Love is Hell Read online

  Murrin shrugged. “I want my wife to be pleased. That is all that matters.”

  Alana wasn’t surprised to see Dreadlocks—Vic— leaning on a wall outside the coffee shop where she’d been waiting while Murrin was off on a secret errand. She’d thought she’d seen Vic several times lately. She didn’t stop though. She wasn’t sure she knew what to say to him. When she’d seen him watching, she thought to ask Murrin about him, but she wasn’t sure what to say or ask.

  Vic matched his pace to hers and walked alongside her. “Would you hear what I have to say, Alana?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are mated to my brother, and I am worried about him.”

  “Murrin doesn’t seem like he’s very close to you . . . and he’s fine. Happy.” She felt a tightness in her chest, a panic. It was so unlike what she felt when she was with Murrin.

  “So you haven’t seen him watching the sea? He doesn’t ache for it?” Vic’s expression was telling: he knew the answer already. “He can’t admit it. It’s part of the . . . enchantment. You trapped him here when you stole his Other-Skin. He can’t tell you he’s unhappy, but you’ll see it in time. He’ll grow miserable, hate you. One day you’ll see him staring out to sea . . . maybe not yet, but we can’t help it.”

  Alana thought about it. She had seen Murrin late at night when he thought she was asleep. He’d been staring into the distance, facing the direction of the water, even though he couldn’t see it from the apartment. The look of longing on his face was heartrending.

  “He’s going to resent you in time. We always do.”

  Vic’s mouth curled in a sardonic smile. “Just as you resent us. . . .”

  “I don’t resent Murrin,” she started.

  “Not now, perhaps. You did though.” Vic toyed with one long green strand of his hair.

  “You resented him for trapping you. It’s a cruel fate to be trapped. My mate resented me, too. Zoë . . . that was her name. My Zoë . . .”

  “Was?”

  “I suspect it still is.” He paused, a pensive look on his face. “But in time, we resent you. You keep us from what we deserve: our freedom. I didn’t want to be angry with my Zoë.

  . . .”

  Alana thought about Murrin being trapped, being angry at her, resenting her for keeping him landbound.

  The bitterness in Vic’s eyes wasn’t something she wanted to see in Murrin’s gaze.

  “So what should I do?” she whispered.

  “A mortal can’t be tied to two selchies . . . just lift up my skin. Murrin will be free then.”

  “Why would you do that? We’d be—” Alana tried not to shudder at the thought of being bound to Vic. “I don’t want to be your . . . anything.”

  “Not your type?” He stepped closer, as predatory and beautiful as he had looked at the party when they first met. “Aaah, Alana, I feel badly that I bungled things when I met you. I want to help Murrin as my brother helped me. If not for him, Zoë and I would still be . . . trapped.

  I’d be kept from the sea. Murrin unbound us.”

  “It’s cool that you want to help him, but I don’t want to be with you.” She repressed another shudder at that thought, but only barely.

  Vic nodded. “We can work around that detail. I won’t ask what Murrin has of you . . . I don’t seek a wife. I need to fix things, though. Maybe I didn’t know the right words when we met. I can’t say I have the kind of experience that Murrin has with mortal girls, but . .

  .”

  Alana froze. “What do you mean?”

  “Come now, Alana. We aren’t exactly built for faithfulness. Look at us.” Veikko gestured at himself. That self-assured look was back. “Mortals don’t exactly tell us no. The things you feel when you see us . . . hundreds of girls . . . not that he’s been with every one of them . . . What you feel is instinct. It’s not really love; it’s just a reaction to pheromones.”

  Alana struggled between jealousy and acceptance.

  Vic wasn’t telling her anything that she hadn’t thought.

  In some ways it was just an extreme version of the logic behind the Six-Week Rule.

  “I owe him this,” Vic was saying. “And you don’t really think you love him, do you?”

  She didn’t cry, but she wanted to. She hadn’t said those words to Murrin, not yet, but she’d thought about it. She’d felt it. Am I a fool? Is any of it real? She’d asked Murrin, but was he telling the truth? Did it even matter? If Murrin would hate her in time, she should let him go now. She didn’t want that between them. If Vic was telling the truth, there was no reason to keep Murrin with her, and plenty of reasons to let him go. Soon. He wasn’t hers to keep. He wasn’t really hers at all. It’s a trick. He belonged to the sea, and with that came relationships, fleeting relationships, with other girls. Is the way I feel a lie, or is Vic lying? It made more sense that Vic was telling her the truth: people didn’t fall in love this quickly; they didn’t break all of their rules so easily.

  It’s just the selchie thing. She forced her thoughts away from the roiling mix of emotions and took several calming breaths. “So how do we do it?”

  Murrin found Alana sitting at the reef, but she wasn’t happy. She looked like she’d been weeping.

  “Hey.” She glanced at him only briefly.

  “Are you okay?” He didn’t want to pry too much: her acceptance of him in her life still felt tenuous.

  Instead of answering, she held out a hand to him.

  He sat behind her, and she leaned back into his embrace. The waves rolled over the exposed reef and up to the rocky ledge where they were sitting. He sighed at the touch of the briny water. Home. He couldn’t have imagined being this content: his Alana and his water both against his skin.

  Perfection . . . except that Alana seems sad.

  “I didn’t expect . . . to care, especially so soon. I want you to be happy,” she said. “Even if it’s not real—”

  “It is real.” He took out the pearl necklace and draped it around Alana’s throat. “And I am happy.”

  She gasped softly and ran her fingertips over the pearls. “I can’t—” She shook her head.

  “Do you miss it?”

  “The sea? It’s right here.”

  “But do you miss . . . changing and going out there?

  Meeting other people?” She tensed in his arms.

  “I’m not going to leave you,” he consoled. His mother had often looked at the sea as if it was an enemy who’d steal away her family if she wasn’t careful. That wasn’t what he wanted. He wrapped his arms around her again.

  “I am right where I need to be.”

  She nodded, but he could feel her tears falling on his hands. Alana thought about it and decided that trusting Vic completely was foolish. He was right: she needed to let Murrin go before he resented her for keeping him from the sea. Murrin wasn’t thinking clearly. Whatever enchantment made him need to stay close to her was keeping him from admitting that he longed for the sea. If he went back . . . there were selchies he could meet. None of that meant that she wanted to risk being tied to Vic— so she opted to try a plan she’d come up with before, but had rejected as too dangerous.

  And unnecessary because love took over.

  He was sleeping when she left the apartment. She thought about kissing him goodbye, but knew that would wake him.

  She let the door close behind her; then she went silently to the street and popped the trunk of the car.

  It was in there, his pelt. It was a part of him as surely as the seemingly human skin she’d caressed when he sat beside her late at night watching old movies with the sound down low. Gently, she gathered the pelt to her, trying not to wonder at how warm it was, and then she ran.

  There weren’t tears in her eyes. Yet. She’d have time enough for that later. First she had to focus on getting to the beach before he realized what she was doing. She ran through the streets in the not-yet-light day. The sunrise wasn’t too far off, but it was early enough that the su
rfers hadn’t started arriving yet.

  She knew he’d come soon. He had to follow the pull of his pelt when it was in her hands, but knowing didn’t make it any easier to hurry. She felt an urgency to get done with it before he arrived, but she felt a simultaneous despair.

  It’s for the best.

  She waded into the surf. Waves tugged at her, like strange creatures butting at her knees to pull her under the surface; kelp slid over her bare skin, slithering lengths that made her pulse race too fast.

  It’s the right thing for both of us.

  He was there then. She heard Murrin calling her name. “Alana! Stop!”

  In the end, we’ll both be miserable if I don’t.

  The pelt was heavy in her arms; her fingers clutched at it. He was beside her. “Don’t—”

  She didn’t hear the rest. She let the waves take her legs out from under her. She closed her eyes and waited. The instinct to survive outweighed any enchantment, and her arms released the pelt so she could swim.

  Beside her, she felt him, his silk-soft fur brushing against her as his selchie pelt transformed his human body into a sleek-skinned seal. She slid her hand over his skin, and then she swam away from him, away from the wide open sea where he was headed. Goodbye.

  She wasn’t sure if it was the sea or her tears, but she could taste salt on her lips as she surfaced.

  When she stood on the beach again, she could see him in the distance, too far away to hear her voice if she gave in and asked him to come back. She wouldn’t. A relationship based on enchantment was ill-fated from the beginning. It wasn’t what she wanted for either of them. She knew that, was certain of it, but it didn’t ease the ache she felt at his absence.

  I don’t really love him. It’s just leftover magic.

  She saw Vic watching her from the shore. He said something she couldn’t hear over the waves, and then he was gone, too. They were both gone, and she was left reminding herself that it was better this way, that what she’d felt hadn’t been real. So why does it hurt so bad?

  For several weeks, Murrin watched her, his Alana, his mate-no-more, on the shore that was his home-nomore.

  He didn’t know what to do. She’d rejected him, cast him back to the sea, but she seemed to mourn it.

  If she didn’t love me, why does she weep?

  Then one day, he saw that she was holding the pearls he’d given her. She sat on the sand, running the strand through her fingers, carefully, lovingly. All the while, she wept. He came to shore there at the reef where he’d first chosen her, where he’d watched her habits to try to find the best way to woo her. It was more difficult this time, knowing that she knew so many of his secrets and found him lacking. At the edge of the reef, he slid out of his Other-Skin and tucked it in a hollow under an edge of the reef where it would be hidden from sight. Giant sea stars clung to the underside of the reef ledge, and he wondered if she’d seen them. His first thoughts were too often still of her, her interests, her laughter, her soft skin.

  She didn’t hear his approach. He walked up to stand beside her and asked the question that had been plaguing him. “Why are you sad?”

  “Murrin?” She stuffed the necklace into her pocket and backed away, careful to look where she stepped, no doubt looking for his Other-Skin, then glancing back at him after each step. “I set you free. Go away. Go on.”

  “No.” He had dreamed of being this close to her ever since he’d been forced away from her. He couldn’t help it; he smiled.

  “Where is it?” she asked, her gaze still darting frantically around the exposed tide pools.

  “Do you want me to show—”

  “No.” She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled.

  “I don’t want to do that again.”

  “It’s hidden. You won’t touch it unless you let me lead you to it.” He walked closer then, and she didn’t back away this time—nor did she approach him as he’d hoped.

  “You’re, umm, naked.” She blushed and turned away.

  She picked up her backpack and pulled out one of the warm hoodies and jeans she’d found at the thrift store when they were shopping that first week. She shoved them at him. “Here.”

  Immeasurably pleased that she carried his clothes with her—surely that meant she hoped he’d return—he got dressed. “Walk with me?”

  She nodded.

  They walked for a few steps, and she said, “You have no reason to be here. I broke the spell or whatever. You don’t need—”

  “What spell?”

  “The one that made you have to stay with me. Vic explained it to me. You can go get with a seal girl now. . . .

  It’s what’s best.”

  “Vic explained it?” he repeated. Veikko had convinced Alana to risk her life to get rid of Murrin. It made his pulse thud as it did when he rode the waves during a storm. “And you believed him why?”

  Her cheeks reddened again.

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That you’d resent me because you lost the sea, and that you couldn’t tell me, and that what I felt was just pheromones . . . like the hundreds of other girls you . . .”

  She blushed brighter still. “And I saw you at night, Murrin. You looked so sad.”

  “Now I am sad in the waves watching you.” He pulled her closer, folding her into his arms, kissing her as they’d kissed only a few times before.

  “I don’t understand.” She touched her lips with her fingertips, as if there were something odd about his kissing her. “Why?”

  Even the thriving reefs weren’t as breathtakingly beautiful as she was as she stood there with kiss-swollen lips and a wide-eyed gaze. He kept her in his arms, where she belonged, where he wanted her always to be, and told her, “Because I love you. That’s how we express—”

  “No. I mean, you don’t have to love me now. I freed you.” Her voice was soft, a whisper under the wind from the water.

  “I never had to love you. I just had to stay with you unless I reclaimed my skin. If I wanted to leave, I’d have found it in time.”

  Alana watched him with a familiar wariness, but this time there was a new feeling—

  hope.

  “Vic lied because I’d helped his mate leave him. She was sick. He was out with mortal girls constantly . . . and she was trapped and miserable.” Murrin glanced away, looking embarrassed. “Our family doesn’t know. Well, they might suspect, but Veikko never told them because he’d need to admit his cruelty, too. I thought he’d forgiven me. He said . .

  .”

  “What?”

  “He is my brother. I trusted him. . . .”

  “I did, too.” She leaned closer and wrapped her arms around him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sooner or later, we will need to deal with him.” Murrin sounded both sad and reluctant.

  “But in the meantime, if he talks to you—”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  “No more secrets,” he said. Then he kissed her.

  His lips tasted like the sea. She closed her eyes and let herself enjoy the feel of his hands on her skin, gave in to the temptation to run her hands over his chest. It was the same heady feeling she dreamt about most every night since he’d gone. Her pulse thrummed like the crash of waves behind her as he moved to kiss her neck. He’s mine. He loves me. We can—

  “My beautiful wife,” he whispered against her skin.

  With more than a little reluctance, she stepped away from him. “We could try things a little differently this time, you know. Go slower. I want you here, but being married at my age isn’t good. I have plans . . .”

  “To see other people?”

  “No. Not at all.” She sat down on the sand. When he didn’t move, she reached for his hand and tugged until he sat beside her. Then she said, “I don’t want to see other people, but I’m not ready to be married. I’m not even done with high school.” She glanced over at him.

  “I missed you all the time, but I don’t want to lose me to have you. And I want you t
o be you, too. . . . Did you miss changing?”

  “I did, but it’ll get easier. This is how things are.”

  Murrin sounded so calm, and while Alana knew that Vic had lied about a lot of things, she also knew this was something he hadn’t needed to lie about. She hadn’t imagined the sadness she’d seen on Murrin’s face when she’d seen him staring toward the water.

  She asked, “But what if you could still have the sea?

  We could . . . date. You could still be who you are. I could still go to school and, umm, college.”

  “You’d be only mine? But I get to keep the sea?”

  She laughed at his suspicious tone. “You do know that the sea isn’t the same as being with another girl, right?”

  “Where’s the sacrifice?”

  “There isn’t one. There’s patience, trust, and not giving up who we are.” She leaned into his embrace, where she could find the same peace and pleasure the sea had always held for her.

  How could I have thought it was better to be apart?

  He smiled then. “We get each other. I get the sea, and you have to go to school? It sounds like I get everything, and you . . .”

  “I do, too. You and time to do the things I need to so I can have a career someday.”

  She had broken her Six-Week Rule, but having a relationship didn’t have to mean giving up on having a future. With Murrin, she could have both.

  He reached over and pulled the pearls out of her pocket. With a solemn look, he fastened them around her throat. “I love you.”

  She kissed him, just a quick touch of lips, and said it back. “I love you, too.”

  “No Other-Skin, no enchantments,” he reminded her.

  “Just us,” she said.

  And that was the best sort of magic.

  .

  .

  .

  .

  Justine Larbalestier is the author of the ULTIMATE

  FAIRY BOOK as well as the award-winning Magic or Madness trilogy. Justine divides her time between Sydney, Australia, and New York City (with sojourns in Mexico, New Zealand, Thailand, and anywhere else that strikes her fancy). She is married to author Scott Westerfeld. You can visit her online at www.justinelarbalestier.com. Melissa Marr is the author of the New York Times bestseller WICKED LOVELY and INK EXCHANGE. She has a collection of weaknesses that includes tide pools, folklore, deserts, tattoos, and new experiences. You can find her online at www.melissa-marr.com. Laurie Faria Stolarz is the author of the hugely popular young adult novels BLUE IS