by Kate Brian
“I still can’t believe he’s your charge,” Joaquin said under his breath. “How did you not know?”
“I’m as confused as you are,” I said. Normally we knew who our charges were the moment they arrived on the island—knew everything about them once we saw them. Then, when they were the next in line to be ushered, we would find out about their deaths, the better to help them resolve their issues. “Maybe it was because they arrived on the ferry? Everything was such a mess that day.”
“Maybe,” Joaquin mused, narrowing his eyes at them. “Is it just me or does it seem like when it comes to the Tses, nothing’s quite what it should be?”
“It’s not just you,” I replied.
Just then, Sebastian turned slightly, and I saw that the coin he was toying with wasn’t silver, but gold—one of the Lifers’ ushering coins.
“Joaquin!” I exclaimed, gripping his arm.
His face paled when he saw the coin. Before he could stop me, I’d taken off after the twins, grabbing Sebastian’s arm.
“Get off me!” Sebastian snapped, shrugging off my hand.
My teeth clenched. “Where did you get that?”
“It’s none of your business, is it?” he replied, quickly pocketing the coin. “Unless you want to try explaining what it is.”
He and his sister eyed me and Joaquin shrewdly, their light eyes glinting with malice. I pressed my lips together tightly.
“We didn’t think so,” Selma said.
Then they turned as one and walked away, their steps perfectly matched.
“What the hell is going on?” Joaquin asked as a stiff wind off the ocean blew my hair across my eyes.
“Pete said he was working with someone. We just assumed it was a Lifer, but what if it’s not?” I turned to face him. “What if one of the visitors has something to do with this?”
“But, Rory, it can’t be them,” Joaquin said. “They didn’t get here until the ferry sank. Aaron, Jennifer, your dad…they’d been ushered already.”
“Unless they didn’t get here that day,” I replied, my pulse racing. “What if they’ve been here all along?”
Joaquin shook his head. “What?”
“Think about it,” I said, everything coming to me in a rush. “Steven Nell managed to sneak in under everyone’s radar. What if the twins got here earlier and were hiding out until the ferry sank? Maybe they used the confusion of that day to come out of the woodwork and start stirring things up with the locals. Cause a distraction so Pete could keep ushering souls.”
Joaquin eyed the line of visitors along the ridge. A few of them parted to allow Sebastian and Selma through, then followed the twins toward town, casting suspicious stares over their shoulders at us. It was as if the Tses were gathering forces. As if some of the visitors had become willing minions.
“Why else would they have a coin, Joaquin?” I asked. “Why else would they be asking us these crazy questions as if they already know the answers?”
Just before he dipped below the hill, Sebastian paused and looked back at the weather vane atop the mayor’s house. Ever so slowly, his narrowed eyes slid in our direction, sending a creeping chill down my spine. He smirked and was gone. Joaquin’s jaw tightened.
“We should take this to the mayor,” he said. “I think it’s time she had a little chat with the Tses.”
I stare at the graves long after everyone else has gone. No one has covered them over yet and the piles of mud on the once clean surfaces seem wrong. Everything about this seems wrong. They didn’t have to die, but it wasn’t my fault. It was theirs. If Nadia had just stayed in hiding like a good little scapegoat, if Cori hadn’t interfered, these graves never would have been dug.
I could have ended this without killing anyone, but what’s done is done. There’s no going back. Soon I’ll have everything I want. And that’s the only thing that matters.
I waited in the lobby of the twins’ boarding house on Magnolia that afternoon with Krista, Liam, and Bea, while Joaquin, Fisher, Kevin, and Dorn made their way past the staircase to the door of the first-floor room where the twins had been staying. I still couldn’t believe they had been placed so close to my house. The very idea of their proximity to it gave me the creeps. But then again, I had been staying with Krista for the last few days anyway, and hopefully, when and if I ever felt comfortable in my house again, the two of them would be long gone.
I glanced nervously at the front door and the weather raging outside, and hoped we could get through this without a scene. After the funeral earlier, there was a sort of unease between the Lifers and the visitors.
Fisher pounded on the door. It sounded like thunder. Liam startled and even I flinched. Apparently he wasn’t as concerned as I was about being discreet. Not that I was surprised. All my friends were on edge with another member of our group gone—someone they’d laughed with, hung out at the cove with, shared secrets with. They wanted answers, they wanted justice, and they wanted the deaths to stop.
“Selma? Sebastian? We need to talk to you,” Joaquin said. “Please open the door.”
There was no reply. A door on the floor above creaked open, and I could feel whoever it was eavesdropping. Joaquin glanced at Dorn, who’d worn his Juniper Landing Police uniform for the occasion. His police cruiser—the only one in town—idled out on the street.
“Selma and Sebastian Tse?” Dorn said, heaving a sigh. “This is the Juniper Landing Police. Open up.”
Several more doors opened overhead. One man actually stepped over to the top of the stairs, his fuzzy bathrobe hanging wide over a T-shirt and boxer shorts. “What’s going on down there?” he asked Bea, who was closest to him.
“Nothing.” She shrugged casually. “The police just have a few questions for someone. No big deal.”
“Selma and Sebastian Tse, we know you’re in there,” Dorn said, lowering his voice. “Open the door or I’ll be forced to break it down.”
“That doesn’t sound like nothing,” the man said, creeping down a few steps but keeping a safe distance.
I gritted my teeth and stared at Krista, who looked pale against the backdrop of the yellowing flowered wallpaper. This was not good. Finally, the door at the end of the hallway opened a crack, and either Sebastian or Selma—it was impossible to tell which—peeked out.
“What do you want?”
“Mr. Tse?” Dorn began.
“That would be Miss Tse,” Selma corrected him with a sneer.
“My apologies,” Dorn said, sounding not a bit sorry. “Would you please step out into the hallway?”
She didn’t move. The door didn’t move. “Why?”
“Is your brother inside, miss?” he asked, tugging up on his utility belt.
Selma’s eyes flicked to his gun in its holster. “Why?” she said again.
“Because we’re going to need you both to come with us.”
The door ripped open so fast that the guys jumped back, and Krista grabbed my arm. Sebastian stood there, his fists clenched at his sides. He was seething.
“Come with you where?” he demanded. His gaze darted to Joaquin’s face, then Fisher’s, then Kevin’s, as if he was studiously memorizing every detail. “Are we under arrest? We’ve done nothing wrong.”
“We just want to ask you a few questions,” Dorn said firmly.
“So ask,” Selma said.
Dorn glanced over at us, and at the man in the bathrobe, then toward the stairs leading up, where who knew how many people were listening.
“We’d rather do it over at the station.” Dorn reached for Sebastian, and in a blink Sebastian lunged at him, slamming the much bigger Dorn back against the staircase wall behind him. I flinched and Selma screamed. Almost instantly, Dorn got Sebastian in a headlock and wrestled him face-first to the floor. Liam craned his neck past me to get a better look at the action.
“That
was a bad idea,” Dorn said in Sebastian’s ear. “Now you’re under arrest for assaulting a police officer.” I heard the cuffs click around his wrists without ever seeing Dorn take them off his belt. The guy was good.
“Sebastian!” Selma cried. “Are you okay?”
“Get the girl,” Dorn growled at Joaquin as he dragged Sebastian to his feet. His face was red and his cheeks quivered. He was angry, maybe even embarrassed, that Sebastian had gotten the better of him, even for that one second.
More doors opened and a crowd started to gather. Joaquin made a move toward Selma, but she flinched back. I grabbed his arm.
“Let me try,” I said.
He raised his hands. “All yours.”
I took a deep breath and approached Selma. Without her brother by her side, she looked scared. Angry, but also scared. She eyed me cautiously, and I turned my palms out in an apologetic way.
“Look, if you just come with us willingly, everything will be fine,” I said. As long as you aren’t the one who hauled my family off to hell, I added silently.
“Yeah, right. Your ape of a cop just mauled my brother,” she snapped.
“Your brother attacked a police officer,” I shot back, frustration niggling at my nerves. “But if you agree to answer our questions, I’m sure they’ll let him off with a warning.”
Selma leaned out of the apartment doorway when she heard the police car’s door slam. Her hand covered her mouth. I could see how much she wanted to be with him, and recalled from my flashes of Sebastian’s life the depth of emotion they felt toward each other.
“Do you want to go with your brother, or do you want to stay here?” I asked. “Alone.”
“I’ll come,” she snapped, grabbing her bag from just inside. “You got any lawyers in this town?”
I shot a glance at Bea, Liam, and Krista as Selma stormed out the door. The twins were not about to make anything easy.
“You guys good?” Joaquin asked as Dorn loaded Selma into the backseat of his car next to her brother. Bea, Krista, Liam, and I were supposed to stay behind to search the Tses’ room for more coins, or anything else suspicious.
I glanced back at the apartment. “We’ll get it done as fast as we—”
Suddenly, a crackle of static cut me off. Grantz’s voice boomed through the speakers on our walkie-talkies.
“Be advised, Pete Sweeney has been located. We’re transporting him to the station now. Over.”
My eyes widened as I looked at Joaquin. “He’s alive.”
“This is a good thing, right?” Liam said.
I zipped up my jacket. “I’m going over there.”
“I’ll come with you,” Joaquin offered.
“No. No way.” Dorn was standing in the doorway now, practically filling up the space. “I need you and Fisher here with me.”
“It’s okay. I can go by myself,” I said.
“No. You can’t. Nobody goes anywhere alone anymore, remember?” Joaquin said, briefly cupping my face with his hand. I felt everyone staring at us—at that brief moment of intimacy—and my skin burned.
“I’ll go!” Krista and Liam offered at once.
“You,” Joaquin said, pointing at Liam. “You go with Rory. Bea and Krista, search the room.”
Krista’s eyes filled with worry. It was nice to have someone around who cared about me that much. My friends back home were really more casual acquaintances—people I studied with or ran track with. But Krista had become more than that. She’d become like a second sister. Unfortunately, right now all I could think about was getting my real sister back.
Krista looked at Joaquin. “But Rory might need—“
“Just do it, Krista,” Joaquin ordered.
Her shoulders slumped. “Fine.”
“Come on,” I said to Liam. “We’re wasting time.”
On my way out the door, Joaquin grabbed my wrist and turned me to him. I could feel the excitement, the anticipation, coming off him in waves. “You radio me the second you find out what’s going on,” he said, glancing at the twins, who sat whispering in the back of the cruiser. “By the end of the night, one of these people is going to talk. We’re gonna get them back, Rory.”
His energy was contagious, and for the first time in days, hope filled my heart. I nodded. “We’re gonna get them back.”
“He’s unconscious?” I said, standing in the stiflingly hot and humid hallway outside the prison area in the basement of the police station. Chief Grantz was drenched with rain and smelled of pungent sweat. Heavy bags settled under his eyes like water balloons. His dark blue vinyl JLPD jacket had a long tear up one arm, and mud covered his black boots, soaking the hem of his police-issue pants as well.
“Yep,” he said, wiping his face with a rag. “We found him at the foot of the wall at the cove. Looks like he slipped and knocked himself out.”
“You could have maybe said that on the walkie-talkie,” Liam said.
Grantz shot him a beady-eyed look. The man seemed as if he were one sarcastic remark away from a meltdown. “Teresa’s in there with him now, assessing him. You can go in if you want.”
I nodded and he opened the door for us. There were two very tiny cells with bars comprising their front walls and the walls between them. Goose bumps popped up on my arms, and I shivered as I moved aside to let Liam in behind me.
Pete was laid out on the cot in the first cell, blankets piled over him. His face was turned to the side, away from us, but I could see most of his cheek, chin, and one ear. He looked fine, just a bit pale. At least his skull was intact.
Why couldn’t we just find someone who was conscious for a change?
Teresa, a woman of about forty with short graying hair, knelt next to the cot holding Pete’s wrist between her fingers. She looked up as we came in and placed his arm gently down on the bed. My teeth clenched as I tried to fight back my vindictive side—the side that felt that Pete didn’t deserve such care when he was the one who had taken Nadia’s and Cori’s lives, who had rendered Tristan unconscious.
“How is he?” I asked.
Teresa stood up and sighed. “Vitals are fine, but he’s out cold. Only time will tell.”
“Do you have any idea when he’s gonna wake up?” Liam asked, pushing his hands into his pockets.
Teresa opened the cell door with a clang and slipped out. “Unfortunately, no. But it’s not as bad as what Tristan suffered. I’d say a few hours maybe? At most a day or two.”
A day or two. I thought of my dad and Darcy and squeezed my eyes closed as a wave of despair crashed over me. Every hour, every minute that they were in the Shadowlands was too long.
“You’re Liam, right?” Teresa said, lifting her chin. “The mayor told me it was your idea to check Cori’s lungs. Good call. I did a rudimentary autopsy, and they were full of salt water. Turned out she did drown.”
Liam looked at me. “I guess that’s a…good thing?”
“It ups the chances that it was an accident,” Teresa replied.
“Maybe, but it doesn’t prove anything,” I said. “Dorn made it sound like everyone knew Cori wasn’t a great swimmer. If he shoved her into the water, the way it’s been raging lately…”
Liam went green and I trailed off. I didn’t want to think about it in too much detail, either—the callousness it would take to do something like that, the terror Cori would have felt as she slipped away.
“You could go in and try to wake him up if you want,” Teresa suggested, tilting her head toward Pete’s bed.
I bristled at the thought. Nothing that I had to say to Pete would make him want to wake up. I was just about to tell her as much when Pete suddenly sighed and turned his head. His eyes were still closed, but I froze, grabbing Liam’s arm. Beneath my grip, his whole body went tense.
“Oh my—” Liam said, biting down on his lip.
“Pete?” I asked. “Pete? Are you awake?”
Teresa slipped a tiny flashlight out of her pocket and moved to the bed. She pried open one of Pete’s eyes and shined the light in it. He didn’t flinch.
“He’s still out,” she concluded, shrugging at us.
Liam’s skin had gone waxy and pale. “I think we should go.” He darted for the door like the room was on fire.
“Shouldn’t we stay in case he wakes up?” I said.
Liam paused with one hand on the doorknob. “Why? She said it could be days. I say we go up to the mayor’s and find out if the Tses are talking.”
It was tempting. At least I knew the twins were conscious. I glanced back at Pete, whose eyes stayed stubbornly closed, his chest rising and falling at a normal, calm rhythm.
“I can radio you when he wakes up,” Teresa said, laying a comforting hand on my arm. “Go ahead. Neither one of you should be going anyplace alone.”
“Okay,” I said reluctantly. “Thank you.”
Liam shoved through the door. I listened as his footsteps retreated down the long hallway, but I didn’t follow. Instead, I waited until Teresa left the cell and closed the door behind her. Pete had ushered my father and my sister and Aaron and Jennifer and all the other innocent people to the Shadowlands. I wasn’t going anywhere until I knew for certain that he was locked up good and tight.
Teresa pulled out a big, old-fashioned key and placed it inside the lock. When she turned it and the catch slid into place, it let out a loud, satisfying clunk.