My knees buckle, and I dig my fingernails into the wall of the lighthouse to keep from collapsing. I can’t do this.
“What was your brother’s name?” Olivia ponders. “Doesn’t matter. I’m sure you resemble each other, and how could my sister resist the chance to seduce two brothers? It’s just so perfect.”
“Stop it,” I tell her, but Bo has taken a step back against the railing, and it rattles beneath him. His hair is soaked, his clothes soaked. We all look like we’ve been swimming in the ocean, drenched, the three of us trapped together on this walkway, caught by the wind and whatever fate has brought us here to this point. Centuries of deceit now tearing me apart. The truth more painful than anything I’ve ever felt. Even more painful than drowning.
“Was it you?” Bo asks, and the way he says it feels like he’s just thrust the knife straight into my gut.
“I didn’t know at first,” I say, fighting through the heat of tears that push against the rim of my eyes. “But when you told me what happened to your brother, I started to remember him. You look so much alike.” I clear my throat. “I didn’t want to believe it. I was different last summer. I didn’t care whose life I took—I didn’t care about anything. But I do now. You helped me see that. I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore, especially not you.”
“This entire time, you knew I was trying to figure out who killed him. . . .” He gets tangled up on the words. Then he finds them again. “It was you?”
“I’m sorry.” Another breath.
He looks away, not even listening to me anymore. “This is why you could see what Gigi really is, and Olivia?” His eyes shift to look at Olivia and then me, like he’s trying to see what lies inside us. “You could see them because you’re one of them?”
“Bo,” I plead, my voice sounding weak.
“You drowned my brother,” he says, and he takes one quick step forward and locks his body around mine. His breath is low and shallow, and he brings the knife up to my throat, pressing it just beneath my chin. My eyelids flutter. I lean my head back against the wall. His gaze tears through me. Not with lust but rage. And I sense in the fury pumping through his stare, through his fingertips where they hold the knife, that he wants to kill me.
Olivia’s eyes flash to the doorway. This is her chance to flee. But for some reason she stays. Maybe she wants to see him slit my throat. Or maybe she just wants to see how this plays out.
“How many have you killed this year?” Bo asks, like he’s looking for another reason to slide the blade across my throat and let the life drain out of me.
“None,” I mutter.
“My brother was the last one?”
I nod, just barely.
“Why?”
“I don’t want to be that person anymore.” My voice is a whisper.
“But it’s what you are,” he spits back.
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s not. I can’t do it anymore. I won’t. I want a different life. I wanted it with you.”
“Don’t do that,” he says.
I try to clear my throat, but I’m shaking too badly.
“Don’t act like I changed you. Don’t act like you care about me,” he says. “I can’t trust anything you’ve said. I can’t even trust how I feel about you.” These last words sting the worst, and I grimace. He thinks I made him love me, that I seduced him just like Olivia did. “You lied to me about everything.”
“Not everything,” I try to say, but he doesn’t want to hear it.
He drops the knife from my throat. “I don’t want to hear anything else.” His eyes are like stone, rimmed with hatred for what I am. Mine are pleading for forgiveness. But it’s too late for that. I killed his brother. There is nothing more to say.
I have made myself his enemy. And now he recoils from me.
And just as the beam of light from the lighthouse passes over his face, he turns away, the rain slamming against his back, and ducks through the door into the lighthouse.
His shadow moves through the lantern room and disappears down the stairway. “He doesn’t love you, Hazel,” Olivia says, as if to console me. “He loved what he thought you were. But you’ve been lying to him.”
“This is your fault. You did this.”
“No. You did this. You thought you could be one of them—human—but we’ve been dead for two hundred years—nothing will change that. Not even a boy you think you love.”
“How the hell would you know? You’ve never really loved anyone in your whole life. Only yourself. I don’t want to be miserable like you, stuck in that harbor for eternity.”
“You can’t change what we are.”
“Watch me,” I say, and I push away from the wall and dart back into the lighthouse.
“Where are you going?” she shouts after me.
“I’m going after him.”
TWENTY-TWO
The bonfire outside the greenhouse is a smoldering heap of coals, unable to survive in this downpour. And everyone who had come to the island for the summer solstice is now gone. A party cut short by the return of Gigi Kline.
The shadow of Bo is already headed down the path to the dock, and the wind and rain between us makes it seem like he’s miles away, a mirage on a desert highway. I open my mouth to yell down to him but then clamp my lips closed. He won’t stop anyway. He’s determined to leave this island . . . and me. For good.
So I start to run.
At the dock, the cluster of boats and dinghies that had been clotted together only a few hours earlier are now all gone. Only the skiff and the sailboat remain, thumping against the sides of the dock, the wind battering down on them like an angry fist.
Out on the water, several lights sweep through the dark, still searching for Gigi, unable to locate her, while the others must have given up and returned to the marina. She might still be out there somewhere, hidden. Midnight inching closer. Or maybe she’s already gone beneath the waves, Aurora dissolving back into the deepest dark of the harbor. But if I know my sister, she will find a way back to shore so she can wait out the last few minutes until midnight. Savor these fleeting moments until she has to return to the brutal sea. And Marguerite will do the same. Maybe she will stay atop the lighthouse, staring out over the island, watching the storm push inland over the Pacific, until she’s forced down to the water’s edge in the final seconds.
Bo is not in the skiff, so I scan the sailboat. He appears near the front starboard side, throwing the moor lines.
“Where are you going?” I shout up at him, just as he tosses the last bowline. But he doesn’t answer me. “Don’t leave like this,” I plead. “I want to tell you the truth—tell you everything.”
“It’s too late,” he replies. The auxiliary motor rumbles softly, and he walks to the steering wheel at the stern of the sailboat. It sounds just like I remember from three years ago—a gentle sputter, the wind aching to push against the sails once the boat reaches the open ocean and can grasp the Pacific winds.
“Please,” I beg, but the boat begins to drift forward from the dock.
I follow it until there is no more dock, and then I don’t have a choice. Two feet separate me from the stern of the sailboat where the blue script letters painted on the back read WINGSONG. Three feet. Four. I jump, my legs catapulting me forward, but I fall just short. My chest slams against the side, pain lancing across my ribs, and my hands scramble for something to keep from falling into the water. I find a metal cleat and wrap my fingers around it. But it’s slick, and my fingers start to give way. Seawater splashes up against the backs of my legs.