“You have to. It’s what we do.” She twirls a strand of blond hair through her thumb and index finger, pressing her lips together into a pout. Aurora’s face seems to push against the inside of Gigi’s skull, like she’s trying to find more space, stretch her neck a little within the confines of her body. I know the feeling. Sometimes I feel trapped in Penny’s body as well—imprisoned by the outline of her skin.
“We’ve been living like this for too long,” I say, my voice stronger now, finding purpose in the words. “Two centuries of torturing this town, and what has it gotten us?”
“You fall for some boy, who’s not even a local, and now suddenly you want to protect this town?” She folds her arms over her chest, still wearing the same soiled white blouse as when she drowned those boys in the water. “And besides, I like coming back. I like making boys fall in love with me, controlling them . . . collecting them like little trophies.”
“You like killing them, you mean.”
“I make them mine, and I deserve to keep them,” she snaps. “It’s not my fault they’re so trusting and gullible. Boys are weak—they were two centuries ago, and they still are.”
“When will it be enough?”
“Never.” She cants her head to the side, cracking her neck.
I exhale. What did I expect coming in here? What was I hoping for? I should have known: My sisters will never stop. They have become just like the sea, breaking apart ships and lives without remorse. And they’ll keep on killing for another two centuries if they have their way.
I turn for the door.
“Haven’t you learned your lesson, Hazel?” she says from across the room. “You were betrayed by the boy you loved once before; what makes you think Bo won’t betray you too?”
I bite down on the fury boiling inside me. She doesn’t know anything about what happened before—two centuries ago. “This is different,” I say. “Bo is different.”
“Unlikely. But he is cute.” She smirks. “Maybe too cute for you. I think I should have him.”
“Stay away from him,” I bark.
Her eyes turn to slits, narrowed on me. “What exactly do you plan on doing with him?”
“I won’t kill him.” I won’t take him into the sea and drown him. I don’t want that for him—a dark, watery existence, his soul trapped in the harbor. A prisoner shifting with the tide.
“You realize that you’re just going to have to leave him behind in a few days. And he will have fallen in love with a ghost and be left with the body of this girl Penny, who won’t remember a thing.” She lets out a short laugh. “Won’t that be hilarious? He will be in love with Penny, not you.”
A rattling of nausea starts to rise in my gut. “He loves me . . . not this body.” But the words sound feeble and broken.
“Sure,” she says, and her eyes roll in her head—such a Gigi thing to do. We can’t help but take on the mannerisms of the bodies we inhabit. Just as I have taken on the traits of Penny Talbot—all of her memories sit dormant in my mind, waiting to be plucked like a flower from the ground. I am playing the part of Penny Talbot, and I do it well. I’ve had practice.
I touch the doorknob. “I meant what I said,” I say back to her. “Stay away from him or I’ll make sure those boys in town get the opportunity to do exactly what they’ve been dying to do—kill you.”
She chuckles, but then her gaze turns serious, watching me as I slip out the door and kick it shut behind me.
HAZEL SWAN
Hazel was walking swiftly down Ocean Avenue, a small package containing a vial of rosewater and myrrh perfume held delicately between her hands. She was on her way to deliver it to Mrs. Campbell on Alder Hill.
She had glanced down at the package, expertly wrapped in brown butcher paper, when she smacked right into the hard shoulder of someone standing on the sidewalk. The package slipped from her fingers and broke on the cobblestone street. The scent of rose and myrrh evaporated swiftly into the soggy, seaside air.
Owen Clement knelt down to scoop up the remains of the package, and Hazel did the same, her arm grazing his, their fingers touching and soaking up the perfume.
Hazel had always avoided the fervent affections of men, unlike her sisters. And so she wasn’t prepared for the desire that twined through her upon meeting Owen Clement, the son of the first lighthouse keeper who lived on Lumiere Island. He was French, like his father, and words rolled from his tongue like a sanguine breeze.
Nightly, Hazel began sneaking across the harbor to the island—hands pressed to skin and tangled in each other’s hair; bodies formed as one; waking each morning in the loft above the barn that stood near the main farmhouse, the air smelling of hay and sweat. The chickens clucked from their pen below. And in the evenings, with only the moonlight to reveal their faces, they wandered the single row of young apple tree saplings that Owen’s father had planted that spring. It would still be several years before they would turn a harvest. But the promise of what they would bring felt ripe and sharp in the air.
Together they explored the rocky coastline; they let the water lap against their feet. They imagined a new life together, farther south. California, maybe. They threw flat stones into the water, and they made wishes for impossible things.
But Owen’s father distrusted the Swan sisters, who were rumored to be witches—temptresses who lured boys into their beds just for amusement—and when he discovered his son and Hazel folded together in the loft one morning, he swore he would make sure they never saw each other again.
It was Owen’s father who mounted the inquisition into the three sisters. It was Owen’s father who tied the stones around their ankles that pulled the three girls to the bottom of the harbor. It was Owen’s father who was responsible for their deaths.
And year after year, summer after summer, Hazel feels drawn back to Lumiere Island, reminded of the boy who she loved in that place, who she forged promises with, and who she lost two centuries ago.
SIXTEEN
Bo is still asleep on the bed when I get back to the room.
The sky turned dark on my way back to the house, rain once again blowing across the island.
His chest expands with each breath; his lips fall open. I watch him, wishing I could tell him the truth without destroying everything. Without destroying him. But he thinks I’m someone else. When he looks at me, he sees Penny Talbot, not Hazel Swan. I have carried the lie around as if it were the truth, pretended that this body could actually be mine and that I wouldn’t have to return to the sea at the end of June if I believed it hard enough. Maybe this feeling blooming inside my chest will save me; maybe the way Bo looks at me will make me real and whole. Not the girl who drowned two hundred years ago.
But Gigi’s laugh rings in my ear. It’s what we do. We’re killers. Our revenge will never be satiated. And I can never have Bo, not really. I’m trapped in another girl’s body. I’ve been repeating the same endless cycle summer after summer. I am not me.