sorry. . . . I’m screwing this up. Just give me a chance to explain it all to you. From the beginning. Make you understand.”

I nod because it’s all I can do.

His voice is husky, smooth, and calming. “A hundred and fifty years ago, they say a nix stumbled upon a siren. He saw her swim and was awed by it. But, unlike other men, he wasn’t lured by her voice. Instead, he stood there, mesmerized by her song. Neither of them knew what to do, only that they were a kind of kindred spirit. They were intrigued. They spent that night together, staring at the water. He came back every night, watched her swim, and eventually, they fell in love, and then everything changed. Their curses were broken, and they were no longer slaves to their fate. The legend is that when a nix and a siren fall in love, the curse is broken.”

He rakes in a slow breath. “The curses were revenge for things our ancestors did. They’re meant to force us into loneliness. The idea is that no one can possibly accept us for the monsters we are. As soon as they discover the truth . . . they leave.”

I swallow. He’s right. The second my dad knew what my mom was, he disappeared. And he never came back.

“But the two of us together . . . why would we judge each other for it? We’re willing to look beyond it. See each other for who we are instead of what we are.”

I swallow. “How do you know this?”

He smiles, gets this faraway look for a moment before meeting my eyes again. “My father is a nix, and my mother a siren. If it worked for them, it could work for us.

“It’s been slow and tortuous, trying to find you. Some nixes never find who they’re looking for. They live their entire lives with the curse.”

Erik leans in closer, his thumb lightly tracing my jawline for a whisper of a second. “Two years ago, a high school senior—a star swimmer—drowned.”

Steven.

“On its own, it wasn’t enough. But then I saw a photo of your mother, drowning under unusual circumstances. And I found out she had a daughter. My parents knew how important it was to find you. So they sent me here to see if I was right.”

He edges closer, meeting my eyes. “And turns out I was. You’re a siren. Like nixes, sirens are rare. You’re probably the only one in the world even close to my age.”

He pauses and crouches lower, so we’re eye to eye. “You know it makes sense. By now swimming has probably become the only thing that matters, the thing the rest of your world revolves around. You have to want more from life than the card you’ve been dealt.”

“I . . .” I swallow. “It’s just weird. To hear you talk about this. About ... what I am. I’ve never talked to anyone about it.” I don’t know what to think of all this. The idea that everything I’ve lived has just been turned on its head. He looks at me, at the scared look in my eyes, and steps back. The sudden distance seems to force air into my lungs, and I take a big gasp of breath.

He furrows his brow. “I’m sorry . . . I . . . must be overwhelming you. I never considered that you wouldn’t know about me. About what we . . . about us.”

I swallow, find myself climbing to my feet even though I don’t know why. “I just ... this is . . . a lot to take in. I don’t know what to say right now.”

“You don’t have to say anything. Let it settle in and we can talk more tomorrow.”

“I think I have a boyfriend,” I say, lamely.

He purses his lips. “I understand. That’s . . .” He doesn’t know what to say. He clearly hadn’t expected that to be my reaction. “Unfortunate,” he concludes.

“Do I still need to swim tonight?”

Erik nods. “Yes. You’ll have to keep swimming, for now. Until we fall in love.” He clears his throat. “I’ll go.”

I don’t know what to say. This has been the most bizarre conversation of my life. “Will you be at school tomorrow?”

He nods. “Yes. I transferred here. I was hoping . . . hoping I could be normal. Hoping we could be normal. Finish school together like everyone else.”

I nod, but I don’t know what to say. “Can we talk about this tomorrow? When it’s all . . . sunken in?”

He nods. “Yeah. Of course.”

“Okay. Um, see you then?” I edge toward the water, twist around so the lake is to my back and I’m staring at him.

“Yeah. Tomorrow.”

He doesn’t break eye contact as he edges away into the shadows. “See you then.”

And then he turns and steps into the darkness. I stand on the edge of the lake for several more minutes, waiting for him to reappear. He doesn’t.

Finally, I turn to the water, the only thing that never changes.