Siren

by Tricia Rayburn

  “What?” She looked at me. “What is it?”

  I still stood in Zara’s room. I held my breath and looked slowly over one shoulder. The three walls that weren’t lined by floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean were lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrors. I hadn’t noticed before because their reflections were muted by sheer white curtains. The windows were closed, but the curtains, which had hung motionless while Paige and I sat on the bed, moved now, floating away from the mirrors. They revealed bursts of silver light, like a thousand paparazzi stood in front of each mirrored wall, their camera flashes all going off at the same time.

  “Paige!”

  The pressure exploded in my head at the sound of Zara’s voice downstairs, but I hardly felt it.

  “When you see Louis tonight, I have a few choice words I want you to share!”

  Paige squeezed my hand before releasing it. If she saw the lights, she didn’t say so. “I’ll go tame the beast. Meet me in my room.”

  I followed her as she ran for the stairs, but when she was halfway down, I turned around. Paige had closed Zara’s door behind us, and the lavender carpet glowed white in the light shining out from under the door.

  He has to want to be found….

  I stood in front of the closed door, my heart slamming against my chest. The last thing I wanted was to go back inside Zara’s room, but my body seemed to be moving without checking with my brain first. Something was pulling me back. Something strong, something that didn’t care whether Zara discovered me there.

  “It’s just a disco ball,” I whispered, placing one hand on the doorknob. “It’s just a disco ball reflecting the afternoon sun.”

  I shielded my closed eyes with both arms and turned away as soon as I opened the door. The whole room was engulfed in a blinding silver cloud. I waited, my heart threatening to fly through my chest. The cloud thinned after a few seconds, and I opened my eyes slowly. When I could see into the room without cringing, I stepped through the doorway.

  The curtains reached toward me as I moved in the glittery haze. The bursts of light still danced across the mirrors, but they were smaller now, softer. Like a million tiny lightning bugs had pushed out the paparazzi.

  One pocket of light didn’t fade. It shone strong, a beacon cutting through the fog, from the top of the white bookshelf.

  It’s okay, Nessa…. You’re okay…. I’m here….

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I whispered again, my voice cracking. “I don’t know what you want me to do.”

  I neared the bookshelf, and my brain screamed to turn back, to leave it alone and run out of the room, out of the house. But my feet kept moving. They didn’t stop until I stood in front of the bookshelf, engulfed in silver.

  He wants to be found…. He just can’t see past the light….

  My hands shook as my arms stretched up. I braced for something as my fingers touched lace—searing pain, my palms burning, my entire body melting into a liquid pool—but my hands actually grew steadier. I slid the scrapbook from the shelf, cradled it in one arm, and turned through the pages. I turned past Xavier Cooper. Alex Smith. John Martinson. Trevor Klemp. Zach Holbrook. Eric Park. Max Hawkins. And at least a dozen others Zara had led into loving her, then left behind. I turned until I reached the very last head shot, and then I sank, with the light, to my knees.

  “Caleb Carmichael,” I said softly.

  He looked younger than the last time I’d seen him, on top of the cliffs, so I assumed the school picture was from the year before. He was smiling. He seemed happy. My stomach turned for him, for this younger, happier Caleb who had no idea what he was going to have to endure several months later.

  Keep going, Nessa…. You must keep going….

  I forced myself to turn the page, not wanting to see what came next. In this collection of romantic targets, Zara had eventually hit the bull’s-eye every time. If she’d zeroed in on Caleb, even if she’d done so before things had developed with Justine, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know what they’d done together, or how long it had taken for her to win him over. I didn’t want to know that he’d cared for anyone else the way he’d cared for Justine.

  “‘May first,’” I read aloud. The starting date was written in pink ink under a paper napkin with a navy blue anchor in its center and “The Lighthouse Marina Resort and Spa” across its top edge. Underneath the date was only one other word.

  Bingo.

  “I don’t care how you do it, just do it!”

  Zara’s voice was closer. I flipped through the remaining pages, relieved and confused when they were blank. Caleb was the scrapbook’s last target, and the napkin was the only memento marking his connection to Zara.

  Go, Nessa … now….

  I snapped the scrapbook shut, jumped to my feet, and replaced it on top of the bookshelf. The silver light was gone, the sheer white curtains hanging straight and still against the empty mirrored walls. Every part of my body seemed to be working together again, and when my brain screamed to run, my feet listened. I flew from the room, closed the door behind me, and was at the other end of the hallway just as Zara started stomping up the stairs.

  I wasn’t sure which was Paige’s room. Not wanting to guess wrong, I froze behind a small potted tree. I didn’t breathe as Zara reached the top of the stairs and a fresh jolt of pain shot between my ears. She stopped suddenly and cocked her head to one side, as though listening. Her back was to me, but when she stepped to the right instead of in front of her, toward her room, I ducked into the nearest room and gently closed the door behind me.

  “Do you hear that?”

  I turned slowly. Grandma Betty sat in her chaise, facing me. She held a needle in one hand and a half-finished project in the other, but both hands were still. She smiled as her eyes rested on the empty space above my head.

  “She’s talking to you.”

  I swallowed. “Who?” I asked this so quietly, I almost wasn’t sure I’d said the word aloud. I stepped away from the door, as though Zara wouldn’t be able to hurt me as much the closer I stood to her grandmother. Because Grandma Betty’s supersonic, supersensory senior powers were obviously picking up Zara saying my name as she moved down the hallway. She heard Zara breathing, her muffled footsteps coming this way. She could sense Zara’s anger at my presence and knew something very, very bad was about to happen.

  Grandma Betty’s cloudy eyes traveled slowly from the space above my head, stopping when they were level with mine.

  “She’s talking to you, Vanessa,” she said. “Your sister. Justine.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “‘WILLIAM O’DELL and Donald Jeffries were found late last night on top of the boulders at Beacon Beach, a popular surfing spot ten miles north of Winter Harbor. It is believed their bodies had been there several days before Winter Harbor officials discovered them.’”

  I sat in the parked Volvo, watching two little girls hurry toward an SUV with their mother.

  “This is in the Globe, Vanessa. The Globe! People are dying practically every day there, and I had to wait for a Boston paper to pick up the story? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The girls wore matching yellow sundresses and carried picture books. Ten years ago, they could’ve been Justine and me. My stomach turned at the thought.

  “I hope you’re not spending so much time with Simon that you’re oblivious to the world around you. I will not let another Carmichael boy put one of my daughters in harm’s way, do you understand?”

  “Mom, I’m fine.” I looked away from the girls and grabbed the door handle. “They were all water-related accidents. You know I don’t go in the water.”

  “Your sister never jumped off cliffs before she started hanging around Caleb.”

  “Sorry … is Dad there? I wanted to ask him about the kitchen faucet.”

  “The last time I handed the phone to your father, you used him to do your dirty work. You can talk to him when we’re done.”

  I frowned. I really wan
ted to talk to Big Poppa, to tell him everything that was going on, to confess that I was more scared than I’d ever been, because there was no one else to tell … but I didn’t think I could make it through twenty more minutes of Mom. Plus, Simon was waiting.

  “Never mind, I have to go. I’ll call you later.” I hung up before she could argue, turned off the cell phone ringer, and hurried into the Winter Harbor Library.

  “Vanessa, I’m so sorry,” Simon said when I reached the basement. He stood and gave me a quick hug. “I didn’t know I’d be gone that long. How are you? Is everything okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, aware that my arms kept tingling even after he’d let go. “And things are better now.”

  Something flashed across his face as he looked down, but I couldn’t decipher the expression in the basement’s dim lighting.

  “How was the research?” I asked. “Did you get any answers?”

  “Yes, actually.” He pulled out a metal folding chair for me before sitting himself. “How many storms hit here while I was gone?”

  “Four.” I didn’t have to think about it. The sky now turned as dark as night at least once a day.

  “Know how many hit Ashville? And Gouldsboro and Corea?”

  “Four?” I guessed.

  He looked at me. “None.”

  “But those towns are only a few miles from here.”

  “It was seventy degrees and sunny every day in every town within a hundred miles of Winter Harbor.”

  My eyes traveled over the dozens of temperatures and weather conditions listed in the notebook he held toward me. “I don’t understand. The storms don’t always last long, but they’re huge. How can they not be hitting anywhere else?”

  “I don’t know.” He closed the notebook. “What I do know is that they originate and dissipate right over Winter Harbor—and only over Winter Harbor.”

  “Isn’t that, like, scientifically impossible?”

  “Not impossible—but highly improbable. And unfortunately, the weather isn’t the only thing we need to figure out.” He dragged a fat black binder across the table, opened it, and flipped toward the back. “I didn’t mention it because I thought we’d already been through enough for one day, but when the police were inspecting the beach at Camp Heroine, they referred to ‘the other ones.’”

  I frowned. Not wanting me to have to revisit the scene of the accident, Simon had insisted I stay in the Subaru while he led the police to the beach. Whatever he’d heard, he’d been processing on his own for four days.

  “At first, I assumed they were talking about the other victims from the past few weeks,” Simon continued, “but then they started throwing dates around. June 1970. August 1975. September 1983. May 1987. August 1989. When I asked what they were talking about, all they said was that they’ve never had a situation of this same magnitude, but they have had similar incidents over the years.”

  “I don’t remember hearing about anything like this before.”

  “Me either. And there’s nothing about weather-related deaths in those back issues of the Winter Harbor Herald.” He turned the binder around and slid it toward me. “But there is this.”

  “‘Orin Wilkinson, twenty-five, beloved son and brother, passed away in his rowboat, near the Winter Harbor Marina. His parents said he was never happier than when he was fishing, and that he was still smiling on the water, even in death.’”

  “That’s from May 1987.” He swung another binder around to face me. “This one’s from June 1992.”

  “‘Jack Fleischman, twenty-nine, was found on Long Wharf, lying motionless on his surfboard, grinning from ear to ear.’”

  “May 1998.”

  “‘Vincent Crew, twenty-two, was discovered near Beacon Beach, his water skis still strapped to his feet, a smile frozen on his face.’”

  “July 2003.”

  “‘Lucas Fink, thirty-one, had been scuba diving off Ashawagh Pier the day Coast Guard officials found him floating faceup, reportedly still smiling from whatever he’d seen on his last trip below the surface.’” I looked at Simon to find him already looking at me.

  “All of these victims were found smiling.”

  “Just like Tom Connelly,” I said, recalling the name of the man we’d found. I hadn’t read the article in the Herald but couldn’t miss his name blown up on the front page.

  Simon pulled another binder from a stack on the floor. “This one just happened last year, and probably bothers me the most.”

  I recognized the three hoops through the bottom lip immediately.

  “‘Max Hawkins, twenty-three, loved music, movies, and mountain biking. He was found on the docks near Betty’s Chowder House, smiling as though he’d just finished a bowl of the restaurant’s famous namesake.’” He looked at me. “Caleb and I met him when we were fishing on the pier and ended up talking to him quite a bit. He wasn’t a particularly happy guy, and he never smiled. Ever.”

  “Simon …” My heart hammered in my ears as I stared at the same photo I’d seen for the first time only two days before. “The other day, when you said it was hard to not know Zara Marchand … what did you mean?”

  He sat back, apparently surprised by the question. “I guess I meant that she doesn’t really let you forget her.”

  “How?” I asked. “How doesn’t she let you forget her?”

  He frowned at me, clearly wondering why I wanted to know, especially now. “Well, she’s gorgeous, for one thing.”

  Grateful for the basement’s dim light so he couldn’t see my face burn, I lowered my eyes back to Max’s picture.

  “But she’s the kind of gorgeous that throws you off, makes you uncomfortable. Like when you go to an art museum and feel guilty for even looking because the security guards are watching your every move. And she knows it and isn’t shy about using it to get what she wants.”

  “What does she want?”

  “Attention, mainly.”

  I looked down, and my eyes landed on Max’s death date.

  September thirteenth. The day after Zara broke up with him.

  “Do you know a guy named Xavier Cooper?” I asked hesitantly. “Or Trevor Klemp? Or Eric Parks?”

  “The names don’t ring any bells.” He leaned forward. “What is it, Vanessa?”

  “Nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  “You’re talking to me.” His eyes locked on mine. “Mr. Science Guy. Everything is something worth considering—even if it’s eventually ruled out.”

  Was that true? Or would he think the connection was completely ridiculous? A case of jealousy gone very bad? “Zara keeps a scrapbook,” I said before I could change my mind. “Of her dating conquests. She records start and end dates of every relationship she has and keeps small mementos of every date—blades of grass, napkins, breath-mint boxes, whatever.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought her the sentimental type.”

  “She’s not,” I said. “She stays with each guy long enough to get him to say he loves her, and then breaks up with him.”

  “A never-ending game of catch and release?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Okay, well … this is new insight, but not entirely surprising. What does it have to do with them?” He nodded to the newspapers.

  “Xavier Cooper was her first boyfriend. They started hanging out in May and stopped in August. On day eighty-three of their relationship, he gave her a card that said he loved her. On day eighty-four, she stopped talking to him.”

  “He stopped showing up at the pier sometime in the middle of August,” Simon said thoughtfully.

  “Trevor Klemp and Eric Parks followed.” I paused. “So did Max Hawkins.”

  His eyes fell to Max’s faded picture in the Herald.

  “They dated for nineteen days. On September twelfth he told her he loved her.”

  He followed my gaze to the dates by Max’s picture. “And on September thirteenth his body was found by Betty’s Chowder House.”

  “I’m not saying
that she drove them to their deaths, to take their own lives …” I shook my head. “Or maybe I am. I don’t know. But Max is gone. Xavier’s gone. Trevor and Eric may or may not be gone. And Max was found smiling …”

  “Just like Tom Connelly.”

  “And maybe the others, too?”

  “But what about Orin Wilkinson?” he said. “Vincent Crew? All the people who died in the seventies and early eighties, before Zara was even born?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  He reached across the table with one hand. He raised his just above mine, then lowered it so that it rested an inch away. “What about Justine?” he asked, his voice soft. “She was the first one found.”

  I focused on his hand, his neat nails, the way his fingers widened slightly at the knuckles.

  “You were there, weren’t you? You saw her?”

  “She wasn’t smiling.” I answered his next question before he could ask it.

  He sat back in the chair. “I’m not saying Zara doesn’t have something to do with it. The scrapbook is an interesting piece of evidence, and I don’t doubt her ability to do whatever she sets her mind to. But there’s also all the storms, the tides, the crazy atmospheric activity—”

  “Caleb was in it.”

  He paused. “What?”

  “Caleb was in the scrapbook. He was her last entry, and the only one without an end date.”

  “But Caleb can’t stand Zara. Not to mention he was out-of-his-mind crazy about Justine.”

  I didn’t want to say it because I really didn’t want there to be any truth to a relationship between Caleb and Zara, but it did no good denying that we didn’t know everything about our siblings that we once thought we did. “Justine didn’t apply to Dartmouth,” I finally reminded him.

  He stared at me, his eyes flicking back and forth as his brain tried to process the latest bit of illogical information. The room was so quiet I could hear the single bare lightbulb buzzing overhead.

  We both jumped when his cell phone rang and vibrated at the same time, sending the phone skipping across the metal table.