I lift my shoulders, biting my lower lip. “The Swan sisters don’t want to be seen,” I say. “They’ve been doing this for two hundred years; they’re good at it. They’re good at not getting caught.” I circle a finger around the rim of my white cup.
“You say it like you don’t want them to get caught, like the town deserves it.”
“Maybe it does.” The anger I feel for this town, these people, burns inside me—it beats against my skull. So many injustices—so much death. They’ve always treated outsiders cruelly, cast them off because they didn’t belong. “The sisters were killed by the people of this town,” I say, my voice weighted with something that doesn’t sound quite like me. “Drowned unfairly because they fell in love with the wrong men. Maybe they have a right to their revenge.”
“To kill innocent people?”
“How do you know Gregory Dunn didn’t deserve it?” I can hardly believe my own words.
“I don’t,” he says sharply. “But I doubt every person who’s been drowned did deserve it.”
I know he’s right, yet I feel inclined to argue the point. I just want him to understand why it happens. Why the sisters return every year. It’s not without cause. “It’s their retribution,” I say.
Bo stands up straight and takes a sip of his coffee.
“Look, I’m not saying it’s right,” I add. “But you can’t start thinking that you can prevent it or change what happens here. Gregory Dunn was just the first. There will be more. Trying to stop it has only ever made things worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“The town has killed innocent girls because they thought they were inhabited by one of the sisters. It’s just better to leave it alone. There’s nothing you can do.”
The sun starts to edge up from the east, dull and pink at first. At the marina, fishermen begin slogging down the docks to their boats. And then I spot Heath, walking down Ocean Avenue, returned to give us a ride back to the island.
Bo doesn’t speak, his mind likely wheeling over thoughts that don’t line up: trying to resolve what he’s seen tonight. A dead body. A two centuries–long curse. A town that has accepted its fate.
It’s a lot to take in. And he only just got here. It’s going to get worse.
We start down the pier, the light changing, turning pale orange as it streaks over the town. Two girls are walking toward us, headed to the Chowder. My gaze slides over them briefly.
It’s Olivia and Lola—the best friends who danced around the bonfire at the Swan party shortly after the singing started. They are both fully dressed, no pj’s or messy hair, as if the death of Gregory Dunn were a social event they wouldn’t dare miss. One they were expecting. Lola’s dyed-black hair is woven back in a French braid. Olivia’s is loose across her shoulders, long and wavy. Her nose ring glints against the encroaching sun.
And when my eyes meet hers, I know: Marguerite Swan is occupying her body.
The white, spectral image of Marguerite hovers beneath Olivia’s soft skin. Like looking through a thin pane of glass, or beneath the surface of a lake all the way down to the sandy bottom. It isn’t a clear, crisp outline of Marguerite, but like a memory of her, wavy and unsettled, drifting inside this poor girl’s body.
I’ve found her.
A part of me had dared to hope I wouldn’t see them this year, that I could avoid the sisters, avoid the ritual of death that befalls this town. But I won’t be so lucky after all.
I wish I weren’t staring through Olivia’s snow-white skin at Marguerite hidden beneath. But I am. And I’m the only one standing on Shipley Pier who can. This is the secret I can’t tell Bo—the reason why I know the Swan sisters are real.
Her lurid gaze settles on me, not Olivia’s—Olivia is gone—but Marguerite’s, and then she smiles faintly at me as they stride past.
I feel briefly paralyzed. My upper lip twitches. They continue down the pier, Lola chatting about something that my ears can’t seem to focus on, oblivious that her best friend is no longer her best friend. Just before they reach the Chowder, I glance over my shoulder at them. Olivia’s hair swings effortlessly over her shoulders and down her back. “You all right?” Bo asks, turning to look at Olivia and Lola.
“We need to get back to the island,” I say, spinning back around. “It’s not safe here.”
Marguerite has found a host in the body of Olivia Greene. And Marguerite is always the first to make a kill. Gregory Dunn was hers. The drowning season has started.
PERFUMERY
The Swan sisters might have dabbled in witchcraft in the years before they arrived in Sparrow—an occasional hex or potion to detour jealous wives or bad spirits—but they certainly wouldn’t call themselves witches, as the people of Sparrow had accused.
They were businesswomen, shop owners, and when they arrived in Sparrow two centuries ago, they brought with them an array of exotic scents to be crafted into delicate perfumes and fragrant balms. At first the women in town gathered together inside the Swan Perfumery, swooning over scents that reminded them of the civilized world. They purchased small glass bottles of rose water and honey, lemongrass and gardenia. All perfectly blended, subtle and intricate.
It wasn’t until Marguerite, the oldest of the sisters at nineteen, was caught in bed with a ship’s captain, that everything began to crumble. The sisters couldn’t be blamed. It wasn’t witchcraft that seduced the men of Sparrow—it was something much simpler. The Swan sisters had a charm that was born into their blood, like their mother: Men could not resist the softness of their skin or the gleam of their aquamarine eyes.
Love came easily and often for them. While Marguerite liked older men with money and power, Aurora fell for boys who others said couldn’t be seduced—she liked a challenge, typically falling for more than one boy at a time. Hazel was more particular. Precise. She didn’t delight in the affection of numerous men, like her sisters, yet they adored her anyway, a trail of heartbroken boys often left in her wake.
The sisters brought about their fate like someone stumbling into a poison ivy bush in the dark, unaware of the consequences that would befall them by morning.
SEVEN
For three awful weeks, tourists and locals will accuse nearly every girl of being a Swan sister. Any offense, any deviation in behavior—a sudden interest in boys they used to despise, spending too many nights out late, a twitch or flick of an eye that seems out of place—will make you a suspect.
But I know who the sisters really are.
Heath gives us a ride across the harbor, and when we reach the island, we all say a swift good-bye, and then Heath chugs back to town.
Bo and I don’t speak as we walk up the path, until we reach the place where the walkway splits. A mound of old buoys and crab pots that have washed ashore over the years sit just to the left of the walkway. A decomposing heap. A reminder that this place has more death than life.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “We never should have gone out there.” I’m used to the gruesome shock of death, but Bo isn’t. And I’m sure he’s starting to consider leaving this place as soon as possible. And I wouldn’t blame him if he did.
“It wasn’t your fault.” His eyelashes lower, and he kicks a pebble from the walkway. It lands in a patch of yellow grass and vanishes.