Nor sat in a rickety wicker chair in front of Apothia’s little dance studio. A chilly March breeze came up off the water. Nor wrapped her sweater more tightly around herself. Across from her, Wintersweet set down a cup of tea. Her hand trembled as she passed another to Nor, the teacup rattling in its saucer. Nor leaped up to take it from her to avoid adding this one to the shards of broken porcelain she’d already had to sweep up. Wintersweet looked at Nor expectantly. Nor raised the teacup to her lips and took a polite sip of the air inside.
Judd had done all she could for Wintersweet. Any physical ailments Wintersweet had suffered that night two months ago were healed. But there were some types of pain that Judd couldn’t heal. Nor knew all too well that some pain would not be erased. Some pain demanded to be felt.
Wintersweet had never been particularly chatty to begin with, but now it was difficult to get her to say much of anything. There were gaps in her memory, too, as if someone had carved parts of her away. She’d often remember that to make a fried egg, she had to use a pan, but she would forget that the egg must also be cracked. Or — like today — she’d remember the ritual of serving tea but forget the part about making it first. A few days earlier, she’d remembered how to turn on the kitchen faucet but not how to turn it off.
Wintersweet seemed to prefer hanging around the Tower rather than at the Witching Hour. Nor didn’t blame her; the last time Nor had visited the shop, it had felt almost sinister. The gargoyles hanging from the walls had seemed cold and menacing. And something was wrong with Madge. Her tattoos looked infected. Her cheeks were sagged and droopy, as if her skin were suddenly too big for her. She’d shrugged off Nor’s concerns. Nor hadn’t spoken with her since.
As for Fern, her rising success and popularity continued to seem unstoppable. She was doing seminars now, offering her fans new ways in which to behold her benevolent talents. A renowned publication had named Fern Blackburn Person of the Year. Soon, her face would be adorning every checkout counter and newspaper stand in the country. There were even rumors that she’d been invited to meet with several foreign diplomats, and the Chinese ambassador had been spotted sporting his own green fern tattoo.
But lately, there’d also been reports of people going missing after attending one of Fern Blackburn’s events. People had been disappearing around Anathema Island as well. No one had seen Catriona in weeks, and just yesterday, the Sweet and Savory Bakery had been uncharacteristically closed. Vega was also gone, but at least that vanishing act had an explanation. The last Nor had heard, he’d reconnected with his old flame Lake somewhere in rural Texas. Wherever he was, Nor hoped he was in a place Fern would never think to look.
The few people Nor had seen on Meandering Lane were Pike and Sena Crowe, though judging from the knives they always had slung on their hips, they weren’t there to shop. Fortunately, Gage was never with them. Every time Nor saw Gage, she was overcome with the feeling that she was on the cusp of some terrible disaster, like she was standing in the path of a hurricane. Gage Coldwater felt dangerous, the way a sharp metal object felt dangerous, and try as she might, Nor had never been very good at keeping herself away from those.
The weather had remained cold and gray; the whales had yet to return. The island was void of its usual surge of tourists. Retirees hadn’t returned to air out their summer homes; their lawns grew more feral with every passing day. For the most part, those who remained stayed locked in their houses, sealing their doors and windows against whatever nameless ghost had brought this air of unease to their island home. The animals, too, had hidden themselves away. The dogwood trees along Meandering Lane were covered in a toxic residue that could burn the skin. The juniper bushes in front of the Witching Hour screamed whenever Nor was within hearing range.
Nor stood and walked out into the overgrown yard, leaving Wintersweet to enjoy her tea party on her own. She made a point to avoid a hostile-looking holly bush and chose instead to pass through what looked like a benign patch of narcissus. When she did, she felt something prick her skin, and when she looked, she saw a bead of blood well up on her ankle.
It seemed now even the daffodils had thorns.
It was hours later when Nor wended down the trail that led to the beach. Behind her, the Tower loomed against the setting sun, like a fortress in some medieval legend. The plants along the trail were just as vicious as ever, and when she emerged, her sleeves were torn, her hands scratched and smeared with blood. She’d almost lost her scarf to a mean-spirited rhododendron bush. If she’d trusted herself with a knife, she would have brought one to fight them off, but ever since that incident with the cigarette back in January, Nor could barely glance at even a paper clip without feeling on edge.
Once she reached the shore, she unzipped her jacket, and Bijou hopped to the ground. The little dog scurried gleefully ahead of her, kicking up rocky sand as he ran.
It was nothing special, this beach, but its many nooks and crannies and delightful sea treasures that washed up on shore — gelatinous jellyfish and bulbous bull kelp and the occasional sea star — had made it the perfect place for Nor’s childhood adventures. And as Nor spotted a familiar figure walking toward her, she realized it was perfect for other things as well; when the beach grass glowed silver in the moonlight, Nor could imagine how easily felicitous lovers might find each other in the dark here.
“Are you looking for the whales, too?” Reed called. When he got closer, Nor could see the tip of his nose had turned pink from the cold. “I keep thinking that I just haven’t looked closely enough,” he said, “but it doesn’t look like there’s anything but a few fish out there.”
Nor had stopped expecting the whales to return, mainly because it wasn’t just the whales that had disappeared. It had been weeks since Nor had come across a young deer and her fawn while on her evening run or woken up to the crows tormenting Antiquity through the bedroom windows. All of the sea creatures were long gone; even the ones who made their homes there had left. There were no breaching porpoises, no barking sea lions, and no seabirds gliding overhead, calling to one another with their cackling cries. She suspected the whales had skipped over the archipelago on purpose, disturbing migration patterns in search of more welcoming waters.
“Quite a change from a few months ago, huh?” Reed continued. “Now it’s almost like they’d come last fall to say their good-byes.”
And maybe they were trying to convince us to leave, too, Nor thought. “They could just be running late,” she offered lightly.
“Maybe we should wait out here for them a little longer then,” Reed said, smiling. “Just in case.”
Typically, most especially in the early stages of spring, with winter and all its shivery consorts still breathing down their necks, nights on the island required a jacket as well as a scarf, mittens, and sometimes even a warm wool hat. But every time Reed looked at her, Nor swore the heat of her cheeks could warm the oceans.
Nor sat on one of the fallen logs along the beach and watched Reed build a fire. As it roared to life, bright flickers of orange and red danced against the darkening night sky. Bijou settled happily on the warm coils of Nor’s discarded scarf.
“I haven’t seen you around much,” Reed said.
Nor blushed. Was that a nice way of calling me out for avoiding him these past few months? “I’m sorry,” she muttered lamely. “I’ve been — busy.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Reed shrugged. “I’ve been increasing my mileage just in case you’ll join me on a run again.”
“Really?”
“No,” he admitted. “That last run almost killed me.”
“What?” Nor laughed. “You didn’t seem to be struggling to keep up.”
“I’ll attribute that to adrenaline and bravado,” Reed said. “I was trying to impress you.”
His hand brushed against hers. Nor’s breath caught when his fingertips grazed the scars on her wrist, peeking out from the cuff of her sweatshirt. Her first inclination was to pull her arm away, to run away as fast as she could. But she didn’t.
He took her hand. “Can I ask if it ever helped?”
“It didn’t,” she finally admitted softly. “Not enough.”
Not even on the days when she hadn’t stopped at one cut or when she’d cut too deep. Like the time Apothia had found her in the bathroom, blood gushing through her clamped fingers. She remembered the desperate rasp in Apothia’s voice when she’d screamed for Judd. She remembered how that pain had come out of her as an effluvium that burned Nor’s lungs. Thanks to Judd’s quick work, that cut hadn’t left a scar.
But try as she might, Judd could do nothing about the pain Nor felt on the inside. So Apothia took her to someone who could. Three times a week, she took Nor into the city for her therapy appointments. It wasn’t so bad. Most of the time, they’d stopped for a bowl of pho or clam chowder at Pike Place Market before heading home. They’d always brought home those little salted caramels that Judd pretended not to love. And eventually, Nor had gotten better. She wasn’t any less afraid than she’d been before; it was more that the desire to carve out the parts of herself that scared her had become easier to control.
The ocean waves lapped gently against the beach, picking up pebbles and ribbons of algae. The water glittered with the bioluminescence of tiny phytoplankton. Another unnatural occurrence, it being too early in the year for its appearance, but it felt like an otherworldly gift just for the two of them. As if a constellation of stars had plummeted from the heavens for their amusement alone.
“You up for a swim?” Nor asked suddenly.
“Are you out of your mind?” Reed groaned. “It’s freezing out there.”
“That’s the fun part.” Before she could lose her nerve, Nor jumped up and unzipped her sweatshirt. She dropped it and the rest of her clothes in a heap near the fading fire as she raced down the rocky beach and, feeling the satisfying weight of Reed’s eyes on her, plunged into the ocean.
The icy water pulled the air out of her lungs and numbed her skin. It hurt but not in a bad way. Her voice suddenly rushed to the surface, and she was laughing so hard she was screaming.
“It’s not that bad,” she hollered between chattering teeth. “Come in.”
Reed shook his head and remained seated, warm and dry on the log. “Sure,” he called. “It looks downright tropical out there.”
“Okay, it’s freezing,” she admitted. “But the water is so beautiful, it’s easy to ignore.”
“Beautiful things tend to have a distracting effect,” Reed said.
A slow grin pulled at the corners of his mouth before he stood and took off his jacket, then stripped off his T-shirt and jeans. Nor diverted her eyes until he was immersed in the water. His golden-brown skin glowed in the moonlight.
Their treading feet startled a few herring out of the water. It was reassuring to see there was something in the sea besides the two of them. The small fish twinkled like blue fireflies against the night sky. Nor sliced her hands through the waves in a smoky turquoise streak. The marks on her arms stood out purple and impervious in the water.
She reached up and brushed her fingers against Reed’s shivering lips. He dipped backward, and the glow of the plankton illuminated his head like a halo. “It’s starting to feel a little warm to me,” he said.
Nor laughed. “I’m pretty sure that’s what hypothermia feels like.”
They hurried back to shore, stumbling over the rocks and into each other in their haste to get away from the icy water. They got back to the fire, their clothes, and Bijou, asleep on Nor’s scarf. Reed wrapped them both in his jacket. When he kissed her, Nor could taste the ocean on his lips. When they got back to the Tower, it was dark and quiet with sleep. With Reed, the silence didn’t feel like something that needed to be filled; rather, it felt like something to be shared. Like a secret. Or a kiss.
Reed drew Nor to him. When they pulled apart, he kept his hands on her face. “Ask me what I’m thinking,” he murmured.
“What are you thinking?”
He hooked a piece of her wet hair with his finger and tugged on it gently. “That you are so beautiful.”
Nor blushed. “Oh, shut up.”
“You are so beautiful,” Reed continued, ignoring her. “No wonder it hurt to look anywhere else.” He kissed her good-bye, pressing his lips to the scars on her wrists.
Nor scooped up Bijou and hurried into the house. Once upstairs, she plopped the little dog onto the bed and threw her sand-filled combat boots into the corner.
Moonlight flooded the room with its opalescent light; from up there, the rest of the island was just shadows, as foreboding as a fairy tale. Monsters may very well have been hiding in those shadows, but with the briny scent of the ocean still on her skin, Nor couldn’t imagine how any nightmare could possibly find her that night.
Nor was dreaming again. In her dream, she was standing in a cold and unfamiliar room. The walls and floor were made of stone. The room had a foul odor to it, a mix of rot and decay, and the metallic scent of blood. The only way out was up a winding stone staircase. The only light poured in from a solitary window at the far end of the room.
Nor tapped her red-lacquered nails against her arm. Green fern tattoos spiraled across her pallid skin. Her stilettos clicked menacingly against the cold stone floors as she paced.
Catriona held the victim down and covered the woman’s mouth with her hand. A plain girl so used to being overlooked, Catriona had proven to be very useful, devoted, and reliable.
Madge had turned out to be far too fainthearted for such work, Mohawk too stupid. But Catriona, well, she was far too eager for it. She’d probably rip out the woman’s tongue with her bare hands if Nor let her.
The woman kneeling on the floor in front of Catriona emitted a pathetic moan, more animal than human. She had the same nose as her son and the same fair hair. And the same too-familiar expression: instead of seeing love in his eyes, there was only ever fear and contempt, a constant reminder that, no matter what she did, time and again what she wanted continued to slip through her hands like frayed rope.
“What do you want?” Bliss’s voice was a strangled whisper, as if the grip Catriona had on the back of her head affected her ability to speak. Perhaps it did.
“You have nothing I want,” Nor snapped in that voice that did not belong to her, “but you do have something I need.” When she was finished with Bliss Sweeney, she would be sure to have carved out any resemblance remaining between mother and son. She would make a point of it.
“Is it the girl?” Bliss asked. “I swear I only spoke to her about the spell once!”
Nor’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
Bliss hesitated. “I — I asked her about casting a spell for me. I haven’t seen my son in years. I was desperate. You have to understand, a mother’s love is —” She stopped.
“And what was the girl’s response?” Nor snapped.
“She insisted she couldn’t cast it.” Her voice wavered. “Should she be able to?”
“That,” Nor said in that honeyed tone, “has yet to be determined.” She ran the razor-sharp point of a red fingernail along Bliss Sweeney’s soft jawline. “But thank you. You’ve been more helpful than I expected you to be.”
Much later, the blood of Quinn Sweeney’s mother trickled across the floor. As promised, there was nothing left of her that resembled her son. There was nothing left of her at all.
Nor wiped the blood from her face. She turned to Catriona, who had a new fern tattoo coiling up her arm like a snake. It was splattered with blood.
“Now,” Nor said, “let’s talk about the girl.”
The frantic beat of Nor’s own heart filled her ears as she pounded down a faint pathway near the southern shore of the island. No one had maintained this trail for years — Nor wasn’t entirely sure she’d known it existed before now. The hems of her pajama pants were torn and muddy; there were rips in the long-sleeved T-shirt she’d worn to bed, and chestnut burrs were caught in her hair. Her hands and face were smeared with dirt and blood. The wintry air burned her lungs and turned her breath to mist.
A little fox raced through the woods parallel to her, his thoughts moving in and out of her head. He sped in front of her, and Nor could feel the racing of his heart, the cold air in his lungs. The farther away he got, the harder he was to hear, and all too quickly he was gone, leaving Nor alone in the woods.
Nor yelped as she jammed her bare foot on a rock in the trail. She sank to the ground to assess the damage: a jagged gash on the heel of her right foot. She pressed her hand to the wound, just as she’d watched Judd do a thousand times, but she couldn’t get it to mend. Perhaps it was too deep. Perhaps she was too scared.
“What are you doing out here?” a gravelly voice asked. Startled, Nor looked up to see Reuben Finch looming over her.
“I don’t know,” she answered hoarsely. One minute, she was falling asleep in her own bed. The next, she was waking up in a pile of frost-covered leaves and mud on one of the island’s abandoned trails with no memory of how she’d gotten there. And the dream she’d had in between? She was quite certain now that this dream — and the last one — hadn’t been dreams at all.
Horror swept over her like a cold sweat. It had been her hand with those red-painted nails that had wiped Bliss Sweeney’s blood from her face. She had watched those ferns unfurl from her arm. Only, she didn’t have red nails. Or tattoos.
Reuben nodded thoughtfully, as if Nor had given him an answer worth deliberation. His face, Nor noted, was lined with time and endless summers spent outdoors. His eyebrows were as thick and unruly as a briar patch, and his goatee was streaked with the fiery red hair that had once covered his head. “All right then,” he said.
He held out his giant hand and pulled Nor to her feet, nearly crushing her fingers with his meaty paw. Her grandparents, Nor realized as she kneaded her smashed hand, were quite similar. Once upon a time, they must have made quite the pair.
Nor stumbled, hopping back and forth on her good foot in an attempt to regain her balance. With Reuben’s help, she somehow managed to keep her weight on the ball of her foot, hobble over fallen tree limbs, and pick her way through branches sharp with thorns cloaking the path. When they finally emerged from the woods, Nor was surprised to find they were on the other side of Reuben’s farmhouse.
Tucked back from Stars-in-Their-Eyes Lane, the large cabin sat at the very end of the property and was surrounded by acres of farmland. As she limped down the long driveway, Nor could see fields of bright-green asparagus and red stalks of chard. A few free-range chickens roamed the yard. From here, she could also make out one of the closest neighboring isles. Halcyon Island was barely a few miles long and boasted only one structure — the abandoned hotel.
It scared her, all of it: the dream with all that blood on the floor and the fear in Bliss Sweeney’s eyes and those red-painted nails scared the shit out of Nor. Those plants, with their bloodthirsty thorns, scared her, too. And there was something disquieting about that uninhabited island.
As soon as Nor walked through the cabin’s front door, she smelled oolong tea brewing. She hobbled after Reuben into the kitchen, passing a stone fireplace, a braided rug stretched across the hardwood floors, and a rocking chair in the corner. Aside from the tea, the house smelled of leather and pine and wet wool.
Reuben set a ceramic mug on the table in front of Nor. The mug was large and obviously handmade, misshapen and glazed in a multitude of hues, all turquoise and cerulean and jade. After pulling a first aid kit from one of the kitchen cupboards, Reuben settled into the chair next to Nor. He took her foot in his hand, examining the gash on her heel. “You must have been moving fast,” he mused. He wiped the wound clean of dirt, applied a disinfecting salve that made Nor wince, and then wrapped a length of gauze around her foot.
Though Reuben Finch was Nor’s biological grandfather, their relationship was a bit untraditional, because neither had ever acknowledged their relationship at all. Traditionally, the fathers of the Blackburn women didn’t give so much as a second thought to the daughters they’d sired, let alone their granddaughters. The only difference was that Judd Blackburn, who had loved both men and women at one time or another, and Reuben Finch had been childhood sweethearts. Ironically, the only Blackburn daughter who had ever been conceived in love had been Fern.
“That’ll have to do for now,” he said. “Let’s get you home to Judd so she can fix you up properly.”
He pulled her up, and that was when Nor spotted it again — through the window, the little red fox. Satisfied that Nor was safe — at least for now — he darted around the corner of the porch and scurried into the fields and out of sight.
Reuben helped Nor through the back fields toward the Tower. When they reached the gate that divided the woods from Harper Forgette’s property, however, he turned and began walking away.
“You’re not going to help me the rest of the way?” Nor called.
“Eh, you’re strong enough to make it on your own,” Reuben answered glibly. And with that, his lumbering stride took him back into the woods.
“Are you kidding me?” Nor muttered. She pulled herself up and over the fence, catching her leg on the barbed wire Harper Forgette used to try to keep raccoons out of the pastures. She landed on the ground with a grunt and stumbled back to her feet. The alpacas weren’t quite as pleased to see Nor this time. She was much too distressed for their liking, and the pack turned away with quick, nervous steps. She kept hobbling across the pasture, and the dogs came into view. They were waiting at their usual spot, but Antiquity’s attention and hostility, usually aimed at Nor, were directed elsewhere. That can’t possibly be good.
Suddenly, Pike was hurtling over the gate toward her. “Where in the hell have you been?” he asked, gripping her arm.
Nor didn’t answer but glanced toward the Tower. An unfamiliar and flashy green car was parked in the front yard.
A familiar panic began to build in her chest. Those scars — those neat little lines that ran along her ankles, in the crook of her arm, along her hips — began to hum in anticipation. “She’s here,” she said. “Isn’t she?”
Pike examined the cuts on Nor’s face and noticed the gauze wrapped around her foot. He made a face, grabbed her arm, and wrapped it around his shoulder. The sheathed knife he carried on his hip was thick, like a cleaver or a machete.
“We’ll get Judd to heal you up after,” he said.
After what?