Will waited as she stared at the stars overhead.
“I have a story to tell you,” Asia said at last. Her voice was like a thin vapor, a fine mist dissolving on the air. “It’s a long story.”
“Will it clear anything up? Or will it just leave my head feeling like it’s going to explode?”
“Both, maybe,” Asia admitted.
Will touched her hair, brushing it away from her face. It trailed over his fingers like black ink.
“Just tell me.”
“Yes, but not here,” she said. “Then where?”
“Meet me at the library tomorrow morning.”
“I can’t. I have to go to work.”
“Then meet me there tomorrow evening. Six?”
“Okay, but you’ll be there, right? I don’t want you ditching me.”
Laughter sparkled in her eyes. “You haven’t figured it out yet?”
“What?”
“I’m not like you humans, Will. I can’t lie. That’s why I don’t talk very much.” She stood and brushed the sand from her long maroon dress. “You’ll hear the truth, but I can’t promise that you’ll like it.”
The next morning, Will and his father ate breakfast in their usual tense silence. When Mr. Archer was finished, he took his plate to the sink and headed toward the door. He nearly ran into Angus, who was on his way up the steps. “Hey, Mr. Archer.”
Will’s father nodded at him and kept walking.
“Wow, your dad’s cheery this morning,” Angus said as he scrambled inside and stuffed his long legs under the table in the seat next to Will’s. “Dude, are you going to finish that?” He pointed to Will’s scone.
“Yes.”
Unfazed, Angus plucked the remnants of Will’s father’s toast from his plate and started smearing pear jam on it. “Your mom makes the best stuff.”
“Why are you here?”
“What’s wrong with everyone this morning?” Angus demanded. “What happened to ‘Hey, Angus, great to see you’?”
“Great to see you. Why are you here?”
“Something freaky happened. I kind of wanted to tell Gretchen, but I’m not sure how.”
“What?”
“You remember Jason Detenber?”
“That asshole,” Will said.
“Don’t say that too loud,” Angus advised.
“Why not?”
“He’s dead.”
“What?” Will felt sick. His throat constricted, making it hard to breathe.
“Well, he’s disappeared,” Angus admitted. “My guess is he’s fish food.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Remember that white jacket he had? I saw it at the police station. Only it wasn’t too white anymore, if you know what I mean.” He lifted his eyebrows meaningfully at Will. “It was in an evidence bag. But nobody was saying anything. Not anything. I mean, guys who can’t help talking were suddenly like clams. They didn’t even want to say hi to me. I think my uncle scared them silent. But Jason’s family is rich. The truth is going to have to come out, sooner or later.”
The image of Jason and Asia on the bridge flashed into Will’s mind. The way he had moved toward her threateningly. The way she’d twisted backward and flipped into the water. Jason’s horror. Asia’s watchful face, her eyes upturned from the water. Had she marked Jason for death at that very moment? Had he sealed his own fate, like the sailors in the journal?
But Will didn’t say any of this to Angus.
“Gretchen’s gonna freak,” Angus noted.
“Yeah,” Will agreed.
“You wanna tell her?” Angus asked hopefully.
The knot in Will’s stomach tightened at the thought of facing Gretchen with news like that. “No, I really don’t,” he admitted.
“But you will,” Angus said.
“Do I have a choice?”
“You’re a good man,” Angus told him.
“Not really.”
Angus sighed. “Okay. I mean, maybe he’s okay. It’s not like anyone really knows what happened, right?”
Just one person, Will thought. But what he said was, “Right.”
“Oh, hey—and guess who’s in rehab?” Angus tipped back in his chair, stretching his long legs under the table.
“Is this person a celebrity?”
“Just a local one. Kirk Worstler.”
“Seriously? Where’d they get the money?”
“Word is Adelaide finally called the grandparents. They’ve got him locked up in some fancy place in Hampton Bays.” Angus stood up and helped himself to some fresh coffee.
“Listen, speaking of Kirk, it seems that he left a gift in Gretchen’s room.” Will explained about the painting.
“Oh, shit. Okay, I’ll call Uncle Barry. He’ll get it taken care of.” Angus shook his head. “That poor kid. I’ll bet the Miller won’t even press charges.”
“Thanks, man. I owe you.”
Angus held out his fist for a pound. “We gotta stick together.”
“Sure.”
“Sure? Just—you know, ‘sure’? Man, how about some enthusiasm?”
Will managed a smile. “We gotta stick together,” he said.
When Johnny came to the door, he told Will that Gretchen was upstairs in her room and said Will should head on up. Will took the steps slowly, dreading the moment when he would have to deliver the news. But when he pushed her door open gently, he saw that the room was empty. The normal chaos was unusually tidy—the bed was made and the large painting was spread out over it. Will stared down at the image of the fierce bird-women on the rocks in the distance. Their expression made his heart splutter, starting and stopping in frantic motion. He completely understood why it gave Gretchen the creeps. He wondered what Kirk had been thinking when he left it for her. He was glad the kid was finally in rehab. For Kirk’s own safety—and everyone else’s.
A movement caught Will’s eye, and he looked out of Gretchen’s window. There was the green bluff, and beyond it, the blue-gray sea. A figure in green stood at the edge of the bluff, long blond hair sweeping down her back. Gretchen was looking out to sea like a sailor’s wife, waiting for her husband’s safe return.
Will hurried down the stairs and out the door. His legs ached as he climbed the bluff. A lonely seagull cried overhead. Finally Gretchen came into view, and Will slowed as he got near her. He didn’t want to frighten her.
Gretchen didn’t turn around. “Jason’s dead,” she said. Her voice was heavy, and it was weary.
“How did you—?”
“Do you think that there’s anything to what Kirk was saying?” Gretchen asked. She gazed out at the distant horizon, a faraway look on her face. “About angels?”
“I don’t know,” Will admitted.
“I wonder what it’s like.”
“What?”
“Being dead.”
Will shrugged. “It’s like being asleep.”
“Sleep without dreams.” A gentle breeze lifted a lock of her hair. She had added colorful strands to the blond. With the blue and green streaks, she looked like a storybook mermaid.
“Yeah.”
“How do you know?” Gretchen asked.
“I don’t. It’s just what I think.”
“I don’t think that’s what it’s like,” Gretchen said. She seemed on the verge of saying something else, as if the words were like bits of mist assembling into clouds in her mind. There was a long beat of silence as Will waited for her to go on. “Sometimes I think I can hear them,” she said at last.
“Dead people?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Will studied her profile, noticing the dark circles under her eyes, how pale her skin seemed beneath the light kiss of sun across her nose. He’d always thought of her as walking sunshine, but now the light within her seemed dim. Very dim. “Have you been sleeping?” he asked her.
She laughed, and the sound was brittle on the wind. “Stupid,” she muttered.
“What?
”
“Forget it.”
“No, wait—what did I say? What was stupid?”
“Not you, me,” Gretchen snapped. “I should have known.”
“Known what?”
“Known that if I told you the truth, you’d think I was nuts.” Gretchen narrowed her eyes at him.
“I don’t think you’re nuts,” Will told her. He reached out and pressed her hand. Her skin was soft beneath his own.
She looked down at their intertwined fingers. Her hair hung over her face, half obscuring it.
“I’m just afraid,” Will said.
Gretchen’s eyes met his. It was strange to see that gaze, at once so familiar and so unfamiliar. There were flecks of green in those blue eyes. It was as if you could see the whole world in Gretchen’s irises. Will wondered if he’d ever noticed that before.
He didn’t remember.
She placed her cheek against his chest, as if she was listening to the beat of his heart. Will placed an awkward arm around her shoulder, wondering what to say, what to do. “I’m afraid, too,” Gretchen told him.
“Jason might be okay. Just because they haven’t found a body—”
“They never found Tim’s body.”
Will was rocked with the truth of this. He was speechless.
Gretchen pulled back to look up into his face. “I—I’m sorry,” she sputtered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with—”
“No—” He held up his hand. “It’s true. Sometimes, I think part of me is still waiting for him to come back.”
“We could wait forever.”
“I know.”
They stood there like that for a while, both staring out over the water, flat as a blank page. “It’s so strange,” Gretchen said after a moment. “I was sleepwalking again last night. Here. At the edge of the water. Do you think that means something?”
“Out here? I thought Johnny was locking you in.”
“I must have climbed down the maple tree,” Gretchen said.
“So what are you going to do? Nail the window shut?” Will was kidding, but Gretchen didn’t laugh.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Gretchen,” Will said slowly, “who told you about Jason?”
“Asia did.”
“She did? She called?”
“She came by.”
“Is she still here?”
Gretchen’s eyes filled with tears, which mystified Will. “I—I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I just need to ask her—”
Gretchen shook her head. “It’s okay.” She ran her fingers along the rims of her eyes, then wiped the tears on her loose green jersey dress. “Sorry. I’m just … everything is making me cry today.” Tears welled in her eyes again, and Will pulled her into a hug.
“We’re going to get through this,” Will said.
Gretchen nodded her head against his chest. “I know,” she said. “I just wish I knew what was on the other side.”
Chapter Eleven
From the Walfang Gazette
Happy 375th Birthday, Walfang!
Saturday marks the 375th anniversary of the founding of Walfang, which was—along with Boston, Salem, and New York City—one of the eastern seaboard’s most important port towns during colonial times. There will be a parade and concert to celebrate the founding.…
The library was a small white Greek revival building that had stood at the center of town for two hundred years. Two incongruously thick columns guarded either side of the periwinkle-blue doors, holding up the tiny roof with Atlas-like drama. It could have been the library in any small town, except that the names of the authors who were scheduled to perform readings were the kind of names you saw in New York City, for a fee. Every author in the Hamptons wanted to appear there, both to show how “community-oriented” they were and to prove that they belonged in the famous-authors club.
The warm, slightly sweet smell of old books haunted the place. Gretchen used to drag Will here on weekday afternoons. They’d to go to the children’s section, at the back, where she’d poke around among the novels while he checked out nonfiction. Will had always liked biographies, which made Gretchen roll her eyes. “Real life is boring,” she’d say. But not the real lives he read about. He’d gone through a period in which he read everything he could about Ernest Shackleton, an explorer whose ship became stranded in Arctic ice in 1915. He liked stories about survival.
The librarian didn’t look up from her computer screen as Will shut the door gently behind him. The library was nearly empty. A pouty boy with pale blond hair sat in a corner while his slim mother chatted on a cell phone. He reached for a book from the top shelf, and the mother’s gold bangles jangled as she snapped at him and frowned. The kid scowled. He looked freshly scrubbed, as if he were on his way to a photo shoot. Will felt sorry for him.
Asia was on the other side of the library, at a table near the windows. An open book was spread out before her, but she wasn’t reading. She was looking out the window. Will slid into the chair across from hers.
“I shouldn’t have left him on the bridge,” Asia said. Her face was dark as the sea beneath a coming storm.
She didn’t need to explain whom she meant. Will knew she was talking about Jason.
“Did you have anything to do with what happened?” Will asked.
“Not directly.”
“Not directly?” Will looked at her carefully. “Or no?”
She continued to stare out the window. “There are beaches, far from here, where, if you kick the sand at night, it sends up tiny green sparks. It’s just a phosphorescent microorganism. Plankton, that’s all. But it looks like starlight at the edge of the water.”
“Am I supposed to know what the hell you’re talking about?” Will replied. He wrestled his voice into a hoarse whisper rather than a scream. “How about some clarity? Yes or no, Asia—did you kill Jason?”
Asia looked at him then with those crystalline green eyes. “No.”
“Did you kill my brother?” The words spilled out of him, sharp as tacks.
Asia’s green eyes softened. “No, Will,” she said gently. “No.”
Will’s tense body relaxed ever so slightly. He believed her. Maybe I shouldn’t, he thought, but I do.
Asia smiled sadly, and she pushed the book toward him. “Were you ever made to read this?” Asia asked.
Will flipped to the cover. It was a worn cloth-bound edition, the dust jacket lost long ago. Gold letters were nestled into the faded navy cover. The Odyssey, it read.
“Freshman year,” Will said. “I don’t remember much about it. Didn’t they gouge out somebody’s eye?”
A smile played at the corners of Asia’s lips. “The Cyclops, yes.”
“And didn’t Ulysses kill all his wives’ boyfriends?”
“They weren’t her boyfriends,” Asia corrected. “They just wanted to marry her for her money.”
“I guess I remember the bloody parts,” Will admitted.
Asia pointed to a passage near the bottom of the page. “Do you remember this?”
Will scanned the page.
“Read it out loud,” Asia commanded.
“ ‘First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them.’ ” Will hesitated. The words seemed to crawl over his skin, tickling up memories from the journal he’d read. He looked up at Asia, who was scowling out the window.
“Go on,” she whispered.
“ ‘If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead men’s bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them.’ ” Will looked at her closely. “So what exactly is a Siren?”
“Siren, mermaid, naiad, Oceanid … there are many names,” Asia said. “Many names for the same thing.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“What we ar
e? Who knows?”
“You’re not human?”
Asia laughed. “No.”
Will sat back in his chair. He looked at her carefully—her perfect skin, her luminous eyes, her silken hair. She did look almost unreal. Still, hearing it from her own lips made him feel a little dizzy. It wasn’t that he was surprised. It was more like he was relieved. At least I’m not crazy. Or at least I’m not the only crazy one. “So …”
Asia lifted an eyebrow.
“Do you have …” He shook his head, searching for the word.
“A fin?” she prompted. “Yeah. I guess.”
“No. No, I don’t turn into a fish or a bird. No, it doesn’t feel as if I’m walking on glass every time I take a step on land. No, I didn’t give my voice to a sea witch.”
“So what’s different about you? Do you have superpowers?”
Asia looked out the window. “We don’t die. If you consider that a superpower.”
“Don’t you?”
Asia’s expression turned a shade darker. “Not really.”
“You don’t die, ever?” Will had a hard time grasping that. He never used to think about death, but now it seemed like he thought about it all the time. He couldn’t really imagine what it would be like to never have to worry about that.
“Not that I know of. Perhaps we just have a long life span. Perhaps we’re immortal. None of us has ever died of natural causes, at least not that I know of. But we can be killed.”
“So—wait a minute. How old—”
Asia toyed with the frayed edge of the old book. “I remember many things,” she said. Her eyes met Will’s. “Many of these things.”
“That stuff in the book? That—”
“We have lived among humans for a long time. Some of us, like Calypso, even married among them.”
“This Calypso?” Will pointed to the book.
“The very same.”
Will thought that over, fighting the damp, clammy feeling that was slowly creeping up the back of his neck. He held his head in his hands and suppressed the desire to run screaming from the library.
“It’s hard to hear, I know,” Asia said.
“It’s hard to believe.”