I go under, forced down by his weight as he climbs me like a vine. He’s still biting me, this time in my ass . . . though I can’t figure how he can bite me there when his face is at my chest. Then it registers, what’s really going on, and I flail harder. I hear myself yelp as I kick, but I’m pinned as much in place by the life jacket as I am by Daniel’s ceaseless grip. His head bobs up again and he gasps, wild-eyed, right in my face.
“Isn’t it amazing,” he says, breathing heavy, “how closely celebration and destruction resemble one another?”
And then he stabs me with the scissors again in the side.
Fireworks explode behind my eyes as I ram my forehead into his battered brow. I push away, strokes wild. I have lost my way. I don’t know where I am in the water, I only know where I am in relation to Daniel, and he’s a shark. He’s following my blood. He’s going to slice me open before anyone sees us and then leave me in this oily lake the same way he left his father.
The thought panics me so much that I don’t even realize what I’ve backed into until I touch it again. I spin, sense Daniel behind me, and flail at his wrecked boat with a desperate gasp. The damaged vessel tilts, threatening to flip, so I duck beneath the cleaved hull—still fighting the damn jacket—to try to board it from the other side.
He’s waiting when I surface, smiling at me through broken teeth. The frenzied sky builds to a crescendo above us as I push away. Too late. His hand is already raised and the scissors spark in the celebratory light.
They rip through the left side of the life vest, right above my heart. I flail for the boat beside me, find purchase on the lip and feel the hull tilt my way. I jerk, and everything inside of it shifts and tumbles as it flips upside down. Daniel has to release me and duck beneath the waves just to keep from being hit.
Trapped in the hollow of the capsized boat, I feel steel strike my padded shoulder, and my instinct is to dodge it too, but then I reach out and grab instead. Daniel will be back any moment, and I need a weapon.
It’s too heavy, though. It’s already slipped beneath the waves, bubbling past my thighs, and the attached rope skitters through my fingers, sailing down. I finally twist it around my battered right wrist, then drop my head back on my orange life vest and play dead.
His dark head pops up a moment later. He looks like a slick seal as he closes in, but I can’t see his expression, so I know he can’t see mine either. My wrist is torqued in an unnatural angle beneath the wave, and the weight at the end of the rope tilts me to one side, but my life jacket keeps me bobbing, so Daniel suspects nothing until I whip out my left hand and begin looping the slack around his shoulders.
I lift my head only after his arm is secured to his side, and that brings him to life, but by then I’ve already made him a necklace. I wrap my legs around his as he begins to thrash. I draw him in close, circling him until the entire length is used up, before tying off with a vertical weave. Then I let the anchor fall.
He doesn’t even blink as he disappears beneath the surface. His eyes are pinned on me, and his head even tilts upward as his dark hair fans around his pale face. I’d wanted Abby’s face to be the last he ever saw, but as I watch him disappear, as one final deep-throated pulse rocks the sky above us, I decide that this works just fine too.
When he’s gone, I push out from beneath the shattered hull.
I lay atop the waves for hours. Maybe minutes. Either way, it’s long enough to know that I’m bleeding out, though I’m too numb to feel it. I cry as I wait to die, but after a bit I begin to laugh too. At some point, I hear Daniel coming after me again with the scissors.
But he doesn’t appear. Instead, as firework ash falls from the stunned sky to lay another dark coat across the black lake, I float on my back and watch the stars wink back into focus above me. They throb for a bit in time to the beating of my heart, but disappear again right before I close my eyes, washed away in a thrumming whirl of red-and-blue light.
One Year Later
It’s nearly nightfall, but there’s a bit of time yet before the fireworks begin. The air is still, filled only with the hum of adult conversation along the deck of Lake Arrowhead’s grand hotel, and the lawn teems with children bopping to tunes they all seem to know but that I’ve never heard. They dance in front of the DJ booth, as if thanking him for spinning, and the tween girls squeal in groups, their plastic glow-stick necklaces and bracelets zigzagging in neon against the deepening night.
The sounds lap at me as I lean over the edge of the patio, a full glass of white wine beading in my hand. I had this idea of Abby standing next to me, united as we face down the holiday on the lake where it all almost ended one year ago. Independence Day. I envisioned her looking up at me and marveling at the way I stare out over that cold water without flinching, maybe saying she can’t believe how strong I am, so that I can be motherly and wise and remind her that the same strength lives inside of her.
But it never works out the way you think, does it? Abby is preoccupied with barbecue and sticky lemonade, and a girl she just met is whispering in her ear like they’ve been friends for the whole of their lives. They’re likely discussing their favorite apps or clothing stores or school subjects . . . or something far too important to be interrupted by a lecture on the merits of being strong in the face of adversity and evil. So I just mark her position on the soft, cool lawn, cataloging everyone around her too, and then turn back to face the lake alone.
I am not sure what I expected by coming back here.
Now that I’m on speaking terms with all of my emotions, I’m often surprised at what pops up. I regularly startle myself and others by bursting into tears in the strangest, even benign, moments. Abby’s parent-teacher conference had me blubbering like a rejected reality-show contestant. Commercials for fast food and insurance send me lunging for the tissue box. Sometimes the tears fall down my face and I don’t even know it until I find myself rubbing the scar that still stretches red along my left leg. Or unconsciously covering my reconstructed earlobe with hair from my new shoulder-length bob. I am told it suits me.
The therapist says the wildly swinging emotions are normal, that it’s my mind continuing to recalibrate. She also warned that it was probably too soon to face Daniel’s ghost alone, but I know what happens when you don’t give closure to unresolved business, and as I look at the gaping black hole directly across the lake—everything shadowed and dark but for the turrets spaced along the sharp roofline—I feel another tie that binds me to my dusty past loosen its stays and fall away.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
The question comes from a man leaning against the other end of the railing. He smiles and lifts his wine glass my way, and I smile back while searching his face for signs of recognition. My own face was splayed across newspapers countrywide in the weeks after Daniel’s rampage, and the hospital administrator finally called me into his office and suggested that it might be best for me to take some time off. I didn’t blame him. The tabloid reporters loved their headlines and hounded me with loaded questions, following me all the way into the hospital in efforts to bait me, trying to get photos of all my wounds.
As expected, they found a more receptive subject in Lacy, who was quoted as saying that she had sensed I was under duress in the roadside diner. That as soon as I ordered cherry pie, she’d just known there was something off about the map and my treasure hunt and my boyfriend.
Wish I’d known.
However, this man doesn’t give off the sharklike air of a reporter. His face remains politely open, and he keeps a comfortable distance between us, which is fine with me. My therapist is working on that too.
You’re still so young, she’d said, as if that matters more than experience.
And you’re still so hopeful, I’d replied, because, even though she is twice my age, she’s never witnessed a man flattened in a casino parking lot, or seen one crucified on a hillside, o
r encountered a woman—and a dog—buried in a closet.
Clearly, the man at the other end of the railing never has either, because he seems hopeful too.
I decide not to hold it against him and politely answer his questions.
Do you live around here?
No. I’ve recently moved to Los Angeles.
What do you do there?
I’m studying to become a doctor.
So you’re a healer?
I pull the sleeves of my sweater down to hide my scarred wrists and nod. It means another round of med school and residency, a six-year commitment at the least, but I figure as long as I’m starting over, I might as well go all the way.
“Mom?” Abby, I realize, has been saying my name.
“Yeah, baby,” I blink as if coming to, the man immediately forgotten.
“Can I go down to the docks to watch the fireworks from there? Some of the other kids are going.”
My fingers tighten around my wineglass. “I’d rather you stay in sight.”
I’d rather you stay tucked by my side, in my pocket. I’d rather you climb back inside of me, where my heart is supposed to live.
Abby looks as though she’s going to argue for a minute, then surprises me with a smile. Reaching up, she runs her thumb across my forehead, one side to the other, and smoothes the frown from my brow. It’s a habit she picked up at some point in the last year when we started sleeping together in the same bed. I’ll wait until I hear her breathing ease out before I go to sleep, but sometimes I’ll wake in the middle of the night to find her caressing me this way, totally still and silent, but wide awake as if memorizing my features. That’s how she’s looking at me now.
“Okay,” she finally says, and skips lightly away.
I watch her go, and I feel so alive.
That’s what I’m thinking as I turn away, smiling, and catch sight of him.
It’s not much to go on, just the flash of a dark head and a pair of wide shoulders disappearing around a myrtle hedge, but it’s enough to make me startle. That’s nothing new; my breath regularly catches in my throat. I have to relearn how to breathe dozens of times in any given twenty-four hours. So I don’t trust the bump in my chest, but given the environment—given that they never found Daniel’s body—I am following the man before I know it, cutting through the buffet line on the lawn, chasing a ghost down the zigzag path I’ve just forbidden Abby to traverse. All the while I’m thinking, it can’t be.
I push past a couple strolling hand in hand, my throat tight with the leaden ball of real panic. The stone-walled path forks into two directions near the lake’s edge, and I have a decision to make: head up to the pool, where guests are lounging with their faces turned to the sky, or down into the darkness of the water and docks. I make my choice, dodging children that glow with green and yellow and orange neon, and skirt a couple engaged in a hard embrace next to one final hedge. I round the corner and stumble when I come eye level with the boats glowing on the lake.
The flashback hits me square, a sprint toward a dock just opposite this one, a frenzied row before a crash. A blade in the lake. I suddenly feel watched as I stumble toward the hotel’s lone dock. The gate is shuttered on it, and a sign hanging on a chain marks it as off limits, but it isn’t secured. In fact, it’s ajar half an inch, though there’s no one and nothing moving on the long, flat dock.
Leaves flutter in uneasy whispers, and something small and brown skitters in the brush behind me. I look back up at the deck where I stood minutes earlier and see its outline losing its contours, everything going hazy with nightfall. I think I see the man who smiled at me leaning over slightly, like he’s caught sight of me as well, but his features are indistinguishable in the deepening gloom.
Inconsequential, comes the whisper from across the lake.
I step onto the dock. It creaks beneath my weight, a groaning metronome keeping time to my footsteps as I scan the surrounding water. There’s nothing. I lift my gaze to the small island in the lake’s middle, then the mountains across from me, but everything is dark. I am alone.
The lake’s center is identical to the way it was the year before; cool water and light waves rocking stilled boats, a centered dock with hot fireworks and police strobes. Pockets of black sit up along the opposite shoreline, perfect for burying secrets. Yet try as I might, I can’t sense Daniel here. He’s gone, and I think I should go too, back up to the balcony to watch the rest of this show with Abby and everyone else who has come here to celebrate.
I don’t move, though, and I’m not sure why until the first firework sears the air with a piercing whistle. It breaks into an explosion that colors the lake in violent red. Awe-filled sighs float down from the hotel patio but I don’t look up like everyone else. Instead, I keep my gaze trained on the onyx pocket directly across from me, where a giant mausoleum lays buried in an encroaching forest.
“Are you watching me?” I ask, in between aerial concussions. At first I’m just talking to Daniel, but then I realize I’m really speaking to all of them: my father and mother both, Waylon Rhodes, all buried deep.
“I hope so,” I tell them, without blinking. “Because I’m going to climb on top of all the things you people tried to do to me, and I’m gonna use them to get everything I want.”
That, I think, turning back around, is evolution.
Then I head back up the path to the hotel under the umbrella of beautiful violence. I climb up and up, out of the darkness. I go forward, to my daughter and to my life. And this time I’m the one who doesn’t look back.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A mere “thanks” to my agent, Peter McGuigan, seems inadequate. He believed in this book before it was written, and exhibited kindness beyond measure and patience beyond duty throughout its creation. I remain ever grateful. To Kristen Weber, who reinforced to me that good books are not merely written, but rewritten, and who helped me repurpose my writing for the thriller market. Not a lot of people can say no to an author with nine books on the shelves, but your no—provided with explanation—turned this book into a big yes. Which brings me to Ed Schlesinger. I can’t help but think that I was on the receiving end of some beautiful black magic to have you as my editor for this book. We seem to sip occasionally from the same poisoned well, so thank you for loving this (1000%!) and for your keen and passionate editorial eye.
Audrie Dugger helped with All Things EMS; Alyssa Stone, PA-C, was the first person to walk me through the training, insight, and skill required of a physician assistant; and John Notabartolo, PA-C, read through the manuscript with an eye toward veracity in that world. (LeAnne Notabartolo reads my books too, and then invites me for cocktails to discuss pretty much anything but my writing, and for that I am grateful too.) David Blatty copyedited without pointing and laughing (at least not in the margins). Any deficiencies that might remain in the text are, sadly, my own.
Jann McKenzie always reads with a critical care, and her emoticons and personal reactions (Eww!) are received with a glad heart. Crystal Parnell and Kristine Perchetti gave me permission to appropriate their given names for my own mean purposes, and I stole Daniel J. Hale’s as well. I’m not sure he knows that. Perhaps he does now.
As ever, to my husband, James, for Intangibles. You are a solid and supporting force greater than the entirety of the Mojave.
Finally, to and for the readers who’ve followed me over from the fantastical . . . see, guys? I told ya I’d give you another girl with grit.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photograph © Jeferson Applegate
VICKI PETTERSSON is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of the popular Signs of the Zodiac urban fantasy series and the “para-noir” Celestial Blues series. She lives in Las Vegas and Dallas. Visit her on the web at www.vickipettersson.com.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: authors.simonandschuster.com/Vicki-Pettersson
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Also by VICKI PETTERSSON
SIGN OF THE ZODIAC
The Scent of Shadows
The Taste of Night
The Touch of Twilight
City of Souls
Cheat the Grave
The Neon Graveyard
CELESTIAL BLUES
The Taken
The Lost
The Given
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Vicki Pettersson
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First Gallery Books hardcover edition July 2015
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