Blueisland (Watermagic Series #4) Read online

  Copyright© 2013 by Brighton Hill

  This e-book has been provided to you by the author and publisher for your individual use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any manner. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please inform the publisher at [email protected].

  Blueisland

  Watermagic Series, #4

  by Brighton Hill

  Sabine’s School of Mers Formed Twenty Five Years Ago on an Island in the Atlantic Ocean

  This is how Jewel, Savannah, Emily, Logan, Andrew, Steve, and Jane became a family

  Preface

  Back in tenth grade my high school only had three baton twirlers and I was one of them. Geeky—that’s an understatement. I must have been crazy to volunteer because everyone thought twirlers were total nerds. At least that’s the way it was at my high school. It wouldn’t have mattered what other people thought so much if they left me alone. But, you know how it is, kids love to bully the underdog.

  I should have known that, but at the time my mind was in other places. Mostly, I just wanted to get my mom who had been a baton twirler in high school to notice me more than her druggy boyfriend who had become her number one obsession. It was my hope that if I followed in her footsteps, she would come to the football games to watch my dances and love me again.

  That didn’t happen. I don’t think she even knew I was ever a baton twirler. I told her, but she just couldn’t listen to a damn thing I said. “Not, now, Jewel,” she sighed waving me away with her hand. Instead, I became the school buffoon all for nothing.

  We wore these out of style maroon colored body suits with lots of sequins and fringe around the hips that made my classmates laugh. I understood because the design made me cringe. I was more of a simple, plain dressed girl with messy brown hair and all that gaudy flash and sparkle wasn’t my thing. And, aside from the pathetic costumes, I was so skinny from malnutrition. Because my mother was so wrapped up in Steve’s life, she kept forgetting to pick up the food stamps from the government office. That year I looked like I was dying. A pale, waify teenager in a goofball leotard wasn’t a pretty sight.

  The other two twirlers weren’t much to look at either. The poor girls were as fat as elephants. Mary had short, curly orange hair that looked like a clown’s wig and Genie wore six pony tails on her head and had glasses as thick as storefront windows. People called them the bun sisters and me the baloney girl. I was the flat piece of meat between the buns. A popular football player named Jake Stevenson came up with that one. What a moron.

  Well, one dark night when the moon was full in the sky and the stars were falling like sad tears, I waited in my baton twirler costume for my uncle to pick me up. Somebody had stolen my backpack with my clothes in it. Everyone had already left the football game except for that jerk, Jake Stevenson. He was standing there under the light of the moon by the back fence that closed in the bleachers. Most everyone considered him good looking with his brown short hair and muscular physique, dark eyes that switched back and forth, but he wasn’t my type.

  Jake kept glancing over at me from across the parking lot as he chucked rocks at a metal trashcan. I wished my uncle would hurry up. I knew he probably wouldn’t show up like he promised, but I had to wait until ten just in case before walking home otherwise he’d whip me good.

  My body tensed as I noticed Jake was walking through the parking lot toward me. “Razzle, my dazzle,” he called to me, strutting a little more suavely than I was used to seeing. He was teasing me about my last name, Razzen. He liked to make fun of me at school too. “Whatchya doing out here all alone?” He winked as if that was cool or something. What an idiot.

  He stopped right before me and leaned his hand against the wooden light pole next to where I stood. Looking at him made me very uncomfortable and I felt even more awkward talking to him in my French cut costume with the fringe blowing in the night wind.

  I swallowed hard, the heat rising up to my cheeks. “I’m waiting for my ride.” My voice was more of a whisper because he made me nervous. Just because he was popular didn’t make him good.

  His shifty eyes glanced at his watch. “If your folks haven’t picked you up yet, they aren’t coming.” His low voice lifted teasingly. Whatever!

  Well, I’m embarrassed to say, tears welled up in my eyes. I think the fight I had with my mother’s boyfriend after school was making me feel out of whack. Steve said he was thinking about putting me in foster care. Jerkoff.

  But Jake Stevenson didn’t have to rub it in that my family didn’t give a crap about me. I turned away so he wouldn’t see how I was feeling, being so pathetic and all. “You’re probably right,” I said coldly without looking at him. Before he could respond, I started to walk away.

  But he jogged up to me as I crossed the parking lot and grabbed hold of my frail shoulder spinning me around. We were standing in a dimmer part of the lot now where the light from another lamppost was flickering on and off. The dark shadows and flashes of light on his angular face made me uneasy. There was something about the look in his eyes that were much steadier now that made my skin crawl.

  “There’s no one around,” he said, looking through the parking lot and back up toward the stadium.

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s obvious.” My voice was sarcastic because I didn’t know how else to act to such an absurd comment.

  “Let me give you a ride,” he suggested. “My Camero is over there.” He pointed at the black sports car.

  I knew a lot of girls who would die to go anywhere with Jake Stevenson in his Camero, but I wasn’t one of them. “No, thanks. I want the fresh air.”

  He smiled, one eye narrowed more than the other. “I’ll roll down the windows. Take off the T-tops. Can’t get more wind than that.” To my surprise, he took my hand.

  That made me even more uncomfortable. His palms were clammy and hot. “Thank you for the offer, but I think I need some alone time.” I tried to drop his hand, but he clasped it tighter. Even though it was cool out, my forehead was perspiring and a thin stream of sweat rolled down my back where my costume was too baggy.

  “I won’t take no for an answer.” He started leading me to his car. “It’s dangerous for a little girl like you to walk home at night. I won’t have it.”

  He was right. It wasn’t safe for a girl to walk home at night by herself. I was used to that sort of thing and had learned to hide in the shadows and run behind the bushes so passing cars wouldn’t notice me. But I knew that was risky all the same. I would probably be better off hitching a ride from the moron. My best friend Savannah would just die to hear I got a ride home with the one and only hot Jake Stevenson. Just giving her that thrill made it worth it. We’d have something to laugh about. But even still, I didn’t feel good about it.

  “Come on, come on,” he said, opening the door with a smile on his face.

  His insistence surprised me. He acted almost caring. I think that’s what got me to lose my mind and go against my own better judgment. This was not the way I perceived him at all. So even though I didn’t want to go with him, I did. I should have never ignored that warning in my gut because my life was never the same since. For a long time after, all I could hear in my head was his groaning, “You want it, girl. You want it.” And then, there were my screams: “No! No!” The blood was the worst part. So much blood.

  Chapter One

  Almost Two Years Later

  “Party on,” I yelled out to my classmates on the deck below as I edged my way up the mast of the yacht we rented to celebrate senior prom.

  Below me, I heard some football players chanting, “Raz, Raz, Raz…” They saw me as a tomboy and apparently liked to tease me about it. I didn’t care if they thought of me as a dude—I just wanted to get away from it all.

  “That whore’s a geek,” one guy said. My blood boiled at that. I just knew that was Jake Stevenson. He loved to put me down. If I could, I would kill him with my bare hands. Nobody knew him like I did. And I would never tell a soul the truth about him. “Baloney Girl,” he yelled, even though I quit baton twirling after that night that he drove me home.

  Some stupid girls were screaming too. I heard blond, beautiful Emily Monroe crying, “Get her down—she could die!” She was just another one of the phonies I wanted to avoid. We used to be friends in elementary school, but that all changed once she became popular.

  Like, I cared if I died. That was what I wanted, I thought as I took another swig of vodka from the bottle I was holding.

  During the dance earlier, Emily Big Boobs and I had been crowned prom queens. It was the first tie in school history, they said. Whoop-dee-do! What a joke.

  I knew the principal and teachers elected me because of what happened to my mother and that Emily was the real queen chosen by the other students of our senior class. I wasn’t the glamorous, popular type with my shaggy brown mess of hair and childish body in boy jeans. I didn’t even run for prom queen. People who run for those things are idiots. And, anyway, the only reason I even got a date to the dance was because Donny Smith’s so called girlfriend dumped him for Jake Stevenson and he needed someone to go with.

  But Emily was thrilled to get the honor and after the dance she insisted we wear the idiotic crowns the entire night even though I had already changed back into my jeans and t-shirt. Every time I took the dang crown off, she put it back on my head. It was so absurd that it almo
st became funny. I said almost because in truth it was just annoying.

  My arms started to ache as I pulled myself up the sleek lengthy pole. The night wind was thrilling as it thrashed through my tangled hair, but it knocked the crown off my head and onto the deck. Once it landed, Emily let out a loud sob. “Oh, no! Jewel Razzen’s beautiful tiara!”

  The clouds were thick above, graying in the night and the air was fresh and salty. The higher I got, the less obtrusive the sounds below became. And even in my mental state, I relished in the escape. Screw them all—superficial snobs.

  With the view around me, my mind drifted to other thoughts. The ocean is awesome. Since childhood, I’d been obsessed with the vast underwater depths and all its life forms. I used to dream of sailing the seas. In my fantasies I found sparkling treasures and was romanced by the same confusing guy of mythological wonders.

  Maybe that was why I found high school a bore with its rules and predictabilities. The social cliques were absurd. Why can’t people just be who they are rather than something that everybody else expects them to be? I wanted adventure, magic, and passion. That’s why I was damn glad that we would be graduating next week, so I could get away from Sunshine Coast.

  When I reached the top of the mast, I guzzled down the rest of the vodka, relishing the burn in my throat. I pulled the note I wrote earlier out of my jeans pocket and pushed it inside of the empty bottle before capping it. And without further thought, I chucked the thing hard and fast out into the ocean as planned. More screams. Jerks were below me. I’m not joking. Like I would smash their heads with glass. I wasn’t such a douche bag.

  At that thought, I broke off the flag flapping violently in the wind. Feeling as free as a bird, I waved my prize in the air. A part of me wanted to just let go entirely and fall through the night, plummet into the thrashing water and drown like my mother did six months ago.

  I pushed the flag in my jeans pocket and grasped onto the mast now with both hands. Two years of gymnastics gave me enough upper body strength to support my waify body for a while. I had filled out some over the last couple of years. The sounds below were muffled now from the approaching storm. It was good to have relief from their jabber.

  I yearned to see the stars, but they weren’t visible through the thick masses of graying clouds. But then, through the wind, I thought I heard the voice of my best friend, Savannah Kilmore. We went through some unconventional and hardcore Girl Scouts together as kids. Nobody’s been in a troop like ours. This wasn’t some prissy kind of club like you might expect. It was downright dirty. Even our cookie sales kicked ass—#1 in the country.

  “Raz—get the hell down.” The words sort of washed through the wind, so I wasn’t certain if it was Savannah or someone else.

  I gazed out at the immense black ocean. The unpredictability of the great expanse mesmerized me in its vastness. My view was so open and dark with just specks of light on the water. That kind of beautiful kills me.

  The yacht started to slow and come to a stop out in the middle of the ocean. It was probably a whale sighting. The captain said he would stop for those. I heard people running to the other side of the deck away from where I was at.

  My thoughts began to blend into the night. A sort of serenity started to take over my senses. I felt tired, sort of dreamy like I was floating. My mind was on a good buzz. That went on for some time. But just as my eyes started to lower, the strangest thing happened that jarred my senses.

  Holy crap! A flash of light. Did I see what I thought I saw? Could it be? I rubbed my eyes with one hand as I looked out at the ocean.

  I seemed to perceive something glowing beneath the dark waters. It looked like sparkly lights jetted through the waves and across the surface. Did someone lace my vodka with something? My body tensed as my breath quickened. Was there some sort of submarine shining lights up at us?

  But the lights appeared to grow more prominent and grander like fireworks shooting out from the depths. My adrenaline rushed fast now. What the hell could that be?

  Suddenly, to my utter shock, a guy about my age maybe a little older swam up through the spray. I felt my heart pounding hard against my chest. I could hardly breathe.

  My mind raced with so many thoughts, but I swear he looked like the same guy from my dreams. It couldn’t be. He appeared to be about nineteen or twenty. His skin was an enticing shimmer. I tried to gain focus. In the light, his eyes looked fiercer and bluer than mine—more stunning like that of a tropical sky. It looked like his hair was long and dark with a masculine array of jewels woven into his locks.

  But he didn’t seem like a nice guy. He looked downright mean with scratch marks on his stunning face. I wasn’t sure but I thought I saw a tribal design tattoo on his shoulder kind of like the one I had on mine. He bit down hard on his lip and closed his eyes as his body shuddered briefly while exhaling. The only time I had seen an expression like that was in a movie that I shouldn’t have been watching. He swung his head of long hair up and to the side sending a spray of water out that glistened in the light.

  Suddenly, he peered up at me for a moment and snarled. I shook my head in astonishment. My body shivered. I couldn’t believe my eyes. What was this? It wasn’t possible for a guy to swim so far out into the ocean. Did he swim out of a submarine somehow? I don’t think that was possible. Or was it? No, no, no. Crap. Was his boat anchored nearby and I just hadn’t seen it in the dark sea? Maybe he dove in for a short swim before returning to his vessel. What an odd thing to do.

  What were the lights? And then, as I was trying to figure it out, suddenly, some hands shot out of the lit water below him and grabbed onto his body. It happened so fast. Long nails dug into his neck causing his forehead to frown. At once, a girl surfaced and kissed along his neck. He brushed her off. The girl was utterly gorgeous with long ass hair too. Then to make matters even weirder, suddenly a whole bunch of feminine hands shot out of the water at once and pulled the stunning couple under.

  What the hell? I was shaking. This didn’t make sense. I kept looking out, waiting for them to resurface, but they did not. A group of people had just drowned them. This was crazy. It couldn’t be happening. Was I going insane? My heart tightened so tight just like the evening when the police officer told me my mother was dead.

  Who swims at night out in the middle of the ocean? It is dangerous to swim up so close to a yacht. What if the captain started it up again? The propellers could shred them to pieces. What kind of reckless teenagers would take such risks? And who would swim after them?

  This guy wasn’t even normal looking and neither was she. Hello! He was gorgeous, the epitome of my ultimate fantasy, anyone’s ultimate fantasy—the vision of a pirate-ess out at sea too long perhaps. Yet, we had only been on the ocean for a few hours. And he looked so much like the guy from my dreams. Some kind of demented serendipity perhaps? And now he was dead.

  A strange feeling swept over me. How could my reoccurring dreams actually be real? I felt like I knew this guy. During those whims, we swam together to a far off island, hung out in his secret tree house in the jungle, and messed around in a cave behind the waterfalls.

  The engine to the yacht started back up. The other kids were back from looking on the other side of the yacht for the whales now, talking amongst themselves below me. I couldn’t reason away what I had seen. I wasn’t prone to hallucinations. Sure I was buzzing, but that never made me this loony before. There was no way I imagined that. I wasn’t that creative.

  Crap! Suddenly, the yacht rocked in a jolting start and I lost my grip in the thrust. At once, I flew backwards. Oh God! Girlish screams sounded from below. I was upside down now with my legs wrapped around the pole above me as my heart slammed against my ribcage.

  I hadn’t expected that. Adrenaline rushed through my body again. That felt good, like I was alive. Now or never, I thought. With that, I drew in a quick breath and tried to inch my legs down the pole, but the position was awkward. Damn! A bead of sweat rolled off my forehead. Just do it, I told myself.

  So at once, I just let go and threw myself upwards. Somehow, I managed to grab the pole as I fell and I slid down fast. My thoughts were spinning in my mind, but to my surprise, I landed upright on the deck, relatively unscathed.