33. Chapter 33
Ididn’t have time to react before Dad scrambled out of bed. Any excuse.
“What’s happening?” Dad asked as we hurried down the corridor.
“You won’t believe it,” Sandra said, taking the steps down two at a time. “It’s... you just won’t believe it!”
She seemed too elated for it to be bad news, but I kept my caution all the same as we followed her downstairs and toward the arrow room. We dashed inside and I stopped dead.
Where the arrow had once stuck out of the wooden pillar in the middle of the room, there was only a black mark, and at the foot of the pillar was a pile of dust. But that only caught my attention for a split second. Standing on the other side of the room, glowing with a pearly sheen that moved under the sunlight streaming through the window, were ghosts. The spiritual forms of Phineas, Ray, and every other Arrowood that had ever died because of the curse, and...
“Mum.” My eyes blurred with tears, obscuring my view of her, so I wiped them away fiercely with my sleeve.
When I could see her again, she beamed at me and made her way across the room to us.
“Celeste,” Dad breathed, holding a hand out to her.
Mum put her translucent hand on top of Dad’s. “Theo, I’ve missed you so much.”
“I... I can’t... I can’t believe...” Dad dissolved into tears, and I wrapped an arm around him, leaning my head on his shoulder.
“Does this mean the curse is...it’s over?” I asked.
With the arrow gone and the souls freed, could it mean anything else?
“It’s broken, sweetheart. Thanks to you. And Ben, of course,” Mum said, smiling. “I’m so proud of you.”
As I exchanged tender looks with Mum, I was overcome with the feeling that there wasn’t just hope for the future of Dusk, but for the first time in centuries, for the Arrowoods and the Everharts, too.
***
Floating on my back in the ocean, tail listing lazily from side to side, the peace felt almost alien. After months of utter despair, relaxation had a hard time fitting back into my emotional range.
The stars glistened brighter than I ever remembered, but perhaps I had seen them through the sheen of the phoenix’s magical barrier for too long.
After spending some time with Mum and Dad, I had told them I was going to go swimming in the ocean with my boyfriend and left them alone. They needed it, and I hoped that when I got back, they would have bridged a few gaps in their relationship.
As a ghost, Mum had every chance of moving on to the next life, but I hoped that after years of confinement away from us, she would want to stick around for years at least. Maybe even my entire life if she could manage it.
Telling Dad the truth had unloaded a lot of weight, and he had taken it well. Almost too well. I wondered if he was just too shocked from learning Mum and I were mermaids to actually comprehend that I had told him I was dating an Everhart.
Splashes approached, and I flipped upright to see Ben paddling toward me in a wetsuit on his surfboard.
“Still want to sneak out with me, huh?” Ben asked, folding his hands on top of the board and resting his head on them.
“I figured we should do it one last time, for old time’s sake.” I swam up to him and kissed him. “Is your grandfather okay?”
“Fit as a fiddle.” Ben rolled into the water, splashing me on the way in.
I giggled as he emerged, scraping his hair out of his face. “So your curse is broken, Dusk’s two curses are broken and...” I drum rolled on his surfboard, “... our families’ curse is broken. For the first time in living memory, this place is curse free.”
“Not bad for a day’s work, huh?” Ben leaned an elbow on his surfboard and swam in close to me. “But we’ve still got a little unfinished business.”
“Are you serious? We’ve done all that and there’s still something we haven’t done? Wait. Is it sex at the Great Barrier Reef?” I asked.
“It’s not that, but it is on the to-do list.” Ben cupped my cheek with his hand, and my face flushed. He gazed into my eyes with a look tender enough to dissolve me. “We need to talk about what you said earlier.”
“... what did I say?”
“You said you loved me.”
Oh gods, I had. Had I meant it? Is that what he wanted to know? Well, of course I had meant it, but had I meant to say it in that moment? What was I thinking? I should have said it sooner! We were both about to die as far as we knew and I hadn’t already told him? Had I even known-?
“Maeve? Are you doing your whole internalised psycho-babble thing?” Ben asked.
“Excuse me?”
Ben grinned. “You freeze up, but I know the cogs are turning back there. It’s okay, you know... I love you too.”
For the millionth time that day, I burst into tears and sank into his arms, disappearing into the crook of his neck.
“Really?” I mumbled against his skin.
“I didn’t want you to feel self-conscious about it and I hadn’t said it back... I worried you’d think I didn’t feel the same way.” Ben pulled me out of my hiding place and kissed my nose. “Stop hiding.”
“Can’t help it.” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “I told my dad about us, by the way.”
“Oh good. I told my mum.”
“You what?” My mouth fell open.
Margaret Everhart had only ever wanted to throttle me whenever I was in her vicinity.
“Yeah, she was weirdly okay with it,” he said. “I’m suspicious that she’s hiding her true feelings.”
“That’s so strange. I thought the same thing about my dad. You don’t think that the curse maybe... exacerbated the hate?” I asked.
“I mean, maybe? Because now it’s broken, everyone is really chill, and I think I might take advantage of that.”
“How so?”
Ben wrapped one arm around my waist and propped the other up on his surfboard for support. He touched his nose to mine, the way he always did.
“I thought I’d ask my mum about the reason she brought Adrian and me here,” he said. “After what we heard the day she brought us to Dusk, I think there’s more to our adoption than she’s told us.”
“Are you going to do that before or after you introduce me to her?” I asked, running my hands up his body. It wasn’t the same with his wetsuit on.
Ben snorted. “Maybe we should let the dust settle before I invite you over for dinner.”
“Yes, we wouldn’t want any blood in the dining room. It might spoil the carpets.”
“She won’t hurt you…not while I’m there, anyway.” Ben patted the part of my tail where my bum would have been. “You’ve got a sexy tail, by the way.”
I snorted. “Why thank you. You’re putting me in the mood to practice for the Great Barrier Reef.”
“That’s the best suggestion I’ve heard all day.” Ben kissed me, and I sank into him, my tail transitioning back into legs.
As I kissed him under the stars, the waves lapping gently at our backs, I felt for the first time in my life a sense of completeness and elation that I couldn’t put words to. If this was the rest of our lives, I welcomed the future with open arms.