by Kate Brian
“Where does that go now?” I asked, eyeing the key.
“Back to Chief Grantz,” she said. “His is the only key.” She smiled in a friendly, knowing way. “You can come with me if you like.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you. I just—”
“Honey, if I were you right now, I wouldn’t trust which way was up,” she said, giving my hand a quick squeeze. “This way.”
“Thank you,” I said, and meant it. It was the first time anyone had made me feel as if my insane emotions were understandable in such simple terms.
I followed her down the long hall, which opened up onto the back of the police station. Together we walked to Grantz’s office, and I watched her hand over the key, which he tied to a chain that was attached to his belt. Liam was waiting for me near the front door.
“Good?” Teresa asked, turning to me with a smile.
“Good,” I said. “You’ll call me when he’s awake?”
“The second he starts talking,” she assured me. “Don’t worry, hon. One way or another, this is gonna be over soon.”
I nodded and joined Liam at the door, feeling heavy and hollow at the same time. One way or another. It didn’t inspire much confidence.
“Something really weird happened to me today,” Liam said.
We were climbing the hill to the mayor’s house through the wind and the rain. Both of us were bent forward against it, like two storm-tossed ships trying to cut through the waves.
“Weirder than usual?” I asked.
He nodded as we reached the top of the bluff. “I was helping Nick up after he got pounded by a wave, and I got this flash.…I saw how he and Lalani died.”
There was a crack of lightning directly overhead. We ran for the cover of the porch roof at the mayor’s house. Heaving for breath, I pushed my hood off my hair and looked at Liam. His face was half lit by the overhead lamps, and he looked, understandably, freaked.
“That means he’s your first charge,” I told him. “He’s the first person you’re going to usher. Once we get this mess figured out.”
Liam looked at his feet. His Converse were soaked through. “That’s what I figured.”
“Are you okay?” I reached out to touch his arm, and he flinched, violently, away. I drew my hand back, my heart hammering. “Liam?”
He scoffed at the ground. “Sorry. I just…it’s been a weird day.”
Then he turned and yanked open the door, ripping his jacket off as he barreled inside. I took a deep breath, shaking off the awkwardness, and followed. Joaquin stepped away from the wall where he’d been leaning, and Krista hurried toward me from her post near the office door, where she’d clearly been attempting to eavesdrop.
“Well? How’d it go?” Joaquin asked.
“What did he say?” Krista added.
“He’s unconscious,” I said flatly, shedding my rain jacket and hanging it on the nearest hook.
“What?” Fisher blurted. He was sitting on the stairs with Bea, who leaned the side of her head against the wall, looking exhausted.
“Teresa thinks it’ll only be a few hours,” I said, trying to stay positive. “How’s it going here?”
Liam had lain down on one of the couches in the living room and was rubbing his face with both hands. Kevin was on the other couch, across the coffee table from him, his arm slung over his eyes. I could hear him snoring lightly. It was an odd time to take a nap—what with our number one suspects being interrogated in the next room—but I could hardly blame them. Every last one of us could have slept for weeks at this point.
“She’s still in there with them,” Joaquin said, nodding at the office. I could hear voices talking in calm tones from inside. “You should have heard the way they freaked when we brought them here instead of the police station. Those two are not of the wallflower variety.”
“Did you find anything at their place?” I asked Bea.
Bea sighed and pushed her curly hair back from her face with both hands. “Nothing. Not even the coin you guys saw. He must have it on him.”
“How the hell did he get ahold of a coin?” Krista asked, running her hands up and down her bare arms.
“Maybe he woke up with one next to his bed,” Fisher mused. “There’s been a lot of random crap happening around here lately. You never know.”
We fell silent. I didn’t like the idea that the coin was simply a mistake or a coincidence. I wanted the twins to be part of this. I needed someone—anyone—to blame. Someone to tell me what the hell was going on and how to fix it. I wanted my sister and my dad back so badly it was causing a constant ache in my chest.
“I’m gonna go upstairs and check on Lauren and Tristan.” Bea pushed herself up slowly.
Lauren had taken the day shift on Tristan Watch, hanging out by his bedside in case he woke up. She’d taken Nadia’s and Cori’s deaths—the very fact that we now could die—harder than anyone, and was clearly terrified of losing Tristan as well. Somehow, being with him comforted her, as if simply watching his chest rise and fall gave her hope.
Bea had climbed two or three steps when the office door suddenly opened. Fisher stood up. Joaquin pushed away from the wall again. Even Kevin flipped over on the couch, blinking at us with bleary eyes.
“Thank you so much for coming. I hope you enjoy your stay,” the mayor said pleasantly, holding the door for the twins to walk through. My heart caught and I glanced at Joaquin as the two of them strolled by us, smiling like content tourists.
“You’re letting them go?” Joaquin asked.
“Shh!” the mayor replied curtly.
She opened the front door for them, as well, and waited with a stiff grin on while they lifted their hands and disappeared into the night. The door closed with a bang, and the mayor pressed her palms together.
“The Tse twins are innocent as pie,” she said, her lips pursing sourly around the words. “They are incredibly suspicious people and were career activists in the other world. The current situation on Juniper Landing understandably awoke their inner rabble-rousers, but they have nothing to do with what’s been going on here.”
“Oh, come on!” Joaquin blurted. “Then where did they get the coin?”
“He claimed he found it outside the general store,” the mayor said, casting an accusatory glance around the room. She moved to the window next to the front door to glance out at the stormy sea. “Fortunately I was able to wipe the ferry accident from their memories and alter their perceptions of tonight’s activities so that when they go back to the boarding house, they’ll have the story of a silly misunderstanding to tell, but that’s that.” She took in a sharp breath and blew it out. “They should be perfectly happy here for the duration of their stay. What we need to do is figure out how long that will be.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“You want us to start ushering again, don’t you?” Bea asked quietly.
“If Pete was, indeed, responsible for this mess, I see no reason not to get on with our business now that he’s locked up.” The mayor’s eyes darted from face to face, waiting for someone to contradict her. “Have any of you received new coins today?”
“I have,” I said.
“Me too,” Kevin called from the living room.
“We all have,” Joaquin said, pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans and looking at his feet.
“Then those coins will be used first, as there’s no way Pete could have tampered with them,” the mayor said. “We need to start ushering the dark souls and admitted criminals off this island. Right now, we’re working on borrowed time. We’ll start tonight.”
“Tonight?” Krista blurted, glancing out at the sky.
“The sooner the better,” the mayor answered.
“But what about the other souls?” I interrupted. “The ones we know should head to the Light? And the children? How will we ever
feel comfortable ushering them?”
“We’re just going to have to trust that everything will right itself,” the mayor said. “And then we’ll see.”
We’ll see. Hopelessness settled in over my shoulders, thick and oozing, like the muddy dirt we’d dropped at Nadia’s and Cori’s graves.
“I wish Tristan would wake up,” Bea said. “Maybe whoever was working with Pete was with him that night at the gray house.”
We looked up the stairs where, aside from the usual rhythm of the rain against the windows, everything was still. There was nothing but shadows, the sliver of light under Tristan’s door, the dull crystal on the cut glass light fixture. But I could still see him standing there, his tan skin lit by an inner glow, as he smiled down at me. As he made me feel like I was the only girl he could ever love.
“I’m going up there,” I decided, skirting around Fisher.
“Why?” Krista asked.
“I’m going to talk to him,” I said, lifting my palms. “They say they can hear you, right? Maybe if he hears my voice…I don’t know. I’m just going to talk to him.”
“I’ll come with you,” Joaquin offered, his foot hitting the bottom step.
“No.”
He froze, and the rest of the world seemed to freeze along with him. “No?”
I couldn’t look him in the eye. Not right then. “I want to do this alone. I have to.”
“But I—”
“Jay,” Bea said. “Let her go. Who knows? Maybe it’ll work.”
I shot her a grateful smile and didn’t wait for him to answer. Instead I ran up the stairs two at a time and, finding myself in front of Tristan’s closed door, took a deep breath.
You can do this, I told myself. He loves you. He even said so in his note. He never stopped loving you. If there’s anyone he’ll come back for, it’s you.
With these hopes ringing inside my mind, I pushed open the door. Lauren looked up. She’d been reading aloud to him from a book, seated in the desk chair next to the bed, but fell silent when she saw me. Her short dark hair was back in a plaid headband, and she wore a pink polo shirt, one corner of the collar just starting to fray.
“Any luck?” she asked.
I shook my head. “The Tses don’t know anything, and Pete is unconscious.”
She slumped back in the chair, the book going slack in her lap. “This is so very bad.”
“Mind if I talk to Tristan alone?” I asked.
She glanced at his face, so still it looked like a painting, then sighed. “Sure.” As she got up, she reached over to squeeze his hand, then walked out, closing the door behind her. I took the seat she’d just vacated. It was still warm.
“Hey, Tristan,” I began, and my voice broke.
I took in a staggered breath, blinking back a fresh wave of tears. Seeing him in this state, motionless and vulnerable, was so very wrong. The Tristan I knew was stronger than any of us, in both body and soul. I remembered, suddenly, the firmness of his arms as he kissed me for the first time. The warmth of his hand as he held tightly to my fingers, swinging our arms between us as we walked from the bridge into town. There had been a time, not that long ago, when there was such an amazing, hopeful, loving lightness in his eyes, and I’d brought it out of him. We were happy.
There was no way I was ready to let that go.
I reached out to take his hand and cupped it with both of mine.
“Tristan,” I said firmly, “I want you to know that I’m sorry I didn’t believe in you. I know I said that already yesterday, but I am. I am so, so sorry. I hope that you forgive me. No, I know that you’ll forgive me when you wake up. I know that you’ll understand.”
Tears fell from my eyes, and I bent forward, resting my forehead atop the back of my own hand. The top of my head hit his side, and I leaned into it, relishing any contact, wishing I could crawl in next to him and hold him close.
The thought that I might never see his eyes again. That I might never feel him hold me again. That I might never touch his lips again . . .
I had to force myself to breathe.
“Tristan, please,” I whispered, lifting my head and looking up at his placid face. “Please don’t die. Please don’t do this to me. I know that what I’m saying is selfish. I know it. I do. But I can’t take this anymore. I can’t handle losing you on top of everyone else. There are only so many people in this world I love, Tristan, and they’re all gone. Every one of them. Except you.”
I leaned back, willing him to blink, to gasp, to do anything. Anything to show me that he was still in there, that he could hear me, that he understood.
But there was nothing but the steady rise and fall of his breath, and the ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs.
“So let’s break it down,” Kevin said, dropping onto a blanket in the sand next to a roaring, comfortingly warm and dry bonfire. The rain had stopped at three o’clock. Just suddenly stopped after days and days of relentless soaking. It was still drab, gray, and cold with a solid layer of fog overhead, but it was dry, so we’d decided to meet up at the cove for a dinner of sandwiches and chips—which was great, since I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten—and to figure out our next move. Kevin popped open a can of beer and took a swig, licking the suds from his lips. The skin on his knuckles was dry and cracked, tiny white flakes clinging to his skinny fingers. “Pete is the bad guy. He killed Nadia, and he may have killed Cori.”
“Yep,” I said, tossing a piece of driftwood into the popping, crackling fire.
“And he has an accomplice, but we have no clue who it is, and he can’t tell us who it is, because he’s unconscious,” Kevin continued.
“Yep.”
“Well, this totally sucks.”
Kevin chugged the rest of the beer, crushed the can, and reached for another one. I poured coffee from Krista’s plaid thermos into a Styrofoam cup, then shuffled through the cool, damp sand and sat on a towel between Krista and Bea.
“I still can’t believe we thought it was Tristan,” Lauren said, shivering under the gray wool blanket she had arranged over her legs.
“None of us can believe we thought it was Tristan.” Kevin tugged his black baseball cap lower over his brown eyes. “But let’s not go there right now. I want to talk about Pete. That fucking little backstabber, Pete.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Bea said as she reached into a crumpled brown paper bag for a sandwich. “Nadia was one of his best friends and he just kills her? Why?”
“He said if he waited long enough he’d get what he wanted,” I told them, probably for the dozenth time. “So what does he want?”
“Pete? Aside from a lifetime supply of beef jerky and a record deal, I have no clue. He’s a pretty simple guy,” Fisher said.
“God, I wish he’d wake up,” I muttered, checking my walkie-talkie. It’s red “on” light gleamed brightly as if laughing at me. I dropped the hem of my jacket over it, annoyed. Bea tore her sandwich in half and handed one side to me.
“I say when he does wake up, we break each of his fingers one by one until he talks,” Kevin said, hunching his shoulders toward his ears as he took another loud slurp of beer. “That’ll do the trick.”
“You wouldn’t actually do that, would you?” Liam asked, alarm lighting his handsome face.
“No!” the rest of us answered in unison. To punctuate the message, Fisher flung a scrap of bark at Kevin’s head. It bounced harmlessly off the bill of his cap.
“That is not the way we do things,” Krista snapped, brushing some ash off the sleeve of her white sweatshirt.
“How do you know?” Kevin asked, sitting up straight and pushing the cap up on his forehead to better glare at us. “How do any of us know? It’s not like anything’s normal around here. Who’s to say how we do or don’t do things?”
Bea took a deep breath and sighed. For
the first time in days, her red curls were loose around her shoulders, and they danced and shook in the cold ocean breeze. “He does have a point. It is a whole new and not-very-pleasant Juniper Landing.”
“But we’re not torturing anyone,” Joaquin said firmly. “End of discussion.”
Suddenly our walkie-talkies buzzed in unison, and there was an awful, piercing peel of feedback, so loud I wouldn’t have been surprised if our ears had started to bleed. I grabbed at my radio as Krista ducked her head into her hands dramatically.
“Apologies,” Chief Grantz’s voice blared through the radios. “My apologies for that. Let all ushers be advised that the mayor has decided the usherings will begin tonight at sundown.”
There was no movement other than the endless wild dance of the flames and the meek waves of low tide, lapping at the shoreline behind me. I stared at Joaquin. His jaw clenched as he tossed another twig, then another, then another into the fire.
“The souls on the watch list will be the first to be ushered, as previously stipulated. Please bring your first charge to the bridge once it’s dark. Over.”
Lauren hugged her knees up under her chin. “Well. So there you go.”
“I’m sorry, but I cannot wait to get rid of Tess,” Bea said, munching on her sandwich. “I’d usher her ass right now if they’d let me.”
“Yeah, I won’t mind getting rid of Lancet, either,” Joaquin said.
“And if I hear Piper ask for Wi-Fi one more time…”
Everyone laughed, but it was a short laugh. I stared at the flames, thinking of Ray Wagner’s ridiculous taunts, his blackened tongue, his rotting teeth. We were lucky he hadn’t tried anything yet. Booting him off the island would be a relief.
But once he’d been ushered, he’d be in the Shadowlands. With Darcy, and my dad, and Aaron. What was it like for them there? Would they have to deal with him, or did they even know where they were, and who else was in there with them? Were they in constant terror, or was it a vast loneliness?
I shivered violently, and my fingers curled into fists at my sides. I had to save them. How was I going to save them?