“Black tea, please,” I tell her.
She frowns briefly and makes a snort sound, like my request for tea will require more effort than she’s willing to give at this hour, but she shuffles away in her boots, and Bo and I stand at the end of the pier, leaning against the railing and facing out to sea, waiting for the sunrise.
Voices murmur all around us, and speculation begins to circulate almost immediately. Over the next couple weeks, we will be in the middle of an all-out witch hunt.
Several girls from school have gathered on the outdoor deck, sipping coffee and popping bits of blueberry muffin and biscotti into their mouths, chatting loudly even though it’s the middle of the night and they can’t possibly be fully awake. I examine their features, the hue of their eyes, the chalky porcelain of their skin. I am looking for something unnatural, a gossamer creature suspended behind human flesh. But I don’t see it.
The waitress brings us our drinks without even a smile. “How could Gregory Dunn have been led into the harbor without anyone seeing?” Bo asks, keeping his voice low, holding his coffee between his hands but not yet taking a drink.
I lift my shoulders, biting my lower lip. “The Swan sisters don’twantto be seen,” I say. “They’ve been doing this for two hundred years; they’re good at it. They’re good at not getting caught.” I circle a finger around the rim of my white cup.
“You say it like you don’t want them to get caught, like the town deserves it.”
“Maybe it does.” The anger I feel for this town, these people, burns inside me—it beats against my skull. So many injustices—so much death. They’ve always treated outsiders cruelly, cast them off because they didn’t belong. “The sisters were killed by the people of this town,” I say, my voice weighted with something that doesn’t sound quite like me. “Drowned unfairly because they fell in love with the wrong men. Maybe they have a right to their revenge.”
“To kill innocent people?”
“How do you know Gregory Dunn didn’t deserve it?” I can hardly believe my own words.
“I don’t,” he says sharply. “But I doubt every person who’s been drowned did deserve it.”
I know he’s right, yet I feel inclined to argue the point. I just want him to understandwhyit happens. Why the sisters return every year. It’s not without cause. “It’s their retribution,” I say.
Bo stands up straight and takes a sip of his coffee.
“Look, I’m not saying it’s right,” I add. “But you can’t start thinking that you can prevent it or change what happens here. Gregory Dunn was just the first. There will be more. Trying to stop it has only ever made things worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“The town has killed innocent girls because they thought they were inhabited by one of the sisters. It’s just better to leave it alone. There’s nothing you can do.”
The sun starts to edge up from the east, dull and pink at first. At the marina, fishermen begin slogging down the docks to their boats. And then I spot Heath, walking down Ocean Avenue, returned to give us a ride back to the island.
Bo doesn’t speak, his mind likely wheeling over thoughts that don’t line up: trying to resolve what he’s seen tonight. A dead body. A two centuries–long curse. A town that has accepted its fate.
It’s a lot to take in. And he only just got here. It’s going to get worse.
We start down the pier, the light changing, turning pale orange as it streaks over the town. Two girls are walking toward us, headed to the Chowder. My gaze slides over them briefly.
It’s Olivia and Lola—the best friends who danced around the bonfire at the Swan party shortly after the singing started. They are both fully dressed, no pj’s or messy hair, as if the death of Gregory Dunn were a social event they wouldn’t dare miss. One they were expecting. Lola’s dyed-black hair is woven back in a French braid. Olivia’s is loose across her shoulders, long and wavy. Her nose ring glints against the encroaching sun.
And when my eyes meet hers, I know: Marguerite Swan is occupying her body.
The white, spectral image of Marguerite hovers beneath Olivia’s soft skin. Like looking through a thin pane of glass, or beneath the surface of a lake all the way down to the sandy bottom. It isn’t a clear, crisp outline of Marguerite, but like a memory of her, wavy and unsettled, drifting inside this poor girl’s body.
I’ve found her.
A part of me had dared to hope I wouldn’t see them this year, that I could avoid the sisters, avoid the ritual of death that befalls this town. But I won’t be so lucky after all.
I wish I weren’t staring through Olivia’s snow-white skin at Marguerite hidden beneath. But I am. And I’m the only one standing on Shipley Pier who can. This is the secret I can’t tell Bo—the reason why I know the Swan sisters are real.
Her lurid gaze settles on me, not Olivia’s—Olivia is gone—but Marguerite’s, and then she smiles faintly at me as they stride past.
I feel briefly paralyzed. My upper lip twitches. They continue down the pier, Lola chatting about something that my ears can’t seem to focus on, oblivious that her best friend is no longer her best friend. Just before they reach the Chowder, I glance over my shoulder at them. Olivia’s hair swings effortlessly over her shoulders and down her back. “You all right?” Bo asks, turning to look at Olivia and Lola.
“We need to get back to the island,” I say, spinning back around. “It’s not safe here.”
Marguerite has found a host in the body of Olivia Greene. And Marguerite is always the first to make a kill. Gregory Dunn was hers. The drowning season has started.
