“We can’t wait until the morning,” I protested, hugging myself against the sudden chill. “What if someone else gets taken tonight? What if they get sent to the wrong place?”
“That’s not going to happen,” Joaquin replied, shaking his head. Water dripped from his eyelashes and chin. “No one ever gets taken in a storm.”
I laughed sarcastically. “Oh, and there’s no chance that rule is going to be broken?”
Joaquin gave me a hard look. “I’m sorry, Rory, but there’s something I have to take care of. You’re just gonna have to trust me. I’ll be at your place first thing in the morning.”
Then he turned and slipped into the woods, disappearing between two huge trees. I just stood there, soaked and baffled, my teeth chattering, waiting for the punch line. He had something to take care of in the middle of the woods, right now, when two seconds ago he’d been about ready to throw down with Tristan?
Shaking from head to toe, I turned to look back at the mayor’s house. I’d never seen it from this angle before, and for the first time, I noticed the large garage facing the driveway. The door was open, and sitting inside, safe from the rain and wind, was a sleek silver convertible. The very same car I’d seen idling near the cliff the other night.
The mayor had met with Dorn. Dorn, who was watching me just like Nadia was. A chill went down my spine, and as I turned to go, I saw Tristan standing on the porch under the cover of its wide roof, staring out at me.
You’ve been here longer than anyone, Joaquin had said. And Tristan hadn’t argued. Was that really true? How long was “longer than anyone”? And was it even possible that one person had been sent to Juniper Landing alone, with no one there to guide him?
Slowly, I headed back toward town. Joaquin didn’t want to deal with this tonight? Fine. As of that moment, I had my own mission to carry out.
1766
Navigating the descent to the cove that night in the pouring rain and pitch dark was terrifying. The wind was so fierce it drove the rain sideways, each droplet a sharp dart against my skin. Halfway down the rocky decline, my foot slipped on the rocks, and as my arms flung out to grasp at the nothingness, I was sure I was about to fall to my death. Then my back hit a jagged point and I remembered: I couldn’t die. But I could feel excruciating pain.
I scrambled to my knees and checked the pocket of my rain jacket to make sure my flashlight hadn’t tumbled out. Shakily, I pushed myself to my feet and took baby steps all the way to the bottom of the hill. When I could finally see the sand, I unclenched my jaw and jumped the last few feet. The ground squished beneath the soles of my sneakers, bubbling up around the rubber treads with the consistency of oatmeal.
I could just make out the shadowy humps of the tents in the distance. Not surprisingly, they were dark and still. I flicked on my flashlight and ran it along the rock wall to my left, inching forward until I finally found the opening of the cave. It looked smaller somehow, as I stood there in front of it alone. Threatening. For one brief moment I thought I saw something flicker deep inside, and I almost turned around and ran.
No one’s here, I told myself, listening to the rain as it thwapped against the vinyl cover of my hood. They’d have to be crazy to come out in this.
Of course, I was crazy just for being here. And after seeing the Lifers storm-surfing last week and the cliff-diving the other night, I already knew that some of the others weren’t exactly on the right side of sane. But this place was mine now, as much as it was theirs. If someone was inside, they were just going to have to deal.
I took a deep breath and slipped into the cave. The narrow opening was clogged with smoke, the heady, ashy kind that billows up after dousing a fire. As I came around the corner, I covered my mouth with my sleeve and ran the flashlight’s beam along the floor. Sure enough, the fire pit was smoldering. A few small embers still glowed bright orange in the darkness, and thick gray smoke snaked up from the center of the charred logs, disappearing near the high ceiling of the cave.
“Anyone here?” I called.
No response. Somewhere in the deepest depths of the cavern, water dripped at a steady rhythm.
This made no sense. If someone had been in here just before me, I would have bumped into them coming out, either on the beach or on the rocks. Unless there was a back entrance to the cave, or some other way out to the cove that they hadn’t shown me.
Forget it, I told myself. You came here for a reason.
I tried to ignore my trembling hands as I aimed the flashlight beam at the wall to my right. I found Krista’s name again, the bubbly flowery lettering proclaiming her arrival. A few feet away, Nadia had written her name in slanted, sophisticated script: NADIA LINKOVA (NASH) 1982. Right under hers, Cori had added her name: CORI HERTZ (MORRISON) 1982. No wonder they were so close. They’d shown up here around the same time. Another reason why Krista probably expected the two of us to become BFFs. I moved on, illuminating unfamiliar names like Corina Briggance (Horrance) from 1993 and Wallace Brooks (Garretson) from 1979. I paused when I found Kevin’s name, huge and jagged, near the top of the wall, an intricate fire-breathing dragon painted above it, the tail curling around his year, which was 1965. Kevin had come here the year my father was born.
Slowly, I made my way along the wall, reading name after name after name. Toward the back of the cave the years got older and older. 1921, 1915, 1906, 1899. Some looked hastily painted, in thick white paint. Others seemed to be written in chalk, probably the only instrument they could find in those days. I couldn’t imagine that some of the people I’d seen on the street had been here for almost two hundred years. How was that even possible? How was that survivable?
I squinted in the darkness, trying to make out the words that had faded with time, holding my breath as I waited for my light to find the name I was looking for. When it finally did, I was at the innermost point of the cave. And there, etched into the stone at eye-level, was Tristan’s name.
TRISTAN SEVARDES (PARRISH) 1766.
I inhaled sharply. He’d been alive before the U.S. was even a country. Had, in fact, died before the Revolutionary War. He was over two hundred years old.
There was a noise, like a scraping, near the mouth of the cave, and I dropped my flashlight. When I grabbed for it, it slipped through my fingers and hit my toe. Cursing under my breath, I picked it up again and shone the light near the opening. The fire still smoldered.
“Hello?” I said, my voice sounding weak and scared. My toe throbbed angrily. I cleared my throat, tried to sound more authoritative. “Who’s there?”
No reply. I took two tentative steps forward.
“Come on, you guys. This isn’t funny,” I said.
I listened hard for the sound to come again, but it didn’t. All I could hear was the deafening rasp of my own breathing, and the faint echo of the surf crashing outside.
I looked at Tristan’s name again. 1766.
Suddenly, my whole body started to shake. The manic scribble on the walls closed in. I tried to take a breath, but my throat squeezed shut. I had to get out. I had to breathe. I pressed one hand against the cold wall and lurched for the exit. That was when a crackling sound stopped me cold.
“Hello?” I called again.
I took a tentative step forward. Another crackle. Something in the corner of my vision flashed. There was a piece of white paper stuck to the bottom of my sneaker.
Nice. Way to be paranoid, Rory. I reached down and plucked the page from my sole, then kept moving.
Outside, the rain had reduced to a light drizzle. I took a deep breath of the cool night air and tipped my face toward the sky, letting the rain soothe my face. After a while, the rhythm of my breath returned to normal. I leaned back against the rock wall and trained my light on the paper. It was a small, rectangular sheet torn from a standard notepad, the kind reporters scrawled on in old movies. Someone had drawn a line down the center and made hash marks on either side, each set of four slashed through with a long mark—the old method of counting by fives. In one column there were thirteen slashes. In the other, only nine.