I close my eyes then open them. Bo has turned fully away from Olivia and is now staring at me. I’m the threat now. I’ve hurt him. Lied to him. Made him trust me and even love me. “I’ve taken Penny’s body every summer for the last three years,” I confess.
A blast of wind barrels into us, sending a surge of rain against the windows of the lighthouse.
“Why?” Bo manages to ask, though his voice sounds strangled.
“I like her life,” I say, the first time I’ve admitted it aloud. “I like being here on the island.”
“Oh, Hazel, if you’re going to tell the truth, you might as well tell him everything,” Olivia interjects.
I shoot daggers at her, wishing she’d just shut up. I should have let Bo push her over the edge. I shouldn’t have stopped him. But now here she stands, bringing up every lurid detail of my past. And calling me by my real name.
“I used to come here when I was still—”
“Alive,” Olivia finishes for me, raising both eyebrows.
“You lived here before?” Bo asks.
“No.” I don’t want to tell him about Owen. About my life before. It doesn’t matter now. I’m not that girl anymore. That girl drowned in the harbor two centuries ago . . . and this girl is here, alive, right in front of him.
“The first lighthouse keeper had a son,” Olivia fills in for me. “His name was Owen Clement. He was handsome; I’ll give him that. But I never understood what she saw in him. He had no money, no estate, no lucrative future. Yet she loved him anyway. And she was going to marry him. That is, if his father hadn’t accused us of being witches and drowned us in the harbor.”
I cringe at her sharp account of Owen and me. As if it could be summed up so crisply. A single breath to tell our story.
“Now Owen is buried up on Alder Hill in the Sparrow Cemetery. That’s where she went this morning—to his grave.” She says it like an accusation, like I have betrayed Bo with this single act. And maybe I have. But it’s not the worst offense, not by a mile.
Bo looks stunned. He’s staring at me like I have ripped his heart from his chest, squeezed it between my clawed fingers, and crushed it until it stopped pumping.
Where he once saw a girl, he now sees a monster.
“It wasn’t like that,” I say. “I went to say good-bye to him.” But my words seem frail and ineffectual. They don’t mean anything anymore. Not to him.
“So you see, Bo,” Olivia continues, hair whirling about her face, Marguerite Swan grinning and swaying beneath her skin as if she were suspended in midair. “Your sweet Penny is not who she says she is. She is a murderer like me, like Aurora—her sisters. And she only comes back to this island because it reminds her of the boy she used to love. And if you think you care about her, love her even, you might want to consider that she is a Swan sister, and seducing boys is what we do. You might only love her because she has spun a spell to make you think you do. It’s not real.” Olivia licks her lips.
“That’s not true,” I bark.
“Oh, no? Perhaps you should tell him about his brother. Tell him how good you are at seducing unsuspecting outsiders.”
My knees buckle, and I dig my fingernails into the wall of the lighthouse to keep from collapsing. I can’t do this.
“What was your brother’s name?” Olivia ponders. “Doesn’t matter. I’m sure you resemble each other, and how could my sister resist the chance to seduce two brothers? It’s just so perfect.”
“Stop it,” I tell her, but Bo has taken a step back against the railing, and it rattles beneath him. His hair is soaked, his clothes soaked. We all look like we’ve been swimming in the ocean, drenched, the three of us trapped together on this walkway, caught by the wind and whatever fate has brought us here to this point. Centuries of deceit now tearing me apart. The truth more painful than anything I’ve ever felt. Even more painful than drowning.
“Was it you?” Bo asks, and the way he says it feels like he’s just thrust the knife straight into my gut.
“I didn’t know at first,” I say, fighting through the heat of tears that push against the rim of my eyes. “But when you told me what happened to your brother, I started to remember him. You look so much alike.” I clear my throat. “I didn’t want to believe it. I was different last summer. I didn’t care whose life I took—I didn’t care about anything. But I do now. You helped me see that. I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore, especially not you.”
“This entire time, you knew I was trying to figure out who killed him. . . .” He gets tangled up on the words. Then he finds them again. “It was you?”
“I’m sorry.” Another breath.
He looks away, not even listening to me anymore. “This is why you could see what Gigi really is, and Olivia?” His eyes shift to look at Olivia and then me, like he’s trying to see what lies inside us. “You could see them because you’re one of them?”
“Bo,” I plead, my voice sounding weak.
“You drowned my brother,” he says, and he takes one quick step forward and locks his body around mine. His breath is low and shallow, and he brings the knife up to my throat, pressing it just beneath my chin. My eyelids flutter. I lean my head back against the wall. His gaze tears through me. Not with lust but rage. And I sense in the fury pumping through his stare, through his fingertips where they hold the knife, that he wants to kill me.
Olivia’s eyes flash to the doorway. This is her chance to flee. But for some reason she stays. Maybe she wants to see him slit my throat. Or maybe she just wants to see how this plays out.
“How many have you killed this year?” Bo asks, like he’s looking for another reason to slide the blade across my throat and let the life drain out of me.
“None,” I mutter.
“My brother was the last one?”
I nod, just barely.
“Why?”
“I don’t want to be that person anymore.” My voice is a whisper.
“But it’s what you are,” he spits back.
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s not. I can’t do it anymore. I won’t. I want a different life. I wanted it with you.”
“Don’t do that,” he says.
I try to clear my throat, but I’m shaking too badly.
“Don’t act like I changed you. Don’t act like you care about me,” he says. “I can’t trust anything you’ve said. I can’t even trust how I feel about you.” These last words sting the worst, and I grimace. He thinks I made him love me, that I seduced him just like Olivia did. “You lied to me about everything.”
“Not everything,” I try to say, but he doesn’t want to hear it.
He drops the knife from my throat. “I don’t want to hear anything else.” His eyes are like stone, rimmed with hatred for what I am. Mine are pleading for forgiveness. But it’s too late for that. I killed his brother. There is nothing more to say.
I have made myself his enemy. And now he recoils from me.
And just as the beam of light from the lighthouse passes over his face, he turns away, the rain slamming against his back, and ducks through the door into the lighthouse.
His shadow moves through the lantern room and disappears down the stairway. “He doesn’t love you, Hazel,” Olivia says, as if to console me. “He loved what he thought you were. But you’ve been lying to him.”