“Bo,” I say, harder this time, twisting my other fist around his shirt and pulling him closer to me. My legs kick quickly beneath me to keep from sinking under. “Wake up!”
He blinks. His lips are ghostly, lost of all color. He opens his mouth, squints slightly, and a word forms softly against his lips. “What?”
“She’s in your head, making you do this. You need to get her out, ignore what she’s telling you. It’s not real.”
Several yards ahead, toward the mouth of the harbor, the bell buoy rings against the force of the waves. An eerie sound that rolls across the water.
“I need to find her,” he says, voice slurred. I know the image she has placed in his mind: of her, swimming in a pearl-white dress, fabric thin and transparent swirling around her body, hair long and silken, her beguiling voice slipping into his ears. Her words promise warmth, the velvet of her kiss and her body pressed to his. He is caught in her spell.
She will drown him like all the others.
“Please,” I beg, staring into eyes that can’t focus—that only see her. “Come back with me.”
He shakes his head slowly. “I . . . can’t.”
I clench my jaw and wrap my hands around the back of his neck, forcing him so close that our bodies slide weightlessly together. I do it without thinking, without breathing. I crush my lips to his. Water spills between us, and I taste the sea on his skin. I dig my nails into the base of his neck, trying to spur him from his waking dream. My heartbeat drives against my chest, and I press my lips harder. I open my mouth to feel the warmth of his breath, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t react. Maybe this won’t work—maybe it was a mistake.
But then one of his arms slides around me, bracing against my shoulder blades. His mouth parts open, and the heat from his body suddenly pours into me. His other hand finds my cheekbone and then weaves through my hair. He draws me in deeper, folding me in the circle of his arms. And with my lips, I wipe away the memory of Marguerite Swan from his mind. I take him from her, and he lets me. He kisses me like he wants me more than he’s ever wanted anything. And for a second, none of it feels real. I am not swimming in the harbor, wrapped in Bo’s arms, his mouth sweeping over mine, my heart pattering wildly against the cage of my chest. We are somewhere else, far away from here, coiled against each other under a warm sun with warm sand at our backs and warm breath on our lips. Two bodies bound together. Fearing nothing.
And then he pulls his mouth away, slowly, water dripping between us, and everything focuses into a single narrow pinprick. I expect him to release me, to resume his swim across the harbor, but he keeps a hand tangled at the back of my skull and the other against my back, our legs kicking rhythmically beneath us. “Why did you do that?” he asks, his voice raw and near breaking.
“To save you.”
His eyes glance out at the dark forbidding sea, as if waking up from an all-too-real nightmare.
“We need to get back to shore,” I tell him, and he nods understanding, his eyes still bleary and unfocused, like he’s still not entirely sure where he is or why.
We swim side by side back to the dock. We’ve drifted farther away from it than I realized, the current drawing us out to sea, and after several minutes of swimming hard, we finally reach it. He wraps his hands around my waist and hoists me up to the edge of the dock, and then he pulls himself up after. We’re too cold to speak, collapsing onto our backs on the dock, heaving in the chilled night air. I know we need to get inside and get warm before hypothermia sets in—a real possibility out here. So I touch his hand and we both rise, jogging up the wood path to his cottage.
*
We tug off our shoes and Bo kneels down beside the fireplace—a few embers are still alive beneath the charred logs—while I curl up on the couch with two wool blankets held tightly over my shoulders. Otis and Olga appear from the bedroom, stretching and looking sleepy. They’ve been spending all their time in here with Bo; they like him. Maybe more than they like me.
Bo adds more logs to the fire, and I crawl onto the floor beside him, stretching out my arms to warm my palms against the meager flames. My teeth chatter, and my fingertips are wrinkled. “You’re freezing,” he says, looking down at my trembling body beneath the blankets. “You need to get out of those clothes.” He stands up and walks back into his bedroom, returning a moment later with a plain white T-shirt and a pair of green boxer shorts. “Here,” he says. “You can wear these.”
I consider telling him that I’m fine, but I’m not fine. My shorts and tank top are so drenched that they’re starting to soak the blankets as well. So I stand up, thank him, and take the clothes into the bathroom.
The white tile floor is cold beneath my feet, and for a moment I stand scanning the tiny bathroom. A razor and a toothbrush sit beside the sink. A towel hangs from the rack. Hints that someone has been living in this cottage after so many years vacant. I slog out of my clothes then drop them heavily onto the floor in a pile. I don’t even bother folding them.
Bo’s shirt and boxers smell like him, minty and sweet, but also like a forest. I take in a deep breath and close my eyes before stepping back out into the living room. The fire now crackles and flames spark up the chimney, filling the cottage with warmth.
I sit on the floor beside Bo and pull the blankets around me. He doesn’t turn to look at me; he is staring into the flames, biting his lower lip. While I was in the bathroom, he changed into dry jeans and a dark blue T-shirt. Both of us are now rid of our waterlogged clothes. “What happened out there?” he asks.
I tighten the blankets across my chest. The rain batters against the roof; the wind howls. “You were being led into the harbor.”
“How?”
“You know how.”
“Olivia,” he says, as if the name has been trapped on his lips for days. “I could see her . . . out in the water.”
“She was calling to you. Her voice infiltrated your mind.”
“How?” he asks again.
“At the boathouse she whispered something in your ear. She claimed you as hers, making it impossible for you to think of anything or anyone else. It was only a matter of time until she beckoned you. Since you’ve remained on the island, hidden, she couldn’t physically pull you out into the water, so she had to slip her voice into your mind and make you come in search of her.”
He shakes his head, unable to rectify what has just happened to him.
“Olivia Greene,” I tell him bluntly, “is Marguerite Swan. She was waiting for you out in the harbor; she would have pulled you to her, her lips on yours, and then she would have drowned you.”