He shifts his gaze to me, exhaling. “Only the obvious.”
“Which is?”
“Destroy the purveyors of it.”
“The sisters.”
“The only way to end it would be to kill them,” he says.
“But then both the Swan sister and the girl whose body they stole would die.”
He nods.
“And you still want to kill Gigi Kline?” I ask.
“I want whoever killed my brother to pay for it. And if the only way to do that is to destroy both the girl and the monster, then that’s what I’ll do.”
I brush both hands through my hair, catching on knots that my fingers must work through before I can twist my mass of hair over my shoulder. “Does this mean you believe in the Swan sisters now?”
“I don’t think I have a choice,” he says. “One of them is trying to kill me.” The fullness of his lips seems amplified as he pushes them together, a rivulet of tension passing over his expression. It can’t be easy knowing someone—something—wants you dead.
But what’s even harder is knowing it’s your fault. Marguerite wouldn’t want Bo so badly if he were just some random tourist. It’s because of me that she’s so intrigued by him. She loves a challenge. And Bo is the perfect prey.
I stand up from the floor. Otis and Olga had been sleeping on the couch, curled up together at one end. But now Olga is awake, her ears alert, head turned toward the door.
“I’m sorry you’re here,” I say, rubbing my palms down my arms. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this.”
“It’s not your fault.” His voice is deep, his eyebrows angled downward, softening the hard edges of his face. “I came here because of my brother. I did this; not you.”
“If you weren’t on this island with me,” I tell him, forcing the tears down so they don’t rise up. “Then she wouldn’t want you. I was wrong when I thought keeping you here on the island would make you safe. She’ll find you wherever you are.”
“No.” He stands up too but doesn’t touch me, doesn’t run his hands up my arms to comfort me—not yet. “She’s not in my head anymore,” he says. “I don’t hear her voice, feel her thoughts. You broke whatever hold she had on me.”
“For now. But she’ll try again. She’ll come for you, here to the island if she has to. She’ll physically drag you out into the water. She won’t give up.”
“If I’m not safe, then you’re not safe.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I tell him. “It’s you she will drown. Not me.” My stomach begins to wrench and turn.
“If you can see them, and they know it, then you’re in danger too.”
I think of Marguerite out in the harbor, waiting for Bo, beckoning him with the promise of her lips skimming delicately over his. She is a wraith dredged up from the seafloor. She is vengeful and clever. She is single-minded in her hatred for this town. And she won’t stop.
“You can’t protect me,” I tell him. “Just like I can’t protect you.”
Olga hops down from the couch and trots between us to the front door, stretching up on her hind legs to scratch at the wood. She begins to mew, and it wakes Otis.
“I can try,” Bo says, moving closer, and in his eyes I see the ocean, and it draws me into him like the tide against the sand.
His hands find me in the firelight, grazing my wrists, my arms, then his palms slide up to my jaw, through my hair, fingerprints on my skin, and for a moment I believe him. Maybe he can keep me safe; maybe this thing threading between us is enough to keep all the terrors at bay. I suck in a breath and try to steady the two halves of my heart, but when his lips brush against mine, I lose all rooting to the earth. My heart turns wild. His fingers pull me closer, and I press myself against him, needing the steadiness of his heartbeat inside his chest and the balance of his arms. My own fingers slide up beneath his shirt: feeling the firmness of his torso, air filling his lungs. He is strong, stronger than most. Maybe he can survive this town, survive Marguerite. Survive me. I dig my fingers into his skin, his shoulders, losing myself to him. He feels like everything—all that’s left. The world has been shredded around me. But this, this, might be enough to smooth the brittle edges of my once-beating heart.
The fire makes the heat between us almost unbearable. But we fold ourselves together among the pages of books and the blankets scattered across the floor. The wind roars outside. His fingers trace the moons of my hip bones, my thighs, my shivering heartbeat. He kisses down my throat, the place where my secrets are kept. He kisses my collarbone, where the skin is thin and delicate, patterns of freckles like a sailor’s map. He kisses so softly it feels like wings or a whisper. He kisses and I slip, slip, slip beneath his touch. Crumbling. His lips inch beneath my shirt, along the curves of my body. Valleys and hills. Breathing promises he’ll keep against my skin. My clothes feel burdensome and heavy—clothes that belong to him, boxers and a T-shirt—so I peel them away.
My mind spins, my breathing catches then rises again. My skin crackles, set alight, and his touch feels infinite, fathomless, a wave that rolls ashore but never ends. He is gentle and sweet, and I never want his hands, his lips, to be anywhere else but against me. The morning sunlight is just starting to break above the horizon, soft pinks sifting through the windows, but I am breaking here on the floor, shattering into pieces as he whispers my name and I see only flecks of light shivering across my vision. And after, he holds his lips above mine, breathing the same air, my skin shimmering from the heat. Sweat dewing the curves of my body. He kisses my nose, my forehead, my earlobes.
I have doomed him, kept him here, made him the prey of Marguerite Swan. He is caught in the tempest of a season that could kill him. He needs to leave Sparrow, escape this wretched place. Yet I need him to stay. I need him.
JOHN TALBOT
On June fifth, a week before he vanished, John Talbot entered the Olive Street Tea & Bookhouse. He had special ordered four books a week earlier, titles he had researched online that contained real-life accounts of hexes and curses that had been documented in other unfortunate towns.
It was not unusual for locals in Sparrow to take an interest in the Swan sisters. They often collected newspaper clippings and old photographs of the town from when the sisters were still alive. They shared stories at the Silver Dollar Pub over too many beers, and then stumbled down to the docks and shouted into the night about their sons and brothers who they’ve lost. And sometimes they even became obsessed. Sorrow and desperation can make cracks along the mind.
But John Talbot never shared his theories. He never got drunk and lamented the tragedy of Sparrow over a pint. He never told anyone about the collection of books he kept stashed in Anchor Cottage. Not even his wife.
And on that bright, warm afternoon, as he left the bookstore, there was frenzy in his shadowed eyes, lines of worry carved along his forehead. His gaze darted side to side, as if the sunlight were unbearable, and he pushed through the horde of tourists back down to the skiff waiting at the dock.
Those who saw him that day would later say he had the look of someone overcome with sea madness. The island had been known to drive people insane. The salt air, the isolation. It had finally gotten to him.