“I’m not sure.”
I glance up Ocean Avenue, where the mass of people has grown larger, tourists pressed together, trying to get a better view of the docks where the bodies will be brought ashore. This is what they came for—to glimpse death, proof that the legend of the Swan sisters is real.
“Who knows about Gigi?” I ask, looking back at Heath.
“I don’t know. I saw Lon when he reached the docks, and he told me what he saw. Now he and Davis are searching for her.”
“Shit,” I mutter. If they find her, who knows what they’ll do.
“Do you think it’s true?” Rose asks. “Could Gigi be one of them?” Her expression seems tight and anxious. She’s never fully believed in the Swan sisters before—it scares her, I think, the idea that they could be real, that she could be taken and not even know it. It’s a survival mechanism for her, and I understand why she does it. But now the waver in her voice makes me think she’s not so sure what she believes anymore.
“I don’t know,” I answer. I won’t know for sure until I see her.
“They already found her,” Heath interrupts, his cell phone in his hand, the screen lit a vibrant blue.
“What?” I ask.
“Davis and Lon, they have her.” His throat catches. “And they’re taking her to the old boathouse past Coppers Beach. Everyone’s headed over there.” Word is traveling fast, at least among the inner circle of Sparrow High students. “I’m going down there,” Heath adds, clicking off his phone.
Bo nods and Rose twines her fingers through Heath’s. We’re all going, apparently. Everyone will want to see if Gigi Kline—last year’s homecoming princess and star cheerleader—has been inhabited by a Swan sister. But I’m the only one who will know for sure.
*
The harbor police boats are just starting to motor into port, carrying two bodies whose identities we don’t yet know, when the four of us push through the crowds toward the edge of town. We pass Coppers Beach then turn down a dirt road almost completely overgrown by blackberry bushes and a tangle of wind-beaten shrubs.
The air smells green here, damp and sodden, even with the sunlight glaring down. No cars pass down this road. The property is abandoned. And when we emerge from the dense thicket of green, the boathouse comes into view at the edge of the waterline. The old stone walls of the structure are slowly turning brownish green from the algae inching its way up the sides, and the wood-shingled roof is covered in a slimy layer of moss. A sheer cliff stands to the right of the boathouse and a rocky embankment to the left. You can’t see the town or the beach from here; it’s completely secluded. Which is why kids come here to smoke or make out or ditch classes. But it’s not exactly a pleasant place to spend longer than an afternoon.
As we get closer, I notice that the small door into the boathouse is ajar several inches, and voices echo out from inside.
Heath is the first to step into the dark interior, and several faces turn to look at us as we shuffle in behind him. It smells worse inside. The room has a rectangle cut out of the floor near the far doors where a boat once sat protected from the weather, and seawater laps up into the interior, making reflective patterns across the walls. The stench of fuel, fish guts, and seaweed permeates the space.
Davis McArthurs and Lon Whittamer are standing against the right side wall on the narrow three-foot-wide walkway that stretches down either side of the boathouse. Three other girls who I recognize from school—but whose names I can’t recall—are crowded just inside the door, as if they’re afraid to get too close to the water splashing up from the floor with each wave that rolls in. And sitting in a plastic lawn chair between Davis and Lon, zip ties around her wrists and a red-and-white-checkered bandanna tied over her mouth, is Gigi Kline.
We seem to have walked into the middle of a discussion already unfolding, because one of the girls, wearing a bright pink parka, says, “You don’t know for sure. She looks fine to me.”
“That’s the point,” Davis says, jutting out his square jaw. Davis reminds me of a slab of meat, broad and thick. With a nose like a bull. There is nothing delicate about him. Or especially kind, for that matter. He’s a bully. And he gets away with it because of his size. “They look like everyone else,” he continues, firming his glare on the pink-parka girl. “She killed those two guys in the harbor. Lon saw her.”
“You can’t keep her tied up,” another girl interjects, her smooth dark hair pulled up into a ponytail, and she points to Gigi with one long, sharp finger.
“We sure fucking can,” Lon snaps back, while Davis scowls at the girl. Lon is wearing one of his standard Hawaiian shirts—light blue with neon yellow anchors and parrots. I feel Bo shift closer to me, like he wants to protect me from whatever is unfolding in front of us. And I wonder if he recognizes Lon from the night at the Swan party, when he was wasted and Bo pushed him into the sea.
“There’s no way to prove she did anything,” ponytail girl points out.
“Look at her fucking clothes and hair,” Lon says sharply. “She’s soaking wet.”
“Maybe she . . .” But ponytail girl’s voice trails off.
“Maybe she fell in,” pink-parka girl offers. But everyone knows that’s a weak excuse, and unlikely considering the circumstances. Two boys are being hauled from the harbor as we speak, and Gigi Kline is found completely drenched—it’s not hard to put the pieces together.
Davis uncrosses his arms and takes a step toward the group. “She’s one of them,” he says coldly, his deep-set eyes unblinking. “And you all know it’s true.” He says it with such finality that everyone falls silent.
My eyes slide over Gigi Kline, her cropped blond hair dripping water onto the wood-plank floor. Eyes bloodshot like she’s been crying, lips parted to accommodate the bandanna stretched across her mouth and tied at the back of her head. She looks cold, miserable, terrified. But while everyone speculates as to whether she might no longer be Gigi Kline, I know the truth. I can see right through the delicate features of her face, through her tear-streaked skin, right down into her center.
A pearlescent, threadlike creature resides just beneath the surface—silky, atmospheric, shifting behind her human eyes. The ghost of a girl long dead.
Gigi Kline is now Aurora Swan.
Her gaze circles around the room, like she’s looking for someone to help her, to untie her, to speak up, but when her eyes settle on mine, I look quickly away.
“And now,” Davis says, rolling his tongue along the inside of his lower lip, “we’re going to find the other two.” I think of Olivia Greene, now inhabited by Marguerite Swan. But she will be harder to catch—Marguerite is careful, precise, and she won’t allow these boys to discover what she really is.