“Of what?”
“To fall in love again?” His hands are resting on the arms of the chair, relaxed, but his gaze seems far more intent.
“No.” I swallow down the heartbeat climbing up inside my throat. Can he see what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling? That my heart is already pooling in my stomach, that my mind can hardly think of anything but him? That when we’re together, I almost believe nothing else matters? That maybe he could save me and I could save him? “I used to be afraid that I wouldn’t get another chance to.”
He stands up from the chair and walks to the window, pressing his shoulder against the wood frame, a hard line from his jaw up to his temple. “How did you know you were in love?”
His question makes my fingertips tingle with the need to touch his face, show him the feeling bursting from my seams. “It felt like sinking,” I say. I know it might be an odd way to describe it, considering the prevailing death in this town, but it’s how it comes out. “Like you’re drowning, but it doesn’t matter, because you don’t need air anymore, you just need the other person.”
His eyes flick to mine, searching them, looking to see if I’m drowning. And I am. The clock beside my bed ticks through the seconds; the rain keeps time.
“Penny,” he says softly, tilting his gaze on me. “I didn’t come here, to this town, expecting any of this.” He looks to the floor then back up again. “If I hadn’t met you, it probably would have been easier—less complicated. Maybe I would have left days ago.” I frown, and he clears his throat. His words break apart then reform. This is hard for him. “But now I know...” He lets out a breath, eyes looking through me—turned wild and unwavering. “I’m not leaving here without you. Even if it means I have to wait. I’ll wait. I’ll wait in this miserable place for as long as it takes. And if you want me to stay, then I’ll stay. I’ll fucking stay here forever if you ask me to.”
He shakes his head and opens his mouth like he’s going to continue, but I don’t let him. I take one swift step forward and crush my lips to his, pressing away his thoughts, his words. He tastes like a summer wind far away from here, like absolution, like a boy from a different life. Like we could make memories that belong only to us. Memories that have nothing to do with this place. A life, maybe. A real life.
I open my eyes. I trace his lips with mine. He looks at me like I am a girl brought in with the tide, rare and scarred and broken. A girl found in the roughest waters, in the farthest reaches of a dark fairy tale. He is looking at me like he might love me.
“I’m scared,” I whisper up at him.
“Of what?”
“Of letting myself love you then feeling my insides collapse when I lose you.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you.”
Promises are easy to make, I think but don’t say. Because I know he believes his own words. He believes that what we feel right now will rescue us in the end. But I know—I know. Endings are never so simple.
I sink back against the wall. His hand still touches my forearm, not letting me go.
“How does it end?” he asks, as if his thoughts trailed mine. “What will happen on the summer solstice?”
Memories cascade through me, all the years past, the summers that slid to a close, dead bodies left in their wake. “There will be a party, just like the one on the beach.” I pull my arm away from his grip, tugging the sleeves of my sweater down over my hands and crossing my arms, feeling suddenly chilled. “Before midnight, the sisters will wade back out into the harbor, relinquishing the bodies they’ve stolen.”
“And if they don’t go into the water? If Gigi stays locked up during the solstice?”
My lungs stop drawing in air.She will die. She will be trapped inside Gigi’s body indefinitely, pushed down into the dark, dark, dark recesses of Gigi’s mind. She will see and hear and witness the world, but Gigi will resume control, unaware that a Swan sister is now imprisoned inside her, buried deep within. A ghost inside a girl. The worst kind of existence. A punishment befitting the torment the sisters have caused.But I don’t tell this to Bo. Because I can’t be sure it’s true, since it’s never happened before. A Swan sister has never stayed inside a body past midnight on the summer solstice.
“I’m not sure,” I answer truthfully.
Bo’s eyes have strayed to the window, he’s considering something. “I have to kill her,” he finally says. “Even if she didn’t kill my brother, she’s killed others. She doesn’t deserve to live.”
“You’d be killing Gigi, too,” I say.
“I know, but you told me before how the town has killed girls in the past, hoping to stop the sisters, but that they always got it wrong.” His eyes search mine. “This time we won’t get it wrong. You can see them. You know who they are. We can find out where the third one is and we can end this for good. No one else has to die.”
“Except three innocent girls.”
“Better than a hundred more boys. Or two hundred. How many more centuries do they keep returning to this town before someone stops them? They never got it right in the past because they never knew for sure which girls were inhabited. Butweknow. And there’s one right down there, locked up.” He points to the window and his sudden urgency scares me. I never thought he’d be this serious, that he’d really want to do it. But now he’s talking like we could march down there and end her life right now, all based on my ability to see what she really is.
“And you could live with yourself after that?” I ask. “Knowing you killed three people?”
“My brother is dead,” he says coldly. “I came here to find out what happened to him, and I did. I can’t just walk away now.” He removes the hat from his head and drops it onto the chair. “I have to do this, Penny.”
“You don’t.” I move closer to him. “At least not right now... not tonight. Maybe we can find another way.”
He exhales then leans into the window frame. “There isn’t another way.”
I reach out and touch his arm, forcing him to look at me. “Please,” I say, tilting my chin up at him. He smells like the earth; he smells wild and fearless and I know he could also be dangerous, but when I’m this close to him I don’t care what he is. “We still have a few days until the solstice. There’s time to figure something out. All those books in your cottage—maybe there really is a way to stop the sisters without killing the girls they’ve taken. We have to look; we have to try.” My fingers slide down to his hand, the warmth of his palm burning me, setting me on fire, making me dizzy.
