Makenna agreed to give Ash Crusader, but after they sought out Caleb. She led Evelyn, Silvey, and him down Seabrook Island Rd. and grew increasingly annoyed when Ash kept pointing out things and asking what they were. Every time Makenna answered, "It's a house! It's a tree! It's a mailbox!" another layer of anger emerged in her voice.
The last thing Ash noticed before they turned onto the road leading to Creek Watch Villas and the crab dock was a car.
A streak of silver steadily made its way down the road, and Ash pointed at it. "What's that?" Immediately, he leaped onto the road and sprinted toward the car.
Makenna yelped and hid behind her hands.
When the car's driver noticed Ash, he screeched to a stop, leaving skid marks on the road. Ash was too close, though, but luckily, Silvey's ribbon-like feelers stretched fifteen feet before her and wrapped around him. Silvey dragged him over to Makenna and Evelyn just in time. She tossed Ash into Makenna's arms, but because he was a bit bigger, she fell back when she caught him. The two landed on the grass, which sat before the woods.
As they rested on the ground, the driver of the car rolled down his window and yelled at Ash, "Watch where you're going, son! You could have been squashed into a pancake!"
"Wha-What's a pa-pancake?" Ash asked, but the driver didn't answer. Instead, he pressed down on the gas and took off.
Makenna and Ash waited until the car vanished before they stood.
Evelyn floated beside Makenna, who stood first. She grabbed Ash's arm and dragged him to his feet. "Just what do you think you were doing? You could've been road kill! You're almost as bad as Tracey!"
"Tra-Tracey?" questionably asked Ash. "Who-Who's Tracey?"
Makenna opened her mouth, but a blast of cold wind, like the one she felt on Coutarine Island, rushed through her hair and caused goosebumps to stick up on her arms. "What's that?" she questioned, turning to the woods. Silvey joined her, while Evelyn landed on Ash's shoulder.
There was a moment of silence, and then Makenna heard it: a crack in the woods, and a second blast of cold wind blew by her. "Is somebody there?" she asked the woods. "Show yourself!"
Nothing did. Makenna must have been hearing things.
She was getting ready to join Ash and continue to the crab dock when she heard something even more mysterious: singing. It came from the intersection before her, Silvey, Ash, and Evelyn. Only one thought came to mind. "Tracey!" Makenna yelled, but it wasn't Tracey.
The owner of the beautiful voice—Makenna saw him—was a teenage boy, around Ash and Tracey's ages, who stood in the intersection. He had black hair and brown eyes. Hair covered his right eye. He was dressed in a yellow-and-blue hoodie over a long-sleeved blue shirt, jeans, and dark blue high-tops.
Every hormone in Makenna's body exploded to life. She felt like she herself had just turned eighteen. Hearts appeared in her eyes, and she shouted, "Whoa! Who's that?" Her face turned red.
Silvey, confused, peered up at Makenna and bumped her.
"Cupid has struck a bullseye!" Makenna added.
Evelyn looked up from Ash and asked, "What are you talking about, Makenna?"
"That boy!"
"What boy?"
"Over there!" Makenna gestured at the boy standing like a statue.
Evelyn, Silvey, and Ash looked with her, but didn't see anything.
"I don't see a boy," Evelyn admitted. "You must be seeing things, Miss Delling."
"No, I'm not! He's right there!" However, when Makenna pulled her gaze from Evelyn and refocused on the intersection, the boy had vanished. "What the—?" she yelped. "He was there just a second ago!"
"I think you miss your brother," Evelyn suggested. "Don't worry, though, honey, we're going to the crab dock right now. Lead the way."
"But I saw a boy!" Makenna complained. "Argh! Cupid has snapped my heart!" She was getting ready to lead her friends forward when she felt the blast of cold air. Then, in the blink of an eye, the mysterious boy once again appeared in the intersection. "There he is!" Makenna jabbed her finger at him.
No matter how hard Ash, Evelyn, and Silvey looked, they could not see the boy.
"There's no boy," Evelyn spoke, but Makenna knew there was.
Why her friends couldn't see him, she had no idea, but she tried to knock some sense out of him. "Who are you? What do you think you're doing, standing in the middle of the road?"
The boy didn't answer. He merely held his hands behind him and smiled at Makenna. After a moment of silence, he gestured for her to follow him and turned onto the road that led to Creek Watch Villas and the crab dock.
"Wait!" Makenna yelled. She leaped into a run and chased him.
"Makenna, wait!" Evelyn shouted, but Makenna didn't return. The young man was too mysterious.
Silvey tagged along while she chased him down the road. Marshland surrounded them. Seabrook Island's fire station was a little further up on the right.
"Just tell me who you are!" Makenna yelled at the boy. She stopped in her tracks, though, when another car appeared from the Creek Watch Villas entrance and headed toward the young man. They did not slow down. Did they see him?
"Watch out!" Makenna shouted. She grabbed Silvey and pulled her to the side of the road.
The boy stopped in the middle of the path, facing her.
"Move!" Makenna yelped, but he didn't.
The car reached the boy, but drove right through him.
Eyes widening, Makenna's jaw dropped. She didn't hear anything: a thump, a scream, etc. Once the car passed her and Silvey, the boy remained in his spot, unharmed. Makenna rubbed her eyes to ensure she wasn't seeing things. She wasn't. Nobody, though, could escape getting hit by a car without a scratch or death unless—!
Makenna patted Silvey's head and gestured for her to wait. She, Evelyn, and Ash watched as she crept toward the young man and stopped before him. Makenna lifted her hand and moved it toward his chest.
He followed every movement she made.
Behind, Evelyn glanced at Ash and asked, "What's she doing?"
Ash's only answer was a shrug, and he crossed his arms.
Makenna's hand edged closer to the young man's chest. When she reached it, her hand went through him. It appeared on the other side of him. Makenna's entire arm was in him, but all she felt was coolness.
"You," Makenna mumbled after a bit. "You're a ghost, aren't you?" Sweat fountained down her temples and onto her cheeks. She soon realized how translucent the boy's body was.
He nodded yes and focused on Makenna's arm in his body.
When she pulled her hand out, her face had whitened, and her voice was shaky. "A ghost." She saw Breena's ghost back on Coutarine Island, sure, but she had never been that close to one. "What are you doing here?" she asked the young man. "I thought ghosts didn't like sunlight."
"That is just a myth," a voice suddenly spoke in her head. It was the ghost! Just like with Tracey, he had the power to communicate with her telepathically.
Questions exploded like a bomb in Makenna's mind, but she found no answers.
"I personally love daylight," the spirit explained. "It helps me not think about death."
Makenna was having a difficult time wrapping her head around the fact that the beautiful, young man was dead. "Why are you here?" she asked him shakily.
"Because I know where your friend is."
"Tracey?" Makenna felt her heart skip a beat.
"Ah, so that was his name. Tracey. I love that name. Don't you?"
"Um." Makenna had no idea how to carry on a conversation with a dead person. She didn't talk with them often. The only ghosts she'd seen, except Ash's sister, were ghosts in movies, books, and TV shows. Most of them had been portrayed as evil devils who wanted to haunt the living.
Makenna didn't notice Silvey, Ash, and Evelyn creeping up on her.
While she was distracted, Ash reached for Crusader, which Makenna wore on her back again.
"Your friend stumbled upon mine and my parents' island a few days ago," the ghost explained.
"Your parents?" Another layer of fear sounded in Makenna's voice.
"Oh, don't worry. They're still alive," Sky sweetly said. "They've been begging ever since I died to have a new son. I think we got lucky with Tracey. He's just the sweetest little thing who loves to sing. I heard him mention you and where you live when he was sleeping. That's what led me here. He said all he wanted in life was a girl named Makenna Delling, singing, and the ability to fly again."
"Fly? Wait, do you know?" Makenna said.
"Know what?" asked Sky. "That he's a fairy? Of course. He's not the first fairy that's visited our island."
"He's not?" Makenna moved aside so she could see Sky better. That led Ash to miss the sword when he tried snatching it away.
He clenched his fist and stepped behind Makenna's back.
Sky saw him, but carried on with the explanation. "Of course. I wasn't alive when a fairy first visited the island, but my parents always said the legend had been passed down through our family's history. It was a little over a hundred years ago. This beautiful, young fairy, maybe ten years old, visited her sister in Charleston and, one day, took a flight to the Bermuda Triangle. During her journey, she found the island and met my mom's great-grandfather and grandmother. They became best friends."
Makenna stopped herself from speaking. She was so hooked to Sky's story that she didn't feel Ash finally grab Crusader's hilt.
Sky continued: "The fairy helped them fix up the island. A disastrous storm from the Triangle almost destroyed it. Some rumors say Poseidon created it."
A shiver ran down Makenna's spine.
"Legend has it," Sky explained, "that the fairy stayed two weeks on the island and brought light and life back to it. People visited it during that time. Business was great. It was the most fun my great-great-grandparents had in a long time. After two weeks, though, the fairy had to leave. She said she had to return home, but she promised she would return. Before she left, my ancestors gave her a present so she could always find her way back to them. However, she never returned."
"Because she died," Makenna said out loud, but it had started as a thought.
Sky nodded. "Yes. Rumors say she died in the Triangle, but I don't think that's true. My ancestors fell into despair when they learned the one child they really loved had been sacrificed to Atlantis. To Davy Jones's Locker. To the Bermuda Triangle."
A lump formed in Makenna's throat. She wanted to ask a question, but waited until Sky finished his story.
"Everything turned gray on the island. The business shut down, the town became a ghost town, and most of the plants died. My mom's great-grandparents gave up everything, all because they couldn't accept that the fairy had died. To this day, it is said their ghosts haunt the island, and they are waiting for the day she'll return, or someone like the fairy. Someone like you or Tracey."
A jumble of new questions formed in Makenna's mind, and she frightfully stared at Sky. Yep, he was definitely a ghost. He was beyond creepy.
"Yes, Makenna," he said, as if he had read her mind. "I know you're a fairy, too. Well, you're half fairy. Tracey is full-fledged. I don't want to scare you. It's just a bit complicated."
"No kidding." Makenna's hands sweated as if they had been in a toaster oven. Was Tracey all right? Was he still on the island? Where was he? Makenna held her breath on those questions for now and asked the one that had been nagging in the back of her head, ever since Sky mentioned it: "Sir, what exactly did your ancestors give the girl when she left—the fairy who brought light and life to the island?"
"Ah, yes," Sky said, after taking a moment to understand her. "I was waiting for you to ask." He leaned his translucent body close to Makenna.
She gulped. What was he going to do? Would he possess her? What if he was just like the ghosts she'd seen in movies, books, and TV shows—evil?
"A necklace," Sky soon whispered in her ear.
Makenna's eyes widened.
"A costate shell necklace," Sky added. "It came from the Bermuda Triangle. That's why I was always so interested in it when I was alive. I could one day find the necklace and bring the fairy back to my mom's great grandparents, but I never did."
"Because you died." That was all Makenna could say. She shakily covered the necklace she found at the bottom of the reef. Silvey gave it back when she, Ash, and Evelyn approached her at the Gator Pond.
Makenna wanted to confirm with Sky whether the shell necklace belonged to the fairy who brought life and light to his island, but couldn't because she heard something behind her.
"Makenna!" Evelyn yelled.
Makenna snapped out of her trance and inquired, "What?"
"It's Ash!"
"What about him?" Silvey and Makenna whirled around to Ash, and their jaws dropped.
Ash held Crusader in his left hand. He covered his eye with the blade.
Evelyn hovered beside him, her jaw dropped, too.
A shadow appeared from the Creek Watch Villas' shade and headed toward the magical beings, but it wasn't a car.
Within seconds, Crusader's blade glowed and unleashed a blast of wind that blew Ash's hair. The remarkable phenomenon quickly fell flat, though, when an intense wave of pain attacked his brain.
Ash yelled and fell onto his butt in the grass.
"Ash!" Makenna shouted. She jerked Crusader's scabbard off her back and threw it.
The scabbard flew through Sky. A hole appeared in his tummy. "What's wrong with him?" he asked Makenna, his voice frightful.
"I have no idea!" she returned. Makenna dropped to her knees beside Ash and snatched his shoulder. "Ash! What's wrong? Is your head bothering you?"
Ash could not answer her. He clutched his head with his right hand and closed his eyes, a tsunami of images flooding his mind.