by Kate Brian
My fingers dug deeper into Joaquin’s arm. Normally the visitors here were programmed to think they were on vacation. They were sort of lulled into a sense of happy complacency. But not these two.
“I knew it,” I whispered. “I knew something was off about them.”
“Is someone going to answer us?” Selma asked, her voice ringing to the ceiling.
And from the looks in their freaky light eyes, they weren’t about to take no for an answer.
I speed-walked across town that night on my way to Joaquin’s for Darcy and Liam’s initiation, my head bent toward the ground, trying to stay as dry as possible. The sidewalks were crisscrossed with hairline cracks and deep fractures, a spiderweb of hazards in the darkness. Near the corner in front of the general store, one of the gutters was so packed with leaves the water burbled and rose around it, and I saw a dead mouse bobbing up and down on the swell, its eyes blank.
I shuddered and hurried on, wishing Darcy were with me. She’d been assigned to a late shift at the nursery and was meeting me at Joaquin’s. It was close to midnight, and the town that was quiet in midday was now graveyard silent, aside from the rain and wind. I saw a stray light illuminated in one of the upper windows of the library. As I was about to dip downhill toward the docks, something in the library window shifted. I paused, heart in my throat, clutching my hood together under my chin. A shadow passed through the light—a person, though it was impossible to tell whether it was male or female.
Maybe I was imagining things. Maybe it was a trick of light. But still, I stood there, alone and shivering, squinting across the rain-flattened grasses of the park. I was just about to call myself crazy and give up, when the figure appeared again. This time, instead of moving on, it squared itself in the window and stood there, staring out. Staring out at me.
Then out of nowhere, a flash of lightning blinded me, and a simultaneous burst of thunder vibrated inside my bones. When I looked up at the window again, the shadow was gone.
I turned around and ran.
Hurdling over fallen branches down the hill, I could feel someone—something—behind me, gaining on me, tearing with an otherworldly quickness through the night. Wind-tossed leaves swirled up in front of me, and my foot caught on a raised bit of sidewalk, but I righted myself and kept running. Suddenly I heard a sound cut through the rain. The distant music of the Thirsty Swan, the only business in town still booming. If I could just get there. If I could just find someone, anyone real, maybe I would be okay.
I skidded onto the boardwalk at the bottom of the hill and turned. There was nothing there. Someone grabbed me by the arm.
“Rory?”
I screamed at the top of my lungs, but it was just Liam. He was with a tanned girl with wide dark eyes and long black hair tucked under a poncho hood. The boy walking out the door of the Thirsty Swan and over to join them had to be her brother. He was shorter and tanner, but had the same beautiful eyes.
“Are you okay?” the girl asked me, her face lined with real concern.
I could only imagine how I seemed to her, my breath staggered, my eyes shot through with fear. I must have looked psychotic, haunted.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Sorry. It probably wasn’t the best idea to walk through the park by myself this late.” I extended a shaking, cold, wet hand. “I’m Rory.”
“Lalani,” she said with a smile, grasping my hand. “This is my brother, Nicholas.”
“S’up,” the kid behind her said with a nod and a smirk.
“Lalani and Nick were on the ferry, but they swam to shore on their own,” Liam said, looking at Lalani with a proud expression.
“You guys weren’t hurt?” I asked.
Nicholas shook his head. “We’re from Hawaii, originally. We know how to deal with rough water.”
“Hawaii,” Liam said giddily. “Isn’t that so cool?”
“Awesome,” I said, realizing suddenly what was going on here. Liam had a crush. A big one. On a visitor. “You’re still going to Joaquin’s, right?”
“Oh, yeah. I was just on my way. These guys are headed down to the hotel,” Liam said. He turned to Lalani. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon?”
“Rain or shine,” she replied, blushing.
Rain. It would definitely be rain.
Liam looked uncertain for a second, like he wanted to kiss her, but then he glanced at me and Nick and thought the better of it. Instead, he raised an awkward hand. “Okay. Bye.”
Lalani giggled. “Bye.”
Nick rolled his eyes, and they walked off together.
“We’re going surfing,” Liam said, staring after Lalani until the darkness swallowed her and her brother.
“That’s nice,” I said as we turned our steps down the alley between the Thirsty Swan and the Crab Shack next door. I had to leap over a puddle the size of a small lake, and Liam followed. “So, crushing on a visitor, huh?”
“Is it that obvious?” he asked.
“Kind of.” We skirted a Dumpster and found the set of stairs that supposedly led up to Joaquin’s apartment. “Just be careful.”
“What do you mean?” he asked as we began to climb. The staircase was slim and rickety, made with whitewashed boards that looked as if they’d been hammered together two centuries ago.
“Just…I don’t want you to get hurt,” I said, realizing in the back of my mind that—considering recent events—I might not be the best person to be giving romantic advice. Or instructions on how to protect his heart. “She’s going to be leaving soon. Moving on.”
Hopefully, anyway, I added silently.
“Oh. Right.” We paused on the tiny landing at the top of the stairs, outside the plain wooden door. He was silent and pensive for a split second before adding brightly, “Or maybe she’ll become a Lifer!”
I knocked on the door, smiling in spite of myself. It was nice to have someone around who was optimistic. I could hardly believe that earlier today I’d half suspected him of being an ax murderer. Joaquin opened the door, and his brows knit. He seemed confused at the sight of me and Liam together, but recovered quickly.
“Hey. Come on in.”
“How did I not know you live here?” I asked as Liam slipped inside.
“We moved here when we left the house on Sunset. Which you also never visited,” Joaquin replied with a teasing grin.
As I stepped over the threshold, I was pleasantly surprised. The living area was long and wide, mirroring the exact space taken up by the restaurant and bar below. A clean, modern kitchen and dining area were separated by half walls and columns from a sunken living room, where couches and chairs were set up in a conversational circle around a coffee table. Candles flickered inside hurricane-style holders, and two doors at the very far end were open to reveal a gray-and-white bathroom and what appeared to be a fairly large bedroom. A hallway led down the right side of the apartment toward the back.
Liam joined Bea, Lauren, and Fisher on the living room couches, where they were chatting as they sipped beer and soda from heavy-looking crystal mugs. Bea’s red curly hair was pulled back in a messy bun, as it had been ever since the rain started, and she wore a black-and-gray henley and jeans. Lauren’s short, glossy black hair was pushed back with a striped headband, and her blue Juniper Landing sweatshirt was so long it allowed only an inch of her khaki shorts to peek from under the bottom hem. Liam had shed his rain jacket to reveal a deep-burgundy T-shirt with some kind of blown-out logo on it and seriously distressed jeans. A trendy boy, definitely. Fisher was in his usual uniform of dark cargos and a light blue T-shirt so tight I could see every single one of his muscles.
“Hey, guys,” I said, handing Joaquin my soaked jacket as he closed the door behind me.
“Rory!” Lauren and Bea cheered.
“Where’s Darcy?” Fisher asked, straightening up to better see the door, as if expecting her to su
ddenly appear.
“She has a shift at the daycare with Krista. She’s coming straight from there.” I glanced over my shoulder at Joaquin. “Is Ursula home?”
He was reaching up into a high cabinet but turned to nod at the hallway. “She’s still not feeling well, so she went to bed early.”
The large metal bowl he was pulling out smacked against the top of the cabinet and let out a clang. The baskets underneath it started to spill out.
I reached up to grab the baskets before they could scatter everywhere, and he put the bowl down on the table, which was littered with bags of chips, plastic containers of dip, and some random vegetables.
“Are we having a party?” I asked. “I thought this was an initiation.”
“Is it weird?” he asked, showing a flash of uncharacteristic uncertainty. “I just thought, if I’m hosting…”
“No,” I said, and couldn’t help laughing. “It’s not weird.”
“Good.” His arms flexed beneath the short sleeves of his red T-shirt as he started to chop a pepper. I watched his hands as he worked, so adept and sure. It was riveting.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” I asked.
He lifted his hand and sucked a bit of pepper juice off his thumb. “When you cook for yourself for a hundred years, you develop some skills.” He nodded toward the dining area. “Could you grab me the wooden platter? It’s in the sideboard over there.”
“Sure.”
For some reason, I felt my heart rate thrumming in my wrists as I moved across the room, and I felt conspicuous. Fisher said something that made Bea and Lauren laugh and Liam blush. No one was paying any attention to me. As I bent to retrieve the platter from a low shelf, I noticed an old scrapbook open on top of the sideboard, its pages browned at the edges. The black-and-white and sepia-toned photos were held to the pages with black corner stickers. The book was flanked by a lit candle on each side, but they were both set a careful distance away from the book. I glanced at the first photo—a grainy shot of a lanky, smiling boy and a younger, round-faced girl in turn-of-the-century clothing—and dropped the heavy platter. It hit the corner of the sideboard with a serious clatter, but I somehow managed to grab it before it fell to the floor.
“God, Rory! Give me a heart attack!” Lauren said, hand to her chest.
“You okay?” Joaquin asked, coming up behind me.
“That’s you!” I blurted.
Joaquin nodded. “Yeah. That’s me and my sister, Maria.”
His sister. The one he’d killed in a car accident. His expression went distant for a moment as he eyed the photograph—not sad, exactly, just not here.
“How did you get this?” I asked. “Did you have it with you when you died?”
It seemed unlikely, considering he’d committed suicide alone in his attic. But the only things any of us had with us in Juniper Landing were those things we’d had on our person when we’d perished. Or in my and Darcy’s case, in our bags, since we’d been going into witness protection when Steven Nell attacked.
“No. It was my sister’s.” He took the platter from me, our fingers grazing. “I found it in the relic room about fifty years ago.”
He turned and headed back from the kitchen while my knees almost went out from under me. I placed one hand on the surface of the table and the other on the sideboard to steady myself.
“You found it?”
“Crazy, huh?” It was a light statement, but he didn’t say it lightly.
Slowly I tried to piece the implications of this together. If it was his sister’s and he’d found it in the relic room, then that meant that his sister had come through Juniper Landing when she’d died. When he’d accidentally killed her.
“So she…she had it with her when she died?” I asked, joining him in the kitchen.
“She must have brought it to church with her to show her friends,” he said as he wiped the platter clean of dust with a wet rag. His eyes flicked to my face. “I know. It’s freaky. I’ve had fifty years to contemplate how freaky it is. I killed her, she came here, and someone ushered her from here and tossed her stuff in the relic room only for me to stumble on it decades later when I was looking for a new needle for my turntable. I know.”
His hands started to shake as he wiped the platter yet again. I reached out and put my hand on his wrist, steadying him. He stopped moving.
“Does anyone remember her? Did Tristan…?”
I paused, his very name on my tongue causing my mouth to dry out. Joaquin shook his head. “No one really remembered her. I like to think it was because she was ushered straight to the Light.” His eyes shone as he looked at me, and he smiled. “She didn’t exactly have any unfinished business to deal with. That was all mine.”
My free hand fluttered to my chest. “Joaquin, I’m so—”
“Don’t.” He turned and put the platter down. “Seriously, don’t. It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine, but it is what it is.” He glanced across the room at the album and lifted a shoulder. “I’m glad I have it. It’s filled with good memories. And without it I’d have no images of anyone in my family, so…”
“Wow.”
For a moment, I couldn’t imagine the right thing to say. Joaquin stood still, his fingers pressing into the top of the kitchen island, the tips going white.
“Are you guys ever gonna bring the food in here?” Bea demanded. “I’m starving.”
I hurried to grab a bag of chips, then emptied it into a basket. Joaquin added the chopped vegetables to the platter and followed behind me.
“What were you guys talking about in there?” Fisher asked. “It looked pretty serious.”
“I was just telling Rory about some of the weirder visitors who’ve come through here,” Joaquin answered quickly, shooting me a go with it look as he set the platter down on the table. Bea darted forward and grabbed a handful of veggies before anyone else could move.
“Um, yeah,” I said. “Like those twins from the station? Totally weird.”
Lauren shivered, her hair shimmering in the candlelight. “I know, right? Those two give me the willies. I hope Chief Grantz was able to explain everything.”
“If not, can’t the mayor just wipe their memories?” I asked.
“Wait. The mayor can wipe people’s memories?” Liam said, sitting forward.
“To a degree,” Joaquin answered, sitting down on an empty love seat. “She only does it in extreme situations, when someone’s behavior threatens the peace or our cause.”
There was nowhere else for me to go, aside from the floor, so I sat next to him, leaning into the opposite arm.
“So why doesn’t she just wipe everyone who came in on the ferry today?” Liam asked. “That’s an extreme situation.”
“Because she gets sick if she does it too much,” Bea explained, tugging on one of her errant curls and wrapping it tightly around her finger. “It takes a lot out of her.”
“Really? I never knew that. Like how?” I asked.
“Like if she wiped the whole ferry, she’d probably put herself in a coma,” Fisher said, crunching into a carrot stick. “So you could see how it’s better to try to deal with people in a non-mind-meld way first.”
I blew out a sigh. “Wow. I guess every superpower has its limits.”
We sat in silence for a moment, until Lauren sat forward and grabbed some vegetables. “Remember Andy Warhol?” she asked, changing the subject abruptly. “That guy was nuts.”
“And Babe Ruth?” Joaquin shot back. “He was an animal.”
Liam’s jaw dropped. “You met Babe Ruth?”
“And ushered him,” Joaquin said with a laugh. “But only after he got me good and drunk.”
“What about you?” Joaquin asked, popping a cucumber slice into his mouth. “Who was the weirdest person you ever met?”
I instantly thought of Steven N
ell, but I wasn’t about to go there. “There was a kid at my school who could relate any situation in life back to Star Wars.”
“Seriously?” Fisher asked. “Like how?”
“Like this one time I had a fight with my dad and I was telling a friend about it, and this kid walked up to me and said, ‘At least he didn’t chop your hand off with a light saber,’ then walked away.”
Everyone laughed. “No way,” Lauren said.
“Yep.” I grinned and took another chip. “And then there was this girl who swore she was going to be a supermodel one day, so she walked around school for three years with a stack of books balanced on her head.”
“Was she hot?” Joaquin asked.
“Nope. Not even a little bit,” I replied, cracking up.
Liam’s brows knit. “What kind of crazy-ass school did you go to?”
Everyone laughed. I leaned back in the love seat and just let myself feel the joy of that one brief moment. Inside that cozy apartment with those people, there was nothing wrong in the world. We were just a few friends having fun.
“It feels good to laugh,” I commented.
“Yeah.” Joaquin looked me in the eye. “We should do this more often.”
My skin humming, I held his gaze, refusing to look away. Then Fisher cleared his throat.
“Where the hell is Darcy?”
The spell was broken. I glanced at my watch. It was twelve seventeen.
“Could she have gotten lost?” Liam asked.
“She knows where the Thirsty Swan is,” I said, immediately regretting my sarcastic tone. Liam had been here less than a day. He didn’t need me biting his head off for making perfectly acceptable assumptions. “Sorry.”
I got up and walked to the door, peering out the window beside it. Which of course showed me nothing but the side of the next building across the alleyway.
“Maybe she had to stay late,” Joaquin suggested, coming up behind me.
“Or maybe she was attacked by one of our resident criminals.” I reached for my coat.
“Where’re you going?” he asked.
“I’m gonna walk up to the mayor’s,” I said, flipping the still-wet hood up over my hair. “Hopefully I’ll bump into her on the way.”
