I feel my chest seize up, ribs closing in around my heart and lungs, making it hard to draw in air and pump blood to my brain. “Don’t,” I say too softly, hardly loud enough for her to hear.
“You probably want to know why I brought all those people to your island, why I wanted the summer solstice to happen here.”
I don’t respond, even though I do want to know.
“I wanted you to see that no matter what we do, no matter how many times we steal a body and pretend that we are one of them . . . we never will be. We’re their enemies. They hate us. And if given the chance, they will kill us.” She nods her head at Bo, as if he were the proof. “You have been playing house for too long—too many summers in that body. You think you have friends here; you think you could make a real life in this town. You think that you can fall in love—as if you were entitled to it.” She sneers, left eyebrow raised. And even though the rain cascades down her face, she still looks beautiful. “But they only like you because they don’t know what you really are. If they did, they would hate you. Despise you . . . they’d want you dead.” She says this last word as if it tastes like metal. “He”—she flashes her gaze at Bo—“would want you dead.”
The knife is still pressed to her belly, but she leans into it, staring at Bo. “Ask your girlfriend what her real name is.”
My heart stops completely. My eyes blur over. No. Please, I want to beg. Don’t do this. Don’t ruin everything.
“She’s been lying to you,” she adds. “Go ahead, ask her.”
Bo turns just enough to look me in the eye where I’m pressed up against the wall of the lighthouse, palms flattened against the stone.
“It doesn’t change anything. . . .” I start to say, trying to keep the truth from spilling up to the surface.
“Doesn’t change what?” he asks.
“How I feel about you . . . how you feel. You know me.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Olivia’s smirk reaches her eyes. She’s enjoying this. This is what she’s wanted all along: for me to realize that we can’t change what we are. We’re killers. And I can never have Bo. Not like this, in this body. The only way a Swan sister can truly keep someone is by drowning them, trapping their soul in the sea with us.
“My name isn’t Penny,” I say, the confession ripping at my insides. My lips quiver, rainwater dripping over them and catching on my tongue.
The knife in his hand starts to lower, and his gaze cuts through me. The realization of what’s coming next is already settling into his eyes.
“My name is Hazel.”
He shakes his head a fraction of an inch. The knife is now lowered at his side, his mouth forming a hard, unyielding line.
“Hazel Swan,” I concede.
His eyes sway briefly and his jawline tightens, and then he goes perfectly still, like he’s solidified into a statue right in front of me.
“I should have told you before. But I didn’t know how. And then when I found out why you came here, I knew you’d hate me. And I just couldn’t—”
“When?” he asks matter-of-factly.
“When?” I repeat, not sure what he means.
“When did you stop being Penny Talbot?”
I try to swallow, but my body rejects the motion. As if Penny’s body and mine are battling each other. Fighting for control. “The first night we met.” I brush a wet clump of hair away from my forehead. “After the Swan party on the beach, Penny brought you back to the island. That night, she woke from sleep and came down to the dock before sunrise. It was a dream to her. She waded into the water, and I took her body.”
“So that night on the beach, when we talked by the bonfire and you told me about the Swan sisters . . . that was Penny? Not you?”
I nod.
“But everything after that night . . . has been you?”
Again I nod.
“But you remembered talking to me on the beach, and things about Penny’s life.”
“I absorb the memories of the body I inhabit. I know everything about Penny.”
“That’s not the only reason,” Olivia chimes in, happy to fill in the holes I’d like to avoid.
I close my eyes then open them. Bo has turned fully away from Olivia and is now staring at me. I’m the threat now. I’ve hurt him. Lied to him. Made him trust me and even love me. “I’ve taken Penny’s body every summer for the last three years,” I confess.
A blast of wind barrels into us, sending a surge of rain against the windows of the lighthouse.
“Why?” Bo manages to ask, though his voice sounds strangled.
“I like her life,” I say, the first time I’ve admitted it aloud. “I like being here on the island.”
“Oh, Hazel, if you’re going to tell the truth, you might as well tell him everything,” Olivia interjects.
I shoot daggers at her, wishing she’d just shut up. I should have let Bo push her over the edge. I shouldn’t have stopped him. But now here she stands, bringing up every lurid detail of my past. And calling me by my real name.
“I used to come here when I was still—”
“Alive,” Olivia finishes for me, raising both eyebrows.
“You lived here before?” Bo asks.
“No.” I don’t want to tell him about Owen. About my life before. It doesn’t matter now. I’m not that girl anymore. That girl drowned in the harbor two centuries ago . . . and this girl is here, alive, right in front of him.
“The first lighthouse keeper had a son,” Olivia fills in for me. “His name was Owen Clement. He was handsome; I’ll give him that. But I never understood what she saw in him. He had no money, no estate, no lucrative future. Yet she loved him anyway. And she was going to marry him. That is, if his father hadn’t accused us of being witches and drowned us in the harbor.”
I cringe at her sharp account of Owen and me. As if it could be summed up so crisply. A single breath to tell our story.
“Now Owen is buried up on Alder Hill in the Sparrow Cemetery. That’s where she went this morning—to his grave.” She says it like an accusation, like I have betrayed Bo with this single act. And maybe I have. But it’s not the worst offense, not by a mile.
Bo looks stunned. He’s staring at me like I have ripped his heart from his chest, squeezed it between my clawed fingers, and crushed it until it stopped pumping.
Where he once saw a girl, he now sees a monster.
“It wasn’t like that,” I say. “I went to say good-bye to him.” But my words seem frail and ineffectual. They don’t mean anything anymore. Not to him.
“So you see, Bo,” Olivia continues, hair whirling about her face, Marguerite Swan grinning and swaying beneath her skin as if she were suspended in midair. “Your sweet Penny is not who she says she is. She is a murderer like me, like Aurora—her sisters. And she only comes back to this island because it reminds her of the boy she used to love. And if you think you care about her, love her even, you might want to consider that she is a Swan sister, and seducing boys is what we do. You might only love her because she has spun a spell to make you think you do. It’s not real.” Olivia licks her lips.
“That’s not true,” I bark.
“Oh, no? Perhaps you should tell him about his brother. Tell him how good you are at seducing unsuspecting outsiders.”