Between the Spark and the Burn (10 page)

He dragged me over to the bay window.

I blinked several times, and leaned my face against the glass to see better. Neely kept hold of my hand and I let him.

I saw it. A light on the beach. Coming toward the house. Closer. And closer. Right up on the deck. I heard a door open downstairs . . .

Neely's hand was on my mouth before I could say anything. He waited a second, took his hand away, and brought his finger to his lips. I nodded.

The tower stairs creaked. A door opened somewhere above me, and closed again.

Canto.

“She could have been doing anything,” I whispered. “Checking fish traps or other fisherwoman things.”

“That's true.” Neely looked at me, and then grinned. “But, all things considered, what are the odds?”

Despite myself, I grinned back. “The odds are terrible,” I whispered.

I sat down on my bed and tucked my knees under my chin and my cold feet underneath my long nightgown. “She wasn't lying, though, when she said she didn't know about the sea god.” I let my hair fall over my cold cheeks. “I know she wasn't.”

Neely sat down next to me and started rubbing my cold right foot between his warm hands. “Tomorrow we'll find this Lillian Hut. And tomorrow night, if she sneaks out again, we follow Canto. All right?”

I nodded.

Neely warmed up my other foot, and then stood up again. He went over to a beat-up plastic radio on the dresser. Turned it on. Spun dials.

. . . Eyed Theo. I'm here. You're here. And it's the witching hour. Time for your daily dose of
Stranger Than Fiction
.

My only update tonight comes out of the Colorado Rockies. My source, who lives by himself in a cabin and seems to be the rugged mountain-man type, claims the nearby town is acting strange. He said, quote, “All those folks in Gold Hollow have gone stark mad. They keep talking about the trees, saying the trees told them to do this or that, and none of it any good. And now I've heard the children have all gone missing too. They followed a tall, thin, red-haired girl into the mountains and no one's seen them since.”

This is a new one, listeners. Talking trees full of bad intentions and a pied piper girl. My source refused to mention any specifics—he said he didn't want to be laughed at on the radio—but he wanted me to send someone out there to investigate, since, quote, “the nearest law is in Boulder and they don't believe me, and won't drive up here anyway because of the snow.”

Anyone near Colorado want to do some investigating? I'd owe you one.

It's Wide-Eyed Theo, signing off for the night.

Go forth and find the strange.

“Maybe we should have gone to the mountains, instead of the sea,” Neely said, and laughed. “Damn it. I hate being wrong.”

“Don't you have a half sister, Neely?”

“Do I?” he asked, quiet.

“You sound like River,” I answered, quiet too.

Neely raised one eyebrow and looked so cocky and mischievous and River-like suddenly that my heart started to ache. And then he grinned and it went away.

I met his eyes. “Back in the guesthouse. The day I met you. You said you had two half brothers and one half sister, that you knew about. And the half sister was in Colorado. It could be her, Neely, leading those kids into the woods.”

Neely shrugged. “Or it's Brodie in a dress. Or it's just nothing at all.” He shrugged and turned the radio off . . .

. . . and the next thing I knew he was pulling his shirt over his head and slipping out of his wool trousers and climbing into my bed and I was climbing in right next to him and picturing those wild horses in my mind and nothing happened except me squeezing myself into his smooth side and resting my head on his shoulder and feeling his soft scar underneath my cheek and my feet nestling in between his warm legs.

Neely whispered,
No wonder River liked this so much,
and heaved a deep sigh, and then both of us, sleep, sleep, sleep.

≈≈≈

My dreams were loud. And dark. At first it was just flashes of Neely smiling and the spindly Captain Nemo and Canto with an odd, blank look and Finch swimming in a black sea, his red hair looking redder than the setting sun . . .

But then my dreams turned to River.

River with a glint in his eyes and a gold crown on his head.

River with his arms wide, wild horses behind him, hooves pounding, kicking sand into the air. The sea and the wind and a ragged shack and then he grabbed me and his palms were covered with sand, and I didn't care, it belonged there, and the grains scraped down my skin as he pulled me in, and I was soft and pliable as seaweed in the surf and when River opened his mouth the sounds of the sea came out, crashing and lapping, and the wet, and the blue, and the deep . . .

When I woke in the pre-dawn dark, Neely was still beside me. He was breathing in and out, slow, soft. I let my forehead rest against his warm, smooth back for a minute, and then I stretched, long and slow, trying to shake off the bad dreams, my arms hitting the wooden headboard, my feet reaching toward the end of the bed . . .

And that's when I felt it.

Sand.

My hands went to my head, to my skin, to the sheets. It was everywhere. Crusted over my scalp, underneath my fingernails, underneath my pillow, caked around the necklace Neely gave me, in between my toes, everywhere.

I ran my fingertips down my cheek and sheets of it flaked off.

My hair was wet too; I felt it slap against my shoulder when I got up and started brushing at the quilt with my hands.

I was quiet, so quiet.

Slow, Vi, slow. Don't wake Neely.

My palms scraped the grit to the sandy floor, over and over, again and again.

Then I slipped off down the hall and got in the shower.

I didn't let myself think about it, not one thought, not for a second.

In the morning I would think it all a dream.

June

I found her. And him. We had all come up from the city to celebrate Rose Redding's sixteenth birthday. Chester and Clara Glenship were her godparents, and she helped fill the hole that their poor broken-necked daughter Alexandra left when she fell from the tree house.

The sky on Rose's birthday was blue and clear. A perfect day for a perfect girl. She was apple-cheeked and chestnut-curled and innocent as one of the round brown puppies in the barn. I knew. I knew when Chase gave her that book of naughty French poetry for a present and she smiled up at him like he was God. I knew what he'd done.

Will figured it out later, when he found Rose in Chase's bed.

Chase was a fine match for me, in Will's mind. Daring, worldly, flashy Freddie. I could have handled him.

But not Rose.

Rose was the kind of girl to fall in love once, and forever. Chase and “forever” didn't mix.

I crawled into Will's arms that night, as I'd done so many nights before. I woke with a start, a few hours before dawn. Maybe I heard a scream. Or maybe not. Something called me to the cellar. I slid out from between Will's hands, and legs, and followed the feeling.

Chase was holding her, rocking back and forth, back and forth, her hair swinging between his elbows, blood soaking them both.

I saw the knife. Small. Steel. A red handle.

My heart broke. Right down the middle.

And the color went out of the world

≈≈≈

Canto was gone by the time we got up, off to fetch the fish, like she said. I read some of Freddie's diary in bed, and it was dark and sad. I sighed, got up, and brushed my teeth in the small bathroom down the hall—the water was hot enough but cut out when I still had toothpaste in my mouth. Living by the sea did bad things to pipes. I knew this from the Citizen. We'd had to abandon four of its seven bathrooms because nothing in them worked anymore.

I pulled on a clean wool skirt, tights, black boots, and a dark gray sweater. I saw a phone in the tower hallway, a black, metal one with a rotary dial. I wanted to call the Citizen, to see if Jack was all right, to see if Luke and Sunshine had made it home. I picked up the handset and put it to my ear . . . no dial tone. I guess Luke and I weren't the only kids who couldn't pay the phone bill sometimes.

Luke, are you all right?

I met Finch and Neely in the kitchen. Neely handed me a cup of espresso, and Finch gave me a red plate with a shiny poached egg wobbling to and fro on a piece of buttered toast.

“Never had them poached before,” Finch said, and he seemed both amused and a bit scornful. “Only scrambled and fried and boiled. I guess this is how the city people eat their city eggs. They certainly take a lot more work.”

But I caught a glimmer of a smile when Finch sliced through the egg and the orange-yellow yolk spilled out. He dipped a piece of toast into the yolk and took a bite. Another smile glimmer.

I looked between him and Neely while I ate, and enjoyed the view.

Finch didn't have freckles, like Jack, but his cheeks had a ruddy hue that matched his hair. He sat in a shaft of the morning sun, the sea in the background, the clean, fresh air making his red cheeks all the redder.

I turned to Neely.

Neely's clear, even skin and Kennedy-esque side-parted hair and strong jaw all said
I come from generations of blue blood–ery.
His laughing, fired-up blue eyes—they were all his own, though. And they were my favorite part. He smiled at me over his cup of coffee, and my cheeks went hot, damn it all to hell.

Canto still hadn't returned by the time we finished breakfast, so we decided to go into the little town and get some coffee, and the lay of the land. I wanted to see if any of the Carollie people were acting . . . strange. I wanted to know what we were up against. And Neely did too, based on the way his eyes went smart and dark when I suggested it.

We saw the horses again when we stepped out of Captain Nemo, only two of them, running and playing with each other, and it was a joy to watch. It really was.

I thought about the night before, Neely beside me, his warm calves heating up my cold toes, and the horses, and the wild, and the freedom, and the strange dreams I had, and all of it.

We walked down the main street and I found the coffee shop that I'd spotted the night before. A sign hung above the door that said
The Green Salmon
. We went in and let ourselves be caught up in the clamor of people needing joe. It was ten in the morning and all ages were present: kids still on their Christmas holiday and elderly people who had already been up for hours and fishermen in thick plaid shirts.

Carollie seemed like any nice small town with its own urban legend and café and hollering waves . . . except it was fresh and new and unexplored and clean-slated. And, therefore, exotic.

Until.

Until we were standing on Carollie's main street, breathing in the salty air, drinking the Green Salmon's special of the day, coconut milk lattes with cinnamon. We watched a small town go about its small-town life, batting our eyes against the bright sun. My gaze danced down the row of buildings, the little post office, the closed-for-the-season French restaurant, the chocolate store, the used bookstore, the knickknack store . . .

Nothing was wrong with this place. Not a thing. Canto had been meeting a boy in the night—probably one of those Greek god boys from the Hag's Shack. Perhaps she had to do it in secret because . . . because their fathers hated each other and were in the middle of a fishermen's feud with no chance to reconcile, and . . .

Finch saw it first. The poster on the telephone pole.

A boy.

A boy our age.

Missing.

He looked familiar. The dark hair, the tilt of his chin, the smile that went ear to ear . . .

I'd seen him. Recently.

Or someone who looked just like him.

Two brothers, both with the same hair and tilt and smiles . . .

A pretty woman in her early forties walked by. She caught us staring at the poster and stopped walking. She had long eyelashes and round shoulders and she held three sweet-looking greyhounds on a leash.

“Roman's been missing for weeks now,” she said as her dogs rubbed their noses into our palms. “Some people are saying he ran off to the mainland, chasing a girl. He's one of the Finnfolk boys, fisher family, dark-eyed and rowdy, all of them, catching Carollie hearts as easily as they catch fish.” The woman's face fell and she looked older all of a sudden. “Even the island crones go soft-eyed,” she added, after a second, “whenever they catch sight of the Finnfolk boys hauling in the nets. And Roman there was the worst of the lot. Or the best, depending on your view . . .”

The woman trailed off. She wasn't looking at the poster anymore. She was looking at Canto, walking toward us, raven-haired and red-lipped and chipper in the morning sun.

“Hey, you three.” Canto waved, smiled. “Fancy meeting you here. What are you all looking at?”

The woman turned, quick, and moved off down the street, her dogs loping behind.

Canto watched her go, her brow twisted up, smile gone.

None of us said anything. After all, boys went missing all the time, didn't they? Even rowdy, dark-eyed fisher boys with hearts on their sleeves.

Canto spun around, and saw the poster. She stared, blinked, and then turned her back to it. “What do you say we head home and get some work done?” she asked. She smiled again, but it was different this time. Stiff. Strained.

I opened my mouth to ask, saw the sharp look in her eyes, and shut it again.

Back at Captain Nemo, Neely helped Canto make more clam chowder and lemon crème fraiche sauce for the Hag's Shack. I cleaned things and dusted things and felt useful and wondered why the hell I didn't do this kind of thing back home, in the Citizen. Finch found a broom and swept sand into piles, and then swept those piles out into the sea.

A few hours later I finished cleaning. I stepped outside, onto one of Captain Nemo's worn decks. I breathed in the air, deep, deep, and then went down to the beach and sat in the cold sand and watched the waves. I thought about my parents and Jack and Luke and Sunshine and Freddie and Citizen Kane . . .

And Pine and Aggie and Inn's End and Finch . . .

And Neely and Brodie and River . . .

I got to my feet and started walking down the beach, going nowhere in particular.

It was faint at first. Just a whisper that seemed to float in on the waves.

Violet.

I stopped walking. I shut my eyes.

I heard it again. Closer.

Violet.

And the next time was right in my damn ear . . .

Violet
 . . .

. . . Like he was beside me, his body inches away, his lips on my neck . . .

I opened my eyes. Spun around.

There was nothing. No one. A long stretch of sand without a single soul, silent except for the lapping of the waves at my toes.

River. He'd called out my name, plain as day. I'd heard it right over the roaring of the sea.

I shivered, hugged my chest, and waited for it to happen again.

But nothing.

I ran all the way back to Captain Nemo, the sea wind combing through my hair, sweeping in and out of my lungs. I went up the steps and inside and stood still in the doorway, catching my breath.

Quiet. Where was everyone? I called out names. No one answered.

The air was thick with the smell of the sea. Fish and sand and salt. It was overpowering suddenly, hovering like a cloud, clinging to my skin and my hair like I'd rolled in it, soaked it up, let it drench my pores.

Something about the smell, the lovely, familiar smell, felt odd to me.

Wrong.

Bad.

I went through the house, opening door after door, until I finally pushed through into a pipe-smoke-smelling study with a worn carpet and dark walls filled with water-warped books on fishing and sea-ing.

I turned, and there they were, in the far corner, in the shadows.

Canto's black curls meshing into Finch's straight red.

Her fingertips in his hair and her palms on his cheeks.

His body pressing into hers and his hands spread out across her lower back.

I didn't watch.

I only watched for a second.

Finch seemed to be holding back and Canto seemed to be pushing forward and it was personal, so personal. I backed out of the room and . . .

. . . and the next thing I knew I was sitting on Captain Nemo's front wooden deck, facing the great blue sea and trying to figure out why the hell I was crying. It was Neely who found me. He sat down and wrapped me up in his long arms until I didn't know where he ended and I began. His head was buried in my neck and he didn't laugh and he didn't talk. He didn't say one word until I was done.

“What happened?” he whispered. “What the hell happened?”

“I don't know,” I said, because I didn't. “I stumbled onto Canto and Finch kissing in the study . . .”

“Canto and Finch? Already? That was fast,” Neely said, and laughed.

And then I was laughing too, even though my cheeks were still red from crying my damn eyes out for no reason.

“I'm not a crier,” I said. “This doesn't make me a crier.”

Neely nodded. “I know.”

We both just sat and listened to the sea roar out its feelings for a while.

“I think I'm going mad,” I said, after a bit. “Neely, how do you know if you're going mad?”

Neely raised his eyebrows at me. “People like you don't go mad, Vi. They're quiet on the outside and loud on the inside and sane as the day is long.”

I shook my head. “I went for a walk on the beach and I heard River say my name. Three times. Clear as a bell, as if he were standing right next to me. How the hell do you explain this?”

Neely shrugged. “The sea will make you hear all sorts of things. It's tricksy and spiteful.” He put his hand to his ear, and leaned forward. “Right now the waves are telling
me
to take off all my clothes and tap-dance down the shore. See? That's not good advice. I'm not doing that.” He put his hand back down. “As I said, tricksy and spiteful.”

I laughed.

And then Neely cupped my head with his hand and I tilted right back into his palm, chin in the air, natural as breathing. And when he brought his face down, down toward mine, my insides went soaring up, up . . .

His lips touched mine, light and soft as snowflakes melting on my skin . . .

I closed my eyes . . .

. . . and started hearing the sea, louder now, like I was in it, under it, the bellow and the blast and the tides and the crash . . .

Neely's fingers slipped from my hair.

I opened my eyes.

Cornelius Redding was on his feet, looking down on me, his blues meeting mine. “I'm so sorry, Vi,” was all he said.

And then he just walked back inside. And I was alone.

≈≈≈

Neely and me never did get to the Lillian Hut. Night fell fast and we all went along with Canto to help feed the Hag's Shack crowd. We met her regulars and everyone was cheerful and easy to talk to. It felt like we'd been on the island for months, not hours.

“I could live here,” Finch said, decisive and brooking no refusal. We were walking back to the rambling Nemo after shutting up shop. Finch and Canto walked side by side, the wind whipping their clothes about their bodies and their hair about their faces. “I like being able to see. The forest was dark. Close. I'm done with it, for now. I like the openness of this island. I like seeing forever.”

Canto looked up into his face, and he looked down into hers, and suddenly they were looking at each other, deep, like they were all alone, and Canto's eyes were alert and dark and her face said
You'll do, forest boy,
and Finch's face said
I didn't know how much I needed this,
and he looked kind of happy and mysterious underneath the caged and wild.