I tried to reach down—to grab whatever it was. I prayed that it was Vanessa.
A finger grazed mine. I let out a scream and tried to dive farther. I tried to reach her, but she sank lower, and I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure if it was the water or my fear that stopped me more.
I shoved upward again.
“Harlow!” I screamed. “I found her! She’s here, Harlow! Help!”
“Get her! I have the boat, Charlotte! We need the boat!”
“I can’t!” I breathed. The feel of the water around my feet, the swirling darkness wrapping around my body, was already sending me over the edge of another panic attack. I tried to go under, but I froze.
My sister was drowning, and I couldn’t move.
Harlow screamed out a string of curses, and then there was a splash of water as she swam.
She dove, the splashing around us sounding in the dark for a moment before there was silence.
Silence as I treaded water, waiting for Harlow to come up. Waiting to see if she found Vanessa.
I screamed into the night, a terrifying sound of fear and helplessness. The sound of it was foreign even to me—I sounded like a wounded animal. I tried to go underwater again, but the fear kept me afloat.
Then Harlow broke the surface, and I cried out as I saw Vanessa in her arms, her dark hair plastered against her face.
“Help me!” Harlow cried, and we swam back to the boat. I got in first and then reached down. It took everything I had to pull Vanessa back into the boat. I set her on her back, and it was then I realized she wasn’t breathing.
Harlow heaved herself into the boat, spilling onto the deck.
“She’s not breathing!”
“What?”
“She’s—she’s not breathing, Harlow!” I shrieked.
Harlow skidded forward on her knees, putting her ear to Vanessa’s mouth.
I couldn’t tell if she was whispering out a prayer or a curse. Knowing Harlow, it was likely she was doing both.
I pulled back against the inside edge of the boat as Harlow pumped on Vanessa’s chest.
One two three four five six seven eight. Mouth to mouth. Again. One two three four five six seven eight.
I wrapped my hands around my hair and pulled on the roots.
Vanessa wasn’t breathing. She wasn’t breathing because I couldn’t dive down and save her. I couldn’t save her, and those few extra seconds could have been the difference.
One two three four five six seven eight, Harlow pumped.
“Don’t you fucking dare, Nessa,” Harlow choked out. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
A sob ripped from her throat as I pulled my knees to my chest and let out a small cry.
“Don’t!” Harlow snapped, her eyes wild as they found me through strands of wet hair hanging in her face. The low light of the blood moon made the hatred in her gaze glitter. “Don’t you even cry, Charlotte. She’s not dead. She is not dead.”
Harlow reached down, feeling for Vanessa’s pulse.
I saw the look of terror that she tried to hide when there was nothing.
There was nothing.
Harlow started the compressions again.
“Harlow,” I whispered, bringing a shaky hand to my mouth.
“Shut up, Charlotte,” Harlow bit out.
Vanessa’s face was blank, her eyes closed as she lurched under Harlow’s hands. Her bun had come undone, and I could still see the faint trace of glitter in her scalp.
She was dead.
My sister was dead, and it was my fault.
The horror of it mixed with a self-hatred so deep I swore I could feel it rattling my bones.
I did this.
I let her die.
My heart didn’t break then. I knew what that felt like. This . . . this was different. This was a hollowing out, a remaking. It was as though I didn’t have a heart at all. Because a heart was something that was only useful if it could love.
I’d never thought I was a particularly brave person. But I didn’t realize I was that much of a coward.
I sat there, watching my older sister give everything she had, scraping her nails across the billowing cape of the death that was slowly walking away with my sister in its arms.
Harlow’s jaw clenched as she pumped.
She didn’t stop all at once. For fifteen minutes, her hope died slowly. Each moment still punctuated the night with a grunt, a ruthlessness that we later learned cracked Vanessa’s ribs.
When Harlow stopped, when she fell back against the deck, her wet jeans slapping against the fiberglass finish, her face stunned and blank, I went still.
Harlow didn’t say anything. She didn’t rage at God or scream. She was just . . . quiet.
And that was more frightening than anything I had ever seen. Harlow was a fighter, but in that moment—she had given up.
The waves pelted themselves on the side of the boat, and the lapping sound mixed with Harlow’s harsh, ragged breathing as we both froze, unwilling to be the first to speak in the new world that stretched out—the world where half my family was gone.
I don’t know how long we sat there, too cold and numb to shiver as both of our lips turned blue, eyes fixed on our sister’s body. But it was long enough that when Vanessa lurched, I thought something terrible was happening—that it was a different part of whatever horror we’d just witnessed on land. She coughed twice, eyes bulging with panic at the water in her throat. They were her eyes still.
Harlow shoved herself up, helping Vanessa roll onto her side. Harlow hit Vanessa on the back, letting out a triumphant cry as Vanessa heaved. Harlow pulled Vanessa against her chest.
I know Dean is screaming, but the blood rushing through my ears drowns him out.
And then, Lemmere lets me go, and I crumple to the tile, the sharp pain in my wrists snapping me back to myself as the burning in my lower back ebbs and I can hear again. I lift my mirror and pull out my knife, ready to fight. Lemmere lets out a shriek, turning just in time to see an iron arrow run through the back of Richtor’s head. Dean doesn’t hesitate, but shoves Richtor’s body back and pulls a blade from his sleeve. In the space of a breath, he throws it, end over end, until it hits Lemmere in the shoulder.
Richtor hisses, pushing himself back upward. Vessels can only be killed by beheading them with an iron blade, but from what we can tell, they still feel pain. We use arrows at the Palisade—it usually buys us a couple of seconds when we need it most. But this time, the arrow just seems to piss him off.
Lemmere curses, the breath making heat waves as it rolls past her lips. She is about to lunge at him when a blade runs through her from behind. Her head topples, landing on the blood-soaked tile with a sick thud. The body follows, revealing a lithe figure all in black, the lower half of her face obscured by a black mask. Richtor rushes the killer, but she wastes no time in tossing the blade to Dean, who has a better angle. He catches the blade in midair, twisting it with skill and ease before swiping it across the air, severing Richtor’s head from his body.
The blood slinks across the tile toward me as the sound of dozens of raiders sounds on the stairs.
I avoid tilting my mirror, because I’m pretty sure whose angry gaze will meet mine. The boot moves closer, rolling Richtor’s head over so that it’s facedown. He’s dead, but dead eyes can still pass the Crimson.
I stare at the brackish blood as long as I can before looking down at the reflection to confirm who just let out the irritated noise.
I know that I will have nightmares for months to come. The feeling is still seeping back into my legs, and my lungs burn from the aftershocks of adrenaline.
But it doesn’t really matter that I just literally stared death in the face, because it is still freaking terrifying to look up at the raiding commander’s rage-filled eyes as she pulls her mask off her face and tucks it under her chin. Harlow wipes the fine mist of blood off her defined cheekbone with the back of a gloved hand. It smears upward, an obscene shadow of the perfect contour she
used to paint on in our bedroom mirror before shows.
“There had better be a fucking excellent reason for this,” Harlow hisses.
Chapter 4
TWO RAIDERS—MAX, WITH HIS TWO MISSING teeth, and Glenn, his graying hair cropped short—come up behind her. She eyes Dean, who wipes her sword on his pants as he answers the question before she asks it.
“Only two Vessels chased us, but there was a third,” he says, tossing the sword and catching it by the blade before handing it hilt-first back to Harlow. She snatches it and looks to her men.
“Sweep the perimeter. If it’s still here, end it,” she says. Her bleached blond hair flutters in the ocean breeze, her smoky black eyeliner making her death glare even scarier.
“He didn’t sound like he was progressed, but that one was, so I wouldn’t rule it out,” Dean adds, pointing to Richtor’s corpse as he makes his way over to me.
“Use a mirror,” Max calls, and Dean waves him off.
“She’s fine,” Dean replies. Still, I go a step further and shut my eyes tight as he approaches, relief flooding me as the reality of what we just survived hits me. He puts his hand under my chin and tilts it up. I keep my eyes closed, and Dean sighs.
“You don’t know I’m fine,” I whisper.
“I’ll risk it. It seems we’re doing that today,” he shoots back.
I open my eyes, keeping them downcast. The memory of my mother’s shriek echoes through the back of my mind, the perfect accompaniment to the fear singing in my blood. But a still sort of reassurance cuts across my thoughts: I don’t feel any different.
Dean angles the mirror strapped to the back of his wrist, and I look at myself.
There are spots of dark liquid on my cheekbones and in my eyelashes. Blood.
But my eyes are normal—the irises a weird mix of green and brown. My mom used to say they looked like a sunlit forest. Dean eyes me in the reflection. “What the hell was that?” he asks.
I don’t know what to say—I don’t have an explanation I can use. I love you is the only thing that makes sense, and it’s the one thing I can’t say.
“She alive?” Harlow asks, her voice a blunt knife as she strides over to us.
It was never hard to tell when Harlow was mad. She was never that great at hiding it. When our parents told her she couldn’t get her belly button pierced for her sixteenth birthday, she told me she was going to be mature about it in an effort to show them that she should be allowed to make her own decisions. But when they didn’t change their minds within the fifteen minutes she’d allotted for her patience, she went out and bought cigarettes instead. She chain-smoked the whole pack, threw up, and left the butts on the front porch in a pile.
So I don’t exactly expect subtlety from her. Yelling, maybe. But the silent treatment is way worse. She doesn’t say a word to me as the raiders look through the rest of the museum. There is no sign of the other Vessel—the one with the cruel voice.
That distinction seems almost silly, now that I know how cruel Lemmere was. I tell Harlow what I heard them saying—something about orders from her. Her face remains blank as she nods once, then motions for me to head down to the caravan of cars waiting on the stone driveway.
Dean sits in the front seat of the Range Rover, and I climb in the back. Harlow drives south, leading the convoy back to the Palisade.
“So stupid,” she breathes, wringing her hands on the steering wheel like she’s trying to choke it. I look out over the storm-covered ocean, trying to find words. She’s right. Even with mirrors, we were taking a huge risk. There are many dangers in the world now, and most of them aren’t Vessels.
Because one of the worst parts about this virus—this curse—is what it’s done to the people who don’t have it. And it all hinges on one simple, awful fact: there is a way to survive the Crimson, if you get it. Once you’re exposed and the countdown begins in your iris, staining it from purple to red, you have one day to change your fate, and only if you do the unthinkable: pass the Crimson on to three Curseclean—people who have never been exposed to the Crimson before. Do that, and your iris turns yellow. We call a yellow iris Xanthous—and it means that you’re immune to the Crimson for the rest of your life. The Curseclean you’ve infected become Exposed, and the purple countdown begins for them, a sick cycle with no conceivable end.
And if they don’t find a way to pass it on? If the purple counts all the way down? Then the color goes from purple to an angry red, and the person—as you knew them—is gone.
They’re Vessels.
I guess the closest thing we had to compare them to in the beginning was the undead in horror films. But that didn’t quite fit. They’re not the grunting, mindless creatures that teetered across our screens. At least, not at first. For a while, they’re still . . . them, just hungry. That phase lasts longer for some than others, though we don’t know why. There are tales of mothers and brothers and husbands who turned but stayed with their families even after, a black sash over their eyes and a lock on their doors. They could still talk and reason—and they said they’d rather die than hurt anyone. The families didn’t have the heart to do what needed to be done, because they still sounded so much like they were before.
But the hunger always wins, in the end, and their promises don’t count for much when they break the lock. I wish that was the worst part about the Crimson, but it’s not. The loophole of this curse created more monsters than the actual Crimson. They’re called Runners—traffickers who capture and sell Curseclean to those who can pay to save their own lives and become Xanthous. The Runners spread the curse, then lock the Exposed up in a cell and wait for the Crimson to take over. The blindfolded crew then goes about the task of killing the Vessels the only way they can be killed—by beheading with an iron blade.
Eventually, Dean takes a deep breath. “The headdress was there, Har. Right where Charlotte said it would be.”
“I said no,” she barks at him. “Not with Maddox Caine so close.”
I blanch, wondering for the thousandth time if Harlow can read my thoughts. “Maddox Caine?” I blurt, forgetting too late that that intel probably wasn’t for me to hear. Maddox Caine—one of the most notoriously violent Runners on the western seaboard. Her cruelty is matched only by her body count.
Harlow meets my gaze in the rearview mirror, and I see the irritation in her level stare.
Yeah, I wasn’t supposed to hear that.
“That’s classified. So don’t tell anyone,” she orders.
I roll my eyes. Who would I tell?
Harlow twists her grip on the wheel and turns to glare at Dean again. He knew.
“We talked about it, and I said no. See, as your girlfriend, I would expect you to respect that. But as your commander, I demand it. Now everyone will look at me and expect some sort of follow-through here, Dean. And what am I going to do? Put my boyfriend in the stocks for a day?”
“Sure,” he says, shrugging. “Though I wanted to point out that when I brought up bondage that one time, you said you were not into it.”
I snort, despite myself, and then shrink down in the seat as my cheeks flush hot and I try to turn it into a cough.
Oh, I don’t want to know that.
“I’m not joking right now.” She turns her head, shooting daggers at me before turning back to the road. “And don’t even get me started on you.”
Dean glances at me in the rearview mirror, and I stare out the window.
“That’s three aware Vessels at once. Three,” Harlow says, and I hear the confusion in her voice. “And two were in that pre-mindless state. They’re staying there longer and longer.” She chances a look at Dean. “We’re missing something here.”
Harlow slows down as we pass a motorcade of cars. They all have the same insignia spray-painted on the door—a flame surrounded by a circle. Enforcers—the envoys from the Torch sent to gather intel and give aid to the rest of the country.
“They’re going the wrong way, aren’t they?” I ask, cra
ning my neck to watch as they pass, the sand and dirt spinning up in clouds behind their wheels.
“They’re pulling back,” Harlow says, her voice low. I whip around, my fingers gripping the back of the seat. I meet Harlow’s gaze in the rearview mirror.
I open my mouth to ask more, but she looks forward again, straightening her shoulders. That much information was a gift—sister to sister. But she won’t tell me any more.
I reach down and pull the headdress out of my backpack, fingering the cool metal through the fabric I’d wrapped it in.
You’d think we would have learned our lesson about treasure, Dean had joked. And he was right.
You’d think.
Most people heard about Anne for the first time when the Crimson was spreading. When we realized that “obviously fake” footage from the research ship wasn’t fake.
But I knew about Anne long before then. My mom would tell me there was a reason for it—that it was destined, or some shit. She’s always had more faith than I could ever understand. It was that kind of faith that wanted to help the man who knocked on her window. That kind of hope that got her killed. It’s that kind of hope I can’t afford. So the truth of it is that my sisters and I knew about Anne de Graaf because my dad was a history professor who specialized in Atlantic studies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In short? He was a pirate specialist. Every summer, we’d travel to Boston for an annual convention of pirate buffs. That’s where we first heard about Anne: the French maiden who challenged her husband’s killer to a duel, won, and then took his ship for her own.
The pirate conventions were cool when we were really young. Leo, a burly man with a salt-and-pepper beard down to his belly button, would always make us balloons shaped like swords. We’d eat funnel cake from a truck and watch our mom inspect old coins as our father pored over antique maps and argued with other scholars about trade routes in the Spanish sea. We’d step into Madame Menagerie’s fortune-telling tent and gape at the old books and maps she had on an impressive display. Her real name was Shriver, and she’d laugh with us, putting on a heavy fake accent as she grabbed our hands.
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