“Okay,” he answers, tightening his fingers through mine. “We’ll look for another way. But if we don’t find one...”
“I know,” I say before he can finish.He will kill Gigi Kline just to get to Aurora.But he doesn’t fully understand what that will mean: taking a life. It will change him. It’s not something he can take back.
The sun has managed to sink into the ocean in the span of time that we’ve been in my room, and I switch on the lamps on either side of my bed. “One of us should stay up to watch the cottage, make sure she doesn’t sneak out,” Bo says.
I doubt she’ll try to escape, but I nod anyway, agreeing. Her odds aren’t good back in town. Lon and Davis are surely looking for her. And I’m guessing she knows she’s safer here—hidden in the cottage. Her mistake is that she thinks we’ll protect her from them. Especially with Rose on her side. When, in fact, we’re plotting ways in which to end her life.
SISTERS
Magic is not always formed from words, from cauldrons brewing spices or black cats strolling down dark alleys. Some curses are manifested from desire or injustice.
When she was alive, Aurora Swan would sometimes leave shards of broken glass or a rat’s tail on the doorstep of a woman who hated her—hoping an illness might befall the woman or she might stumble on a loose stone while strolling down Ocean Avenue and break her neck. They were merely small omens, common hexes of the day to bend fate in her favor. Not real magic.
Hazel Swan could often be found whispering wishes onto a blood moon, her lips as swift as a hummingbird in flight. She enchanted the moon, wishing for things she craved—a real love to wipe all the others away.
Marguerite was more direct in her efforts. She would slide her fingers along her lovers’ throats, tell them that they were hers, and if they refused her she would ensure they never loved anyone else ever again. She promised revenge and torment and the full wrath of her fury if they dared deny her. She swished through town as if she were made of the finest French silk, arrogant and imperious. She wanted power, and everyone knew it.
But their hubris would eventually catch up to them.
The sisters might have portrayed themselves scandalously, wicked and witchy. But they never practiced magic in a way that justified their demise. They were not witches, in a historical sense, but they did have a gravity about them—a thing that pulled you in.
They moved with a graceful ease, as though they were trained ballerinas from the Académie Royale de Danse in France; their hair was a hue that wavered between caramel and carmine, depending on the sunlight; and their voices had the singsong of a whistling thrush, each word a fascination.
They never stole the souls of newborn babies or cast potent spells to make the rains unending or the fish in the harbor uncatchable. Nor had they the skills to spin a curse as everlasting as the one that bound them now.
But magic was not always so linear. It was born from odium. From love. From revenge.
FIFTEEN
At two a.m. on the dot, my eyelids flutter open. The room is dark except for the angular shape of moonlight spilling across the floor from the window. The rain clouds are gone and the sky has split open. Bo is awake, sitting in the chair, finger tapping slowly and rhythmically on the armrest. He turns his head when I sit up in bed.
“You should have woken me sooner,” I say drowsily.
“You seemed like you needed sleep.”
I’m still fully dressed under the blankets, and I kick back the layers and stretch my arms in the air. “I’ll take the next shift,” I say. The wood floor is cold and creaking beneath the weight of my feet. “You must be tired.”
He yawns and stands up. We bump shoulders as we try to move around one another, both of us sleepy. And when he gets to the bed, he collapses onto his back, one hand on his chest, the other stretched out at his side. He pulls his hat down over his face. I’m tempted to crawl back onto the bed beside him, rest my head on his shoulder and doze back into my dreams. It would be easy to let myself surrender to him, both in this moment and forever... let the days flit away until there are no more days left to count. I could leave this island with him and not look back. And maybe, possibly, I could be happy.
It doesn’t take long for Bo’s hands to relax, his head to shift slightly to the left, and I know he’s asleep. But I don’t settle into the chair. I walk to the door, opening it just wide enough to slip out into the hall. I move silently down the stairs to the front door.
A few intermittent clouds pass beneath the moon then reveal it again. A ballet of clear sky mixed with low clouds, washed in moonlight.
I wrestle into my raincoat, trying to move quickly, and then hurry out into the night, headed to Old Fisherman’s Cottage.
***
It takes several tries before I’m able to dislodge the board from under the doorknob. My hands are wet; the wood board is wet. And when the door creaks open, the only light inside the cottage is from the fireplace across the room.
It smells like mildew and mothballs and a little like vinegar. And for a half second I feel bad for Gigi being trapped inside this place.
She is standing across the small room, awake, holding her palms over the fire for warmth. “Hello, Penny,” she says without turning around. I close the door behind me, shaking the rain from my coat. “I didn’t kill his brother.”
“Maybe not,” I answer. “But he’s determined to find out who did.” Instinctively, I want to move to the fire for warmth, but I also don’t want to be any nearer to her than I already am. On the couch, I notice the folded-up blanket I brought her earlier. She hasn’t slept at all.
“Did you come to invite me up to your house for tea and a shower? I could really use a shower.”
“No.”
