But then one of his arms slides around me, bracing against my shoulder blades. His mouth parts open, and the heat from his body suddenly pours into me. His other hand finds my cheekbone and then weaves through my hair. He draws me in deeper, folding me in the circle of his arms. And with my lips, I wipe away the memory of Marguerite Swan from his mind. I take him from her, and he lets me. He kisses me like he wants me more than he’s ever wanted anything. And for a second, none of it feels real. I am not swimming in the harbor, wrapped in Bo’s arms, his mouth sweeping over mine, my heart pattering wildly against the cage of my chest. We are somewhere else, far away from here, coiled against each other under a warm sun with warm sand at our backs and warm breath on our lips. Two bodies bound together. Fearing nothing.
And then he pulls his mouth away, slowly, water dripping between us, and everything focuses into a single narrow pinprick. I expect him to release me, to resume his swim across the harbor, but he keeps a hand tangled at the back of my skull and the other against my back, our legs kicking rhythmically beneath us. “Why did you do that?” he asks, his voice raw and near breaking.
“To save you.”
His eyes glance out at the dark forbidding sea, as if waking up from an all-too-real nightmare.
“We need to get back to shore,” I tell him, and he nods understanding, his eyes still bleary and unfocused, like he’s still not entirely sure where he is or why.
We swim side by side back to the dock. We’ve drifted farther away from it than I realized, the current drawing us out to sea, and after several minutes of swimming hard, we finally reach it. He wraps his hands around my waist and hoists me up to the edge of the dock, and then he pulls himself up after. We’re too cold to speak, collapsing onto our backs on the dock, heaving in the chilled night air. I know we need to get inside and get warm before hypothermia sets in—a real possibility out here. So I touch his hand and we both rise, jogging up the wood path to his cottage.
* * *
We tug off our shoes and Bo kneels down beside the fireplace—a few embers are still alive beneath the charred logs—while I curl up on the couch with two wool blankets held tightly over my shoulders. Otis and Olga appear from the bedroom, stretching and looking sleepy. They’ve been spending all their time in here with Bo; they like him. Maybe more than they like me.
Bo adds more logs to the fire, and I crawl onto the floor beside him, stretching out my arms to warm my palms against the meager flames. My teeth chatter, and my fingertips are wrinkled. “You’re freezing,” he says, looking down at my trembling body beneath the blankets. “You need to get out of those clothes.” He stands up and walks back into his bedroom, returning a moment later with a plain white T-shirt and a pair of green boxer shorts. “Here,” he says. “You can wear these.”
I consider telling him that I’m fine, but I’m not fine. My shorts and tank top are so drenched that they’re starting to soak the blankets as well. So I stand up, thank him, and take the clothes into the bathroom.
The white tile floor is cold beneath my feet, and for a moment I stand scanning the tiny bathroom. A razor and a toothbrush sit beside the sink. A towel hangs from the rack. Hints that someone has been living in this cottage after so many years vacant. I slog out of my clothes then drop them heavily onto the floor in a pile. I don’t even bother folding them.
Bo’s shirt and boxers smell like him, minty and sweet, but also like a forest. I take in a deep breath and close my eyes before stepping back out into the living room. The fire now crackles and flames spark up the chimney, filling the cottage with warmth.
I sit on the floor beside Bo and pull the blankets around me. He doesn’t turn to look at me; he is staring into the flames, biting his lower lip. While I was in the bathroom, he changed into dry jeans and a dark blue T-shirt. Both of us are now rid of our waterlogged clothes. “What happened out there?” he asks.
I tighten the blankets across my chest. The rain batters against the roof; the wind howls. “You were being led into the harbor.”
“How?”
“You know how.”
“Olivia,” he says, as if the name has been trapped on his lips for days. “I could see her . . . out in the water.”
“She was calling to you. Her voice infiltrated your mind.”
“How?” he asks again.
“At the boathouse she whispered something in your ear. She claimed you as hers, making it impossible for you to think of anything or anyone else. It was only a matter of time until she beckoned you. Since you’ve remained on the island, hidden, she couldn’t physically pull you out into the water, so she had to slip her voice into your mind and make you come in search of her.”
He shakes his head, unable to rectify what has just happened to him.
“Olivia Greene,” I tell him bluntly, “is Marguerite Swan. She was waiting for you out in the harbor; she would have pulled you to her, her lips on yours, and then she would have drowned you.”
He leans forward against his knees, teeth clamped shut. I stare at the scar beside his left eye, his cheekbones are starting to blaze from the heat of the fire. My focus slides back to his lips, to the way they felt pressed to mine. “But how do you know that?” he asks. “How can you be so sure it’s Marguerite Swan who’s taken over Olivia’s body? And not one of the other sisters?” He squints, like he can’t believe his own question, that he’s even asking it.
“You just need to trust me,” I say. “Marguerite wants to kill you. And she won’t stop until she finds a way to do it.”
“Why me?” he asks.
“Because she saw you with me at the boathouse.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
My fingers tremble slightly; my heart pushes against my ribs, warning me not to tell him the truth. But the truth tastes like letting go, like the sharpness of sunlight on a spring day, and my head begins to pulse with every heartbeat. “I can see them,” I confess, the words tumbling out before I can catch them.
“Them?”
“The sisters. I can see Aurora inside of Gigi Kline and Marguerite inside of Olivia Greene. I know whose bodies they’ve taken.”
He straightens, lifting his elbows away from his knees. “How’s that even possible?”
I shake my head, the air gone from my lungs, and a shiver races up my entire body.
“You can see them and you haven’t said anything?”
“No one knows.”
“But . . .” His mouth dips open, eyes narrowed on me. “You can see what they really are?”
“Yes.”
I stand up, crossing my arms. I can tell he’s trying to piece it all together, make everything fit. But his mind is fighting him. He doesn’t want to believe what I’m telling him could be true. “How long have you been able to do this?”
“Always.”
“But how?”
I lift my shoulders. “I don’t know. I mean . . . it’s just something I’ve always been able to do. . . . I . . .” I’m rambling, getting lost in the explanation. In the deception beneath the truth.
“Can your mom see them too?”
I shake my head.
He frowns and looks down into the fire, rubbing the back of his neck with his right hand. “Do they know . . . do the sisters know you can see them?”