Between the Spark and the Burn (12 page)

His lips parted like the sea.

I thought of Freddie and Will and Will's burning and Rose's swinging hair and the blood soaking them both . . .

River, River, I don't care what you've done, I don't care how mad you are, it's not your fault, it's not your fault . . .

I tasted salt and madness and it was River River River familiar and it tasted so damn good I wanted to drown in it, let the water steal my breath, fill my lungs, jerk, sigh, darkness, limp, floating away.

“V
IOLET.
”

River pulled back and I stared up at him. His eyes were changing. I could see it, like watching the sun sweep the clouds away, leaving a blue sky behind.

I'd kissed him and brought him back. River was Sleeping Beauty and I was the prince and fairy tale, fairy tale. My heart started to swell, soar, and I thought,
I've done it, I saved him, it will be like before, like last summer, and we'll find Brodie, and fight him, and we'll win this time . . .

I turned and looked at Neely. His fists were clenched, his cheeks red, and his eyes were sad, and lost, and angry, and hopeful, and full of wanting, wanting, wanting . . .

Then River shook his head and the clouds came snapping back. His eyes drifted to the pile of nets in the corner, and mine followed.

“Sleep next to me tonight, Vi,” River said. “Let's send these two away and lie down in the nets and kiss and sleep and dream.”

I shook my head. “No, River. I can't, I don't . . .”

I closed my eyes.

I heard the sea.

The waves beat out a pattern and my heart echoed it back, and I was sinking, sinking into the deep again, the deep, deep, deep . . .

“Violet,” Finch said, loudly.

I opened my eyes. Rubbed them. They felt gritty, jagged, scratched, like my face had been buried in sand.

River was still staring at me.

“Stay with me here, Vi,” River said, again. He reached out and pulled me back into him. His mouth went to my ear. “I need you to sleep with me on my nets and keep the nightmares away. I can't let them”—he flicked his hand toward the window, at the people outside—“I can't let them know about the nightmares. They won't understand. But you understand.”

“I don't,” I said, shaking my head.

“You do,” River answered.

“She
doesn't,
” Neely said. He took two steps forward.

And then one step back.

I knew what that was like. I'd been there.

I was there now.

“Violet, be my sea queen,” River sang into my ear, soft and whispery. “Stay with me here, under the sea. We'll grow gills like the fish, and swim from coast to coast, pole to pole, our people following behind. And each night
I will strip you of your seaweed clothes and kiss your scales and stroke your tails and . . .
”

River whispered on and on. I began to watch the islanders outside the window as his voice droned in my ear. They had joined together and formed a circle around the fire. Their voices rose. Their legs moved. Their arms. Necks, bellies. A strange, swelling sea dance. Their voices got louder, their bodies undulating, bending, flopping, tossing, faster, faster, swirling around the fire, arms, legs, hair, elbows, hands, knees, feet, merging into a single slumping, curving mass, in a way that made my heart feel sick and twisted with the wrongness of it—

River stopped talking. His hands dropped from my body. He turned around and looked out the window. “Ah,” he said, in a quiet, knowing sort of way.

He stepped lightly over the fishing nets on the floor and opened the door of the hut and went outside. A cold burst of wind hit us and my hair lifted straight up. Finch was watching me and River, but Neely had his back turned to all of us. I pulled my cardigan closer and went up behind him and put my arms around him. He grabbed my hands and squeezed me back. And then we all followed River out onto the hut's deck.

“They are calling for the sacrifice,” River said. “The sea demands we sacrifice a virgin before each full moon sea feast. Stay here—this won't take long.” River put out a thin arm and pointed at a dark-haired girl whose flopping body was dancing by. “You, you'll do.”

The girl stopped. She stepped out of the circle, and came toward River.

It was Canto.

River walked down the steps to the sand. He put his dirty sea king hands in her curly black hair, and then he kissed her. Deep. Slow. Soft. Like twilight disappearing into night.

The islanders stopped dancing, and watched.

Canto's hands went to River's naked back, and gripped tight.

Finch, Neely, me, none of us moved. We didn't stop it. We didn't do anything. And maybe we were stunned, or maybe River was glowing us up, who knows.

River's fingers slid down Canto's arms. He took both of her hands.

“What's your name?” he asked her, loud enough so we could hear him above the waves.

“Canto,” she said. And her eyes were black and empty, but her lips were wet and red.

“Canto, we need you to sacrifice yourself to the sea. You will drink the water and let it fill your lungs. You will sink into the deep and become the sea's lover. After you cross into the sea world, we will give you our breath, and try to bring you back. The sea may keep you . . . or she may reject you. It's up to her. Do you understand?”

Canto nodded. And River pulled her forward, step by step into the water. They walked into the frigid ocean until it was lapping at Canto's thighs, her skirt lifting up with the waves.

The islanders stretched out across the sand, watching, not moving, not talking.

Except for the three boys.

They came up behind Neely and Finch and me right as River was kissing Canto.

They wrapped us in their strong arms . . .

And squeezed.

And squeezed.

Finch struggled and shouted and Neely struggled and shouted and I pounded my elbows into the thick torso behind me and it made no difference, not a bit of difference.

River said something I couldn't hear and Canto fell to her knees. The sea was sloshing near her throat now, her curly hair going straight in the water and fanning out on all sides.

Finch was still yelling next to me, and Neely was screaming River's name and the wind was howling and I could smell the ocean on the boy behind me, feel his scruffy chin scratch the top of my ear.

River wouldn't drown her, he couldn't . . .

But then he looked up, right at me, and the look on his face was eager and his eyes had gone wrong again and then he was pressing his right palm into Canto's face, fingers outstretched, and pushing her backward into the waves . . .

Finch broke free. He burst out of the islander's arms and started running. Water splashed out from his body in great dark arcs.

“Take me instead,”
Finch screamed out against the pound pound pound.

River turned his head toward Finch, and stared at him.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, Canto was still pushed underwater.

Slowly, slowly, River's hand rose.

Canto's head popped back out of the sea. Her black hair was thick and streaming and she coughed and coughed. She opened her eyes and they were empty still, blank and black and horrid.

She got to her feet and staggered back to the beach and threw herself on the sand, her body still half in the water. I wanted to go to her and grab her in my arms—

But the boy held me tight so tight against him and nothing I did made any difference.

“Finch,”
I begged, calling out across the water. “Don't.
Don't.
”

Finch kept moving, toward River.

Not
Finch
. I
saved
him, we saved him, Neely and me—

River's posture was kingly and bored, and his thin body stood firm against the waves. He looked at me. And he smiled.

“Don't worry, Vi. We will bring him back,” River shouted. “The sea won't want him. We can always tell. We will bring him back, like we have before.”

I might have started screaming again then, but maybe it was just the ocean in my ears. Finch kneeled in the water and River pushed him under and—

Neely hit River, fist to face, hard, cracking, smacking hard. One second he was struggling with the islander and the next he was in the water, fists flying. River's head snapped to the side. Neely hit him again, this time in the stomach, and the sea swirled around them both . . .

River waved his hand in the air like he was swatting a fly, and Neely started screaming. He dropped his arm, mid-hit, and spun in circles, seeing something in the sky that made him scream and duck and scream. I strained against the boy behind me, strained and pulled and my neck went taut, so taut my spine ached down my back and the boy was built of stone and didn't budge, not an inch, so I turned my head and screamed into his shoulder and I saw that he was dark-eyed and wild-looking and beautiful and I knew he was a Finnfolk boy, I just knew.

It only took a few minutes. A few minutes of Finch's flailing body before he went still.

Neely stopped yelling and started rubbing his eyes.

The Finnfolk boy let me go.

I ran to Canto. My black boots filled with water and my skirt went heavy with it and stuck to my legs, and I felt cold cold wet on my calves and my knees, so cold it burned. Empty-eyed Canto clung to me and I let her. The water slapped our sides and made us rock and stagger. I was shivering with cold now, and my feet felt heavy and dead and no longer mine, and Canto was shivering too, great big shivers, and I saw something flash in her empty eyes, just for a second, something dark and scared and so, so sad, but then it was gone just as fast.

I helped Canto to the beach, and then let go of her, gentle, gentle. She sank to the ground, cheek to sand.

River carried Finch to the shore. He was stronger than he looked, and he made it seem easy, holding Finch's limp body high above the water as he waded in. He laid Finch down, next to Canto.

The moon disappeared behind a cloud and everything went dark and Finch's red hair was slick and black and it stuck to his face, his lips, his nose, everywhere, and his skin was cold and hard and glistening in the shadowy bonfire light and it made him seem narrow and different, blue and cold and gaunt and not like himself at all. River started pumping his chest, pump, pump, pump, and then breathing in his mouth. Over and over. Over and over.

It's going to work,
I thought,
it's going to work. It has to.

After a few seconds Neely shoved River out of the way and took over. Pump, breathe, pump, breathe.

He's going to choke and spit up water, any second now, he is, he is.

I shouted at River, horrible, horrible things, and he just stood off to the side and looked bored.

Behind us the islanders started rubbing their eyes. They gave a sort of twitch, and then turned and started wandering back into the town.

Neely pumped and breathed and nothing, nothing.

River looked up at the sky, and then back down at Neely. He yawned. “Well, it doesn't work every time. I guess the sea wanted him after all.”

I bent down and picked up a piece of driftwood. It was gray and heavy and the size of Finch's forearm.

I knew the spot. Luke had hit me there once when we were little. He thought he killed me and maybe he almost had.

Neely gave up at last and pounded his fists on the sand.

Canto shook herself and got up and started walking back to Captain Nemo without a word.

River's face loomed in front of me, dark wet hair, shiny brown eyes, bored, bored, bored—

The end of the driftwood hit his jaw.

I had kissed that pretty jaw once upon a time. Slow, gentle kisses. Dark-of-night kisses. I had kissed that jaw in River's bed, with River's body pressed up into mine.

River twisted. Crumpled.

The sea king hit the sand.

And then Finch opened his eyes, and began coughing up the sea.

December

Rose was dead and buried, and Chase locked up with the mad.

Chester and Clara Glenship left town and didn't come back.

I was a White now. I married Lucas in June. A week after Rose was murdered. Three months before Chase went to trial and was declared insane and committed to the state asylum. Four months before the world crashed and men jumped from tall buildings, and fortunes ebbed and flowed like the tide.

Lucas put all his money in gold, and survived.

I almost pushed Will over, the last time we stood on the cliffs, looking at the ocean. I had my palms to his back . . .

But he guessed what I was about to do and turned and grabbed me to him and kissed me until I couldn't see straight.

It's Will who should be in there. In the madhouse. Not Chase.

Will.

And me.

≈≈≈

Captain Nemo.

River knocked out and sprawled across the middle of the floor, his starved arms limp at his sides.

Finch by the fire, naked and shivering under a quilt like he'd never get warm again, dark circles under his eyes, teeth chattering between pale lips, the flames casting strange shadows on his skin.

Canto sitting on the sofa and staring at the wall with her eyes still blank and hollow.

Neely, hair wet, crouched over his brother, looking lost and sad and scared and angry and relieved.

I sat down next to Finch and took his hand in mine.

I knew what it was like to be half killed by a Redding brother.

≈≈≈

Dawn. I'd fallen asleep on the living room floor, next to the fire, buried under a pile of blankets with Finch next to me. River was either sleeping or still out cold and Neely was beside him. Who knew where Canto was. Out getting the fish maybe.

She probably remembered nothing. She probably woke up in her own bed and walked downstairs and through the living room and wondered why we were all sleeping on the floor and who the hell the tied-up new boy was, before she stepped over him on her way out the door.

Yes, I had tied River's hands and feet before I went to sleep. Even though Neely had told me this alone wouldn't stop him from using the glow, if he wanted to. Even though I knew that as well as him.

I threw off two patchwork quilts, got up, and bent over the two Redding boys. Neely was smiling in his sleep, his arm thrown over his head and his quilts pushed down and his shirt riding halfway up his long, smooth torso.

And River. He looked so pale, so still. I put my hand on his chest to see if he was breathing. My palm touched his ribs, and his eyes shot open. His fingers snapped around my wrist.

“We need to get off the island, Vi,” he whispered, voice still cracked and raw from yelling against the sea the night before. “They . . . I'm too . . . my head hurts too much. I won't be able to keep up the glow. People will start remembering. They'll come looking for me. For us. Help me, Vi. We need to go.” His fingers squeezed against my scar and made it ache.

Someone knocked on the front door and I jerked. River let go of my wrist. Neely's eyes opened and River's closed again.

Neely got up without saying a word and went to the window to see who it was. I followed.

Hayden. Standing in the sun and holding a pail of oysters in one hand, the wild horses running down the beach behind him.

I didn't know how Hayden knew we needed to leave, but he did.

I slipped my fingers between Neely's and kept staring out the window. “We have to get back to the mainland,” I whispered. “River thinks the islanders are going to start remembering soon.”

Neely sighed. Nodded.

He opened the front door and let Hayden in.

We hustled and bustled and stuck River in a hot shower and got him dressed and he let us, weak as he was. Canto came back as we were packing and Finch pulled her aside and whispered something in her ear that made her eyes twinkle and flash and then she was throwing clothes in a ragged blue suitcase. We whispered good-byes to Captain Nemo and then slunk off down the beach to Hayden's boat. We didn't look any of the Carollie fishermen in the eye on the way, not one.

The wild horses lined up on the shore and tossed their heads and watched our boat take off, almost as if they were saying good-bye.

Neely took River to the small living space below deck. River was dizzy and sick and I suppose he had a concussion from my hitting him with the driftwood. But his injury was keeping him calm and seemed to be stopping him from using his glow for the time being, so I can't say I gave a damn.

He'd glowed me up in that shack, made me forget him, left me smelling like sea and sand and feeling a hole in my heart and not knowing why.

He'd killed Finch. Drowned him. Right in front of me.

It wasn't just Neely and me that were in danger now. We'd involved Finch and Canto in this Devil mess too.

Canto was on the other end of the boat, watching her island disappear into the morning mist. I wondered how long it had been since she'd left Carollie. I wondered if she left her father a note about where she was going, or if she didn't even bother.

I stood beside Finch, looking over the moving water, my hip almost touching his. His eyes were distant and his expression was detached. Calm. He didn't look like someone who'd just been cradled in Death's arms . . . someone who'd stared down the dark beyond and then was resurrected when it seemed too late. He just looked like . . . Finch.

Except for the hair. His hair seemed less red now. It was dull and flat, like the water had sucked the color out of him as it had sucked out his life.

“I wonder if I left a part of me, down there, when I died,” Finch said. We both stared at the slipping, sliding water. “I wonder if part of me is trapped, walking the seabed like a ghost.” He paused. “Just like a part of me is still in the woods back home, haunting my small bit of the forest.”

“Why did you do it?” I asked, voice quiet, almost a whisper. “Why did you take Canto's place last night?”

Finch turned to me, and his eyes had that wild look again. “Death came for me in Inn's End,” he said. “And I escaped him. But I . . . I have this feeling that he's never going to stop looking for me, never going to stop biting at my heels. I thought I might as well meet him halfway, on my own terms, and see who's the better man.”

The sea wind lifted his faded red hair and swirled it about his head, as if it agreed.

“That,” he added, “and the fact that I'm falling in love with Canto.” He smiled, and it was shy and forest-boy and savage and primal all at the same time. He looked over my shoulder at the curly-haired island girl, and then back at me, and his smile widened.

“I thwarted Death too,” I said, a few moments later. “Brodie cut my wrists and spilled my blood and if it hadn't been for Neely, I'd be nothing but a ghost. Does that mean Death is watching me too, waiting for another chance? Freddie used to say it wasn't right for me to think of death. She said it was unhealthy and grim and childhood was short and not to be squandered.” I paused. “Still. If Death is coming for me I want to be prepared, Finch. Like you. I want to be brave and meet him halfway.”

Finch grabbed my hand and held it tight. The bright sun sloped off his skin and he looked pale, but happy, his eyes bright, bright, bright. “You will, Vi. I promise.”

I heard a groan from below deck. A River groan. He sounded like he was in pain, but I couldn't bring myself to care. I just kept standing next to Finch, and watching the sea.

≈≈≈

The mainland. We stood in the Nags Dune hardware store parking lot by Neely's car. River was so pale. He leaned against his brother, eyes closed. Two bruises were blossoming on his face, one from the driftwood and one from Neely's fist, and they made him look even more helpless. Which pissed me off. He wore some of Neely's clothes now, just like Finch, and they hung loose on his starved sea king body. Fragile blue veins snaked across his eyelids, and his breath was rasping and frail. He seemed made of nothing but seawater and air. He looked . . . drained. More than Finch even, who had died and come back to life only a handful of hours before.

River kept rubbing his eyes and sighing and if I still had a heart I probably would have felt sorry for him.

But I didn't.

He was supposed to stop and he broke his promise and now he was paying the price.

The color had gone out of my world, watching River push Finch underwater and hold him there until he drowned. The color went out, just like Freddie, and Will, and
rocking back and forth, back and forth, her hair swinging between his elbows, blood soaking them both.

Canto put her back against the hood of the car and crossed her arms. Her black hair was un-brushed and curling up into tight ringlets in the morning mist. Her black eyes shifted, and looked River up and down. “So who is this?”

Neely moved River so he leaned against the car. River couldn't have looked less scary, right then, less like a sea king who had glowed up an island and drowned a redheaded forest boy and maybe even a dark-eyed Finnfolk too.

Neely gave Canto a deep look, and then nodded at River. “This is my brother. He went missing and we found him, finally, on Carollie. He's sick with the flu, and he's a bit delirious with fever. Nothing to worry about, though.”

Turned out Neely was a pretty good liar too.

I looked at River, and then at Canto. “Does he . . . does River look familiar to you, Canto?”

I felt Finch go still beside me.

Canto looked . . . lost . . . for a second, and then shook her head. “No. Why would he look familiar? Did he eat at the Hag's Shack sometimes?”

I shook my head, and then Finch did too.

Canto's lost look disappeared and her eyes went dark. “You're all hiding something from me.”

“All in good time, Canto.” Neely picked up Canto's blue suitcase, opened the trunk, and put it alongside his own expensive leather one.

“All in good time,”
Canto repeated. “Finch asks me to come with on a little trip, and he says it in such a way that I agree before I know what I'm doing. I leave my house, the Hag's Shack, my island, everything, and now I find out I'm traveling with a sick person and a bunch of liars.”

Neely laughed, and closed the trunk with a slam. “You're the one who jumped at Finch's invitation without even knowing where we were going. I can just picture you—dreaming of adventure every night while sweating over the grill at the Hag's Shack. Deny it. I dare you.”

Canto rubbed the tip of her short nose with the palm of her hand. “Fair enough. I've been itching to escape this island for a few days. My father gets to run around and see the world”—she threw a hand out toward the water—“so why not his daughter too? Carollie has nothing to keep me. Not anymore.”

“Isn't she a firecracker,” Finch said, his eyes on Canto, nothing but Canto.

“Neely,” I asked, because somehow no one had, “where are we going?”

Neely shrugged, and gave me one of his big grins.

I grinned back. I couldn't help it.

I looked up. The sky above was bright and blue and happy too, as if it didn't give a damn about whether Brodie was in Maine, or Colorado, or wherever the hell he was.

“I say we check out that town in the Rockies,” Neely said, answering my question. “The one with the talking trees and the missing kids.
Tall, thin, red-haired girl.
That's good enough for me.”

“Neely's got another sibling who might be in Colorado,” Finch explained, eyes still on Canto.

Canto raised her eyebrows. “Another missing sibling? Neely, you know what they say—T
o lose one sibling may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.
”

Neely laughed and laughed.

“Colorado is really far,” I said. “Too far to follow a rumor that's probably just nothing. I'm worried about Luke and Sunshine and Jack and that damn barn boy.”

“It's only three days, doing ten hours each,” Neely said. “I'll drive fast.”

I looked at River, gaunt and pale, still leaning against the car. He squeezed his eyelids shut against the sun and sighed softly. Then I looked at Neely.

I'd said yes to North Carolina without thinking.

Of course, we'd found River there, in the end.

“Call Luke from the road,” Neely added. “Make sure everything up north is all right. If there's anything strange going on, anything at all, we'll turn around.” He came up behind me and put his hands on my waist and his lips to my ear. “I don't want to bring River back to Citizen Kane, not while he's like this, Vi. I'm worried about your parents. And Jack. And Luke. And Sunshine. Let's give him a few days to recover, okay?”

“Okay.” Neely was right. Taking a weak, disoriented, sea king ex-boyfriend back to Maine to meet my parents seemed just about the stupidest thing I could do right then.

Neely laughed. Not a triumphant, I get my way laugh. Just his usual sweet, contagious laugh that brought me to my knees the same as River's damn crooked smile.

Neely, don't you take anything seriously?

He didn't. Mostly he didn't.

And I both hated this about him, and loved it.

I started smiling, hearing his laugh. I couldn't help myself, damn it.

“Good,” Neely said, grinning at me. “Let's do this.”