The scene that greeted us inside the house was astounding. Every last stitch of cozy, beach-house furniture in the sprawling great room had been cleared away, and in its place were rows of cots, each covered with a plain white sheet. Krista and Lauren moved about, efficiently smoothing bedding and setting up gauze and bandages and bottles of antiseptic on tables. On the far side of the room, the injured streamed in through the front door, where they were checked in and assessed by Police Chief Grantz and the mayor herself. Pete and Cori helped their patient onto a bed nearby.
“Where should I take her?” Liam asked me.
“See the blond woman by the door?” I said, gently rubbing the girl’s back. “She’ll want to take a look at her.”
“Got it,” he said, and carried the little girl toward the mayor.
“Come on, Myra. Let’s get you a bed,” I said.
“I don’t want to cut the line,” she said a bit uncertainly as she glanced around.
I smiled. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
We took a step, and Myra listed to the side. Panic gripped me as her eyes rolled up, and I desperately tightened my grip on her, but it was impossible to hold her suddenly lifeless form. Pete noticed and rushed over to help, ducking under Myra’s opposite arm.
“What do we do?” I said.
“Here. Get her to the bed.” Pete nodded at the nearest cot. Together we staggered toward it and turned around, sitting down with Myra between us.
Myra groaned and her head lolled forward. Then her arm fluttered off my back and she touched her hand to her head.
“What happened?” she asked.
“You fainted. I think.”
“You should lie down, but keep your head propped up,” Pete said. I shot him a questioning glance. His green eyes were bloodshot and his nose was red. Sweat poured down his face. “My dad was a doctor,” he explained to me under his breath. “If you’re faint or dizzy, you’re supposed to rest but keep your head over your heart.”
“Good thing we ran into this nice young man,” Myra joked.
I smiled at Pete, who sort of grimaced in return. “Yes. A very good thing,” I said. Pete and I were not the best of friends, considering that not so long ago he and his pal Nadia had accused me of ushering innocents to the Shadowlands. This was the first time I’d spoken to him since Tristan and Nadia had fled, thereby exonerating me and making themselves look guilty as sin. Maybe that was why he currently seemed unable to look me in the eyes.
Once Myra was propped up on a few pillows, she gave me a nod and patted my arm. “Thanks, Rory. You go see if someone else needs your help.”
“I’ll be back,” I promised her. “Thanks, Pete,” I added.
But he had already moved on to the next bed to help Cori with another patient.
I turned around to do the same and was immediately overwhelmed by the frenzy of activity. Darcy and Fisher were leading people to cots while some of the older Lifers tended to wounds and complaints. The stream of “survivors” coming through the door was never ending, and I wondered whether we’d even have enough room for all of them. That was when I spotted a pair of people so odd they momentarily took my breath away. Huddled together a few beds from where I was standing were a guy and a girl, about twenty years old, with white-blond hair in the exact same bowl-cut style, their bangs wet and scraggly over their foreheads. Their features were so similar—broad foreheads, straight noses, angular chins—that I might not have guessed their genders except for the fact that the girl was wearing a plain black dress while the boy wore dark pants and a white shirt. They both had light blue eyes and their skin was an olive hue. Their temples were pressed together as they whispered to each other, but their gazes darted around the room, taking everything in. It was eerie—their awkward pose, the way they were communicating so intensely without looking at each other. An eerie, bloodcurdling sort of fear moved slowly through me, the way the fog had engulfed the beach my first night here. Something wasn’t right about them. I could feel it.
“Rory!”
I quickly wove my way over to Krista, who was waving me down. She had pulled her blond hair into a low ponytail and was looking a lot less freaked than she had down by the docks. Somehow she’d managed to change into a dry white cotton dress and flip-flops and was setting up an oxygen tank, flipping switches and turning knobs like she’d been doing it every day of her life. I glanced over my shoulder at the creepy twins. They were watching me. I forced myself to turn my back to them. Pretend they weren’t there.
“How do you know how to use that thing?” I asked Krista.
She turned to me and shrugged. “I don’t. Does it look like I do? Cool.”
I snorted a nervous laugh.
“Here. Let’s unpack this box of supplies,” Krista suggested, lifting a cardboard box onto the nearest bed. “That I know how to do.”
“On it.”
We tore into the box and pulled out a few first aid kits, some inflatable pillows, and a bunch of ice packs that needed to be chilled. While I worked, I felt the twins’ gazes on me, but when I looked over again, they’d gone back to their freaky darting-eyed communication.
“So who’s the hottie? I saw you come in with him.” Krista nodded toward Liam and the mayor, who were talking over the girl’s head near the door. The mayor gestured toward her office and gently took the girl from Liam’s arms. Liam watched them go until the door closed behind them, and I breathed a sigh of relief. In five minutes the girl would be done longing for her mom. That was something, at least. At the moment, I was sort of longing for mine, just like I did whenever something awful or confusing happened. But my mother had died over four years ago, well before the rest of us had ever heard of Juniper Landing. At least I knew she was safe somewhere in the Light. She would never be a part of this insanity.
“Only you would ask that at a time like this,” I said, half joking.
Her blue eyes widened. “Like you didn’t notice? Please.”
“His name’s Liam Murtry,” I told her.
“He saved, like, a dozen people,” Krista said, looking him over appreciatively from across the room. “It’s like Superman’s arrived in Juniper Landing.”
“Yeah, he seems pretty perfect. Which probably means he’s a psycho ax murderer.” I meant it to come out as a light quip, but my tone entirely missed the mark. Who could blame me, though? I was turning out to be a seriously bad judge of character.
Krista fixed a sort of probing look on me.
“What? First my favorite math teacher kills me,” I said under my breath. “And then I fall in love with the guy who’s taken it upon himself to shift the entire balance of the universe?” I shook my head and took the last roll of gauze out of the box, then ripped the bottom of the box open to flatten it. “From now on, I’m not trusting my instincts about anyone.”
I cast a cautious glance over at the twins again. Their temples were still locked, their lips still moving. They gave me the heebie-jeebies, which meant they were probably the loveliest people I’d ever meet in my life. Well, my afterlife.
“I still don’t know how everyone is so convinced that Tristan betrayed us,” Krista whispered. “I mean, it’s Tristan. He can’t be the bad guy.”
“Then where is he, Krista?” I snapped. “Why doesn’t he come back and plead his case?”
How could he have done this to us? What could have made him turn on innocent people? On my dad? On me?
Krista was just opening her mouth to respond when her mother and Officer Dorn stepped up behind her. The mayor’s thin lips were set in a grim line.
“Girls,” the mayor said. “We need to talk.”
I didn’t trust the mayor. Which was only fair, because I was pretty sure she didn’t trust me. As Krista and I followed her back into her octagon-shaped office, Joaquin and Dorn fell into step behind us. Good. I felt safer with Joaquin at my back.
I glanced over my shoulder at Darcy to make sure she was okay and saw her wrapping an elderly man’s ankle with a bandage, chatting with him and smiling. Once we were all inside the office, Dorn pulled the door shut behind us, and the chaotic din of the clinic softened to a dull, continuous hum.
Dorn stood in front of the door, his eyes sharp on me, his hands clasped before him like a Secret Service agent. Krista and I stood awkwardly in the center of the room, while Joaquin walked over to a leather chair and sat down in it casually, like he owned the place, his ankle resting on his knee. Outside the windows, the storm raged over the ocean, darker and darker clouds gathering. A broken tree branch, its jagged golden insides exposed to the rain, scratched an even tempo on the windowpane behind the mayor’s right shoulder.
“What can we do for you, Madame Mayor?” Joaquin asked, folding his arms behind his head.
She shot him a look full of venom, to which he merely cocked an eyebrow, then she sighed. “This has gone entirely too far.”
“Nothing like a good disaster to mobilize the local politicians,” Joaquin quipped.
“This is not a joke, Mr. Marquez!” she spat. “It’s high time we find Tristan and Nadia and find out what the hell is going on around here.”
“Oh, so now you believe us?” I asked. The mayor had refused to hear a word against Tristan. She didn’t want him to be guilty, so she hadn’t listened. I didn’t want him to be guilty, either, but I knew what I’d seen. I’d seen the guilt in his eyes when we found his stash of tainted coins, and I’d watched him flee.
The mayor’s eyes narrowed at me. “I’m not saying I think Tristan is guilty, but he has been here longer than any of the rest of us. He knows things about this island that none of us could possibly know. If anyone has the answers, it’s him. Is there still no sign of him or Nadia?”
Joaquin and I shared a hesitant glance. He sat forward, rubbing his hands against his thighs.
“We did find something,” he said slowly. “In a cave near the bridge. They were staying there. Very recently.”
“What?” Krista asked, paling. Her hand fluttered up to toy with the leather bracelet around her wrist—the same one every Lifer wore. Suddenly my skin started to itch beneath mine.
“And you didn’t go after them?” Dorn demanded.
“There was this whole thing where the ferry was sinking?” Joaquin replied sarcastically, rising to his feet. He was just as tall as Dorn and almost as broad. “It kind of seemed more important at the moment.”
“Well, put together another search party. Double your numbers,” the mayor ordered. “As soon as we get this mess sorted out, you’re to go out there and find him. This island is only so big. It’s not like they can stay hidden forever.”
“Speaking of this mess…” Krista said quietly.
We waited for her to finish. Outside, something crashed, and there was a scramble and a shout. The mayor closed her eyes and I saw her lips move as she counted, slowly, to ten. Behind her head, lightning split the dark sky and a boom of thunder shook the house. I gripped the back of the nearest chair as the residual rumbles lingered.
“What about it, Krista?” the mayor said finally, impatiently.
“Well, what does this mean?” Krista asked, turning her palms up. “If there’s no ferry…will people stop coming here?”
Joaquin and the mayor and Dorn looked to one another, as if waiting for someone else to have the answer. But we all knew that no answer was coming. Nothing like this had ever happened before. The mayor and Joaquin had been here longer than Dorn, but even with their century’s experience on Juniper Landing, there was no precedent for the mess we were currently in. Finally, the mayor walked around her desk and sat, resting her head against her fingertips, her elbows perched atop a perfectly clean leather desk blotter. She took a breath and then raised her chin.
“I don’t know, but if so, I believe it’s a blessing,” she said.
“A blessing?” Joaquin asked, his face screwed up in consternation. “A blessing that we can’t serve our purpose?”
“We couldn’t anyway,” Dorn put in. “We haven’t ushered anyone in days, and the town is at full capacity. We’re running out of beds and explanations for the weather, the fog, the crowded conditions.…Plus there are dangerous criminals walking around among the innocents, so yeah, I’d agree that the loss of the ferry for right now is a blessing.”
“But it doesn’t mean we can grow complacent,” the mayor said firmly. “With the storms and the overcrowding, it’s getting harder and harder to keep track of everyone. Do you even know how many charges you currently have on the island?” she asked, looking directly at me.
I pressed my lips together, thinking of the coins that had been appearing on my nightstand on a daily basis, which now sat in a heap at the bottom of the drawer. At first I had been able to keep a mental tally of the souls who had been assigned to my care, but after a few days of chaos, their faces had grown murky in my mind.
“No,” I admitted, looking at my feet.
“Do either of you?”
“No,” Joaquin and Krista chorused.
The mayor heaved a sigh. “We have to find Tristan. I want every available Lifer on it. We need to fix this situation, and we need to fix it now.”
There was a sudden rap on the door. Dorn moved to answer it, but it whipped open before he could get there, and Darcy stepped inside. Her posture slumped in relief when she saw me.
“There you are! It’s so insane out there, and you disappeared on me.”
She walked right into the room, as if she hadn’t interrupted anything, and hugged me. I glanced nervously at the mayor, waiting for the reprimand, but none came. Not even when Liam breached the doorway right after Darcy.
“Um…you might want to come out here,” he said to the mayor, gesturing over his shoulder. “People are starting to get restless.”
She nodded and stood, smoothing her platinum-blond hair over her ears and straightening her fitted suit jacket. Pasting a huge smile on her face, she walked around the desk toward me and my sister. “There is good news, however.”
“There is?” I asked, unable to stop myself from stepping protectively in front of Darcy.
“Yes. There is.” The mayor looked down her nose at me imperiously, her words clipped. “Darcy, Liam, congratulations! As of today, you are both Lifers. Welcome to the family.”
“What?” Krista blurted.
I looked at Darcy, my eyes wide. She, of course, had no idea what was going on. That she would be staying here in Juniper Landing forever—that we’d never be apart. I felt a sudden rush of selfish excitement even as a sort of surprising heaviness settled inside my chest. This also meant she’d never have the chance to move on—to truly be at peace. She’d never go to the Light and see my mom.
How was I ever going to explain her new reality?
“I’m sorry the news must be delivered in this hasty manner. There’s usually more subtlety involved,” the mayor said. “But under the circumstances, this seems the only way.”
I thought back to the way I’d found out—Tristan telling me on the beach that I was dead, then having Fisher knock me out cold when I wanted to tell my family, and waking up in a basement while the whole group of my new friends explained what I was. Not entirely subtle, but I didn’t feel like arguing the point.
The mayor shook Darcy’s limp hand, then Liam’s strong one, and stepped to the door. “You kids will fill them in, won’t you?” she said to me, Krista, and Joaquin.
Officer Dorn looked as stunned as the rest of us as he turned slowly and followed her from the room. The door closed with a bang behind them.
“Uh, what was she talking about?” Liam asked, his mismatched eyes wide.
“What the hell is a Lifer?” Darcy asked.
“Um…I…” How was I supposed to answer that question, exactly?
“Hello? Rory?” She waved one hand in front of my face. “Care to explain?”
I looked into her green eyes, so like my own and my mother’s, and took a breath. “Darcy,” I said, “I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news.”
There was really no other way to begin.
“Are we gonna get to see Mom?” Darcy asked me tearfully.
A lump jammed my throat, and I shook my head. Darcy and I were sitting on the window seat in her bedroom, our hands clasped between us, while Krista and Liam perched on the bed, Fisher hovering near the bottom post. He had insisted on being here for Darcy, so Joaquin had stayed behind at the clinic to take his place with the recovery effort. We had walked back to our house to deliver the news away from the madness, and Darcy had run right upstairs crying after hearing the basics. Both she and Liam had finally calmed down—his reaction had been to try to punch Fisher in the face, which hadn’t gone well. Now Darcy had just asked the question I’d been dreading more than any except for one.
“Mom moved on. A long time ago.” I took a breath, the pain of this hitting me all over again, and sat amazed at how it seemed to hurt worse each time instead of getting better. “So, you believe me?”
She sniffled and looked down. “He killed us, didn’t he?” she asked slowly. “That’s how we died—how we got here. Steven Nell killed us.”
I nodded, tears spilling down my cheeks.
“Oh my god, Rory.”
Darcy flung her arms around me and collapsed. She sobbed, her whole skinny body convulsing as her tears wet my shoulder. I cried as well, feeling the devastation of what had happened to us like a fresh stab wound to the chest. I don’t know how long we sat like that, with Liam, Krista, and Fisher silently, respectfully averting their eyes, but I do know that by the time we were done, I was exhausted. She released me, and I leaned sideways against the window, spent.
“So…wait,” Liam said, speaking for the first time in a few minutes. “You guys were murdered?”
I nodded. “It’s a long story.”