“And she told me the two of you were lit from the same match.” I’m staring now, mouth open, because he couldn’t have known that. Not unless Elora had said those words to him. Our special words.
The tinkle of wind chimes floats across the boardwalk. “That ring was really important to her,” he says. And whatever little bit of glue is holding me together, I feel it start to melt under the heat of Zale’s ice-fire gaze. “It was the most precious thing she had to give. Because it came from you.”
His words flow over my soul like fresh water out of the ground.
“She loved you, Grey. So much.”
My heart falls out of my chest and splashes into the river. I look over my shoulder to watch it float downstream until the current sucks it under.
Because everyone keeps saying that. That Elora loved me. But if that’s true, why did things end the way they did last summer?
I’m off and spinning again.
Spinning and spinning and spinning.
I grab for something to hold on to. An anchor. Any little bit of hope.
“Do you think there’s a chance she’s out there somewhere?” I ask. “Alive?”
“No.” Zale shakes his head, and I watch that blond hair fall across his eyes. I’m glad when he reaches up to push it back. Because I need that light. But his answer cuts deep. “She’s gone, Grey. I feel it.”
“Me too,” I whisper, and a sharp-toothed hole opens up somewhere in my heart. It eats me alive when I say those words out loud.
It isn’t a sudden realization. The permanence of Elora’s loss has been stalking me all summer. I haven’t been able to admit it to Hart, but how long have I known it, deep down?
Since I picked up Case’s bloody medal a few hours ago?
Since I got off the mail boat that first morning home?
Since the visions started?
Since that phone call from Hart way back in February?
Or since the night before that? The very night Elora went missing – even though I didn’t know it yet – when I woke up in the dark, sick and dizzy with loneliness that hit me like a sudden flu.
I’m shivering now. Shaking so hard I’m afraid I’ll crack open. I’ve never felt this kind of cold before. A cold so deep it hurts.
“I need to go inside,” I mumble. “I need –” I stop and suck in a rattling breath. Choke back a wail. Because all I really need – all I want in the whole world – is Elora.
And Elora is dead.
I’m frozen solid as Zale walks me back toward the Mystic Rose. We stop in front of the bookstore, and he reaches for my hand. As soon as Zale wraps his fingers around mine, a tingling heat surges up my arm and lodges somewhere in my chest. Under my ribs. When he looks at me, I see all the way down to the bottom of those eyes. And they are deeper than the Gulf of Mexico and ten times as blue.
Something flutters loose inside me.
And my heart starts to beat.
“Be careful, Grey,” he tells me. Evie’s wind chimes start up. There’s a warning in them this time, and when Zale speaks, something in his voice echoes that sound. “This town is poison. Elora knew that. She’d want me to make sure you know it, too.”
I start to tell him he’s wrong about that. That La Cachette is my home, and as much as Elora might have wanted out, it was her home, too. But before I can form the words, Zale squeezes my hand and fades into the dark. I look down at my fingers, and I can still feel the strange tingle of his electric touch.
I step inside the Mystic Rose and close the door behind me, and the rain comes again. Not angry, like before. Gentle. Like tears. The lights flicker a few times, then come back on, and the air conditioner shudders once and begins to hum.
I blink against the brightness as I cross to the half-price shelf to search out a small blue book that I know is hiding there. Secrets of Numerology Revealed. I find it and turn to the section on number eleven.
I see all the things I already know. Power and wisdom . . . but also chaos. The unbalancing of ten. A universe spiraling out of control.
But then there’s this: In the tarot, eleven is the card of Strength and Justice. It represents the courage to stand strong in the storm and face your own worst fears.
I close the book and slip it back into its spot. Then I flip the light off on my way out of the shop.
In my tiny bathroom, there’s a puddle of muddy water on the floor. I clean it up with a dirty towel, but the smell of the swamp still hangs in the air. I go to the window and slide it open just enough to let in the damp breeze and the scent of rain.