Even stranger, each time the curtains rose, my head pulsated. When they drifted back toward the windowsill, the pressure faded.
I jumped out of the chair and dashed up the steps. The back door was locked, but the window next to it was cracked open. I hoisted myself onto the railing, shoved the old window until it slid up another few inches, and reached in with one hand. I was too far away to grab the knob, but using the tips of my pointer and middle fingers, I managed to flick the lock. I hopped off the railing and threw open the door from the outside.
I’d only been in Willa’s living room but I found the stairs easily, in the back of a tiny, immaculate kitchen. I paused on the landing, afraid of what I’d find on the second floor, but then the throbbing intensified and I kept moving. If Willa was in some kind of trouble, if the sirens had come for her after discovering she was communicating with me, I had to do what-ever I could to help.
Even if that meant confronting Raina and Zara.
By the time I cleared the last step, the pressure in my head was constant. It built as I ran down the hall and checked two empty rooms, until it felt like my head was gripped between the tightening prongs of a very large wrench. The feeling was uncomfortable but not painful—not even when I reached the last room at the end of the hall and another force swelled inside my head, pushing against the pressure outside.
Thin wisps of cold vapor streamed out from beneath the closed door. Leaning closer, I held my breath and listened… but all I could hear were the curtains snapping against the windows and walls. I raised my hand to knock, but then decided against it.
I took the knob—and my hand flew from the brass to my mouth to stop me from crying out. At first I thought the metal was scalding hot, but when I tried again, tapping it first to numb my skin to the temperature, I realized it was cold. Like ice.
I twisted the knob and pushed. The door didn’t budge. I tried again, pressing against it with my shoulder, and it inched open before closing again. Feeling stronger than I had in months, I shoved against it with all my weight. The door gave, and I fell into the room, landing hard on my knees.
My eyes closed automatically. I crouched there, waiting for Raina and Zara, bracing for pain.
But it didn’t come. The pressure in my head remained, but that was all.
I opened my eyes tentatively, just in case they were simply waiting for me to see them before they attacked, and then scram-bled to my feet when they weren’t there. Besides me, there was only one other person in the room.
Willa. She sat in an ivory claw-footed bathtub, her back straight, shoulders squared. She faced the open windows opposite the door and didn’t see me. I walked toward her slowly, through a cold, gray fog. As I neared the tub I saw that it was filled with blue-green water… and that the water was bubbling, bursting, as if an enormous fire roared beneath the floor-boards. It splashed over the sides of the tub, and I jumped back when some hit my leg. But the water, like the swirling steam it created, was cold. A few degrees cooler and Willa would’ve been stuck in a block of ice.
As it was, she already seemed to be frozen. She didn’t move once as I rounded the tub and stood before her.
Her long white hair hung loose around her shoulders, which looked bony instead of soft, the way they usually did; they jutted out, stretching the thin material of her nightgown. Her arms seemed thinner, her skin grayer. Two days ago her face was lined with soft, shallow creases, but now it sagged. Her wrinkled forehead, eyelids, cheeks, and mouth drooped as if the tub was a vacuum trying to suck her down.
She looked old. Sick. Tired. The only signs of life came from her lips, which twitched erratically, as if silently mumbling an indecipherable chant… and from her eyes. They were largely hidden by the folds of her skin, but I could still tell that they were silver, and bright, and shifting back and forth without blinking.
I stood there, shaking from fear and cold, not knowing what to do. She didn’t appear to be in pain, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t. What if this was some sort of hypnosis? What if the Winter Harbor sirens had figured out how to control her the way they were controlling Betty? What if it was a trap designed to lure me closer? Maybe she was a trigger that, once set off, would alert the sirens to my presence.
I stepped closer, opened my mouth. I was about to say her name when the pressure in my head suddenly gave. I looked at Willa but saw Raina. Zara. Gray water. A red rowboat. An oar lined with shiny stickers. A girl with empty eyes, a slack mouth, drifting on her back toward a blurred horizon.
“Is that me?” I whispered. “Am I—”
“Vanessa.”
The images vanished.
“What are you doing here?” Willa demanded. Her frail body was visible through her wet nightgown, and she tried to shield herself with her arms and stand at the same time.
My eyes focused to see that hers were now bluish-green, not silver. The air was clear, the water in the tub still. The curtains hung, unmoving, before the windows.
“You shouldn’t be here.” She reached for a robe on the floor by the tub. “Wait for me downstairs. Now,” she added when I didn’t move right away.
I went. Five minutes later, she joined me in the living room. She’d changed into jeans and a sweater and her hair was wrapped in a towel. She’d put on makeup, but her face still looked like it had aged ten years in two days.
“Why aren’t you in school?” she asked, moving through the room slowly, like her joints ached. She sat down across from me.
“I made out with Parker last night.”
She looked at me. I could tell that wasn’t the answer she was expecting, and it definitely wasn’t the one I’d planned to give. But if I was honest with her, maybe she’d return the favor.
“The boy in my life,” I reminded her. “The one who’s not my boyfriend.”
“I see. And how did that happen?”
“I asked him out. On a date.”
She frowned. “Because there was no one else to have dinner with?”
“Because I wanted him to like me. Even more than he already did.”
“Vanessa, this isn’t a game. I thought you knew that.”
“I did. I do.” I leaned toward her. “I want to be strong. I want to be able to help when the time comes.”
She held my gaze but didn’t answer.
“It’s coming, isn’t it?” I asked. “That’s what you were doing. You were trying to listen, to find out what they’re planning?”
“What I was doing doesn’t concern you.”
I leaned closer. “But I saw them. I saw Raina and Zara. I saw a red rowboat—my red rowboat.”
Her gray skin paled. “What are you talking about?”
“Upstairs. I was about to say your name to make sure you were okay, but before I could, all of these pictures flashed through my head. Right after that, you woke up, or snapped out of it, or whatever.” I paused. “Whatever that was, whatever I saw… it was part of their plan, wasn’t it?”
Her lips turned in as she searched my face. “Yes,” she said finally. “But it’s not going to get that far. They’ll be stopped long before then.”
“How?”
“That’s not for you to know.”
“But if I can help—”
“You can’t,” she snapped, standing up. “You’re a target, but this isn’t your fight, Vanessa. It’s bigger than you. And they might be weak individually, but they still have strength in numbers.”
I stood, too. “But what are you going to do? You’re just one person, and no offense, but I think I might be able to swim a little farther.” I felt guilty the second the words left my mouth, but that didn’t make them untrue.
“You needn’t worry about me being alone. I’m not as active in the community as I once was, but I still have connections. I just need some time.”
“What if we don’t have time?” I asked. “Do you know when they plan to act?”
“Not before I’m ready for them.”
I stepped toward her. “Will
a, please. My family, my friends, everyone I care about… they’re a mess. Because of me. Because of who I am. My sister spent her whole life trying to stand apart from me, and it killed her. My mom raised someone else’s child because my dad asked her to, and he’s been living two lives ever since. Paige lost her family and boyfriend because we made the harbor freeze. Parker thinks that he’s in love with me, that he wants to sail around the world with me, and I’m just using him.”
“Are you?”
The question burned. I shook my head to clear it. “And Simon… all he’s done is care about me, and all I’ve done is hurt him.” I blinked quickly when my eyes filled with tears. “If there’s any way I can help fix what I’ve broken, or at least stop things from getting worse, I want to. I need to. I think I’ll be able to handle the rest of it—the salt water and attention, the flirting and lying—if I can just help stop the sirens from hurting anyone else again.”
She was silent, and for a moment I thought she was seriously considering the request. But then she placed her thin, bony hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye.
“I’m sorry you’re hurting,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry your family’s hurting. But I promise you, Vanessa, the best thing you can do—the only thing you can do—is to go to school. Go home. Live your life the best you can, and eventually, this will all be behind you.”
She didn’t get it. At this point she was the only person in the world who could actually understand what I was going through… and she didn’t.
With tears rolling down my face, I brushed past her and headed for the front door.
“One last thing, Vanessa.”
I stopped, one hand on the door. You were right. I was wrong. We can do this together.
“Whatever you do, don’t try to listen. To me or anyone else. If you do, it’s over. Do you understand?”
I didn’t. What was over? Our relationship? Wasn’t that as good as over anyway? And how could knowing what the sirens planned do anything other than make us better prepared, and give us an advantage?
“Yes,” I said anyway, opening the door and letting it slam shut behind me.
I walked for hours after that. I walked along the water’s edge, through South Boston, into the center of the city, across the Longfellow Bridge, and into Cambridge. I walked until my feet were so tired I couldn’t feel them, and until the sky turned from blue to pink as the sun began to set. Eventually, I grew thirsty and stopped into a deli for a bottle of water and a handful of salt packets. I sat on an empty bench in Harvard Square, surrounded by college kids talking, studying, and doing other things normal kids did, and drank.
I didn’t try to listen. But sometime later, as I was staring at nothing across the square, a girl with long brown hair and blue eyes wandered into my view and stayed there, browsing magazines at the newsstand.
She wasn’t Zara. But the longer I looked at her the fuzzier my vision grew, until her hair looked black instead of brown, her eyes silver instead of blue. My head swelled then cleared, and I saw Zara leaning against a green Subaru with Maine license plates. Under a streetlight, before a boy whose face was hidden by shadows.
Not terribly loyal, but cute…
Which was what Zara had said about Simon last summer, the night she’d tried to mesmerize him and nearly succeeded.
The memory jolted me out of my thoughts. My vision cleared instantly, and I saw two things at once.
The first was my water bottle. It was in my lap, and the clear liquid inside bubbled… just like the water had in Willa’s tub. As I watched, the bubbles grew bigger, popped faster, and spiraled up and down the bottle until the water turned to foam.
The second was my cell phone. I’d retrieved it from my bag somewhere in South Boston and had been holding it ever since. Now, its red light blinked with a new text message.
I love you, V. We can fix this. Come to WH?—S
CHAPTER 27
AFTER EVERYTHING I’d done, after breaking up with no explanation and kissing Parker, Simon still loved me. He still wanted to be with me. No one else in the same situation would… but Simon did. The closer I got to Winter Harbor, the more certain I felt that, somehow, we’d get through this. We’d fix things between us, and then we’d deal with whatever came next together. The way we should’ve been doing all along.
Because we were meant to be, just like Paige had said.
Once I’d texted him back and agreed to meet, Simon had written again and asked me to come to his parents’ house, which was next door to my family’s lake house. I hadn’t been back to the lake house since we’d packed up and left for the season, and I was almost as nervous about returning now as I was to finally tell Simon everything he needed to know. I hadn’t been there by myself since returning to Winter Harbor to figure out what had really happened to Justine—and learning the truth about myself. It’d been bearable the rest of the summer with Mom and Dad there to keep me company, but I wasn’t ready to go it alone again.
So when I finally reached the lake house six hours after leaving Boston, I drove past it and turned into the Carmichaels’ instead.
The sun was setting, the house dark. The only other car in the driveway was Simon’s, and I hoped that meant that the rest of the family was out. With so much to talk about, we could use some time to ourselves.
At the front door I rang the bell and stepped back to wait. A few seconds later, I rang again and then knocked. When no one answered, I stood at the edge of the porch and looked up; Simon’s bedroom window, like the rest of the windows facing the front yard, was dark. I checked my phone, but there was only one message from Paige that she’d sent hours ago, asking where I was and saying we had to talk. Making a mental note to call her as soon as I could, I dialed Simon’s number, dashed down the stairs, and headed around the side of the house. The family room faced the lake at the back of the house; maybe Simon was watching TV or sleeping in there and hadn’t heard the bell.
His phone went right to voice mail.
“Hey, it’s me. I’m here, outside. I rang and knocked, and now I’m heading for the back.” I paused. “I love you, Simon. And I’m so sorry, for everything.”
Like the front, the back of the house was dark. I tried the door anyway, but there was no answer. Peeking into the family room, I saw that it was empty, the TV off. There were no dishes on the coffee table, no open books on the couch, no other signs that he’d been waiting for me there.
Had he changed his mind? Had his parents or Caleb convinced him that reconciling was a bad idea, that after every-thing we’d been through, we were better off apart? Maybe that’s where they all were now—out to dinner somewhere, having a family intervention to keep Simon from getting hurt again.
I turned to run down the stairs when my phone buzzed. “Hey,” I said, smiling in relief. “Hey, beautiful. Missed you at school today.” I grabbed the porch railing, looked around quickly to make
sure I was still alone. I’d been so happy to hear the phone I’d
answered without checking the number. “Parker. Hi.” “Everything okay?” “Everything’s fine.” I looked out at the water, tried to picture Simon swimming, sitting on the dock—anything to replace the image of Parker grinning, his lips nearing mine. I opened my mouth to ask if I could call him back, but nothing came out.
“So I was thinking today that summer’s really far away.”
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