Soon.
Because I figure Saint Sebastian is proof of what Hart has been saying all along. Case has to be the one that Elora is afraid of. He must be the one chasing her down through the rain in all those mixed-up flashes I’ve been having.
There’s no real way to deny that now.
Then, after he killed her, he took his medal back. The one she slipped into her pocket when we were only twelve years old. The summer of batting practice.
Baseballs.
And eyelashes.
He stole it from her while she lay there. Dead at his feet. Or maybe dying.
But then what?
How did Saint Sebastian end up lost in Honey’s shed?
If my power is so great, why don’t I know the answer to that question?
I slip the medal into my underwear drawer, and my fingers find the corner of Sera’s drawing. I unfold the paper and carry it over to my bed. I crawl up on top of the quilt to sit cross-legged and study the image.
That big black trunk.
The trunk that currently isn’t in the shed where it should be.
I think about how I used to hide inside it. And it hits me that it’s exactly the right size.
The right size to hold a body. The right size to make a girl disappear.
Like magic.
The room starts spinning. Suddenly I’m imagining Case folding Elora’s long legs into that black trunk and closing the lid. I get up and shove the drawing back into the drawer, then I run to the bathroom and drop to my knees in front of the toilet. My stomach heaves and heaves, but nothing comes up. I’m shaking all over, and my face is on fire, so I curl up on the bath mat and rest my cheek against the smooth tile.
And then I guess I fall asleep, because when I open my eyes again, it’s pitch black. No bedroom light. No bathroom light.
The power must be out.
I hear the storm raging outside, pelting the window with rain and what must be little hailstones. They make an eerie rattling noise against the glass. Like a tiny army trying to break in.
The tile is hard and cold, and my arm is numb from being pinned under my weight. It’s uncomfortable but undeniably real.
And then all that disappears.
The solid tile of the floor dissolves beneath me and—
The bayou is flooding out. Water runs over my back and swirls around my ears. Deeper and deeper. I try not to breathe it in. But I have to breathe. I gasp for air and water rushes in instead. I’m coughing and gagging, and every time my body cries out for oxygen, all I get is more water.
Panic stabs at my insides. It slices me up and leaves me in ribbons.
I can’t see.
I can’t think.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t—
My throat is on fire. The water burns my lungs like I’m sucking in gasoline.
I lose my grip on the mud, and I feel myself being pulled along with the torrent.
Tumbling.
Spinning.
Arms over head over knees over elbows.
Mud in my nose. My mouth. My eyes. There’s nothing to grab on to. Nothing solid in the whole world.
And then it all goes black.
My head slams against the base of the toilet, and I scramble to my hands and knees on the dark bathroom floor. My chest hurts. Everything hurts.
I can’t see. I can’t think. I can’t breathe. I can’t—
My stomach heaves. I sputter and choke. My throat burns again as the water comes up.
I’m vomiting and coughing.
Water.
Water everywhere.
It comes up and up and up. It gushes from my throat. Pours out my nose.
My ribs ache. I retch and gag and listen to the splash of water against ceramic tiles. It spreads across the floor and pools around my fingers. And it keeps coming.
I vomit up water from my stomach. I cough it up from my lungs.
Again and again and again.
So much water. Enough water to drown a person.
Enough water to drown Elora.
When it finally stops, I fold in on myself and hold my aching sides. The smell of the bayou fills up my nose. I grab the edge of the sink and pull myself to my feet. My legs are shaking, and my bare feet splash through the puddle as I feel my way out of the bathroom.
Blind.
I can’t be in the house anymore. There’s no air in here. I need to be out.
Outside. On the front porch. Where maybe I can breathe.
It’s late. After midnight. I stumble my way through the dark bookstore, and Sweet-N-Low comes padding out of the kitchen to see what’s up. I hear the jingle of his collar, so I put one finger to my lips, like he’s a person, and whisper to him to go back to bed.
Then I open the front door. Slow and easy. So the bell won’t wake up Honey.
And everything goes silent.
The wind. The rain. The thunder and lightning.
It all just—
stops.
No movement. No breeze.
Dead still.
But I can hear the faintest tinkling of wind chimes.
When I slip out onto the front porch, my feet skitter on tiny pieces of ice. Hailstones the size of green peas. I pick some up and hold them in my hand, but they’re already melting in the summer heat.
I cross the boardwalk and step out onto the dock. Hart would be pissed.
But Hart isn’t here.
I avoid the rotten, roped-off area and move to the other side of the platform to stand over the dark Mississippi.
I wonder if maybe I’ve become a water witch.
Like Elora.
Suddenly a strange energy swirls around me. The damp air hums and crackles, and the hair stands up on my arms and the back of my neck. Evie’s wind chimes whisper louder and louder until they ring like church bells.
And I know it’s him.
When I look back over my shoulder, he’s standing right behind me. Blond hair and ice-blue eyes that shine with a deep-lit fire.
He’s so close. If I put out my hand, I could touch him.
I should be afraid.
But something in the water murmurs not to be.
I turn to face him, with all the strength of the great, rolling river at my back, and I can’t even explain it. This weird calm settles over me, and I don’t feel any fear.
“I didn’t mean to scare you, Grey.”
I wonder if all our conversations will begin with those same seven words.
His smile is genuine. Open.
Up close, there’s nothing about him that reminds me of Sander’s drawing. The faceless stranger. Étranger is all emptiness. And there’s so much blazing light in Zale’s eyes.
He’s not wearing anything but a pair of faded jeans. His skin is beautiful. Golden. And that blond hair of his is storm-blown. It shines like silk in the moonshine. It occurs to me that he’d look right at home on the cover of one of those cheesy romance novels. The kind Honey keeps stashed in her nightstand. The ones I’m not supposed to know about.
“Who are you?” I ask him.
“Zale.” I notice a little bit of a gap between his front teeth. And somehow that makes him seem more real. “But I already told you that, didn’t I?”
I swear that ocean-deep voice could sweep me out to sea. But I refuse to let it.
“How did you know Elora?”
Something like sadness crosses his face, and he looks past me, out at the river.
“I told you, she was a friend of mine. That’s a thing we have in common, Grey. You and me.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
He shifts his focus back to me again, and my stomach drops like I’m riding a roller coaster.
“I didn’t kill her, if dat’
s what you’re askin’ me.”
There’s the faintest hint of a Cajun accent. It’s not nearly as strong as Case’s, but I still hear it flowing like water under his words.
“How do I know that?”
He shrugs. “I guess you don’t.”
But I know who killed Elora now.
Don’t I?
That bloody Saint Sebastian medal is sitting in my underwear drawer with the murderer’s name engraved on the back.
“Where did you come from?”
“I was born here,” he says. “Same as you were.”
But that doesn’t make sense.
“Then how come nobody knows about you?”
His eyes darken, like when a cloud passes in front of the sun.
“I’ve been gone a long time,” he tells me. “Just came back around last winter.”
“But nobody even knows you exist.”
“You know.” He smiles at me again.
“And Elora knew,” I add.
“Yeah.” He nods. “Elora knew about me.” Something changes in his voice, and I hear the reverberation of deep loss. It sounds so familiar. “Elora knew me.”
“You’ve been watching me.” It isn’t a question. I’ve felt those eyes on me so often these last two weeks.
“I just needed to make sure you were safe.” He tosses his hair back out of his face again.
“Why?”
He shrugs. “I figured that’s what Elora would want me to do.”
I’m struggling to fit the pieces together.
“Safe from what?”
“I don’t know, Grey. I wish I did.”
A lightning bug lands on my hand. It sits there blinking like a lighthouse beacon.
“Why should I believe you?”
He tilts his head to one side, like he’s thinking hard about that question. “You probably shouldn’t,” he acknowledges. “But I hope you will. I think maybe we can help each other.”
“I don’t even know you.” None of this feels quite real.
“But you do know me, Grey. In a way. You always have.” He grins, and it lights up the night. “I’m one of you.”
“What do you mean, one of us?”
Everything in my life has become some kind of riddle.
“I was born right here,” he says. “Not quite seventeen years ago.” And that’s when I get it. “My birthday’s comin’ soon. The middle of September. Just before the fall equinox.”
The earth has started to spin in the opposite direction.
“You’re one of the Summer Children.”
He nods, and none of the rules I thought I knew apply anymore.
Zale is probably just a few days younger than Evie. That makes him number eleven.
I can tell he means it to reassure me. But for the first time since he appeared on the dock tonight, I’m frightened.
In numerology, eleven can be the number of power and wisdom. But it’s also the number of imperfection. It’s chaos and disorder. A world in disarray. The undoing of the ten. Everything out of balance.
My muscles tense.
“You don’t need to be afraid of me,” he says. “I promise.”
But I’m not sure anymore. I look up, and my eyes find Honey’s darkened bedroom window. Suddenly I’m aware of how alone I am out here.
With this stranger.
I move to step around him. To head back toward the front porch. The light of home.
“Grey. Wait.” Zale reaches into his pocket, then he holds out his fist. “I have a gift for you.” I hesitate, and he opens up his fingers. Something small and silvery catches the moonlight. My hands fly to my mouth, but they can’t hold in my gasp of surprise. Zale gives me another little smile. “Take it,” he urges. His voice is so gentle, like Honey’s hand in my hair. “It’s yours now.”
I reach for the shiny thing with trembling hands, then I slip it onto my finger.
Elora’s ring.
Silver with one tiny blue pearl.
“Where did you get this?” There’s an accusation in the words, and I know he hears it.
“Elora gave it to me,” he says. “The last time I saw her. But it belongs on your finger. She’d want you to have it.”
I’m staring at my hand. At Elora’s lost ring. “Why should I trust you?” I ask him. Because it seems like a thing I should want to know.
I feel the burn of those blue eyes on my skin.
“Because Elora trusted me.” I raise my chin to look at him. “And she told me the two of you were lit from the same match.” I’m staring now, mouth open, because he couldn’t have known that. Not unless Elora had said those words to him. Our special words.
The tinkle of wind chimes floats across the boardwalk.
“That ring was really important to her,” he says. And whatever little bit of glue is holding me together, I feel it start to melt under the heat of Zale’s ice-fire gaze. “It was the most precious thing she had to give. Because it came from you.”
His words flow over my soul like fresh water out of the ground.
“She loved you, Grey. So much.”
My heart falls out of my chest and splashes into the river. I look over my shoulder to watch it float downstream until the current sucks it under.
Because everyone keeps saying that. That Elora loved me.
But if that’s true, why did things end the way they did last summer?
I’m off and spinning again.
Spinning and spinning and spinning.
I grab for something to hold on to. An anchor. Any little bit of hope.
“Do you think there’s a chance she’s out there somewhere?” I ask. “Alive?”
“No.” Zale shakes his head, and I watch that blond hair fall across his eyes. I’m glad when he reaches up to push it back. Because I need that light. But his answer cuts deep. “She’s gone, Grey. I feel it.”
“Me too,” I whisper, and a sharp-toothed hole opens up somewhere in my heart. It eats me alive when I say those words out loud.
It isn’t a sudden realization. The permanence of Elora’s loss has been stalking me all summer. I haven’t been able to admit it to Hart, but how long have I known it, deep down?
Since I picked up Case’s bloody medal a few hours ago?
Since I got off the mail boat that first morning home?
Since the visions started?
Since that phone call from Hart way back in February?
Or since the night before that? The very night Elora went missing—even though I didn’t know it yet—when I woke up in the dark, sick and dizzy with loneliness that hit me like a sudden flu.
I’m shivering now. Shaking so hard I’m afraid I’ll crack open. I’ve never felt this kind of cold before. A cold so deep it hurts.
“I need to go inside,” I mumble. “I need—” I stop and suck in a rattling breath. Choke back a wail. Because all I really need—all I want in the whole world—is Elora.
And Elora is dead.
I’m frozen solid as Zale walks me back toward the Mystic Rose. We stop in front of the bookstore, and he reaches for my hand. As soon as Zale wraps his fingers around mine, a tingling heat surges up my arm and lodges somewhere in my chest. Under my ribs. When he looks at me, I see all the way down to the bottom of those eyes. And they are deeper than the Gulf of Mexico and ten times as blue.
Something flutters loose inside me.
And my heart starts to beat.
“Be careful, Grey,” he tells me. Evie’s wind chimes start up. There’s a warning in them this time, and when Zale speaks, something in his voice echoes that sound. “This town is poison. Elora knew that. She’d want me to make sure you know it, too.”
I start to tell him he’s wrong about that. That La Cachette is my home, and as much as Elora might have wanted o
ut, it was her home, too. But before I can form the words, Zale squeezes my hand and fades into the dark. I look down at my fingers, and I can still feel the strange tingle of his electric touch.
I step inside the Mystic Rose and close the door behind me, and the rain comes again. Not angry, like before. Gentle. Like tears. The lights flicker a few times, then come back on, and the air conditioner shudders once and begins to hum.
I blink against the brightness as I cross to the half-price shelf to search out a small blue book that I know is hiding there. Secrets of Numerology Revealed. I find it and turn to the section on number eleven.
I see all the things I already know. Power and wisdom . . . but also chaos. The unbalancing of ten. A universe spiraling out of control.
But then there’s this: In the tarot, eleven is the card of Strength and Justice. It represents the courage to stand strong in the storm and face your own worst fears.
I close the book and slip it back into its spot. Then I flip the light off on my way out of the shop.
In my tiny bathroom, there’s a puddle of muddy water on the floor. I clean it up with a dirty towel, but the smell of the swamp still hangs in the air. I go to the window and slide it open just enough to let in the damp breeze and the scent of rain.
The whisper of wind chimes.
Wrynn’s little trinkets are still lined up on my windowsill, so I count to thirteen.
Thirteen shiny charms—
Thirteen years old the summer Hart kissed me—
Thirteen Junes come and gone since Ember and Orli were drowned—
Then I slide the window closed and lock it.
There’s been a shift. I feel it. Everything is different.
I think about the first time I saw Zale—outside my window—in the bright shine of the Flower Moon.
The Flower Moon means change comes soon.
I hold Elora’s ring to the light, then I take a deep breath and tell myself that Elora is dead. And I can’t be afraid anymore.
Not of the rougarou.
Not of the dark.
Not of this power that is growing inside me.
Not of the questions.
And, most of all, not of the answers. No matter how ugly they are.
I kick at the hand at my ankle and realize it’s just a twisting root. But I don’t have the strength or the will to get up. Then something thick and slimy moves against my leg. And I’m on my feet before
Dark and Shallow Lies Page 10