FIFTEEN
At two a.m. on the dot, my eyelids flutter open. The room is dark except for the angular shape of moonlight spilling across the floor from the window. The rain clouds are gone and the sky has split open. Bo is awake, sitting in the chair, finger tapping slowly and rhythmically on the armrest. He turns his head when I sit up in bed.
“You should have woken me sooner,” I say drowsily.
“You seemed like you needed sleep.”
I’m still fully dressed under the blankets, and I kick back the layers and stretch my arms in the air. “I’ll take the next shift,” I say. The wood floor is cold and creaking beneath the weight of my feet. “You must be tired.”
He yawns and stands up. We bump shoulders as we try to move around one another, both of us sleepy. And when he gets to the bed, he collapses onto his back, one hand on his chest, the other stretched out at his side. He pulls his hat down over his face. I’m tempted to crawl back onto the bed beside him, rest my head on his shoulder and doze back into my dreams. It would be easy to let myself surrender to him, both in this moment and forever . . . let the days flit away until there are no more days left to count. I could leave this island with him and not look back. And maybe, possibly, I could be happy.
It doesn’t take long for Bo’s hands to relax, his head to shift slightly to the left, and I know he’s asleep. But I don’t settle into the chair. I walk to the door, opening it just wide enough to slip out into the hall. I move silently down the stairs to the front door.
A few intermittent clouds pass beneath the moon then reveal it again. A ballet of clear sky mixed with low clouds, washed in moonlight.
I wrestle into my raincoat, trying to move quickly, and then hurry out into the night, headed to Old Fisherman’s Cottage.
* * *
It takes several tries before I’m able to dislodge the board from under the doorknob. My hands are wet; the wood board is wet. And when the door creaks open, the only light inside the cottage is from the fireplace across the room.
It smells like mildew and mothballs and a little like vinegar. And for a half second I feel bad for Gigi being trapped inside this place.
She is standing across the small room, awake, holding her palms over the fire for warmth. “Hello, Penny,” she says without turning around. I close the door behind me, shaking the rain from my coat. “I didn’t kill his brother.”
“Maybe not,” I answer. “But he’s determined to find out who did.” Instinctively, I want to move to the fire for warmth, but I also don’t want to be any nearer to her than I already am. On the couch, I notice the folded-up blanket I brought her earlier. She hasn’t slept at all.
“Did you come to invite me up to your house for tea and a shower? I could really use a shower.”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?” She pivots around, her shoulder-length, straight blond hair hanging frayed and dirty like the bristles on a broom. Again I stifle back the sensation of feeling sorry for her. She blinks, and the flickering, silvery-gray outline of Aurora Swan beneath her skin blinks too. They are like two girls transposed over top of each other. Two photo images developed all wrong, one hovering over the other. But when Gigi turns away from the firelight, I almost can’t see Aurora inside her; the outlines of her face fade and turn shadowy. I could fool myself into believing that Aurora is no longer there and Gigi is just a normal girl.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Without your boyfriend?” she asks, the left side of her lip arching up at the edge.
“He wants to kill you. . . . The whole town does.”
“They always have; that’s nothing new.” In the corner of the ceiling behind her is a cobweb, partly decayed, dark specks—flies and moths—trapped in the sticky remains. Doomed. Legs and wings stuck. The spider is long dead, but the web keeps on killing.
“But this time they caught you swimming back to shore after drowning two boys. They’re certain you’re one of them.”
Her eyebrows come together, forming a line that rises up into her forehead. “And I’m sure you’ve done nothing to encourage that idea.” She’s implying that I’ve said something, revealed that she is indeed a Swan sister, but I’ve only told Bo.
“Aren’t you tired of this?” I ask. “Of killing people year after year?” This is what I had wanted to say when I confronted her at the boathouse, before Lon caught me talking to her.
She looks intrigued, and her head tilts to the left. “You say it like we have a choice.”
“What if we do?”
“Don’t forget,” she says crisply, “it’s your fault we ended up like this in the first place.”
I drop my gaze to the floor. Dust motes have collected around the legs of the kitchen table and against the walls.
She smiles then rolls her tongue against her cheek. “Let me guess, you’re falling in love with that boy?” Her mouth turns up again, grinning with satisfaction that she’s hit on something that makes me uncomfortable. “And you’re starting to think that maybe there’s a way to keep this body you’re in, to stay human forever?” She steps away from the fire, pushing her lower jaw out like she might laugh. “You’re fucking naive, Hazel. You always have been. Even back then, you thought this town wouldn’t actually kill us. You thought we could be saved. But you were wrong.”
“Stop it,” I tell her, my lips trembling.
“This isn’t your town. That isn’t your body. These people hate us; they want us dead all over again, and you’re pretending that you’re one of them.” She lifts her chin in the air like she’s trying to see me from a new angle, spy the thing inside me. “And that boy . . . Bo. He doesn’t love you, he loves who he thinks you are: Penny Talbot, the girl whose body you stole.” The words are spit from her lips like they taste vile on her tongue. “And now you’ve locked up your own sister in this disgusting cottage. You’ve betrayed us—your own family.”
“You’re dangerous,” I manage to say.
“So are you.” She laughs. “Tell me, were you planning on going the whole season without drowning a single boy? The solstice is coming.”
“I’m done with that,” I say. “I don’t want to kill anymore.” Even though the urge gnaws at me, tugging at my soul—the need like a thorn at the back of my throat, always pricking the skin, reminding me of what I’m here to do. But I have resisted. At times I’ve even forgotten. With Bo, the desire for revenge has been dulled. He’s made me believe I can be someone else . . . not just the monster I’ve become.
“You have to. It’s what we do.” She twirls a strand of blond hair through her thumb and index finger, pressing her lips together into a pout. Aurora’s face seems to push against the inside of Gigi’s skull, like she’s trying to find more space, stretch her neck a little within the confines of her body. I know the feeling. Sometimes I feel trapped in Penny’s body as well—imprisoned by the outline of her skin.
“We’ve been living like this for too long,” I say, my voice stronger now, finding purpose in the words. “Two centuries of torturing this town, and what has it gotten us?”
“You fall for some boy, who’s not even a local, and now suddenly you want to protect this town?” She folds her arms over her chest, still wearing the same soiled white blouse as when she drowned those boys in the water. “And besides, I like coming back. I like making boys fall in love with me, controlling them . . . collecting them like little trophies.”
“You like killing them, you mean.”
“I make them mine, and I deserve to keep them,” she snaps. “It’s not my fault they’re so trusting and gullible. Boys are weak—they were two centuries ago, and they still are.”
“When will it be enough?”
“Never.” She cants her head to the side, cracking her neck.
I exhale. What did I expect coming in here? What was I hoping for? I should have known: My sisters will never stop. They have become just like the sea, breaking apart ships and lives without remorse. And they’ll keep on killing for another two centuries if they have their way.
I turn for the door.
“Haven’t you learned your lesson, Hazel?” she says from across the room. “You were betrayed by the boy you loved once before; what makes you think Bo won’t betray you too?”
I bite down on the fury boiling inside me. She doesn’t know anything about what happened before—two centuries ago. “This is different,” I say. “Bo is different.”
“Unlikely. But he is cute.” She smirks. “Maybe too cute for you. I think I should have him.”
“Stay away from him,” I bark.
Her eyes turn to slits, narrowed on me. “What exactly do you plan on doing with him?”
“I won’t kill him.” I won’t take him into the sea and drown him. I don’t want that for him—a dark, watery existence, his soul trapped in the harbor. A prisoner shifting with the tide.
“You realize that you’re just going to have to leave him behind in a few days. And he will have fallen in love with a ghost and be left with the body of this girl Penny, who won’t remember a thing.” She lets out a short laugh. “Won’t that be hilarious? He will be in love with Penny, not you.”
A rattling of nausea starts to rise in my gut. “He loves me . . . not this body.” But the words sound feeble and broken.
“Sure,” she says, and her eyes roll in her head—such a Gigi thing to do. We can’t help but take on the mannerisms of the bodies we inhabit. Just as I have taken on the traits of Penny Talbot—all of her memories sit dormant in my mind, waiting to be plucked like a flower from the ground. I am playing the part of Penny Talbot, and I do it well. I’ve had practice.
I touch the doorknob. “I meant what I said,” I say back to her. “Stay away from him or I’ll make sure those boys in town get the opportunity to do exactly what they’ve been dying to do—kill you.”
She chuckles, but then her gaze turns serious, watching me as I slip out the door and kick it shut behind me.