Dark and Shallow Lies(62)

My eyes adjust, and I look around the clearing to see signs of life.

A tiny tent leans at the edge of the tree line. A few belongings are scattered around. A bedroll. A razor lying on a rock. There’s a fire ring. And a cooking pot with no handle. A discarded can of beans lies nearby, and a homemade fishing pole leans against a tree.

I take all that in. Because I can’t stand to look at the spot where Zale’s own childhood nightmares were born.

The bones of the cabin where his twin brother died.

Aeron.

Number twelve.

I don’t want to look at the drowning pool, either. I’m trying not to imagine Ember and Orli. White dresses billowing out around them. Trailing blue ribbons the color of a cloudless Louisiana sky.

Fish nibbling at their staring eyes – swimming in and out of their open mouths.

I don’t want to know what they looked like when they pulled them out of the water.

Faces gone. Limbs swollen black.

But somehow I do know.

Zale is silent. I feel him watching me. Waiting. Curious. And I don’t know if I can do what I need to do. I’m not sure I have the strength.

The deep power.

But I have to try. Because it’s the secrets that fester.

I let go of Zale’s hand and slip the little silver hummingbirds out of my hair. I hold them tight in my fists. Then I close my eyes and think about my mother. I don’t move. I stay so still so long that my legs become cypress trees, rooted deep in the soft ground. I become part of the landscape of the bayou. Like the saw grass and the water hyacinth and the duckweed.

And then I open my eyes.

Zale doesn’t move. He doesn’t talk. I don’t even hear him breathing.

I wonder if he’s still there. I hope he is. But I can’t turn my head to see, because I’m staring at my mother. Not inside my head, like a dream. But standing right there in front of me. Flesh and blood.

She isn’t looking in my direction, though. Her green eyes are fixed ahead. Focused toward the cabin. She’s beautiful. Young and slender. Radiant in the grey predawn light. But the look on her face is fierce. Determined.

There’s an explosion of light, and my mother smiles.

Satisfied.

I see the orange glow of the fire reflecting off the little silver hummingbirds clipped in her long hair.

Two of them.

And then I feel the heat.

I smell the smoke as real as anything.

But it’s all silent. No voices. No crackle and snap of flames.

Dead still.

The smoke fills up my nose and burns the back of my throat, so I turn away.

Away from the cabin.

Away from my mother.

Away from the other woman. The one who runs right by me as she slips unnoticed out the back of the inferno, clutching a little blond boy to her chest.

My eyes come to rest on the stagnant pond. The drowning pool. Two small shapes float side by side in the center of all that black water.

Firelight on white dresses.

Blue ribbons like the strings of a kite.

And just for a split second, I hear voices. Like someone turned the radio up.

All the way.

Angry shouting.

The noise of a crowd.

One person is sobbing.

Someone else is screaming.

The next thing I know, that’s all gone and I’m on the ground. Zale is holding me. Calling my name. Hugging me to his chest. Everywhere our bodies touch, there’s that tingle. He helps me to my feet, but I’m unsteady, so he keeps a hand on my elbow.

I open my fingers to stare at the little silver hummingbirds, and I know I have to tell him the truth. Even though I don’t want to. Because we’re all bound up by our secrets.

And that has to stop with me.

“My mother,” I whisper. “She’s the one who started the fire.”

Overhead, there’s a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning so loud and so bright that I’m temporarily deaf and blind. My ears ring and I see spots. A surge of electricity rips into my elbow and up my arm to slam straight into my chest. It’s a white-hot burning. Immediate and violent. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I cry out in pain, and the force of the jolt knocks me backward. I land in the mud at the edge of the drowning pool, and I just sit there with my hand over my racing heart, gasping for breath. My muscles are cramping, and my vision is blurry. Everything tingles. And there’s a strange metallic taste in my mouth. Thunder rolls again. The power in it makes me shake.

“I’m sorry,” Zale tells me. “I didn’t mean – I’m so sorry, Grey.”

“I need to go home,” I whisper.

Zale holds out his hand to help me up, but I hesitate. I’m still struggling for breath. “It’s okay,” he tells me. “I promise.”

So I let him help me to my feet, but I’m too weak to stand. He scoops me up like I don’t weigh anything at all, and I wrap my arms around his neck. Zale’s skin is warm and soft. Alive with energy.

It’s fully night now, but he never stumbles. He carries me out of the woods and down to the edge of the water. But he doesn’t say a word. And then we’re in the boat.

Killer’s Island fades to black behind us.

Zale is taking it slow because of the dark, navigating the shallow channels with a sureness that Hart and Case would be hard-pressed to match. Like he’s lived here all his life.