“I’m not here to save you, if that’s what you think,” I tell her, keeping my distance back from the white chair that has become her cage.
“Then what do you want?”
“You killed those two boys they pulled from the harbor, didn’t you?” She eyes me like she’s trying to understand the real motivation behind my question. What purpose I have for asking it.
“Maybe.” Her lips tug at the edges. She’s holding back a smile—she finds this amusing.
“I doubt it was Marguerite.” At this her eyes broaden to perfect orbs. “Only you would drown two boys at once.”
She shifts her jawbone side to side then wriggles her fingers like she’s trying to stretch them, her wrists confined by zip ties. The lime-green polish on her fingernails is starting to chip, and her hands look waterlogged and pale. “You came here just to accuse me of killing those boys?” she asks.
I stare through her sheer exterior, beyond Gigi, finding the monster inside her—meeting Aurora’s gaze. And she knows it. Knows I’m looking at the real her.
Her expression changes. She grins, revealing Gigi’s bleached white and perfectly aligned teeth. “You want something,” she says pointedly.
I take a deep breath. What do I want? I want her to stop. Stop killing. Stop seeking revenge. Stop this vicious game she’s been playing for too long. I’m a fool to believe she would listen to me. Hear my words. But I try anyway. For Bo. For me. “Stop this,” I finally say.
“Stop?” Her tongue pushes against the inside of her cheek, and she examines me through lowered eyelashes.
“Stop drowning boys.”
“I can’t do much drowning tied up in here, can I?” She sucks in a long breath through her nostrils, and I’m surprised when she doesn’t grimace—the boathouse smells fouler than I remember. Her eyes narrow. “If you untie me, then perhaps we can discuss this little idea of yours.”
I examine the zip ties around her wrists and ankles. A quick yank, and I might be able to break them free. If I had a knife, I could easily slice through the plastic. But I won’t do that. I won’t set her loose on Sparrow again.
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
“You don’t trust me?” She doesn’t even try to hide the wicked curl of her upper lip or the playful arch of her left eyebrow. She knows I don’t trust her—why would I? “ ‘Trust’ is an irrelevant word anyway,” she sneers when I don’t respond. “Merely a lie we tell each other. I’ve learned not to trust anyone—a symptom of two centuries of existence. You have the time to consider such things.” She tilts her head, looking at me from the side. “I wonder who you trust? Who you would trust with your life?”
I stare at the thing beneath Gigi’s skin, eyes milky white and watching me.
“Who would you trust with yours?” I counter.
This forces a laugh from deep within her gut, eyes watering. I take a step back. Then her laughter stops, blond hair sliding forward to cover part of her face. Her arms stiffen against her restraints and her real eyes cut through me. Her mouth twists into a snarl. “No one.”
The door behind me suddenly bangs open and Lon bursts into the room. “What the fuck are you doing in here?” His eyes are huge.
I glance from Gigi back to him. “Just asking her a couple questions.”
“No one’s allowed in here. She’ll trick you into letting her go.”
“That only works on the weak-minded male specimen,” I tell him.
His lips stiffen together, and he takes a quick step toward me. “Get the hell out of here. Unless you want to confess to being one of them, then I’ll gladly lock you up too.”
I glance at Gigi, who sits defiantly blinking back at me, the side of her lip turned upward. She looks like she might even dare to laugh—she finds his threat amusing—but she holds it in. Then I step back out the door into the daylight.
“You realize the police are looking for Gigi,” I tell Lon when he follows me out, closing the door behind him with a loud clatter.
“The police in this town are idiots.”
“Maybe. But it’s only a matter of time before they check the boathouse.”
He waves a hand in the air dismissively, his floral shirtsleeve flapping with the motion, and returns to his post on the stump, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes, obviously not concerned about Gigi escaping. “And tell your friend Rose not to come back either.”
I stop midstride. “What?”
“Rose . . . your friend,” he says mockingly, as if I don’t know who she is. “She was here twenty minutes ago, caught her sneaking through the brush.”
“Did she talk to Gigi?”
“My job is to keep people out, so no, I didn’t let her talk to Gigi.”
“What did she want?” I ask, although I’m certain whatever she told him was a lie.
“Hell if I know. Said she felt bad for Gigi or some crap, that it was cruel to keep her locked up. But you both had better stay away unless you want to be suspects.” His voice lowers a bit like he’s telling me a secret, like he’s trying to help me. “We’re going to find all the Swan sisters one way or another.”
I turn and hurry up the road.
* * *
Alba’s Forgetful Cakes smells like vanilla bean frosting and lemon cake when I step through the door. A dozen people crowd the small store—some wearing festival costumes, kids with faces painted in glitter and gold—picking out tiny cakes from the glass cases to be boxed up and tied with bubblegum-pink ribbon. Mrs. Alba stands behind one of the deli cases helping a customer, carefully placing petit fours into white boxes. Two other employees are also moving quickly around the shop, ringing people up and answering questions about the effectiveness of the cakes at wiping away old, stagnant memories.
But Rose is not in the store, and I wait several minutes before Mrs. Alba is free.
I press my fingertips against a glass case, hoping to get her attention. “Penny,” Mrs. Alba chirps when she sees me, her grin stretching wide across the soft features of her face. “How are you?”
“I’m looking for Rose,” I say quickly.
Her expression sags and then her eyes pinch flat. “I thought she was with you.” On the phone, Rose told me that she had lied to her mother, saying that she was meeting me for coffee when she was really meeting Heath. But since she obviously wasn’t meeting Heath, either, unless they went to the boathouse together to see Gigi, I thought Mrs. Alba might actually have seen her.
“I think I just got the time wrong, or where we were supposed to meet,” I say with an easy smile—I don’t want to get Rose into trouble. “I thought maybe she’d be here.”
“You can check the apartment,” she says, turning her gaze as several more customers enter the shop.
“Thank you,” I answer, but she’s already shuffled away to help the new patrons.
Back outside, I turn right and climb the covered stairs up to the second floor. The gray-shingled walls of the building are protected from the rain under a narrow roof, and at the top of the stairs there is a red door under a white archway. I press my finger against the doorbell, and the ring echoes through the spacious apartment. Their dog, Marco, begins yapping furiously, and I can hear the clatter of his paws as he races to the door, barking from the other side. I wait, but no one comes. And there’s no way Rose could be inside and not know someone was at the door.
I head back down the stairs and push through the crowds across Ocean Avenue. I start down Shipley Pier toward the Chowder, when I spot Davis McArthurs. He’s standing halfway down the pier among the throngs of people, talking to a girl I recognize from the boathouse when they first caught Gigi. She had argued with Davis about keeping Gigi locked up. His arms are crossed, his eyes surveying the outdoor tables like he’s looking for any girl he’s missed—who he hasn’t yet interrogated for being a Swan sister.