That doesn’t sound like an apology, I shot back.
It isn’t one. Her eyes flashed. She was an accidental casualty. We always assumed you perished with your mother, and if your sister’s death is what it took for you to reveal yourself—and for us, to discover the one sleeping siren capable of silencing us all—then it was worth it.
My thoughts started to veer toward what Willa had said about my ancestors in Canada, the powerful group of sirens that had killed thousands of men, but I stopped them before they potentially told Raina more than she already knew.
Now, some of our members feel that you’re owed your due. That you should suffer the same fate you tried to bestow upon us.
I scanned the sirens gathered around us without moving my head. They all breathed through their masks, studied me through skinny silver slits.
But because I strive to act only in the best long-term interest of the group, rather than simply killing you the way you might deserve… I’m giving you a choice.
I returned my gaze to Raina. Her face was blank as she prepared to issue me an ultimatum.
You can either give the ladies what they want, and endure what will likely be a long, painful death… we’ll even be so kind as to escort your bloated, lifeless body back to the dock behind your family’s house.
At this the white light surrounding me flickered and bounced as the sirens nodded their approval.
Or you can join us.
I glared at her, at the thought.
I wouldn’t be so hasty, she warned. Thanks to you, our prominent community has experienced a significant setback. How-ever—and this could also be thanks to you—we will rebound. Healthier and stronger than ever. You have abilities sirens of your age and experience level shouldn’t have. You could be an asset to us, and we, in turn, could be that to you.
That, I thought, holding her gaze, will never happen.
No? She turned, peered over her shoulder. Not even if it means saving the one person in the world you’d do anything for? Who you should do anything for, especially considering certain transgressions?
A soft light glowed from the darkness behind her. Through it I could just make out Zara’s smirk, Simon’s chest rising and falling underneath her arms.
He was alive. As the water and light shifted, I saw a black nozzle lodged in his mouth. It was attached to a small oxygen tank lying in the sand next to him.
Hot tears stung my eyes before neutralizing in the cold lake water. You’ll let him go? If I do what you want me to, you’ll release him and leave him alone?
Vanessa. Her red lips pouted. Let’s be realistic.
Then what? I practically screamed the words in my head. What exactly are you suggesting?
In order to join us, you must take a life.
I breathed faster, the salt water pumping in and out of my mask.
If you take his, you’ll be stronger than you ever imagined possible, and he’ll die, looking at you, listening to you, and feeling happier in that one instant than he was in all of his days on earth. You hurt him greatly, which was why Zara was able to control him for a brief time, but he still loves you, Vanessa. More than ever.
I shook my head, squeezed my eyes shut. How is that saving him? I demanded.
I didn’t say you could save him from death. What you can save him from is watching you slowly drown, which would kill him long before we actually stopped his heart. She paused. Physically, he dies either way.
He’ll leave you alone, I said. We’ll both leave here and never come back. We’ll move across the country, or even out of the country, if you want. He’s too good… he doesn’t deserve—
Let’s not forget, Raina said over my internal blubbering, whose idea it was to freeze the harbor. This punishment isn’t only about you.
Zara, I implored, twisting in my restraints, think of Caleb. I know you still love him. Think of how devastated he’ll be if he loses his brother. If you think that his feeling totally alone will somehow increase your chances—
There was a sudden rush of water and something shoved against my back, hard. I collapsed, landing softly on the rocks. I clutched my head and tried to stand, but stopped when the water cleared and I registered the scene before me.
Raina’s eyes flared as she faced a tall woman with long dark hair. The woman stood where I had seconds earlier; whoever she was, she hadn’t wanted me to keep talking. The other sirens stood behind Raina, trying to appear threatening but clearly growing tired. Some trembled, others were hunched over, still too weak from their time in the frozen harbor to keep their backs straight. They stood between Simon and me, though I could still see his feet so I knew he was there.
Of course, that didn’t mean he was alive.
The Nenuphars wouldn’t approve of this behavior.
My head pulsated in protest. I knew that voice.
The Nenuphars have never known and will never know, Raina said. They don’t concern themselves with groups like ours.
They will if I ask them to.
The woman with long dark hair sounded exactly like Willa.
But Willa had white hair, and her figure was rounder, softer. This woman’s jeans and T-shirt hugged a thinner, firmer, younger body.
As if they’d welcome you back with open arms after a seventeen-year estrangement, Raina said. For someone touting acceptable behavior, you don’t seem to appreciate that you’ve committed the greatest sin of all: abandoning your family.
I left because I had to, the woman said. Because of things you were going to force my child and me to do, to make us become.
Which was precisely what your beloved Nenuphars would have expected under their command. Raina’s lips turned up. And strangely enough, here you are, not looking a day over, what? Forty-five? Forty-six?
Let them go, Raina, the woman said. If you do, I promise the Nenuphars will know nothing. I promise to do whatever you want.
That’s the funny thing about you and promises, Charlotte…
Inside the mask, my chin fell. I watched the Willa look-alike, waited for her to correct Raina and deny being Charlotte… but she simply stood there, still, strong, unwavering.
They never seem to stick.
Raina charged just as a scream seemed to shatter my skull. A blinding flurry of sand and water made it impossible to see its source. I was still trying when an arm latched around my waist and pulled me up and away from the lake floor. The farther we swam, the clearer the view became.
Is that… That can’t be… Please tell me it’s not…
But it was. Paige was swimming away from Zara, carrying a saltwater mask and sack—and wearing one, too.
She just wanted to help, Charlotte answered. Sound familiar?
I couldn’t respond. Paige had transformed. Somehow, she’d succeeded in becoming one of us. I felt so many things at once—shock, fear, disappointment, anger, love—that my head couldn’t single out one to focus and speak to.
Vanessa, Charlotte continued, lifting up a broken, sunken canoe and placing me underneath, I’ve tried to protect you from a distance for seventeen years. I know it’s difficult to understand, and I promise to explain everything later… but please, let me do what I need to protect you now.
She hurriedly untied my wrists and ankles. At one point her face was inches from mine, and I saw her smooth face, taut neck, silver eyes. She looked like two women at once: a younger version of the one I’d come to know over the past few weeks, Willa… and an older version of the one I’d first seen in a photograph in Betty’s bedroom. She was both of them, some-where in the middle.
Do you remember what you did with the water bottle on the bench in Harvard Square? she asked.
I nodded, picturing the water bubbling and foaming inside the plastic container.
Do you remember how you did it?
I think so.
When you hear me sing for you, I need you to do that again.
Here? With the—
I was going to ask if she meant with the whole lake, b
ut she was gone before I could.
What about Simon? I yelled after her. What about Paige?
Nothing.
I lay there, breathing salt water, fighting to control my torpedoing thoughts. In the distance, there was the sound of rushing water. There were more screams, followed by gasping and weeping. Eventually, there was a single, high-pitched note. It started in the center of my head and radiated outward until it seemed like the entire canoe vibrated.
My eyes settled on a smooth stone. I stared at it until it went out of focus, and until I pictured Zara. Raina. Paige. Charlotte. I concentrated so intently, seeing instead of thinking, watching instead of feeling, that I didn’t notice when the water around me began to fill with tiny bubbles, as if on the brink of boiling. I saw Justine, focused on her smile, her dimples, her bright blue eyes. The bubbles swelled and burst, coming bigger, faster.
I saw Simon. Walking around the Bates quad, holding me on the hayride wagon. Watching me in a hospital room, checking on me as we hiked through the woods, offering me the popcorn bowl first as he, Caleb, Justine, and I watched a movie years ago.
I saw Parker. Leaning next to my locker. Bandaging my leg in the park bandstand. Diving off the side of a boat. Reaching for my hand.
And the water rushed and swirled, groaning like the ocean as it pummels the beach after a storm. The canoe lifted from the sand and spiraled away. I was next. The force was so strong it ripped the mask and case from my body. I tried to fight the pull, but I was too tired, my body wouldn’t listen.
Until there was someone behind me. Pressing against me, wrapping arms protectively around my stomach, my shoulders. A face leaned into my neck, and I knew the familiar profile immediately.
He’d come for me. Somehow, perhaps with Charlotte or Paige’s help, he’d found me in this twenty-acre whirlpool.
My body came back to life. I placed both hands on his arms so he knew to hold on, and then I twisted and turned, feeling the currents, listening to them, riding them toward the shore, the wailing sirens, the red and blue lights flashing across the water’s surface.
When my head finally broke the surface, I saw that the police were in our backyard. So were Betty, Oliver, and Caleb.
I made it as far as the diving raft thirty feet from shore. I lifted Simon’s limp body onto the bobbing metal ladder and held it there with my own. My lips, pressed against his neck, were warmed by a faint, fading pulse.
I stayed there as help came, counting the seconds between beats like I once did the seconds between lightning bolts, and whispering the same four words over and over.
“We’re meant to be… we’re meant to be… we’re meant to be…”
CHAPTER 28
“THE UNIVERSITY OF Hawaii’s sounding pretty good right about now.”
I lowered the Globe and looked up as Paige sat in the Adirondack chair next to mine. She rubbed her hands together, then cupped and blew into them. In her lap was a nearly empty orange plastic pumpkin.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Palm trees? Warm turquoise water?”
“I thought you wanted to be as far from water as possible?”
Her smile faltered. She zipped up the down coat she wore, crossed her arms, and shifted her gaze to the lake. “We’re down to sugar-free gum. Maybe I should run to the store and get more candy. Trick-or-treaters talk, and I wouldn’t want you to get a reputation as the house without chocolate.”
Somewhere behind us, there was a long, loud clattering, like the sound of dishes falling onto a tile floor. A second later,
Mom called for Dad.
“I don’t think that matters,” I said.
She frowned. “They’re really selling it?”
I looked out at the lake. Its flat, still surface reflected barren treetops, a cloudy gray sky. “They’re really going to try.”
“But haven’t they had this house—”
“Forever?” I finished. “Yes.”
She leaned toward me, lowered her voice like we weren’t the only two people sitting outside in the freezing cold. “But she knows, right? Your mom? You explained that they’re definitely gone this time, and that what happened last week will never happen again?”
“I did. But after being lied to for twenty years, I don’t think she knows what to believe anymore.”
“Your dad didn’t know that part, though, right? About who Charlotte really was—who she really is?”
“No. Because she never took lives; by the time he saw her again, she looked decades older than she really was. And just to be on the safe side, she dyed her hair and wore colored contact lenses.” My eyes fell to the newspaper. On the front page was a photo of a man in a Red Sox jersey and hat, cheering in the stands of Fenway Park. Beneath the photo was the headline I’d read a hundred times in twenty-four hours: Body of Missing City Sanitation Worker Gerald O’Malley, 43, Found in South Boston.
Despite seeing him only once, I’d recognized him immediately. Gerald O’Malley was one of the city sanitation workers who’d spoken to me outside of Willa’s—outside of Charlotte’s—house. According to Charlotte, after I’d left that day, they’d come back around to collect the trash on the opposite side of the street. She’d followed them as they continued on their route down to the water, and then, in her words, she’d done what needed doing.
She claimed it was the first time she’d taken a man’s life. And that she’d done it only to gain the strength she needed to help save me from the Winter Harbor sirens. She said she’d changed her name to Willa when she moved to Boston in hopes of keeping her true identity from Dad and everyone else, and that not giving in to her body’s demands had aged her drastically. When the life left the men’s bodies and entered hers, it turned back the clock by years.
Like Mom, who’d locked herself in her bedroom for two days after being told the truth about my biological mother, and about Dad, and about me, I was no longer sure what to believe. That was why, after I thanked her for helping Paige rescue Simon and me from the swirling, suffocating sirens, I told Charlotte that I needed not to see her for a while. I needed time to think—preferably without anyone listening.
“Why’d you do it, Paige?” I asked quietly.
“Vanessa… I already told you.”
“Tell me again.” I looked at her. “Please.”
She sat back, hugged the plastic orange pumpkin. “After last summer, after losing… everything… I wanted something that was just mine again. You and your parents were wonderful to take me in, but they were still your parents. I was living in your house, going to your school. And then, in the middle of all the college frenzy, I realized I was trying to figure out a future that belonged to someone else. Because if last summer hadn’t happened, if I’d finished high school here, I probably wouldn’t have gone to college. I would’ve worked at the restaurant, eventually married some local fisherman when Jonathan inevitably left me for some pretty, Ivy League genius who his parents would’ve approved of, and had a million babies.”
I reached for her hand. She let me take it.
“And then… I don’t know. Betty had been trying to convince me to transform because that’s what Raina and Zara wanted, but even if they’d had nothing to do with it, I think I still would’ve been tempted.” She paused. “At least the powers will be all mine, you know? To use the way I want to—to help people instead of hurt them.”
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