FOURTEEN
A boat knocks loudly against the dock, motoring too fast across the water. It’s Heath’s boat; I recognize it as the same one we took out into the harbor to make wishes at the pirates’ ship when we found the first body.
But Heath is not driving it. It’s Rose.
And someone is with her: a girl.
Bo grabs my arm, stopping me from getting any closer to the boat as Rose struggles to tie a rope around one of the cleats on the dock. He recognizes the girl before I do. It’s Gigi Kline.
“Rose?” I ask. And she notices us for the first time.
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” she says frantically when her eyes meet mine. She looks scared, in a state of shock, and her red wavy hair is windblown like a person who’s recently escaped from an asylum.
“What did you do?” I ask.
“I had to help her. And I couldn’t hide her in town, they’d find her. So I brought her here. I thought she’d be safe. You could hide her in the lighthouse or the other cottage. I don’t know—I panicked. I didn’t know what else to do.” She’s speaking too fast, and her eyes keep flicking from Gigi back to me.
“You broke Gigi out of the boathouse?” Bo asks.
Gigi is sitting silently in the boat, meekly, innocently. Her façade is well practiced as she makes slow, measured movements. Each blink of an eyelash looks rehearsed.
“I . . . I had to.”
“No, you didn’t,” I snap. “This was a very bad idea, Rose.”
“I couldn’t just let them keep her locked up like that. It was cruel! And they could just as easily do it to anyone else. To me—to us.”
“And they probably will when they find out what you’ve done.”
“Penny, please,” she says, stepping from the boat, palms lifted in the air. “You have to help her.”
I didn’t realize Gigi’s imprisonment upset Rose this deeply, enough that she would break her out and bring her here. I know they were friends once, years ago, but I never imagined she’d do this. She couldn’t stand to see someone she once cared about tied up and suffering. Made to be a cruel spectacle. It didn’t seem right to Rose from the start. And I can’t fault her for that.
“This is dangerous, Rose. You shouldn’t have freed her.” I lock eyes with Gigi, and with Aurora tucked inside her—watching like an animal waiting until it’s safe to come out of its hiding place. She didn’t have to enchant Davis or Lon to save her, Rose did it out of the goodness of her heart. But she’s set loose a monster, and she doesn’t even realize it.
“Maybe it’s better that she’s here,” Bo whispers to me, out of earshot of Rose and Gigi.
I feel my eyebrows slant into a scowl. “What are you talking about?”
“We can keep an eye on her, lock her up, make sure she doesn’t kill anyone else.”
I know why he wants to do this: He wants to ask Gigi about his brother. And if he decides that it was Aurora—hidden inside of Gigi—who killed his brother, then what? Will he try to kill her? This is a mistake, I can feel it, but both Bo and Rose are staring at me, waiting for me to decide what to do.
This can’t be happening.
“Fine. Get her out of the boat. We’ll take her to Old Fisherman’s Cottage. Then we’ll decide what to do next.”
* * *
Sometimes I think this island is a magnet for bad things, the center of it all. Like a black hole pulling us toward a fate we can’t prevent. And other times I think this island is the only thing keeping me sane, the only familiar thing I have left.
Or maybe it’s me that’s the black hole. And everyone around me can’t help but be swallowed up, drowned and trapped in my orbit. But I also know that there’s nothing I can do to change it. The island and I are the same.
I lead the way to Old Fisherman’s Cottage, Rose trailing behind me, then Gigi, and Bo bringing up the back. He wants to make sure Gigi doesn’t make a run for it.
The door is unlocked, and the interior is darker and damper and colder than Bo’s cottage. I flip on a light switch, but nothing happens. I walk across the living room, furnished with a single wood rocking chair and a burgundy upholstered ottoman that doesn’t match anything else in the room. I find a floor lamp, kneel down to plug it in, and it immediately blinks on.
But the light does little to brighten the appearance of the cottage.
“It’s only temporary,” Rose assures Gigi. But I’m not sure what Rose thinks will happen to change the current circumstances. Kidnapping Gigi from the boathouse will only make Davis and Lon more suspicious. They will assume one of the Swan sisters broke her out, and now they’ll be looking for her. And Rose and I will likely be their first suspects since both she and I were caught sneaking into the boathouse—and now I know why Rose was there. She was planning this all along.
“We’ll bring you wood for the fireplace,” I say to Gigi, but her eyes don’t lift from the floor. She’s staring at a corner of the living room rug, the edges frayed—probably chewed up by mice.
“And I’ll find you some new clothes,” Rose offers, looking down at Gigi’s stained shirt and jeans.
I tug at the only two windows in the cottage, seeing if they’ll slide up in their casings, but they don’t even budge—both are rusted shut. This cottage is much older than the one Bo is staying in. And these windows probably haven’t been opened in two decades. I walk back to the door, not wanting to be in the same room as Gigi any longer than I have to.
“You’re safe here,” I hear Rose tell her, and Bo steps through the doorway, shooting me a sideways glance. We both know what she really is, and I can tell Bo is itching to interrogate her.
“Can I have something to eat?” Gigi asks.
Rose nods. “Of course. We’ll bring you food too.” She has no idea who she has just invited to the island. “Try to get some rest, I’m sure you’re exhausted.”
Once Rose has stepped through the doorway, I shut the door and Bo drags over a warped wood board that had been stacked along the backside of the cottage. He jams it up under the doorknob, locking it in place.
“What are you doing?” Rose asks, making a move to grab the board. “She’s not a prisoner.”
“If you want me to hide her here, then this is how it has to be,” I explain.
“You don’t actually think she did anything wrong—that she’s one of them—do you?” Rose might not believe in the Swan sisters, but she knows that I do.
“You don’t have any reason to think she’s innocent,” I say. “So for now, she stays locked in there. At least it’s better than the boathouse.”
“Hardly,” Rose counters, but she crosses her arms and steps back from the door, reluctantly agreeing to our rules.
“Does Heath know what you did?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No. But I borrowed his parents’ boat, so I’ll probably have to tell him where I’ve been.”
“He can’t say anything to anyone about this.”
“He won’t.”
“And no one saw you take her?” Bo asks.
“It was dark, and Lon was completely passed out. He probably hasn’t even realized she’s gone yet.”
Again I’m struck by what a horrible idea this is. I’m not even sure if we’re hiding Gigi from Lon and Davis or if we’re holding her hostage just like they did. Whatever this is that we’re doing, I’m fairly certain it’s going to end catastrophically.
“Just be careful in town,” I say.
“I will.” And she presses her hands down deep into her coat pockets, as if she were fighting off a sudden chill. “Thank you,” she adds, just before she heads down the walkway back to the dock.
Bo and I look at each other once she’s out of sight. “Now what?” he asks.
* * *
Back at the house, I make two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for Gigi, wrap them in foil, then grab a blanket from the hall closet.
When I reach the door of Old Fisherman’s Cottage, the wood board has been removed and the door is slightly ajar. At first my heart jumps upward with panic—Gigi must have gotten out—but then I hear Bo’s voice inside. He went to collect logs to start a fire for her while I went to make food, and he’s returned before me.
I pause, listening to the crackling of flames in the fireplace.
“I know what you are,” I hear Bo say.
“Do you?” Gigi answers, her voice farther away, across the living room maybe, sitting in the only chair. I touch the doorknob with my fingers then pause. Maybe I owe him this: the chance to question her about his brother. So I wait before entering.
“You’re not Gigi Kline,” he says coolly, his voice measured and precise. “You’re something else.”
“And who told you that? Your girlfriend, Penny?”
I swallow down a jagged lump.
“Did you kill my brother?”
“Your brother?” Her voice changes, dips to an octave that is no longer Gigi’s but is Aurora’s. “You expect me to remember your brother, one boy from the thousands who’ve fallen in love with me?” She says it with a laugh, as if to fall in love is the first step toward death.
“It was last summer. June eleventh,” he tries, hoping this will jog her memory. But even if she did remember, she would never confess. Not to him.
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
I hear footsteps move across the room: Bo’s. And his voice is farther away now. “Did you drown anyone on June eleventh?”
“Hmm, let me think.” Her tone takes on an upswing, like she’s shifting between Gigi’s voice and Aurora’s, playing a game with Bo that he will lose. “Nope,” she finally concludes. “Pretty sure I took that day off. A girl gets tired with so many boys fawning over her.” I’m surprised she’s being so candid with him, even if her answers are still veiled by untruths. She must recognize that he’s not fooled by her little act. He sees right through Gigi Kline, even if he can’t actually see the thing inside her.
“I can make you tell me,” he says, his voice like a steel nail driving into wood, and I push open the door, unable to stay quiet any longer. Gigi isn’t sitting like I thought—she’s standing at the far wall beside one of the windows, leaning against it like she’s watching the ocean for a ship sailing into the harbor that might rescue her. And Bo is only a couple feet away, shoulders drawn back, hands halfway flexed at his sides like he’s about to reach forward and wrap them around her throat.
“Bo,” I hiss.
He doesn’t turn around right away. He stares at her, like maybe he’ll see a flicker of his brother in her eyes—of the moment right before he was killed. Gigi lifts a hand, smiling a little. “Poor boy,” she says in her smoothest, most condescending tone. “I can’t help you find your brother . . . but I can show you exactly what he felt.” Her fingers rise toward his face, her eyes piercing into his. “It won’t hurt, I promise. In fact, you’ll beg me for more.” The tips of her fingers are only an inch away, about to touch his cheekbone. “I can show you things your girlfriend, Penny, can’t. She’s too afraid to really love you.”
And just when her hand is almost to his jaw, he grabs her wrist, coiling his fingers around her skin. She winces slightly, and then he forces her arm away, where it falls to her side.
Her eyebrows rise in unison, and she glances over at me from across the room, like she wants to make sure I saw how close she was to making him hers. “I like the ones that play hard to get,” she says with a wink.
I drop the blanket and two sandwiches onto the small kitchen table with a thump then turn for the door. And Bo is suddenly right behind me.
“If you miss me, Bo,” she cajoles, smirking as she watches us leave, “you know where to find me.” But Bo slams the door shut then slides the board back into place.
“You were right,” he says. “She’s one of them.”
* * *
Bo and I walk the perimeter of the island like we’re surveying it, watchmen on duty, scanning the boundary for marauders—as if the Swan sisters were going to swim ashore by the thousands and take over our small island. I am on edge. Fidgety. Certain none of this will end well.
Gigi Kline is locked in the boathouse. People will be looking for her. Davis and Lon want her dead; the Sparrow police are trying to locate her and return her to her parents. And we are somehow right in the middle of it.
I’m still not entirely sure what we’re going to do with her.
“Do you want to come up to the house for dinner?” I ask Bo when the sun starts to set. We’ve spent most of our time in his cottage, alone, never in the main house.
He lifts his hat to brush a hand through his hair before placing it back on his head, lower this time, so it’s hard to see his eyes. “What about your mom?”
“She won’t mind. And it wasn’t really a request but a demand. I’m not about to leave you alone; you might decide to go for a swim again.” I say it with a grin, even though it’s not funny. He smirks, looking across the island to Old Fisherman’s Cottage, where Gigi is locked up. The wood board is still in place.
“All right,” he agrees.
I heat a can of tomato soup and make two grilled cheese sandwiches on the stove—a simple meal. There aren’t a lot of options anyway. I need to go into town for more supplies . . . eventually. But I’m not in a rush to leave the island.
We eat quickly, and then Bo follows me up the stairs. When we reach my bedroom, I can hear the fan blowing down the hall. Mom’s already in bed.
“Do you think your mom knows I’m here?” Bo asks once we’re inside my room.
“She knows. She senses when anyone is in the house or on the island.”
“What about Gigi?”
“I’m sure Mom knows she’s here too. But she won’t say anything. She hasn’t talked to anyone outside the island for a couple years. I don’t think she could muster the strength to call the cops about a missing girl even if she wanted to.”
“Is she like that because of your dad?”
I give a swift nod then sit down on the edge of the bed while he settles into the cushioned chair beside the window. “After he vanished three years ago, she sort of lost her mind.”
He nods understanding. “I’m sorry.”
A light rain has started to fall, sprinkling the glass and pattering against the roof. A chorus that soothes the eaves and sharp angles of the old house. “Apparently, love is the worst kind of madness.”
I go to the window and touch my palm to the glass. I can feel the coolness of the rain on the other side.
“Have you ever been in love before?” Bo braves to ask.
I look back at him, absorbing the drowsy slant of his eyes. “Once,” I confess, the four-letter word spilling out. It’s something I don’t like to talk about—with anyone.
“And?”
“It didn’t last. Circumstances beyond our control.”
“But you think about him still?” he asks.
“Only sometimes.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Of what?”
“To fall in love again?” His hands are resting on the arms of the chair, relaxed, but his gaze seems far more intent.
“No.” I swallow down the heartbeat climbing up inside my throat. Can he see what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling? That my heart is already pooling in my stomach, that my mind can hardly think of anything but him? That when we’re together, I almost believe nothing else matters? That maybe he could save me and I could save him? “I used to be afraid that I wouldn’t get another chance to.”
He stands up from the chair and walks to the window, pressing his shoulder against the wood frame, a hard line from his jaw up to his temple. “How did you know you were in love?”
His question makes my fingertips tingle with the need to touch his face, show him the feeling bursting from my seams. “It felt like sinking,” I say. I know it might be an odd way to describe it, considering the prevailing death in this town, but it’s how it comes out. “Like you’re drowning, but it doesn’t matter, because you don’t need air anymore, you just need the other person.”
His eyes flick to mine, searching them, looking to see if I’m drowning. And I am. The clock beside my bed ticks through the seconds; the rain keeps time.
“Penny,” he says softly, tilting his gaze on me. “I didn’t come here, to this town, expecting any of this.” He looks to the floor then back up again. “If I hadn’t met you, it probably would have been easier—less complicated. Maybe I would have left days ago.” I frown, and he clears his throat. His words break apart then reform. This is hard for him. “But now I know . . .” He lets out a breath, eyes looking through me—turned wild and unwavering. “I’m not leaving here without you. Even if it means I have to wait. I’ll wait. I’ll wait in this miserable place for as long as it takes. And if you want me to stay, then I’ll stay. I’ll fucking stay here forever if you ask me to.”
He shakes his head and opens his mouth like he’s going to continue, but I don’t let him. I take one swift step forward and crush my lips to his, pressing away his thoughts, his words. He tastes like a summer wind far away from here, like absolution, like a boy from a different life. Like we could make memories that belong only to us. Memories that have nothing to do with this place. A life, maybe. A real life.
I open my eyes. I trace his lips with mine. He looks at me like I am a girl brought in with the tide, rare and scarred and broken. A girl found in the roughest waters, in the farthest reaches of a dark fairy tale. He is looking at me like he might love me.
“I’m scared,” I whisper up at him.
“Of what?”
“Of letting myself love you then feeling my insides collapse when I lose you.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you.”
Promises are easy to make, I think but don’t say. Because I know he believes his own words. He believes that what we feel right now will rescue us in the end. But I know—I know. Endings are never so simple.
I sink back against the wall. His hand still touches my forearm, not letting me go.
“How does it end?” he asks, as if his thoughts trailed mine. “What will happen on the summer solstice?”
Memories cascade through me, all the years past, the summers that slid to a close, dead bodies left in their wake. “There will be a party, just like the one on the beach.” I pull my arm away from his grip, tugging the sleeves of my sweater down over my hands and crossing my arms, feeling suddenly chilled. “Before midnight, the sisters will wade back out into the harbor, relinquishing the bodies they’ve stolen.”
“And if they don’t go into the water? If Gigi stays locked up during the solstice?”
My lungs stop drawing in air. She will die. She will be trapped inside Gigi’s body indefinitely, pushed down into the dark, dark, dark recesses of Gigi’s mind. She will see and hear and witness the world, but Gigi will resume control, unaware that a Swan sister is now imprisoned inside her, buried deep within. A ghost inside a girl. The worst kind of existence. A punishment befitting the torment the sisters have caused. But I don’t tell this to Bo. Because I can’t be sure it’s true, since it’s never happened before. A Swan sister has never stayed inside a body past midnight on the summer solstice.
“I’m not sure,” I answer truthfully.
Bo’s eyes have strayed to the window, he’s considering something. “I have to kill her,” he finally says. “Even if she didn’t kill my brother, she’s killed others. She doesn’t deserve to live.”
“You’d be killing Gigi, too,” I say.
“I know, but you told me before how the town has killed girls in the past, hoping to stop the sisters, but that they always got it wrong.” His eyes search mine. “This time we won’t get it wrong. You can see them. You know who they are. We can find out where the third one is and we can end this for good. No one else has to die.”
“Except three innocent girls.”
“Better than a hundred more boys. Or two hundred. How many more centuries do they keep returning to this town before someone stops them? They never got it right in the past because they never knew for sure which girls were inhabited. But we know. And there’s one right down there, locked up.” He points to the window and his sudden urgency scares me. I never thought he’d be this serious, that he’d really want to do it. But now he’s talking like we could march down there and end her life right now, all based on my ability to see what she really is.
“And you could live with yourself after that?” I ask. “Knowing you killed three people?”
“My brother is dead,” he says coldly. “I came here to find out what happened to him, and I did. I can’t just walk away now.” He removes the hat from his head and drops it onto the chair. “I have to do this, Penny.”
“You don’t.” I move closer to him. “At least not right now . . . not tonight. Maybe we can find another way.”
He exhales then leans into the window frame. “There isn’t another way.”
I reach out and touch his arm, forcing him to look at me. “Please,” I say, tilting my chin up at him. He smells like the earth; he smells wild and fearless and I know he could also be dangerous, but when I’m this close to him I don’t care what he is. “We still have a few days until the solstice. There’s time to figure something out. All those books in your cottage—maybe there really is a way to stop the sisters without killing the girls they’ve taken. We have to look; we have to try.” My fingers slide down to his hand, the warmth of his palm burning me, setting me on fire, making me dizzy.
“Okay,” he answers, tightening his fingers through mine. “We’ll look for another way. But if we don’t find one . . .”
“I know,” I say before he can finish. He will kill Gigi Kline just to get to Aurora. But he doesn’t fully understand what that will mean: taking a life. It will change him. It’s not something he can take back.
The sun has managed to sink into the ocean in the span of time that we’ve been in my room, and I switch on the lamps on either side of my bed. “One of us should stay up to watch the cottage, make sure she doesn’t sneak out,” Bo says.
I doubt she’ll try to escape, but I nod anyway, agreeing. Her odds aren’t good back in town. Lon and Davis are surely looking for her. And I’m guessing she knows she’s safer here—hidden in the cottage. Her mistake is that she thinks we’ll protect her from them. Especially with Rose on her side. When, in fact, we’re plotting ways in which to end her life.