The Price Guide to the Occult(21)

“Apparently all the humpback whales in the area sing the same song,” Reed said, coming up behind her. He brushed up against her arm, and Nor’s pulse began to flutter. “Kind of like they have their own dialect or something.”

“There’s no way those are all whales,” said Grayson, who’d also stepped outside. He pointed to more shadowy shapes in the water, including several close to shore.

“It pains me to admit this,” Savvy said, “but I think he might be right.”

“What are they then?” Reed asked.

Nor left the others on the porch and went into the yard, away from the light of the Tower and to listen more clearly to the mournful song of the whales and whatever other creatures were out there. She definitely heard a hint of something different in the whales’ voices. Something restive, Nor thought. The hair on the back of her neck started to prickle. Something dark and disquieting.

Without a word to the other three, Nor walked to the edge of the property and pushed her way through the overgrowth until she found the trail leading down to the beach. A mess of brambles and naked tree limbs crisscrossed over her head, forming a tunnel that made Nor feel like she was in a scene from Alice in Wonderland.

The trail was unusually overgrown, as if the forest had turned suddenly savage. The plants greeted Nor with hostility and snagged her exposed skin with sharp thorns and stinging nettles. Nor didn’t remember the trail ever being this difficult to navigate.

Behind her, someone cursed. The thistles must have gotten them as well.

Nor stopped at the end of the trail and waited for everyone else to emerge. A piece of Grayson’s sweatshirt had been torn. Reed had scratches on his cheeks, and Savvy had one across her forehead.

The beach stretched two miles in either direction, connecting with Meandering Lane at one end and with a small inlet leading to Celestial Lake at the other. Though not the most beautiful, the beach had its own kind of triumphs — the view of the archipelago being one of them. The water glittered in the moonlight like diamonds. Squinting, Nor could spy the barnacle-covered tail of a humpback whale. The faint whine of a powerboat could be heard in the distance.

Grayson took off toward the water’s edge, Savvy following closely behind him. She shrieked every time one of her bootheels got trapped in between the rocks.

“Shall we?” Reed asked. He held out his hand, and Nor suddenly wished she could push a giant pause button and suspend time. In that moment, she didn’t want to think about her mother or about whatever was going on out there in that cold water; all she wanted to think about was that Reed Oliveira was holding his hand out to her. And for a moment, time did exactly that. It paused. And then Nor stepped off the path, slipped her hand into Reed’s, and followed him onto the beach.

“I was right,” Grayson called. “Those aren’t just whales.”

“What are they then? Mermaids?” Savvy teased.

“No, not mermaids,” Grayson snapped.

The tinny whine of the powerboat grew louder as it cut through the waves. It shined a spotlight over a cluster of creatures in the water. Nor could make out breaching Dall’s porpoises, and the long extended arms of a giant Pacific octopus waving wildly like the mythological kraken. Jet-black dorsal fins revealed the largest orca pod Nor had ever seen. Barking steller sea lions, harbor seals, and otters dove in and out of the waves. Sea birds glided overhead, their eerie witch cackles filling the sky.

They were all moving in the same direction. They were all moving north toward the Pacific Ocean, as if they were all running from a common enemy invading the cold waters of the archipelago.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Reed said.

“Maybe they know something we don’t.” Savvy teetered warily away from the shore. “Like the way dogs act really weird before an earthquake is about to hit?”

While the others debated their own theories, Nor shut her eyes and tuned them out. The thoughts of all those sea creatures trickled over her like water in a creek. At first, it was hard to separate one creature’s thoughts from another. She quickly realized it didn’t matter, that they were all conveying basically the same thing.

Nor paled, and her skin prickled with horripilation. Still clutching Reed’s hand, she backed away from the water’s edge, fear piercing her like a thousand arrows.

Savvy’s right, she realized with a start. They’re afraid of something that’s drawing nearer. They were afraid in the way a herd is afraid when a predator stalks them, readying to pick them off one by one. Something out there, something dangerous and unnatural, had them spooked.

The powerboat had finally bumped its way to shore. Nor recognized the girl at the helm as Charlie Coldwater, her cousin Gage beside her. She cut the engine sharply just as a Jeep, almost as dilapidated as the old boat, rumbled down the beach toward them, sending an arc of rocks over their heads, and stopped.

“Hey!” Savvy called indignantly. “What the hell?”

The Jeep was yellow but thickly splattered with mud. Both doors and the roof were missing. The driver, a tall young man with chiseled features, slammed the Jeep into park and leaped out almost before the vehicle came to a complete stop. The passenger, on the other hand, seemed uninterested in what was happening in the water, though it was hard to tell behind his dark aviator sunglasses.

“Well?” the driver of the Jeep called to the Coldwaters.