“And Elora and I weren’t in love,” he whispers. “Not like you mean. Not like that.”
We stand there for a few minutes, all tangled up in each other. And I start to feel that humming current again. It gets stronger and stronger until Zale’s white-hot energy is coursing through both of us.
Everywhere his body touches mine, I’m suddenly so alive.
Wide awake.
And when I look up toward his face, his eyes blaze down at me bright blue.
Evie’s wind chimes sing out like tinkling laughter. It’s a familiar sound. Magical.
I reach up on my tiptoes to pull Zale’s mouth toward mine. Not because I’m hurting and I need the pain to go away. But because he makes me happy. And I need that to last a little bit longer.
I am so unprepared for the sensation of kissing him, though. So completely unprepared.
When our lips meet, it’s the lighting of a fuse. Zale is soft and sweet, but thrumming with barely contained electricity. Little zaps to my front teeth. The roof of my mouth. Zip. Shock after shock after shock that makes it hard to keep breathing. My legs are shaking. And Zale’s hands are at my waist.
My wide-open heart skips and jumps. It stops hard. Then races.
And when I finally feel his tongue against mine, it’s the completing of a circuit. We hum and vibrate together like our bodies are tuned to the exact same frequency.
That buzz erases everything that hurts and all the things that scare me, at least for a few minutes. I pull him even closer. And I stop fighting the way he makes me feel.
Eventually, we have to stop so I can catch my breath. Zale bends low to whisper in my ear.
“There’s magic in you, Grey.”
And for the first time ever, I almost believe that.
The sky is turning light in the east. But off to the south, there’s a solid wall of black. It’s the light in the sky that scares me, though. Not the dark.
“You have to leave,” I tell him. “You need to get out of here.”
He smiles at me. “I’m not afraid of the hurricane. I was born into the storm. Remember?”
“I know,” I tell him. “But you need to be afraid of Hart. He’s got a gun, and he’s convinced you killed Elora.” Fear grips me all over again. “There’s a supply boat coming this morning. I’m gonna make him leave with me. But if he finds you, he’ll kill you.” My heart is being split right down the middle. “He’s messed up right now. Half out of his mind. But he’s not a bad guy, he just—” Thinking about Hart makes it all hurt again. “Elora was everything. To both of us.”
“I understand.” Zale reaches out to run his fingers through my hair, and I lean into the tenderness of his touch. “You have to love deep to grieve deep like dat.”
I nod and swallow hard. “That’s why Hart went back to Keller’s Island that night. When Elora disappeared. Even though he knew your father was dead. He needed to feel like he was doing something. You know? He needed to look absolutely everywhere. Even if it didn’t make any sense.”
Zale stares down at me, and something flickers through his eyes. “Grey, Hart never came back to Keller’s Island the night Elora disappeared.”
“He did,” I argue. “He said he came back here and got the four-wheeler. Then he drove out there. He told me he ended up covered in bug bites.”
Zale shakes his head. “I was there the whole night, Grey. I went back there right after I saw Elora on the dock. And Hart never came around. If he’d come poking around back there, I’d have known it.” The wind is ripping at the shingles on the roof, and the sound of them flapping is like a flock of birds coming home to roost. “Nobody came around looking for Elora that night. Nobody at all.”
I yell his name as loud as I can.
Somehow I make myself heard over the raging of the storm. He looks back over his shoulder at me. His mouth falls open in surprise. And mine does, too. Because he isn’t human. Not anymore.
26
When Zale leaves, I stagger back inside. My head is heavy. My stomach, too. Like they’re both full of mud.
Why would Hart lie to me?
I slump in a corner and pull my knees up to my chest. I miss Zale already. I need that energy of his. My whole body aches. I’m confused. And I’m so bone-tired. The kind of exhausted that comes from fighting and fighting and fighting.
And losing.
And losing.
And losing.
How long has it been since I slept? Really slept.
Days?
Weeks?
Months?
And that’s when that flash hits me. Elora yelling into the storm. I scratch and claw at it. I grab it and dig my fingernails in. Try to hang on long enough to see something useful.
But I can’t see her face.
And I can’t hear whose name she’s screaming. I only feel the sound tearing its way out of my throat.
Her throat.
My eyes burn.
So I close them. Just for a second.
And somehow, I fall asleep like that. Huddled up against the wall.
When I wake up, Hart is standing in the doorway. Watching me. And there’s no Evie.
“You didn’t find her.”
“No,” he says. “Looked all night. Not a trace of ’er.”
My chest constricts, and the next words come out all pained.
“Did you find him?”
Zale.
Hart shakes his head. “I didn’t find shit.”
I let myself take a deep breath. Because that means Zale is probably safe. At least for now.
Hart looks at me in disgust, so I know he feels my relief.
I want to ask him about what Zale told me. How he said that Hart never showed up at Keller’s Island that night. Back in February. And how that doesn’t make sense. Because it’s one of the very first things Hart told me.
But I can’t figure out how to ask without letting Hart know that Zale is the one who gave me that information. That he was here just a few hours ago. That I kissed him in the gathering storm. And telling Hart any of that seems like a really bad idea.
So I convince myself it’s a misunderstanding. A mix-up. Some kind of confusion.
Things must have been so wild that night. With the wind and the downpour. And Elora disappearing.
It’s seven o’clock in the morning. The supply boat should be here soon.
I hear rain pounding the roof.
I rub the sleep out of my eyes and follow Hart into the kitchen. The radio is still on. Twelve hours till Elizabeth blows into Plaquemines Parish. That’s what the announcer is saying. But he warns that we’re already getting intense bands of precipitation and gale-force winds. Waloons they call them down here.
“What are we going to do?” I ask. “About Evie?”
It just about kills me, thinking maybe she’s out in this.
Alone.
“Nothing we can do,” Hart says. His voice doesn’t sound like his at all. There’s nothing in it that I recognize. “Like I said, she’s already dead. I’d bet my life on it.”
I come so close to telling him that we both know his life isn’t worth much at this point.
But I don’t.
“It wasn’t Zale,” I say. “He didn’t—”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Hart’s voice sounds like he’s talking from the bottom of a well. “It’s all over. We’re never gonna know what really happened that night.”
“But—”
“Boat’ll be here soon,” he goes on. Like he’s telling me what’s for breakfast. “It’ll blast the horn three times. Once you hear that last one, you better get your ass on board. Because there won’t be a fourth.”
He turns and heads out the front door. And I stumble after him.
The boardwalk is uneven. Groping vines push the woo
d aside so the planks look like a smile with missing teeth.
I yell Hart’s name, and he whirls on me. His face is twisted up with rage. He stands there breathing hard. Battling the wind and the rain.
“Jesus, Greycie! Get the hell outta here and let me be!”
“I can’t leave you here to die,” I yell at him.
“The hell you can’t!”
“Hart, please! Don’t do this! Don’t give up like this. I—”
“Shut up!” he yells at me, and he rakes his hands through his wet hair. Pulls hard on his curls. “Dammit! Will you just shut up?” He’s sputtering at me. Choking on rain. “Jesus. Greycie. Please,” he begs. “Just shut the fuck up.”
We stare at each other.
The rain stops suddenly as the squall moves off. But the air hangs thick and heavy between us. We stand there dripping.
“You were right,” he admits. “About what you said. About me.” His hands are shaking as he pulls out a soggy, bent cigarette. It’s almost broken in half, but somehow he gets it to light, despite the whipping wind. It’s a hurricane miracle. Then he sucks in smoke before he exhales a long, uneven breath. “I’m a goddamn coward.”
A gust slams into me from behind. It feels like getting hit by a truck.
“I didn’t mean it,” I tell him. “I was angry. And scared.”
“Jesus, Grey. I know that. But you were still right.”
Hart turns and makes his way toward the end of the boardwalk.
And I follow him.
Again.
Hart’s curls are blowing wild, and his T-shirt catches the wind like a sail.
He stops and stares down at the gator pond. The old pontoon boat has drifted across to the other side. I wonder where it will end up, once the water really starts to rise.
I wonder where all of us will end up.
“Hart,” I plead. “Don’t do this. Please come with me.” He just stares at the water. “For your mama’s sake.” I see him flinch when I mention Becky. “For my sake. We can still be okay.”
He just shakes his head and takes a long drag off that broken cigarette.
“Maybe in our next life.”
I look at Hart and realize he’s just as gone as Elora is. He’s not going to get on that boat. No matter what I say or do. I can stay here and die with him, or I can go on living. Without him. Those are my only two choices.
“You need to get on down to Miss Roselyn’s,” he tells me, and he flicks his cigarette down into the mud. And the rising water. “Stay close to the dock. Boat’s bound to be here any minute. Be ready. They won’t have time to wait. Three blasts—”
“I know,” I say. “There won’t be a fourth.”
There’s no way I can possibly tell him goodbye. Not Hart. So I wrap my arms around him and hold on tight. I want him to feel all the things I can’t say. Deep down, I’m still hoping maybe that will be enough to save him.
But it isn’t.
“Get outta here, Greycie,” he tells me. “Get on down to the bookstore.” He has to peel me off him. “Go on now. I promised Miss Roselyn you’d be on that boat. And I don’t wanna have to show up at some damn séance to apologize for lettin’ ’er down.”
“You’re not a coward,” I tell him. “You never have been.”
He smiles at me. It’s an almost-Hart grin. And it hurts so much I think I might drop dead. Right there on the spot.
“Just ’cause you’re psychic now, Shortcake, don’t go thinkin’ you know everything.” His smile disappears. “There’s a lot of shit you don’t know still.”
Hart looks back out toward the gator pond, and I know that if I don’t go now, I won’t be able to. So I turn and run for home. My foot finds a broken place in the boardwalk, and I go sprawling. But I get back up and keep moving. I tell myself Evie will be waiting on the front porch. That we can still make it out of here together, the two of us at least.
But she isn’t there.
I grab my backpack from the kitchen and sit on the steps of the Mystic Rose to wait for the boat. I try not to think. And I try not to be afraid. Of Elizabeth. Or of whatever happened to Elora. And Evie. Or of what’s going to happen to Hart. And Zale.
I just watch the big waves on the river. And I wait. I wait a really long time. The rain comes and goes as those bands of squalls move through. The wind blows so hard that it drives the rain sideways. I move back off the steps to sit against the front door. I still get wet. But I’m already soaked, so who cares.
By noon, I’m in full panic mode. The wind is unbelievable. It forces me back inside the bookstore. I crouch by the door and peek out to watch the storm peel shingles off houses all up and down the boardwalk. I listen to the water slap against the dock.
And there’s still no boat.
Elizabeth is only seven hours away. The storm surge is already sneaking in. The water has crept up past the high tide mark. And it’s rising fast. Soon it’ll be over the river flood markers. I think of Honey waiting on the dock up in New Orleans. She won’t leave there without me. If anything happens to her, it’ll be my fault.
That’s when I start to cry.
A few more hours trickle by.
Five or six times I think I hear a boat horn. I leap up and run out onto the porch. The wind and rain bite into me.
But there’s never anything there.
I search for the shine of Zale’s bright blue eyes. And I don’t see that, either. And I wonder where he is. He promised he’d be here when I needed him.
And I need him bad.
By late afternoon, all I can do is rock back and forth on my hands and knees on the floor of the Mystic Rose while I tell myself how stupid this all was.
How I’m going to die here. Just like Hart.
It’s around four o’clock that afternoon when the back door crashes open with a bang. I run to see what happened, and Hart stands dripping in the middle of the kitchen, wild-eyed and breathing hard. Furious. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he demands. “You were supposed to get on the goddamn boat!” He looks like he wants to kill me with his bare hands.
“The boat hasn’t come yet,” I tell him. And as soon as I say it, I know the truth.
We both know it.
It’s too late.
The boat isn’t coming. Something must have happened. They couldn’t make it in.
Just then, there’s a voice from the front porch. “You still here, chere? Where you at?” And I know it’s Case. But I also know Case and his whole family went up to his memaw’s place in Georgia.
They’re long gone.
Hart follows me into the front room. And sure enough, there stands Case. And he has Wrynn with him. When she sees us, she ducks behind her brother and cowers in fear.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Hart thunders.
“We came lookin’ for Evie. Just to see if we could spot ’er. Bernadette called my mama from da shelter up in Monroe. Carryin’ on ’bout Evie gettin’ left behind. And I knew couldn’t nobody get down here to check on ’er by road or river.” He glares at Hart. “So dat’s what the hell I’m doin’ here. Brought Little Bird with me.” He puts a hand on Wrynn’s head. But she buries her face against her big brother. “In case Evie was hurt or somethin’.”
“You’re too fucking late,” Hart announces. “Evie’s dead already.”
“No, she ain’t,” Case tells him. “We found her.” He ruffles Wrynn’s hair. “Little Bird did. She’s back at Li’l Pass, holed up in that old clothes dryer.”
My heart leaps, then twists. Because even if Evie is alive now, she won’t be for long.
“How did you know where she was?” I ask Wrynn. But she won’t answer me. So Case does.
“Wrynn said she seen Evie hidin’ in dere before.”
Hiding from Victor, probably. God. How many times did we all fail he
r?
All of us except Hart.
“She wouldn’t come out for me,” Case says. “She’s bad scared.” He shakes his head. “Couldn’t get her to come out for nothin’.”
I turn toward Hart. “She’ll come out for you.”
“If I get her outta there, can you take her back with you?” Hart takes a step toward Case. Wrynn cringes and whimpers. “Her and Grey both?”
Case shakes his head. But I already knew it.
“I can bring Wrynn, ’cause she has a bit of that gift, too. Same as me. But it’s like I told Evie’s mama; I can’t bring nobody else. It just don’t work like that.” He looks at me. “I wish it did, chere.”
“You’ve gotta go get her anyway,” I tell Hart. “At least with us all together, we have a chance. If the water doesn’t get too high, we might make it. Up on the second floor. Or on the roof.”
“Fuck!” Hart turns and puts his fist through the wall of the bookstore. We all jump. Wrynn gives a little shriek and starts to cry. “Goddammit.” He kicks at the baseboard, but then he grabs a flashlight and storms out the front door, leaving it wide open and banging behind him.
Wrynn is full-on sobbing now. She has Case’s T-shirt balled up so tight in her fists that she’s about to pull it off him.
“Evie’ll be okay,” I soothe. “Hart will take care of her. I promise.” But that just makes Wrynn cry louder. “You need to get her out of here,” I tell Case. “Get her somewhere safe.”
“Wish I could get you somewhere safe, chere.” Case shakes his head. “That’s sure a thing I wish I could do.” His voice gets extra deep. “For Elora.” Wrynn is still trembling. She wipes snot on the back of Case’s shirt. “You want me ta come back? After I get Little Bird home? You want me ta be here with you when . . .” He stops. But I know what he’s getting at.
“Thanks,” I tell him. “But Hart will be here. And Evie.” I try to fight my rising panic. “We’ll be together. And there’s nothing you could do to help us anyway.” Case’s face twists up, but he nods. “Let Honey know that I love her, okay? And that I’m sorry about . . . about everything.”
Case nods again. “I sure will, chere. Y’all look out for each other. Ya hear?” He wipes at his face with the back of his hand. “I ain’t giving up on ya. We’ll get somebody down here to see ’boutcha, soon as this blows through.”
Dark and Shallow Lies Page 26