“Your mouth is open,” Beka said, a tad acerbically. “Need something else?”
He closed his mouth with a snap and nodded, completely speechless. He had to have imagined that. Or it was some kind of trick. That was it—it was a trick. Crazy people did all sorts of things to support their version of reality. She must have somehow arranged that stunt ahead of time.
“How about if I pick something?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said, cool as a rock. “Go for it.”
“Okay,” Marcus said, wracking his brain to come up with something completely impossible. Maybe if he could get her to face reality, it would help her to snap out of this. He leaned down and picked up a pillow from where it had fallen—or been shoved—onto the floor during their passionate lovemaking. “Can you turn this into, oh, I don’t know, a bird?”
She raised an eyebrow, but took the pillow out of his hands. “I can’t change an inanimate object into a living being; no witch has that kind of power,” she said.
Aha!
“But I can make it seem like a bird, if that would help.” She tossed the pillow up into the air, making some kind of swirling gesture with two fingers on her right hand as she did so. As he watched in stunned amazement, the pillow became a vivid crimson cardinal that flew across the room before coming to rest on a countertop and returning to its original form. It even sang a few melodic notes along the way.
“What the—”
“I’m sorry,” Beka said. “I know it is a lot to take in. But if we were going to have any chance together at all, you had to know the truth.”
Marcus felt like he’d been standing too close to a mortar strike; as if the ground underneath his feet suddenly shook and disintegrated, filling what had moments before been clear air with sharp and deadly debris. Nothing was what he had thought it was. Least of all Beka.
“The truth?” he said, raising his voice as he got out of bed and started pulling on clothing as fast as he could. Shock made his head spin. “You wouldn’t know the truth if it hit you over the head with a brick. I can’t believe you let things get this far without telling me you’re some kind of magical creature out of a storybook. Does anyone else know?” He spun around and stared at her, tee shirt crushed in his hand. “Does Kesh?”
Beka dropped her gaze. “Yes. Kesh knows. But I didn’t tell him. I mean, he’s always known.”
Marcus jammed the shirt on over his head, not caring that it was inside out. “What, is he a Baba Yaga too?”
“No,” Beka said. He could tell he was upsetting her, but at the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
“Baba Yagas are always women,” she said. “Kesh is a Selkie.”
“A Selkie. Like the people who can turn into seals. My da used to tell stories about them too.”
“More like seals that can turn into people,” she said, then brushed away the correction with a wave. “It doesn’t matter. But yes, Kesh is a Selkie. Um, a Selkie prince, actually. So he knows what I am. But nobody else does. I mean, nobody who isn’t magical.”
A freaking prince. It figured. He never had a chance, did he? “Well, I’m sure as hell not a prince,” Marcus growled, shoving his feet into his shoes. “But I can do magic.”
“You can?” Beka looked startled, confused, and hopeful, all at once.
He took one more moment to look at her, so beautiful, so treacherous. Thank goodness he hadn’t let her get any closer to his heart.
“Yes,” he said. “I can make myself disappear out of your life.”
He turned and walked away, stomping across the bus to the door and slamming it open with a shuddering crash. He turned around long enough to see one shimmering tear glide over pale skin to hang, quivering like a frightened faun, before falling in slow motion to the half-empty bed.
“And I expect you to stay away from me, my father, and the boat,” he said. “Whatever the hell you’re really up to, I want nothing to do with it. Or you.”
He should have known better, he told himself as he got into his Jeep, feeling shocked and betrayed by the magnitude of the secrets she’d been keeping from him, just when he thought he was coming to know the real Beka. All the things he’d been sure were lies were true. And the one thing he’d been sure was true was a lie.
If life was a fairy tale, his was never going to have a happy ending.
* * *
BEKA GOT DRESSED methodically and folded the futon back into a couch. The air inside the bus smelled like passion and heat and exertion; her skin still held the scent of Marcus. Every time she moved she could feel the pleasant ache of unaccustomed activity between her legs and in the heaviness of her breasts. It should have been glorious. Instead, it was hell. Finally, she just gave up and sat on the floor in the kitchen, hugging her legs and letting the tears seep into her already sodden tee shirt.