Chapter 14: Half a Moon

I didn't wake him.

I lay there with my hand clamped over my wrist and watched the sky go from pearl to pink.

He woke anyway.

"Morning," he said, with his eyes still shut.

"Morning."

He smiled before he opened them.

Then he opened them and saw my face.

"What?"

I took my hand away.

The white line around my wrist fizzed in the sunrise.

He sat up so fast the blanket slid off both of us.

He took my wrist in his hand and turned it over, very gently.

A bubble rose off my skin and broke against his thumb.

"You said one moon," he said. "It's been eight days."

"I said the vow holds for one moon. I didn't say it holds the same the whole way."

His thumb stopped moving.

"Thalia."

"Get dressed. I'll tell Ida too. I only want to say it once."

Ida had biscuits in the oven and the radio on.

She saw us coming up the dock together and put out a third mug without a word.

Then she saw my wrist.

She turned off the radio.

I sat down at her table and put my arm flat between the salt and the hot sauce, where the foreclosure notice had been.

"Tell it," Ida said.

So I told it.

"The foam's already past my wrist." I pushed up my sleeve. "It comes back a little further every night, wrist to elbow."

"And at the end of the moon?"

"At moonset after the next full moon, I go to foam. Unless I have my pearl in my own hand."

Jasper was standing behind my chair.

"Then I'll make you another vow," he said. "Right now. On the dock. As many as it takes."

I shook my head.

"It only works once. A man can save me once. After that he's just a man who loves me."

The kitchen was very quiet.

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