Текст книги "Endless"

Автор книги: Kate Brian

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Sisters Forever

“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.”

“That’s intense.” Liam’s brow knit. “How did I die?”

“You drowned, man. Undertow got you.” Fisher gave Liam’s shoulder an awkward pat.

“Please. There’s no way,” Liam said. “I’d never drown.”

“It’s the truth,” Fisher said. “If you hadn’t become a Lifer, I would have been your usher, so I saw the whole thing when I slapped you on the back before.”

“You saw my death?” Liam asked, blanching.

“Just one of the many special powers we Lifers have,” Krista said sourly.

“So how did you die?” Liam asked her.

Krista shifted atop the floral bedspread, tugging the hem of her white dress down further over her thighs. “I did something stupid,” she said, pursing her lips.

Liam looked around at the rest of us. “Like drowning?” he said lightly, clearly trying to put her at ease.

“No.” She glared at him. “I wanted to get my ex-boyfriend’s attention, so I took a bunch of pills, but I didn’t want to die.” Her eyes trailed off to the side as if she couldn’t bare to look anyone in the eye right then. “I just…took too many.”

“Whoa,” Darcy said.

“What about you?” Liam asked Fisher. Darcy and I both turned to look at him, curious.

“It was an accident on the football field,” he said. “I laid a hit on this guy, and bam!” He slapped one fist into a flat hand. “Neck snapped. Done.”

Liam whistled, and I looked Darcy in the eye. He’d just relayed that news like he was going over random stats of a game. Darcy blew out a breath.

“So what happened to him? To Nell?” Darcy asked me.

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember now that he was here…but how did he get here?”

I cleared my throat. “Well…I kind of killed him.”

“What?” she blurted.

“You killed a guy?” Liam asked, sliding to the edge of the bed so that his long legs dangled down. “How?”

His eyes were bright—kind of disturbingly bright considering the subject matter. But he had to be a good person to be a Lifer, right?

I turned my shoulder to him and concentrated on Darcy while I told the story.

“I was…well, basically I was dying.” I paused and took a breath, hating the act of remembering this. “But I got his knife away from him and I…”

I trailed off, unable to find a way to complete the sentence that didn’t sound like something from a bad horror flick. I jammed it into his stomach? No. I gutted him? No. Instead, I stared out Darcy’s window at the house across the street. The gray house I’d been obsessed with when we first moved here, certain that someone was watching us from its windows. And, of course, I had been right. Tristan had been watching me. Keeping tabs on the new potential Lifer. A horrible, sour burning spread through my stomach as I remembered the day he’d taken me there—showed me the spot from where he’d watched. The day I’d first tried to kiss him and he’d rejected me.

The house was still now. Dark. Like everything else on this damn island.

“Wow. Rory, can we just talk for a second about how badass that is?” Darcy exclaimed, her face still shimmering with tears.

I flinched, my skin tightening. There’d been a time, not so long ago, when it had felt badass. When I’d felt proud of myself for ridding the Earth of the man who killed fourteen girls and took my family as his swan song. But now, it no longer felt that way.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Are you kidding me? Just think about the giant favor you did for the world,” Darcy said. “Right now there’s some random girl running around playing soccer or hooking up with her boyfriend or shopping with her mom, and she’s only doing it because you offed the asshole who was coming after her.”

“She’s right, you know,” Krista said. “You’re a hero, Rory.”

I tried to smile, but I realized, as Darcy eyed me proudly, why I felt so conflicted. Because when I took Steven Nell’s life, I hadn’t been thinking about the random girls I was saving or even the girls he already murdered. I’d been thinking about me. I’d been thinking about my family and what he’d done to us. And I’d been pissed. I’d slain the man out of revenge, plain and simple. And there was nothing pure or heroic about that. Did I even deserve to be a Lifer?

“What about Dad?” Darcy asked, wiping her eyes and sucking in a loud breath. “Where’s he?”

And there was the question I’d been dreading the most. She remembered him, now that she was a Lifer. A few days ago, when he’d moved on, I’d mentioned his name and she’d looked at me like I was crazy. Now her eyes were filled with guarded hope. I didn’t want to tell her—didn’t need to tell her just yet—about how wrong things were. I decided to keep my answers short.

“He’s moved on.”

“So Mom and Dad are in the Light.”

She didn’t ask it, just stated it. And I didn’t contradict her. My eyes met Fisher’s. He cocked one brow. I shot him a silencing look that I hoped Krista picked up on.

“We’re never going to see them again?” she asked, her voice breaking.

I cleared my throat. “No.”

She wiped her eyes. “Okay. This is a lot.”

“I know,” I said. “But the good news is, we’re going to be together. Lifers never move on. We’ll never have to say good-bye.”

Darcy’s eyes lit up, and she reached for my hand. “Really?”

I smiled. “Really.”

We sat there, clutching each other’s fingers and looking out at the rain. Back home, before we died, Darcy and I had been estranged for months—a stalemate over a guy I could barely even remember. She used to love stomping around the house, reminding me and my dad about how very soon she was going to graduate and how she’d be “outta here” without looking back. Then, I couldn’t have imagined sitting here with her like this, in peaceful, companionable silence. It was amazing how quickly everything had changed.

“I don’t know,” she said finally. “Do I really want to live with you forever?”

Fisher chuckled. I cracked up laughing and shoved her shoulder. It was a classic Darcy line, and I was glad to see she still had it in her. I knew that I should tell her what had been happening on the island—that my father and others were suffering needlessly in the Shadowlands and we needed to figure out how to get them to the Light—but I didn’t want to spoil this moment. The truth of her new existence and the news that she would never see our parents again were enough to take in on one day. I didn’t have to scare the crap out of her as well.

For now, I was going to let her process what she’d learned, and I was going to selfishly hold on to this feeling that was sprouting up inside me. This delicate, fluttering white hope that somehow everything was going to be okay.

There was a sudden flash at the corner of my vision—something was moving in the house across the street. I flinched. Then thunder rumbled in the distance, and I unclenched. It had been nothing more than a remote flash of lightning. The storm messing with my head again.

“What I don’t get is, why didn’t you tell me this before?” Darcy asked. “You’ve known for…how long?”

“A week,” I admitted.

“But she couldn’t have told you,” Fisher said. “And you can’t tell any of the visitors. If you do, you damn them to the Shadowlands—and you get sent to Oblivion.”

“Seriously? That’s a bit harsh,” Darcy said, looking over her shoulder at him.

He shrugged. “I don’t make the rules.”

“So, basically, if I want to relegate some asshole to hell I just have to tell him he’s dead?” Liam asked.

Fisher whacked the back of his head so hard his hair stuck up.

“Ow! It was just a joke!” Liam snapped, his face turning bright red.

“We don’t joke about stuff like that,” Krista said seriously. “Especially Oblivion.”

Liam shoved himself up and paced toward the closet. “I just found out I’m dead, okay? Excuse me for trying to lighten the mood.”

“Look, it’s just that there’s some history around here with this stuff. History no one wants to see repeated,” I said. “There was a Lifer named Jessica a while back who decided all the visitors deserved to know what was going on, so she told them. Just went around town, knocking on doors and spilling the truth.”

“So what happened?” Darcy asked.

“She got every last one of them a one-way ticket to the Shadowlands,” Fisher said grimly. “All those innocent people, damned forever.”

“For doing nothing wrong,” I added.

Lightning flashed again, and Darcy and Liam looked pale. Krista was about to say something when heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs, cutting her off. The floorboards in the hallway groaned, and there was a thudding knock on the door.

“Come in,” Darcy said weakly.

Joaquin opened the door, keeping one hand on the knob and one on the doorjamb. “You okay?” he asked her.

“I’ll live,” she said, then gave a quiet ironic laugh.

“Good.” Joaquin’s eyes flicked to me. “Mayor’s called a Lifer meeting at the police station. We gotta go.”

I looked at Darcy, and she endeavored to smile. “Duty calls?”

“Yeah,” I said, my stomach curling into knots. “But there are a few more things I’m gonna have to tell you on the way.”

So much for giving her time.

Evil Lurks

“Until further notice,” the mayor announced, “the island is on high alert.”

An uneasy murmur passed through the hundred or so Lifers gathered in the open area in front of the police station’s high front counter. As municipal buildings went, it was fairly small, and we were crowded shoulder to shoulder, some sitting in plastic chairs along the walls, others perched atop the marble counter, and still others—the overflow—hanging out around the officers’ desks. I glanced at my friends—Bea, Lauren, Krista, Joaquin, Fisher, and Kevin. No one said it, but we could all feel Tristan’s absence. Across the room, Pete and Cori huddled together near a potted palm. Cori’s dark curls half covered her face, and her gaze darted furtively here and there as if she thought we were here to accuse her of something. Pete glanced at us and did a quick double take, then pulled his baseball cap low on his head and trained his eyes on the ground. Everyone else was intent on the mayor, who stood at the center of the room with a three-foot radius of open space around her.

“What does that mean, exactly?” the man who ran the grocery stand asked.

Darcy shifted next to me, her arm brushing mine. She had changed into a dry black T-shirt and rolled jeans and stood straight and tall, taking everything in with a discerning, if slightly apprehensive, expression. She had dug out the butterfly necklace my mother had given her for her twelfth birthday and clasped it around her neck. Now she toyed with the pendant, sliding it up and down on the chain. For a girl who’d just had her entire life turned upside down, she was handling it surprisingly well.

“As you know, we’ve had a watch posted at the bridge for the past four days.” The mayor nodded to Officer Dorn and Chief Grantz, who began passing around stapled packets of paper. “From now on we will post similar watches in various spots around the island. Everyone will have a shift or two each day. I want you to keep track of the visitors. Where they go, who they’re with, what they’re up to. We need your help to keep track of who’s here and whether they’re ready to move on.”

Dorn handed each of us a schedule. Darcy and Liam flipped through theirs, then locked eyes, mutually overwhelmed. I was glad Darcy wasn’t the only newbie dealing with this situation. It was good to have someone in the same boat with her.

“You’ll see we’ve also put some of you in charge of the children,” the mayor continued. “As of last count, we have eight kids under the age of twelve on the island. They are staying at my house up on the hill, the better to keep them out of danger. Krista has managed to scrounge up some toys and video games from the relic room, and we’re planning to set up a playroom in one of our parlors. We need to keep these young souls as innocent as they were the day they arrived here, so if you’re in their presence, please, no mention of the unpleasantness we’re experiencing.”

The chief returned to her side and leaned in to whisper in her ear. Her jaw set, her expression darkened, and she nodded.

“Chief Grantz would also like me to remind you of our other special visitors,” the mayor continued. “It has been five days since we’ve moved anyone off this island. We’ve been concerned about those destined for the Light who might end up in the Shadowlands, but there are also those souls who belong in the Shadowlands—souls who committed heinous crimes in their lifetimes who should have been moved immediately to their final destinations. Those souls are now roaming free among us. We cannot usher them as hastily as we normally would, because we can’t risk them mistakenly ending up in the Light.”

She scanned the room slowly, and the murmur rose up again, louder and more urgent this time. I thought of Ray Wagner mocking the survivors this morning and shuddered.

“We must prevent these souls from harming our innocents and ourselves,” the mayor said darkly. “To that end, I would like everyone to stay after this meeting and register the names of any soul you are certain was destined for the Shadowlands, so that the rest of us may keep a close watch on them. When we finally rectify the issues we’ve been having, they will be the first to cross over.”

“Why not just lock them up in the jail?” someone shouted.

“We don’t have the space,” Chief Grantz replied. “Plus we don’t want to arouse suspicions by plucking people off the street and locking them up. This is a small island. Word would get around.”

“We can control the situation if we stay vigilant,” the mayor added.

Darcy turned to me, her eyes wide. “Nell? He’s gone, right?”

I grasped her wrist. “Long gone.”

She blew out a sigh but didn’t look comforted. I couldn’t blame her.

Out of nowhere, Joaquin stepped forward to share the circle with the mayor.

“There is some positive news today!” he announced loudly, his voice ricocheting around the room. “Two new souls have proved themselves worthy of being Lifers. Everyone, we’d like you to meet Darcy Thayer and Liam Murtry!”

There was a smattering of applause, which, at Joaquin’s cheerleader-type gestures, grew into a rousing ovation as Darcy and Liam waved awkwardly.

“We’ll be initiating them tonight, at midnight, at my place,” Joaquin continued. “I realize with the new schedule it will be a smaller group than usual, but if you can make it, it’d be good to have you there.”

He stepped back next to me again.

“Not the cove?” I whispered.

“In this weather? Personally I’d like to be dry for more than fifteen minutes in a row,” he replied under his breath.

I nodded. “Good point. Where exactly is your—?”

The mayor cleared her throat, staring us down. I stopped whispering. “Thank you for that interruption, Mr. Marquez,” she said acerbically. “Now, our last but certainly most pressing order of business is to locate Tristan and Nadia and bring them back here for questioning.”

The entire atmosphere of the room shifted, and from the pained looks on the faces of those around me, everyone felt it. Tristan was this island’s Golden Boy and had been for generations, but by now everyone knew what he’d done. The sense of betrayal was so thick it was suffocating.

“Please check your schedule. If you’ve been assigned to one of tonight’s search parties, see Chief Grantz, who has kindly separated a map of the island into quadrants and will assign one to each party.” She paused as papers fluttered and people compared schedules. “If we stick together and do this in an orderly fashion, they will be found and we’ll get to the bottom of this mess.” She took a deep breath. “Are there any questions?”

The double doors opened suddenly, and a howling wind tore through the station. It was those creepy twins from the clinic. They each wore clear plastic ponchos and had slicked their white-blond hair down and to the side, with opposite parts, so that they looked to be mirror images as they stepped toward the mayor. Their eyes slid left and right, taking in their surroundings. They stayed so close to each other that I assumed they were holding hands, but once they were clear of the crowd I saw this wasn’t the case. The backs of their knuckles were merely touching between them.

“Can I help you?” the mayor demanded.

Their scanning eyes snapped forward at the same time and focused on her. “Yes,” they said in unison. They lifted their hands to remove their hoods with such perfect timing it looked rehearsed.

Lifers around the room exchanged disturbed glances. Good. I wasn’t the only one who was completely wigged out by these two.

“I’m Selma Tse and this is my brother, Sebastian,” the girl said in a reedy voice. “There’s no Internet, and we can’t get cell service, even though our phones were protected inside our bags.”

“We just walked through town, and the place is pretty much deserted,” Sebastian added. They turned their heads in opposite directions, sliding their suspicious eyes around the room.

“It seems as if everyone is…here,” Selma said. “Together. The entire town.”

“What’s the deal with this place?” Sebastian added. “It’s not normal.”

Thunder rumbled outside. The pendant lights overhead flickered and half the room gasped. I instinctively grabbed Joaquin’s arm. Silence.

“I’m sorry, was there a question in there somewhere?” the mayor asked impatiently.

“Yes,” Sebastian began, taking a step forward. “Who are you people? How did we get here when neither one of us remembers even deciding to leave home? And what the hell is Juniper Landing?”

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.

The Vane

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 suddenly 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.