Deep Betrayal Page 0,30

on—to feel this way.”

“What way?”

“Like you’ve traded me in for my dad.”

Calder tipped my chin and kissed me. “I know you just got dry, but how ’bout I show you something. It will do a better job of explaining than I can.”

“You don’t mean we’re going swimming. What about Maris?” A chill ran down my arms.

“I was thinking more like a virtual swim.” He sat down on the floor and he pulled me down. I straddled his lap, facing him, and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. He fixed my sweater so it didn’t bunch up between us.

“Now,” he said, adjusting my weight on his legs. “I know, in the past, you’ve preferred to resist this, but let me have my way with you, just this once?”

My cheeks burned. “I thought you said something about a virtual swim?”

“Look into my eyes, Lily. Relax. I want to show you something. Someone, actually. I want you to understand why I’m spending so much time with your dad. It’s more than just needing to train him, and I don’t want you to be anxious anymore.”

I exhaled slowly, releasing the tension in my shoulders. I leaned in, staring into his beautifully clear green eyes. “Where are we going?” I asked, as they intensified in color.

He didn’t blink. His irises burned with an inner fire I’d allowed myself to see only a few times before. His pupils dilated and, involuntarily, I leaned in farther. I felt myself falling into him, but my forehead never bumped against his.

His fingers trailed up my spine, and although a part of me knew I was still sitting in his lap and in my bedroom, another part of me was giving way to his hypnosis and equally convinced I was underwater.

Instinctively, I held my breath. Calder’s lips were on mine, filling me with air. A cold burn flashed along my arms.

He made me believe he was swimming me deeper, farther into the lake, past the southern tip of Madeline Island, through surprising patches of warmer water. We dodged lake trout and whitefish, swatted at loons as they dove for prey. The low, muted bumps and high, metallic clinks of the marina faded behind us. They were soon replaced by an unfamiliar vibration that trilled along the lengths of my arms.

Calder responded to the change in sound with a change in direction. He tucked me gently under his arm and bore southeast. Eventually, we surfaced in an unfamiliar spot. The lake was calm with only a washboard ripple of waves across the surface.

“Cold?” he asked, his voice a soft murmur, his eyes still piercing my own.

“No,” I said. “I’m a mutant, remember?” He rolled like a seal in the surf, pulling me on top of him. His heart beat against my chest.

“Well, c’mon, you creepy mutant.”

I gulped another lungful of air before he rolled and dove, bringing me down to depths I didn’t think I should go. Leaving the security of the air, I waited for the pressure to crush my lungs, but I never felt more than a firmness about me—like the water was holding me—my mind let go of earthly concerns, leaving the world behind, my thoughts slipped to the Lady of Shalott:

She left the web, she left the loom,

She made three paces thro’ the room,

She saw the water-lily bloom …

This is it, I thought. The pressure on my body made me believe I was about to turn. Every thirty seconds, Calder sealed his mouth on mine. I searched ahead, following the line of his arm, which stretched out in front of us like a prow as he swam. Eventually, a dark spot took shape, growing as we drew closer, until it became a crumpled mass of dark, splintered oak, a broken mast, vacant portholes staring out at us like a many-eyed sea creature. The name J. P. Brodie was written in large script across the stern. Calder pulled me along to the starboard side, to the third porthole. On the other side of the glass, I could see part of a black coat and a button decorated with an anchor. Calder gestured for me to come closer.

I smiled, accepting his invitation, and peered through the window. A second passed, and then a dead man’s pasty face bobbed ghoulishly across the porthole. My stomach hit my throat.

I scrambled out of Calder’s arms to find myself standing in my bedroom—dry and disoriented and gasping for breath. “What the hell was that?”

Calder smiled impishly up at me from the floor. “That