Siren

by Tricia Rayburn

  “Your sister’s upstairs,” Raina said finally. “But she doesn’t feel well.”

  Paige nodded toward the kitchen window. “Have you looked outside today? Do you know what’s happening only a few miles away?”

  “She’ll be back as soon as she’s able,” Raina said evenly.

  “No one’s going to feel well if we’re short staffed,” Paige pointed out. “Our customers will be hungry. Louis will be cranky. And all because Z’s PMS-ing? I don’t think so.”

  Raina turned on an electric mixer and lowered it into the pink mixing bowl. “You can try talking to her,” she said over the whirring. “But don’t expect her to be happy about it.”

  “I never do.” Paige whirled around. She grabbed me gently by the sleeve when she reached the doorway and pulled me with her out of the kitchen.

  “Pleased to meet you, Vanessa,” Raina called after us, sounding indifferent at best.

  “See?” Paige said once we crossed the living room and entered a narrow stairwell. “I’d love it if my biggest issue with my mother was that she bought me a dress I didn’t want to wear to go to a party I didn’t want to go to.”

  “Is that why you call her by her first name?” I asked, ignoring the thudding in my chest. “Because she’s not as warm and fuzzy as other mothers?”

  “That—and because she wanted us to. She says she doesn’t feel old enough to have two teenage daughters.” She reached the landing and turned to me. “By the way, I meant to ask—why aren’t your parents here? You said your mom wanted you to come home?”

  “Right.” I focused on a lit wall sconce. “Mom’s a workaholic, and Dad’s a momaholic, so they went back to Boston for a few days.”

  “Awesome,” Paige said, stepping into the hallway. “I would kill for my own space every now and then. Want to trade?”

  I laughed, but the funny thing was, even if the trade included Zara, I kind of did.

  I followed her down a long hallway lit by two small crystal chandeliers. “Are you sure I shouldn’t wait downstairs?” I asked when we stopped in front of a closed door. “Your sister doesn’t seem to like me that much.”

  “Z doesn’t like anyone that much.” Paige smiled reassuringly and pounded on the door with her fist. “You should hear her talk about Jonathan.”

  She banged again before I could ask who Jonathan was. I pressed one hand to my forehead when music playing on the other side of the door grew louder. It sounded like jazz, but with drums and a fast, throbbing beat.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Z,” Paige yelled. She pounded again, and the pain reverberated between my ears each time her fist connected with the door.

  She started knocking and bobbing her head in time to the music. This went on for at least a minute, and I turned away and stood by a tall window, massaging my temples as I watched the rain fall in one heavy gray sheet into the ocean far below. My head started to spin and, feeling like I might pass out, I turned back to Paige to excuse myself and wait in the car.

  I was about to tap her shoulder when the jazz stopped and the door flung open. As soon as Zara saw me, her eyes flashed surprise, then confusion, then anger.

  “Not feeling well, huh?” Paige asked.

  It was a legitimate question. I’d seen Zara only at Betty’s, so had only seen her in khaki shorts, a black T-shirt, and an apron. The standard uniform was a far cry from her current ensemble: a tight black skirt that ended about six inches higher than the khaki shorts, a fitted black strapless shirt, and sparkly stiletto sandals. Her hair, which I’d only seen in a long ponytail, hung perfectly straight down her back, and her makeup made her silver eyes shine like Christmas ornaments.

  “If you’re having trouble breathing, you may want to let out a few stitches,” Paige suggested, eyeing Zara’s bulging top.

  “And unless you want to never breathe again, you’ll tell your little friend to leave.” Zara’s voice was calm.

  Paige nodded. “Okay, then.” She looked at me. “Meet you downstairs?”

  I was grateful for the out and started down the hallway before Paige had even closed the door behind her. I hoped whatever issues they had could be worked out quickly, because I now wanted nothing more than to make it out of there before the winding roads leading down the mountain and back to town flooded.

  Vanessa …

  I quickened my step.

  My dear, sweet, Nessa …

  Justine was outside my head again, calling to me from the crystal chandeliers above, the pictures lining the walls, the rug beneath my feet.

  You’ve come so far…. Please don’t go….

  I walked faster, shaking my head sharply against wailing sirens and flashing red lights, purple and yellow bruises, and Justine standing in the water, her skeletal arms reaching for me.

  I had one foot on the first step leading downstairs when the house fell silent. I stopped and held my breath. Nothing. No funky jazz. No shouting from the end of the hallway. Not even the rain pounding the roof overhead.

  “Vanessa?”

  In the mirror hanging on the wall across from me, my eyes widened and my face went white. The voice didn’t belong to Paige or Zara. And there was no one behind me. The hallway was empty.

  “You’ve lost it,” I said to my reflection before starting downstairs. “Officially.”

  “Vanessa?” the voice asked again.

  I froze, my heart hammering in my ears.

  “Is that you …?”

  It was coming from the opposite end of the hallway, nowhere near Zara’s room. I stared at the landing at the base of the stairs and willed my feet to move.

  And they did move, finally—upstairs and down the hallway.

  My pulse threatened to break through veins, and my fingers and toes tingled. My timid inner voice warned me, begged me to turn around and get out of there. But I ignored it. Every muscle and nerve fought to pull me in the other direction, but I had to see who was there.

  Because, what if? What if it was her? What if, somehow, despite all logic—and the medical examiner’s report, the wake, the funeral—Justine was still here? I knew it was crazy … but how was it any harder to believe than everything that had already happened?

  The door was open slightly, revealing a thin, vertical line of light. Not breathing, I placed one palm on the door and pushed it in.

  It took me a second to see her. When I did, I was a combination of disappointed and relieved that she wasn’t Justine.

  A woman sat in front of a fireplace on a lilac-colored chaise lounge, wearing a purple robe and weaving a needle and thread through a thin piece of fabric. Her hair was long and wavy like Raina’s; it had probably once been as black as licorice, too, though time had turned it a powdery charcoal, like the ash under the logs burning in her fireplace. When she smiled at me, her eyes were more gray than silver, and cloudy. They focused not on mine, but above my head.

  Somehow, the woman had known I was there without seeing me. Because she couldn’t see anything.

  I wanted to turn around and tiptoe back down the hallway. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Maybe because it didn’t feel right to ignore her and make her think the senses she had left were starting to fail. Maybe it was because her purple walls were covered in dozens of needlepoint tapestries depicting different views of Chione Cliffs in winter, spring, summer, and fall.

  Or maybe it was because I stood there waiting for Justine to say something, anything, inside my head or around it … and she didn’t.

  “I’m Bettina,” the woman said quietly, her voice as smooth as ice. “But you may call me Betty.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “YOUR GRANDMOTHER’S BLIND,” I said when the Betty’s crowd finally thinned out several hours later.

  “Yes,” Paige said, drying a wineglass.

  “She can’t see,” I said. “At all.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay … then how did she know who I was?”

  Paige glanced around, then pulled me to an empty corner behind the bar. �
��Grandma Betty was in a very bad accident two years ago,” she whispered. “She hasn’t been the same since.”

  “What kind of accident?” I asked.

  “Good news,” a male voice said before she could respond.

  We looked across the bar where Garrett stood, holding up two tickets.

  “Dave Matthews. Portland. Tonight.”

  “I thought that show sold out months ago?” I said, since he was looking at me.

  “I pulled some strings—and gave an online broker next year’s tuition.” He started backing away. “I know you’re busy, so don’t say no yet. Think about it first.”

  “Aw, someone has a summer crush,” Paige said once he was outside. “He’s a sweetie. You should go.”

  The idea of going out and having fun was too strange to consider. “You were saying? About your grandmother?”

  “Right.” Paige resumed drying. “She kind of went swimming in a lightning storm.”

  “Ouch.”

  “No kidding.” Paige shook her head. “Before the accident, Grandma Betty spent more time in the water than out of it. It didn’t matter what time of year or how cold the water was—as long as it wasn’t frozen, she was swimming. That’s actually how she ended up here, in Winter Harbor. She grew up in Canada and came down the coast on a road trip with some friends. She was so excited that the water here wasn’t iced over—the way every other body of water this far north is in the middle of winter—that she never went back.”

  “That’s dedication to your sport.”

  “Or the kind of dependency that can get you in trouble.” She looked at me. “You know when you were little and counted the seconds between thunderclaps and bursts of light? And the longer the time between them, the farther away the storm was?”

  I nodded without sharing that I’d actually done that quite recently.

  “Well, on the day Grandma decided to jump from our backyard into the ocean below, the thunderclaps and bursts of light were happening simultaneously. The storm was right over us. She said it was just something she needed to do, which, of course, doesn’t explain squat. And she hasn’t talked about it since.”

  Paige looked up when a table of four men across the room burst into laughter. It had taken the promise of the next weekend off to get Zara out of the miniskirt and back into her Betty’s uniform, but she had eventually conceded. By the time she did, I was waiting in the car. I’d shaken Betty’s hand and complimented her needlepoint, and then I’d hightailed it out of there. Paige and Zara had emerged ten minutes later and driven together in Zara’s red Mini Cooper so that Paige could make sure Zara didn’t embark on an unexpected detour. Now, it was back to business as usual.

  “Grandma wasn’t the same after that,” Paige continued. “She lost her vision, and her other senses were also affected. She thought she was dying when she was still in the water because she couldn’t see anything, but she could hear the rain, waves, crabs crawling, whales singing. In the hospital, she couldn’t see the shock on the doctor’s face—but she heard him say that she was going to live … and also heard a patient breathing on the respirator in the next room, and another patient’s heart stop on the floor below.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know. We thought the insane claims would end once she was home and the trauma was behind her, but she kept insisting that she could hear the fish bubbling in the ocean, the roses blooming in the front yard, the mailman coming from miles away. Then she started smelling and sensing things, like some kind of super senior citizen. We joked that we might see her shooting across the sky one day, wearing her purple bathing suit and a beach towel tied around her neck like a cape.”

  “Is that how she knew who I was without seeing me?” I asked. “Did her super senses clue her in?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” She put a glass down and leaned toward me. “No one outside our family knows that Grandma Betty went off the deep end and never fully returned after the accident. Raina tells anyone who asks that she’s just suffering from normal old-age issues and is too weak to leave the house. She thinks that’s easier than dealing with questions we don’t know how to answer … and I know she’d appreciate it if our little family secret stayed a secret.”

  “You got it.” I nodded. “No problem.”

  “Thanks.” Paige smiled, then looked at the TV perched above the bar. “Hello, daily depressing update.”

  I followed her gaze and hoped she didn’t notice the color leave my face. The news anchor was easy to hear, since everyone with a clear view of the TV stopped talking to listen to what she said.

  “Winter Harbor police are having a busier summer than usual,” the woman said into the camera. “Instead of dealing with the usual seasonal issues of underage drinking and unapproved late-night beach parties, local authorities are contending with a series of seemingly unrelated deaths.”

  Next to me, Paige shook her head.

  “The first victim, eighteen-year-old Justine Sands, who would have been a freshman at Dartmouth College in September, leaped to her death from a cliff. Paul Carsons, an entrepreneur and father of three, died when his boat capsized in a severe thunderstorm. Charles Spinnaker, a corporate attorney and father of five, drowned while fishing fifty feet from shore.”

  As their pictures flashed across the screen, I focused on breathing.

  “The fourth victim, Aaron Newberg, president and CEO of pharmaceutical company ImEx, Inc., was discovered earlier this morning at the base of the Winter Harbor Lighthouse. It is believed that he also drowned, though authorities are still investigating.”

  The news clip ended abruptly with a list of phone numbers for witnesses to call with more information. It seemed as routine as a traffic and weather report.

  “Hey,” Paige said, lifting a crate of water glasses to the counter and snapping my attention from the television. “What time is it?”

  I checked the clock hanging over the sink behind me. “Almost ten.”

  She folded her arms and rested them on the edge of the crate. “Well, that’s strange.”

  I followed her gaze across the dining room. My heart skipped once, then seemed to stop.

  It skipped again when I saw Oliver sitting in Zara’s section—two hours ahead of schedule—and looking around the room instead of out the window. That was what had obviously caught Paige’s interest.

  And it seemed to stop when I saw Simon standing in the lobby, also looking around the room.

  “Is that Simon Carmichael?” Paige said when he waved to me.

  “Yes.” I was glad Grandma Betty’s supersensory powers weren’t hereditary so Paige couldn’t hear my sudden arrhythmia.

  “Wow. And they say college is good for the mind. He looks totally different.”

  “Would you mind helping Oliver?” I asked. “I’ll just be a second.”

  “Take your time.” She took a pad and pen from her apron and smiled. “The day Jonathan shows up here for me will probably be the last day you see me for a week.”

  I made a mental note to ask about Jonathan later. My list of questions for Paige was growing long, and included others, like, What had happened to Paige’s grandfather? What did Paige’s dad think of all this? What was with all the Chione Cliffs arts and crafts? How did Grandma Betty know my name? and Why did Justine seem to want me to meet her?

  The answers would have to wait.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked when I reached Simon. He’d smiled when he first saw me, but now he looked serious.

  “Hey,” he said. “Sorry to just show up, but I couldn’t wait to see you.”

  It was obvious by his expression that he didn’t mean that in the romantic, sitting-at-home-pining-for-me sense, and I was surprised when the words still made my arms tingle, like someone lightly trailed a feather across my skin. “It’s okay. What’s going on?”

  He glanced around, as if someone might actually hear us over the hundred other people in the room, and stepped toward me. He stood so close I could see the smudges
on his glasses and the tiny bristles of hair along his jaw. “Caleb called.”

  The buzz around us seemed to grow softer. “Where is he? Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know—he didn’t say anything. I didn’t recognize the number, and when I answered, there were a few seconds of light, bumpy breathing, like he was moving around. And then just as it sounded like he was going to speak, there was another voice. A female voice. She said Caleb’s name, and then the line went dead.”

  A family of five entered the restaurant, gently pushing us backward. As we moved, my eyes fell on the mirror behind the hostess stand. I held my breath, sure I would see Justine looking back at me, surrounded by a sparkling spray of silver.

  “I checked the number online.”

  I looked away from the empty mirror.

  “There was no listing, so I tried calling. No one answered the first few times, but a park ranger finally picked up.”

  “A park ranger? Where?”

  His eyes held mine. “Camp Heroine.”

  I could no longer hear the customers talking and laughing in the dining room. It was as if Simon and I were the only people in the entire restaurant.

  “I wouldn’t think of going under any other circumstances,” he said. “And he might be long gone by now. But this is the first lead we’ve gotten. I can’t just let it go.”

  I managed to nod. He stood so close now I could smell the spearmint toothpaste on his breath.

  “Will you come with me?” he asked quietly.

  My pulse quickened. Besides Chione Cliffs, Camp Heroine was the last place I wanted to go. But if it meant possibly finding Caleb—and spending the day with Simon—then there was nowhere else I should be. “Be right back,” I said, untying my apron.

  I flew from the lobby and headed for the bar. Paige was gone; a quick scan of the dining room showed her talking to Oliver. I couldn’t disappear without telling her, but I also couldn’t go over and endure another strange senior moment. I waited for her to turn away from him before waving.