I heard Cate’s gasp as we walked into the clearing. The dead birds. Nobody had bothered to remove them from this isolated spot. It remained a little graveyard, the air ripe with the smell of death. There were hundreds of them, scattered between the tree line and the riverbank, in various states of decomposition. Some were nearly whole. Others were just shadows, the silhouettes of outspread wings overlaid with bones and mud-crusted feathers. A few were scorched carcasses, pitch-black arrangements of bones. I shifted back, stepping on the small twisted knot of a bird lying right at my feet. Not the work of Gina Grassi, after all, but of Fiona. Her presence felt stronger here, this direct evidence of her existence, and goose bumps rose along my arms. That dead bird outside my house—a secret signal I’d missed.
Isabelle was scanning the landscape.
“All right,” I said. “So we’re clear on the plan, right?” My stomach was a tight knot of anticipation. I didn’t see anybody here yet—just the swaying branches, the sunlight, the birdsong.
“If they want this diary back, they’ll hand over the film they stole from my house,” Isabelle said. “I know they have it. They bragged about it to me when I told them to meet me here.” She smiled. “We have something they want too.”
Delilah’s diary. A record of everything. Every interaction. Orange Shirt’s real name, right there on the page. What he’d done to her. The growing violence. They hadn’t suspected that Delilah would write it all down. Even in all the chaos of Kithira, Isabelle had the foresight to take the book from Delilah’s bedroom. All along, she’d been operating on a different level than me, and I hadn’t noticed. I thought of both our mothers, trying to bring their dreams to life, always at odds. We couldn’t repeat that same pattern now.
“So the men come here, you hand over the diary, they give us the film,” Cate said. “Then what? They just walk away and we walk away and we’re all copacetic?” Her optimism twisted something tender in me.
But looking at Isabelle’s face, I knew the truth. “It’s a trap,” I said simply. “The diary is just the bait.” We were the jaws of the trap, designed to snap shut tightly around them.
“It’s for the Strouds. And for my mother,” Isabelle said, and all the grief that she’d been concealing beneath that blank layer of control flared to the surface for a second. “These men are a threat to all of us. I wouldn’t have asked you two if I wasn’t absolutely sure. I’m stronger when the two of you are with me. Haven’t you noticed?”
“Yes,” Cate said. “Before I met you, I couldn’t heal anything stronger than a broken bone.” She looked at me, and I remembered the rush of coming back to life. “You’ve changed me, both of you.”
I thought about how quickly I’d learned to use my abilities, how swiftly they’d grown from that first uncertain moment to something that was part of me, automatic and powerful.
“Look at who we are. Look at what we can do. Why are we running from anybody?” Isabelle’s face, veiled with the lacy shadows of the leaves, was holy and fierce. “They’re the ones who should be afraid.”
Cate gazed beyond the edge of the clearing. “They don’t look afraid enough to me,” she said, voice wavering slightly.
I turned. As if they’d been extracted from my restless nightmares, they were there. Three men came toward us, slow and deliberate, ambling as if they had all the time in the world. Two were strangers, but I knew one of them. Orange Shirt, today not wearing orange. Dressed all in blacks and blues, bruise colors. The man who’d killed me.
Instinctively, I moved closer to the woman who’d brought me back.
The sun hovered hot at its peak, the noise of the cicadas throbbing. The river spread out only a few yards from us, a jewel-bright green. For a moment I almost expected Black Shoes to be here with his gentle sneer. The three of us pulled together, arranged with our backs to the trees. I couldn’t help thinking that this secured an escape route.
The men had seen us. They spread out as they came through the trees. Cate was right: They didn’t look afraid. They’d come this far to hunt us down, even knowing what we could do. They’d seen what Isabelle did to Black Shoes. The Strouds had struck their entire town—men poisoned in their beds. Still, they looked at us and saw the familiar shapes of those who could be manipulated, tricked, bent and hurt and discarded. Women whose fear was a comforting undercurrent beneath each kiss, smile, scream. They saw what they were used to seeing.