by Shea Ernshaw
Lon and Davis exchange a look, but they’re obviously undeterred, because Davis says, “Everyone is a suspect. And Gigi is staying in here until we find the other two.”
“She can’t stay in here until the summer solstice; it’s over a week away,” parka girl says, her voice pitched.
“Well, we sure as shit can’t let her go,” Davis rebukes. “She’ll just kill someone else. Probably us, for tying her up.” Davis slaps Lon against the shoulder, and Lon cringes a little, like he hadn’t considered this—that he and Davis might be next on the drowning kill list for capturing a Swan sister.
Gigi tries to shake her head, to make a sound, but only muffled, garbled noises manage to make it through. The bandanna is tied too tightly.
Gigi’s parents will certainly get suspicious when she doesn’t come home; the police will be called, a search party sent to look for her. But the boys did get one thing right: Gigi Kline is a Swan sister—the only problem is that they can’t prove it. And I’m not about to tell them the truth.
Still, this is bad. Aurora has been captured. Marguerite knows it. And the summer solstice will be here soon—things are getting complicated. Aurora’s capture has made it complicated. And I just want to stay as far away from them and this mess as I can.
Heath has had enough, and I see him grab Rose’s hand. “Come on,” he whispers to her, then leads her out of the boathouse.
A new group of three guys—one I recognize as Thor Grantson, whose father owns the Catch newspaper—and one girl shuffle in through the doorway, coming to see Gigi Kline and determine for themselves if they think she’s been infected by a Swan sister.
The room suddenly feels claustrophobic.
“Hell no!” Davis says loudly, pointing a finger at Thor. “You’d better not write about this in your shitty paper, Thor, or tell your father.”
Thor lifts both hands in the air in a gesture of innocence. “I just came to see her,” he says amiably. “That’s it.”
“You’re a fucking snitch and everyone knows it,” Lon chimes in.
Pink-parka girl starts arguing with Davis in Thor’s defense, and soon the room is a cacophony of voices, all the while Gigi Kline sits tied to a chair and Olivia Greene stands calmly at the back of the group, leaning against the wall.
I can’t stay in here anymore, so I slip through the new group of people and stumble back out into the daylight, opening my mouth to breathe in the warm, salty air.
Rose and Heath are standing a couple yards away, but Rose’s arms are crossed. “They’re bullies,” I hear her say. “They can’t do this. It’s not right.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Heath says. “It’s going to be a witch hunt. And they could just as easily lock you up in there.”
“He’s right,” I say, and they both look up. “None of us are safe.”
“So we just let them keep her locked up and accuse whoever they want?”
“For now,” I say, “yeah, we do.”
The door to the boathouse swings open and Bo steps out behind me, blinking away the sunlight.
“Maybe they’re right,” Heath offers, reaching out to touch Rose’s arm. “Maybe Gigi did drown those two boys. Maybe she’s one of them. It’s better if she’s in there, where she can’t kill anyone else.”
“You don’t really believe that girl could be dangerous?” Bo asks, crossing his arms. I glance over my shoulder at him and a stillness settles over the four of us—each of us considering how dangerous she could really be, picturing her hands around a boy’s throat, her eyes wicked with revenge as she forced him below the waterline, waiting for bubbles to escape his nostrils and break at the surface.
Then Rose says, “Penny?” as if she’s hoping I might have an answer. As if I might know how to fix everything and make it all okay. And suddenly I feel the urge to tell her the truth: that Gigi is indeed occupied by Aurora Swan, and that the town is safer with her tied up inside the old boathouse. That setting a trap to catch the remaining two Swan sisters might be a smart move.
But instead I tell her, “We need to be careful. Act normal. Don’t give them any reason to suspect we could be one of them.”
“But we aren’t one of them!” Rose says sharply.
My eyes feel dry, unable to blink. Rose sounds so certain, she’s so sure that she understands the world around her, that she’d be able to see something as villainous as a Swan sister if it were tucked inside of Gigi Kline. She trusts her eyes to tell her the truth. But she can’t see a thing. “They don’t know that,” I say. “We shouldn’t even be here; we shouldn’t be anywhere near Gigi.”
I have a flash of a memory, of Rose talking with Gigi in C hall last year. They were laughing about something, I can’t seem to recall what exactly. It doesn’t matter. But it reminds me that they were friends once, in grade school, and perhaps Rose is more upset by what’s happened because it’s happening to Gigi. Someone who she was once so close with. And if it can happen to Gigi, it can happen to her, or to me, even.
The boathouse door opens again and several people spill out, all chatting in low voices. Lola walks out by herself, staring down at her cell phone, probably sending out more text messages about Gigi’s current incarceration inside the boathouse.
“I want to get out of here,” Rose murmurs, and Heath twines his fingers through hers and starts leading her back up the road.
“You’re really okay just leaving that girl gagged and tied to a chair in there?” Bo asks me.
“We don’t have a choice right now.”
“It’s kidnapping and wrongful imprisonment. We could call the cops.”
“But what if they’re right?” I pose. “What if she’s a Swan sister and just killed those two boys?”
“Then the cops will arrest her.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Olivia Greene finally exit the boathouse, her onyx hair shimmering in the light, her skin papery and transparent so that I can see the inhuman thing resting inside. A watery, grayish-white image that flickers and shifts, similar to an old black-and-white film. Never solidifying or taking shape, always liquid—drifting elegantly but cruelly beneath the features of Olivia’s face. The dark, inky eyes of Marguerite flicker out from behind Olivia’s skull and settle on me.
“Let’s go,” I say to Bo, touching his forearm to urge him to follow me. We start back up the road, Rose and Heath a good distance ahead of us, already pushing through the bramble and overgrown brush.
“What’s wrong?” Bo asks, sensing my unease.
But before I can answer, I hear Olivia’s voice cut through the crashing waves and the cawing of seagulls circling over the tide pools on the rocky shore. “Penny Talbot!” she calls.
I try to keep walking, but Bo stops and turns around.
Olivia has already broken away from the group gathered outside the boathouse and is walking toward us.
“Don’t stop,” I hiss to Bo, but he looks at me like I’m not making any sense. He doesn’t realize he’s in danger just by being close to her.
“Leaving already?” Olivia asks, coming to a stop in front of us with a hand planted smugly on her hip, nails still painted a shiny, morbid black. Marguerite has fully embraced this body. It suits her, fits her already vain, indignant personality.
“We’ve seen enough,” I answer, willing Bo not to speak, not to make eye contact with Olivia or allow her to touch him.
“But I haven’t met your new friend,” she says with a vampish grin, her pale blue eyes sliding over Bo like she could devour him. “I’m Olivia Greene,” she lies, holding out her hand. She smells like black licorice.
Bo lifts his arm to shake her hand, but I grab onto his wrist just before they touch and pull it back down. He frowns at me, but I ignore it. “We really have to go,” I say, more to him than to Olivia. And I take a couple steps up the road, hoping he’ll follow.
“Oh, Penny,” Olivia says blithely, moving forward so she’s only a few inches from Bo, her eyes pouring through him. “You can’t k
eep him all to yourself on that island.” Before I can stop her, she slides her fingers up to his collarbone, holding his gaze steady on hers. And I know he has no choice, he can’t look away. He’s captured in her stare. She leans in close so her face is next to his, her lips hovering against his ear. I can’t make out what she’s saying, but she’s whispering something to him, serpentine words that can’t be undone. Promises and vows, her voice twining around his heart, drawing it forth from his chest, making him want her—crave her. A need that will be planted deep inside him, that won’t be satiated until he sees her again, can feel her skin against his. Her fingertips trail up his neck to his cheekbone, and a fury of emotions spark straight down into my gut. Not just fear but something else: jealousy.
“Bo,” I say sharply, grabbing his arm again, and Olivia releases him from her snare. He blinks, still watching her like she were a goddess formed of silks and sunsets and gold. Like he has never seen anything so perfect or mesmerizing in his entire life. “Bo,” I say again, still holding on to him and trying to snap him from his reverie.
“When you get bored on that island,” Olivia says, winking at him, “when you get bored with her . . . come find me.” Then she spins around, sauntering back to the group.
She touched him. She wove words together against his ear, enticing him. She wants to make him hers for eternity, pull him into the sea and drown him. She is collecting boys, and now she’s dug her delicate, bewitching claws into Bo.
TEN
I start a fire in Bo’s cottage.
I know I shouldn’t trust this feeling, this unraveling in my heart. It will only end up in a tangled heap. But I need to protect him. Watching Olivia run her fingers up his throat, touching the hard line of his jaw, a sickening lump of dread wretched up from my stomach. Don’t let yourself care, I recite in my mind. Boys die all too often in this town. But maybe Marguerite’s words didn’t work, didn’t stick. Maybe he resisted. I just need to keep him safe until the summer solstice, keep him from wandering out into the sea in search of her, and then he will leave the island and this town, and we’ll never see each other again. Simple. Uncomplicated.
I stand up once the flames have ignited over the logs, sending sparks in a cyclone up the chimney. Bo is sitting on the couch, elbows on his knees, forehead pressed into his palms.
“What did Olivia whisper to you?” I ask, sitting down beside him.
He drops his hands, forehead lined with confusion. “I don’t know.”
“Do you remember anything?”
His thumb taps against the side of his knee. “I remember her.” His eyes lift, staring into the fire. I don’t think I want to hear what he remembers about her, but he tells me anyway. “She was so close, it was like her voice was inside my head. And she was . . . beautiful.” He swallows immediately after he says it, like he can’t believe his own words.
I push up from the couch and cross my arms beside the fire.
“I can’t stop thinking about her,” he adds, shaking his head, squinting like he could squeeze her from his mind. But it’s not that easy.
“That’s how it works,” I say, bending down to put another log on the growing flames.
He stares up at me. “You think she’s one of them?”
“I know you don’t believe any of this, but how can you explain that you can’t remember what she said to you? And that you can’t stop thinking about her; that you’re suddenly so captivated by her?”
“I’m not—” But his words break off. He knows I’m right: He knows his mind keeps slipping back to thoughts of Olivia Greene. Her fingertips against his skin, her eyes sinking so deeply into his, it was like she was looking at the exact center of his soul. A part of him craves her now, wants her as much as she wants him. And it tears at him. He won’t be able to stop thinking about her until they’re together again. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t trust my own thoughts.”
I pace across the room. How do I undo this? How do I rid Olivia from his mind? I don’t think it’s ever been done before—I don’t think it’s even possible. He belongs to her now.
I run my tongue along the inside of my teeth. “You have to get away from here. You have to leave town.”
Bo stands up from the couch, and the movement makes me flinch. He walks to the fireplace, stepping in front of me, willing me to look up at him, but I can’t. He unsettles me, cracks apart my insides, and I bite down on the feeling, willing it away.
From beneath my eyelashes, I see his lips flatten together, and our breathing seems to settle into the same rhythm. I want him to speak, to cut through the silence, and all at once I feel light-headed, like I might reach out for him to steady myself. But then his lips open and he says, almost like a confession: “My brother was drowned in Sparrow.” His eyes cease to blink, his body a stone outline in front of me.
“What?” I lift my gaze.
“That’s why I’m here. Why I can’t leave . . . not yet. I told you he died, but I didn’t tell you how. He drowned here in the harbor.”
“When?” My fingertips begin to tingle; the hairs on the back of my neck rise on end as if a cool breeze were gliding across my skin.
“Last summer.”
“That’s why you came to Sparrow?”
“I didn’t know about the Swan sisters. I didn’t know about any of it. The police told us that he’d committed suicide, that he’d drowned himself. But I never believed it.”
I shake my head a fraction of an inch, trying to understand.
“His name was Kyle,” he starts. It’s the first time he’s said his name out loud to me. “After he graduated high school last year, he and two of his friends took a road trip down the coast. It was supposed to be a surf trip; they planned to drive all the way to Southern California, but they never made it that far.” He chokes back something, an emotion threatening to spill past his bulletproof veneer. “They stopped in Sparrow for a night. I don’t think they had any idea about the town, about the drownings. They were staying at the Whaler Bed-and-Breakfast. Kyle left his room sometime just after sunset . . . and he never came back. His body was found the next morning tangled in a fishing net not far from shore.”
“I’m . . . sorry,” I manage, barely above a whisper. A ripple of something shudders through me. A pain that I crush back down.
“He had a scholarship to Montana State in the fall. He had a girlfriend who he wanted to marry. It didn’t make any sense. I know he didn’t commit suicide. And he was a good swimmer. He surfed every summer; it’s not like he would have accidentally drowned.”
He takes a step back, unmooring me, and I let out a swift breath I didn’t even realize I had been holding in. “None of them committed suicide,” I say, thinking of all the boys who’ve waded out into the harbor, lured to their death.
We look at each other, the seconds stretching out between us.
“Maybe you’re wrong about the Swan sisters,” he says, extending an arm to touch the mantel over the fireplace, index finger brushing over a scratch in the wood. The heat from the fire has made his cheeks flushed, his lips pink. “Maybe it’s just a story that locals tell to explain why so many people have drowned. Maybe someone really is killing them; maybe that girl in the boathouse, Gigi Kline, did do it. Not because she has some ancient witch inside her who’s seeking revenge, but because she’s just a murderer. And maybe she’s not the only one; maybe there are other girls who are killing too . . . who killed my brother.”
“But that doesn’t explain why boys have drowned in Sparrow for the last two centuries.” I need him to believe—to know the Swan sisters exist.
“Maybe it’s like a cult,” he answers, refusing to accept the truth, “and every generation, its members drown people for some unexplained sacrifice or something.”
“A cult?”
“Look, I don’t know how cults work. I’m just trying to figure this all out as I go.”
“So if you really believe it’s just some cult . . . then what?”
“Then I
have to stop them from killing anyone else.”
“I thought you wanted to go to the police and tell them about Gigi Kline locked in the boathouse? Let them handle it?”
“Maybe that’s not enough. Maybe that’s not justice—for my brother, for everyone else who’s been killed.”
“Then what? What would justice be?”
“Putting an end to whatever is happening in this town.”
“Killing a Swan sister, you mean? Killing Gigi?”
“Maybe there’s no other way,” he says.
I shake my head. “There is another way—you can leave Sparrow,” I say. “You can go and never come back, and maybe someday you’ll even start to forget this place, as if you were never here at all.” I don’t mean the words I say. I don’t want him to leave. Not really. Except I need him to leave so he doesn’t get hurt, so he doesn’t end up like his brother.
A storm builds in the features of his face, a coldness in his eyes I haven’t seen before. “You don’t know what it feels like—this pain that won’t go away,” he says. “I know my brother would do this for me; he wouldn’t stop until he found out who was responsible for my death. And he would get revenge.”
“This town was built on revenge,” I say. “And it’s never made anything better or right.”
“I’m not leaving,” he says with such finality that I feel my throat tighten.
I look up at him like I’m seeing him for the first time, the resoluteness in his eyes, the anger in his jaw. He’s searching for a way to rid himself of the pain of losing his brother, and he’s willing to sacrifice everything, do whatever it takes, pay any price. Even end someone else’s life. “It wasn’t those girls,” I tell him, pleading with him to understand. “It was the thing inside them.”
“Maybe,” he answers, lifting his gaze. “But maybe there’s no difference between the girl and whatever evil makes them commit murder.”