She stared at him with her big, suddenly sad eyes. Her lower lip trembled.
“No…you can’t…”
“Got it?”
Jack turned and sloshed over toward where Carl waited with the boat in the deeper water.
“You can’t!”she screamed behind him.
Watch me.
9
“He needs killin’, Semelee,” Luke said. “He needs killin’ real bad.”
They had the deck of the Horse-ship all to theirselfs. Semelee sat with her legs danglin’ over the side, starin’ at her reflection in the water. Luke crouched next to her.
His head had stopped bleedin’. Finally. For a while there she’d thought he was gonna lose every drop of blood in his body. He’d refused to go to the hospital, sayin’ he’d heal up just fine without no damn fool doctors stickin’ him with needles. Maybe he was right, but he sure looked stupid with that red bandanna tied across his head and under his chin.
“You’re right,” Semelee told him. “For once, I ain’t got no argument with you.”
Luke stared at her with shocked eyes. “You mean it?”
“Damn right I do.”
“But I thought you was sweet on him.”
“Wasn’t never sweet on him. I thought he was special but that don’t matter none now. He hurt you and—”
“His daddy did the shootin’.”
“I know that. But his daddy only pulled the trigger. It was him, it was Jack who put him up to it. Probably told his daddy to blow your head off but the old boy only creased you. Can’t have that, Luke. Can’t have nobody, no matter how special they are, hurtin’ someone in the clan.”
“So then it’s okay with you if I take Corley and a couple—”
Semelee shook her head. “Uh-uh. I’m gonna handle this my own self. For you, Luke. It’ll be a present from me to you.”
The shock in Luke’s eyes melted into something like love.
Don’t be gettin’ no ideas, she thought.
Because this had nothin’ to do with Luke. She was just lettin’ him think that. He’d been too far away and too busy with his bleedin’ head to pay any attention to what had gone on between her and Jack in the shallows. Didn’t hurt none though to let him think he was the reason she was gonna go after Jack.
But this was gonna be all for her.
She’d wanted to cry all the way back from the shallows. Her heart still felt like it’d been tore right out of her chest. He’d turned her down, turned his back and walked away. He said it was because he was taken, but that was a lie. Semelee had seen it all through her life and she knew the real truth: Jack thought he was too good for her.
But as she’d returned to the lagoon she realized it was the other way around.
Jack…how could she’ve thought he was special and meant for her? What was she thinking? He obviously wasn’t so special and definitely not for her. She saw that now. Her visit to the lights in the sinkhole had changed everything. She knew her True Name now, knew that she’d been brought here for a purpose. She wasn’t sure what that was yet, but she would. She just knew she would.
She’d been special before—her powers proved that—but now she was even more special. Much too special for Jack.
Yeah, but if that was true, why was she still hurtin’? Why this cold hard lump where her stomach used to be?
She knew of only one way to make it better.
“Leave me be for now,” she told Luke. “I gotta work on this. I’m gonna fix a big fat surprise for our friend Jack.”
He got up and backed away. “Okay, Semelee. Sure. Sure. Maybe I’ll go check on Devil. See how he’s doin’.”
Despite how bad she was feeling, Semelee had to smile. Luke’d always been sorta like her puppy dog, but now he was actin’ like her slave.
But she was okay with that. Every girl should have a slave.
10
“I think this calls for a drink,” Dad said as they stepped into the house.
They’d dropped Carl—with his thousand dollars—off at the trailer park. All the way home he’d been so effusive in his thanks for rescuing him from the clan and the lights that Jack had had to shut him up by getting him to describe what he’d seen last night. He’d found Carl’s description of Semelee being lowered into the hole particularly unsettling. If the lights, filtered through sand and water, had caused the clan’s deformities, what would direct exposure do? Make you crazy? The cenote must have been where she’d learned—how had she put it? Who I am. Who was she if not Semelee?
“That was one hell of a shot, Dad. One hell of a shot.”
Jack kept reliving the emotional swings of that moment.
“Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it, though?”
Dad had darted into the kitchen and was searching through the bottles in a cabinet above the sink. His speech came in staccato bursts, his movements were quick, jittery, as if he’d mainlined caffeine.
He’s higher than the proverbial kite, Jack thought.
“I wasn’t looking to kill him, you know, and prayed I wouldn’t, but I was also thinking, if it’s his life or Jack’s, then I can live just fine with a kill shot. All the skills came back as I was sitting in that tree, Jack. Suddenly I was back at the Chosin Reservoir, and I was on autopilot and really, really relaxed because no one was shooting at me out in the Glades. It was just me and the rifle, and control of the situation was mine for the taking. I—here it is.” He pulled a dark green bottle from the cabinet and held it aloft. “Wait till you taste this.”
“Scotch? I think I’ll go for a beer.”
“No-no. You’ve got to try this. Remember Uncle Stu?”
Jack nodded. “Sure.”
Uncle Stu wasn’t a real uncle, just a close friend of the family. Close enough to earn “Uncle” status.
“He belongs to a single malt scotch club. He let me try this once and I had to get a bottle. Aged in old sherry casks—amontillado, I believe.”
“And discovered with a skeleton behind a brick wall?” When Dad gave him a questioning look, Jack said, “Never mind.”
“You drink this neat.” Dad poured two fingers’ worth into a couple of short tumblers. “Adding ice, water, or soda is punishable by death.” He handed Jack a glass and clinked his own against it. “To the best day of my life in the last fifteen years.”
Jack was pierced by an instant of sadness. The best? Really?
Not a Scotch drinker, Jack took a tentative sip and rolled it around on his tongue. It had a sweetness and a body he’d never tasted in any other Scotch. And the finish was…fabulous.
“For the love of God, Montresor!” he said. “That is good!”
“Isn’t it?” Dad said, grinning. “Isn’t that the best you ever had?”
“No question. Potent stuff.”
“That’s what I hear, but I haven’t seen any proof.”
Jack let that one slide. “Where can I get a bottle?”
“You can’t. It’s all gone. They produce only so many casks and this batch is long sold out.”
Jack lifted his glass for another sip. “Then we’d better nurse this one.”
“I don’t care if we empty the bottle. This is a special day. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve felt this alive.” He looked at Jack. “But I have to ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
“Where’d that pistol come from, the one you pulled after I parted the big guy’s hair?”
Jack felt very close to his father at the moment, closer than he could ever remember. The father-son slope had been leveled. They were eye to eye now. Equals. Friends. He didn’t want anything to get in the way of that, but he couldn’t very well tell Dad he’d imagined the Glock.
So he pulled it from the small of his back and laid it on the kitchen counter.