NINE
Bo appears behind me in the doorway just as the tolling bell from across the harbor begins to fade. “Another one?” he asks, hand lifted as if he could see out over the water all the way to the docks.
“Another one.”
He sidesteps around me, his shoulder grazing mine, then starts down the path.
“Where are you going?”
“Town,” he answers.
“You’re safer here,” I call after him, but he doesn’t stop. I have no choice but to follow—I can’t let him go alone. Marguerite is in the body of Olivia Greene. And this latest kill is likely Aurora’s. But I haven’t seen her yet—don’t yet know whose body she has stolen. So when Bo reaches the skiff, I climb in after him and start the motor.
A cluster of boats have gathered in the harbor just offshore from Coppers Beach.
I can’t see the body from this distance, but I know there must be one, newly discovered, floating, being pulled aboard one of the boats—so we motor over to the marina, Bo’s face hardened against the blustery wind.
We dock the skiff, and see that a crowd has already assembled on Ocean Avenue awaiting the return of the harbor police boats, cameras ready. There are signs at the top of the marina that read: DOCK MEMBERS ONLY, NO TOURISTS ALLOWED. But there are always people who ignore the signs and tromp down to the docks anyway, especially after the bell has been rung.
I push through the clot of tourists, past the stone bench facing the harbor, when someone grabs my arm. It’s Rose. Heath is standing beside her.
“There’s two of them,” she says with shaking breath, her blue eyes magnified. She still looks pale and weak, like she hasn’t yet shaken off the chill of falling into the water over a week ago, only inches from Gregory Dunn’s corpse.
“Two bodies?” Bo asks, stepping in beside me so the four of us form a tight circle on the sidewalk, our breath coming out in bursts of steamy white.
Rose nods her head.
Aurora, I think. She’s greedy and impulsive, can never decide, and so she will take two boys at once.
“That’s not all,” Heath says. “They saw one of the Swan sisters.”
“Who did?” I ask.
Heath and Rose exchange a look. “Lon Whittamer was out on his dad’s boat this morning, patrolling the harbor. He and Davis decided to take shifts, like vigilantes; they thought they could catch one of the sisters in the act. Apparently, Lon was the first to spot the two bodies in the harbor. Then he saw something else: a girl swimming, her head just above the waterline. She was kicking frantically back to Coppers Beach.” Heath pauses and it feels like time stops, all of us holding our breath.
“Who did Lon see?” I press, my heartbeat rising into my throat, about to burst.
“Gigi Kline,” he answers in one swift exhale.
I blink, a cold spire of ice slipping down the length of my spine.
“Who’s Gigi Kline?” Bo asks.
“A girl from my school,” I answer, my voice a near hush. “She was at the Swan party on the beach.”
“Did she go in the water?”
“I’m not sure.”
I glance up Ocean Avenue, where the mass of people has grown larger, tourists pressed together, trying to get a better view of the docks where the bodies will be brought ashore. This is what they came for—to glimpse death, proof that the legend of the Swan sisters is real.
“Who knows about Gigi?” I ask, looking back at Heath.
“I don’t know. I saw Lon when he reached the docks, and he told me what he saw. Now he and Davis are searching for her.”
“Shit,” I mutter. If they find her, who knows what they’ll do.
“Do you think it’s true?” Rose asks. “Could Gigi be one of them?” Her expression seems tight and anxious. She’s never fully believed in the Swan sisters before—it scares her, I think, the idea that they could be real, that she could be taken and not even know it. It’s a survival mechanism for her, and I understand why she does it. But now the waver in her voice makes me think she’s not so sure what she believes anymore.
“I don’t know,” I answer. I won’t know for sure until I see her.
“They already found her,” Heath interrupts, his cell phone in his hand, the screen lit a vibrant blue.
“What?” I ask.
“Davis and Lon, they have her.” His throat catches. “And they’re taking her to the old boathouse past Coppers Beach. Everyone’s headed over there.” Word is traveling fast, at least among the inner circle of Sparrow High students. “I’m going down there,” Heath adds, clicking off his phone.
Bo nods and Rose twines her fingers through Heath’s. We’re all going, apparently. Everyone will want to see if Gigi Kline—last year’s homecoming princess and star cheerleader—has been inhabited by a Swan sister. But I’m the only one who will know for sure.
* * *
The harbor police boats are just starting to motor into port, carrying two bodies whose identities we don’t yet know, when the four of us push through the crowds toward the edge of town. We pass Coppers Beach then turn down a dirt road almost completely overgrown by blackberry bushes and a tangle of wind-beaten shrubs.
The air smells green here, damp and sodden, even with the sunlight glaring down. No cars pass down this road. The property is abandoned. And when we emerge from the dense thicket of green, the boathouse comes into view at the edge of the waterline. The old stone walls of the structure are slowly turning brownish green from the algae inching its way up the sides, and the wood-shingled roof is covered in a slimy layer of moss. A sheer cliff stands to the right of the boathouse and a rocky embankment to the left. You can’t see the town or the beach from here; it’s completely secluded. Which is why kids come here to smoke or make out or ditch classes. But it’s not exactly a pleasant place to spend longer than an afternoon.
As we get closer, I notice that the small door into the boat-house is ajar several inches, and voices echo out from inside.
Heath is the first to step into the dark interior, and several faces turn to look at us as we shuffle in behind him. It smells worse inside. The room has a rectangle cut out of the floor near the far doors where a boat once sat protected from the weather, and seawater laps up into the interior, making reflective patterns across the walls. The stench of fuel, fish guts, and seaweed permeates the space.
Davis McArthurs and Lon Whittamer are standing against the right side wall on the narrow three-foot-wide walkway that stretches down either side of the boathouse. Three other girls who I recognize from school—but whose names I can’t recall—are crowded just inside the door, as if they’re afraid to get too close to the water splashing up from the floor with each wave that rolls in. And sitting in a plastic lawn chair between Davis and Lon, zip ties around her wrists and a red-and-white-checkered bandanna tied over her mouth, is Gigi Kline.
We seem to have walked into the middle of a discussion already unfolding, because one of the girls, wearing a bright pink parka, says, “You don’t know for sure. She looks fine to me.”
“That’s the point,” Davis says, jutting out his square jaw. Davis reminds me of a slab of meat, broad and thick. With a nose like a bull. There is nothing delicate about him. Or especially kind, for that matter. He’s a bully. And he gets away with it because of his size. “They look like everyone else,” he continues, firming his glare on the pink-parka girl. “She killed those two guys in the harbor. Lon saw her.”
“You can’t keep her tied up,” another girl interjects, her smooth dark hair pulled up into a ponytail, and she points to Gigi with one long, sharp finger.
“We sure fucking can,” Lon snaps back, while Davis scowls at the girl. Lon is wearing one of his standard Hawaiian shirts—light blue with neon yellow anchors and parrots. I feel Bo shift closer to me, like he wants to protect me from whatever is unfolding in front of us. And I wonder if he recognizes Lon from the night at the Swan party, when he was wasted and Bo pushed him into the sea.
“There’s no way to prove she did anything,” ponytail girl points out.
“Look at her fucking clothes and hair,” Lon says sharply. “She’s soaking wet.”
“Maybe she . . .” But ponytail girl’s voice trails off.
“Maybe she fell in,” pink-parka girl offers. But everyone knows that’s a weak excuse, and unlikely considering the circumstances. Two boys are being hauled from the harbor as we speak, and Gigi Kline is found completely drenched—it’s not hard to put the pieces together.
Davis uncrosses his arms and takes a step toward the group. “She’s one of them,” he says coldly, his deep-set eyes unblinking. “And you all know it’s true.” He says it with such finality that everyone falls silent.
My eyes slide over Gigi Kline, her cropped blond hair dripping water onto the wood-plank floor. Eyes bloodshot like she’s been crying, lips parted to accommodate the bandanna stretched across her mouth and tied at the back of her head. She looks cold, miserable, terrified. But while everyone speculates as to whether she might no longer be Gigi Kline, I know the truth. I can see right through the delicate features of her face, through her tear-streaked skin, right down into her center.
A pearlescent, threadlike creature resides just beneath the surface—silky, atmospheric, shifting behind her human eyes. The ghost of a girl long dead.
Gigi Kline is now Aurora Swan.
Her gaze circles around the room, like she’s looking for someone to help her, to untie her, to speak up, but when her eyes settle on mine, I look quickly away.
“And now,” Davis says, rolling his tongue along the inside of his lower lip, “we’re going to find the other two.” I think of Olivia Greene, now inhabited by Marguerite Swan. But she will be harder to catch—Marguerite is careful, precise, and she won’t allow these boys to discover what she really is.
And no sooner have I thought her name than Olivia and Lola step into the boathouse through the little door behind us. Hardly anyone takes notice of their arrival.
“How are we going to find them?” the third girl asks, chomping on a piece of gum and speaking up for the first time. If she only knew—if all of them only knew—how close they really are.
“We set a trap,” Lon says, grinning like he’s about to crush an insect beneath the sole of his shoe. “We have one of them now. The other two sisters will come for her. Gigi is our bait.”
A short laugh at the back of the group breaks apart Lon’s words. “You think the Swan sisters would be stupid enough to fall for that?” It’s Marguerite who’s spoken, and she rolls her eyes when everyone turns to look at her.
“They’re not just going to leave her here,” Davis points out.
“Maybe they’ll think she deserves to be tied up for being dumb enough to get caught. Maybe they’ll want her to learn her lesson.” Marguerite stares directly at Gigi when she says it, her gaze penetrating deeply so that Aurora knows she’s speaking to her: one Swan sister to another. It’s a threat. Marguerite is upset that Aurora allowed herself to be captured.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Davis says. “And until then, we don’t let any girls near the boathouse.”
“That’s not fair,” pink-parka girl asserts. “Gigi’s my friend and—”
“And maybe you’re one of them,” Davis snaps, cutting her off.
“That’s insane.” She snorts. “I didn’t even get in the water at the Swan party.”
“Then we should question everyone who did.”
The girl with the perfect ponytail drops her gaze to the floor. “Almost everyone swam that night.”
“Not everyone,” Lon adds, “but you did.” His eyes are harpooned on her. “And so did Rose.” He nods to Rose, who is standing a half step behind me, next to Heath.
“This is ridiculous,” Heath pipes up. “You idiots can’t start blaming every girl who was at the party that night. It might not have even happened at the party—the sisters might have stolen bodies later, after everyone was too wasted to remember anything. Or even the next morning.”
Lon and Davis exchange a look, but they’re obviously undeterred, because Davis says, “Everyone is a suspect. And Gigi is staying in here until we find the other two.”
“She can’t stay in here until the summer solstice; it’s over a week away,” parka girl says, her voice pitched.
“Well, we sure as shit can’t let her go,” Davis rebukes. “She’ll just kill someone else. Probably us, for tying her up.” Davis slaps Lon against the shoulder, and Lon cringes a little, like he hadn’t considered this—that he and Davis might be next on the drowning kill list for capturing a Swan sister.
Gigi tries to shake her head, to make a sound, but only muffled, garbled noises manage to make it through. The bandanna is tied too tightly.
Gigi’s parents will certainly get suspicious when she doesn’t come home; the police will be called, a search party sent to look for her. But the boys did get one thing right: Gigi Kline is a Swan sister—the only problem is that they can’t prove it. And I’m not about to tell them the truth.
Still, this is bad. Aurora has been captured. Marguerite knows it. And the summer solstice will be here soon—things are getting complicated. Aurora’s capture has made it complicated. And I just want to stay as far away from them and this mess as I can.
Heath has had enough, and I see him grab Rose’s hand. “Come on,” he whispers to her, then leads her out of the boathouse.
A new group of three guys—one I recognize as Thor Grantson, whose father owns the Catch newspaper—and one girl shuffle in through the doorway, coming to see Gigi Kline and determine for themselves if they think she’s been infected by a Swan sister.
The room suddenly feels claustrophobic.
“Hell no!” Davis says loudly, pointing a finger at Thor. “You’d better not write about this in your shitty paper, Thor, or tell your father.”
Thor lifts both hands in the air in a gesture of innocence. “I just came to see her,” he says amiably. “That’s it.”
“You’re a fucking snitch and everyone knows it,” Lon chimes in.
Pink-parka girl starts arguing with Davis in Thor’s defense, and soon the room is a cacophony of voices, all the while Gigi Kline sits tied to a chair and Olivia Greene stands calmly at the back of the group, leaning against the wall.
I can’t stay in here anymore, so I slip through the new group of people and stumble back out into the daylight, opening my mouth to breathe in the warm, salty air.
Rose and Heath are standing a couple yards away, but Rose’s arms are crossed. “They’re bullies,” I hear her say. “They can’t do this. It’s not right.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Heath says. “It’s going to be a witch hunt. And they could just as easily lock you up in there.”
“He’s right,” I say, and they both look up. “None of us are safe.”
“So we just let them keep her locked up and accuse whoever they want?”
“For now,” I say, “yeah, we do.”
The door to the boathouse swings open and Bo steps out behind me, blinking away the sunlight.
“Maybe they’re right,” Heath offers, reaching out to touch Rose’s arm. “Maybe Gigi did drown those two boys. Maybe she’s one of them. It’s better if she’s in there, where she can’t kill anyone else.”
“You don’t really believe that girl could be dangerous?” Bo asks, crossing his arms. I glance over my shoulder at him and a stillness settles over the four of us—each of us considering how dangerous she could really be, picturing her hands around a boy’s throat, her eyes wicked with revenge as she forced him below the waterline, waiting for bubbles to escape his nostrils and break at the surface.
Then Rose says, “Penny?” as if she’s hoping I might have an answer. As if I might know how to fix everything and make it all okay. And suddenly I feel the urge to tell her the truth: that Gigi is indeed occupied by Aurora Swan, and that the town is safer with her tied up inside the old boathouse. That setting a trap to catch the remaining two Swan sisters might be a smart move.
But instead I tell her, “We need to be careful. Act normal. Don’t give them any reason to suspect we could be one of them.”
“But we aren’t one of them!” Rose says sharply.
My eyes feel dry, unable to blink. Rose sounds so certain, she’s so sure that she understands the world around her, that she’d be able to see something as villainous as a Swan sister if it were tucked inside of Gigi Kline. She trusts her eyes to tell her the truth. But she can’t see a thing. “They don’t know that,” I say. “We shouldn’t even be here; we shouldn’t be anywhere near Gigi.”
I have a flash of a memory, of Rose talking with Gigi in C hall last year. They were laughing about something, I can’t seem to recall what exactly. It doesn’t matter. But it reminds me that they were friends once, in grade school, and perhaps Rose is more upset by what’s happened because it’s happening to Gigi. Someone who she was once so close with. And if it can happen to Gigi, it can happen to her, or to me, even.
The boathouse door opens again and several people spill out, all chatting in low voices. Lola walks out by herself, staring down at her cell phone, probably sending out more text messages about Gigi’s current incarceration inside the boathouse.
“I want to get out of here,” Rose murmurs, and Heath twines his fingers through hers and starts leading her back up the road.
“You’re really okay just leaving that girl gagged and tied to a chair in there?” Bo asks me.
“We don’t have a choice right now.”
“It’s kidnapping and wrongful imprisonment. We could call the cops.”
“But what if they’re right?” I pose. “What if she’s a Swan sister and just killed those two boys?”
“Then the cops will arrest her.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Olivia Greene finally exit the boathouse, her onyx hair shimmering in the light, her skin papery and transparent so that I can see the inhuman thing resting inside. A watery, grayish-white image that flickers and shifts, similar to an old black-and-white film. Never solidifying or taking shape, always liquid—drifting elegantly but cruelly beneath the features of Olivia’s face. The dark, inky eyes of Marguerite flicker out from behind Olivia’s skull and settle on me.
“Let’s go,” I say to Bo, touching his forearm to urge him to follow me. We start back up the road, Rose and Heath a good distance ahead of us, already pushing through the bramble and overgrown brush.
“What’s wrong?” Bo asks, sensing my unease.
But before I can answer, I hear Olivia’s voice cut through the crashing waves and the cawing of seagulls circling over the tide pools on the rocky shore. “Penny Talbot!” she calls.
I try to keep walking, but Bo stops and turns around.
Olivia has already broken away from the group gathered outside the boathouse and is walking toward us.
“Don’t stop,” I hiss to Bo, but he looks at me like I’m not making any sense. He doesn’t realize he’s in danger just by being close to her.
“Leaving already?” Olivia asks, coming to a stop in front of us with a hand planted smugly on her hip, nails still painted a shiny, morbid black. Marguerite has fully embraced this body. It suits her, fits her already vain, indignant personality.
“We’ve seen enough,” I answer, willing Bo not to speak, not to make eye contact with Olivia or allow her to touch him.
“But I haven’t met your new friend,” she says with a vampish grin, her pale blue eyes sliding over Bo like she could devour him. “I’m Olivia Greene,” she lies, holding out her hand. She smells like black licorice.
Bo lifts his arm to shake her hand, but I grab onto his wrist just before they touch and pull it back down. He frowns at me, but I ignore it. “We really have to go,” I say, more to him than to Olivia. And I take a couple steps up the road, hoping he’ll follow.
“Oh, Penny,” Olivia says blithely, moving forward so she’s only a few inches from Bo, her eyes pouring through him. “You can’t keep him all to yourself on that island.” Before I can stop her, she slides her fingers up to his collarbone, holding his gaze steady on hers. And I know he has no choice, he can’t look away. He’s captured in her stare. She leans in close so her face is next to his, her lips hovering against his ear. I can’t make out what she’s saying, but she’s whispering something to him, serpentine words that can’t be undone. Promises and vows, her voice twining around his heart, drawing it forth from his chest, making him want her—crave her. A need that will be planted deep inside him, that won’t be satiated until he sees her again, can feel her skin against his. Her fingertips trail up his neck to his cheekbone, and a fury of emotions spark straight down into my gut. Not just fear but something else: jealousy.
“Bo,” I say sharply, grabbing his arm again, and Olivia releases him from her snare. He blinks, still watching her like she were a goddess formed of silks and sunsets and gold. Like he has never seen anything so perfect or mesmerizing in his entire life. “Bo,” I say again, still holding on to him and trying to snap him from his reverie.
“When you get bored on that island,” Olivia says, winking at him, “when you get bored with her . . . come find me.” Then she spins around, sauntering back to the group.
She touched him. She wove words together against his ear, enticing him. She wants to make him hers for eternity, pull him into the sea and drown him. She is collecting boys, and now she’s dug her delicate, bewitching claws into Bo.