Surrendering (Swans Landing) (9 page)

My lip curled in disgust. “They are not my kind. These people are completely different from the finfolk here in Swans Landing. I’m not like them.”

Luis stood, his eyebrows raised. “You lie, you hurt people. Seems that you’re not that much different.”

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t deny what Luis had said. I had lied, to a lot of people. And I had hurt more people than I’d ever wanted to.

But I was not like Domnall. I knew that deep in my gut. I would never be like him. I would never hurt people the way he did to get what I wanted.

“I should go,” I said.

Luis nodded. “You probably should.”

At the door, I paused, my hand on the painted wood. I looked back at Luis, who was now polishing utensils by the stove.

“Please just be careful,” I said. “And keep an eye on Mr. Jasper.”

Then I pushed the door open and left the kitchen, walking across the silent dining room to the front door of the Sand Dollar. I had done what I could to help the humans of Swans Landing, but I hoped it would be enough.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sailor inspected a jar of pickles and then tossed it into the basket she had set on the floor by her feet. “Do you like olives?” she asked me.

“Not really.” I leaned against the shelf of ketchup and other condiments and sighed. “Sailor, are you even listening to me?”

“No,” she said, sticking her tongue out at me. She nudged the basket with her foot, moving it down the aisle to the display of rice and pasta. The basket was already nearly overflowing and it didn’t look like she was done shopping yet. The cabinets at Miss Gale’s house were looking pretty empty, most likely due to the fact that Miss Gale hadn’t left her house in months.

“You need to talk to Dylan,” I told her again. “He’s upset about you bringing Callum back with you. I think you should go talk to him about it.”

Sailor shrugged. “It’s not my problem if he’s jealous now. He didn’t care to take notice of me all these years. I moved on and found someone else. If he doesn’t like it, whatever. I don’t care.” But the edge to her voice told me she did care, even as she scowled at a bag of white rice before tossing it into the basket too.

“Look,” I said, “it’s not my business who you want to be with. If it’s Dylan or Callum, that’s up to you. I’m not getting into the middle of your relationships. But there’s something bigger at stake here, and we all need to work together if we want to survive. So you need to talk to Dylan and get him to trust that Callum is on our side. I’m afraid of what might happen if we start fighting with each other.”

Sailor sighed. “I’ll try to talk to him. But I can’t make any promises that he’ll listen. Dylan can be stubborn sometimes, when he wants to be.”

“Tell me about it,” I muttered. “You’re not the one who had to go out on watch with him this morning. I’m glad Lake agreed to let me go alone next time.”

“When are you on duty again?” Sailor asked.

I looked up at the dusty old clock hanging over the door of Moody’s Variety Store. “Half an hour,” I said. “I’ll be there until tonight. So you don’t have to worry about me for dinner.”

Sailor frowned. “I’m not worried about feeding you. You’re welcome to what we have. Jim told me to take what we need.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m used to not eating much. I can survive on peanut butter sandwiches, remember?”

Sailor made a face and I laughed. She had probably had enough peanut butter sandwiches while we were in Scotland to last her the next year.

The bell over the door jingled and we both turned to see who had come in. Mr. Connors stood in the doorway, his dark eyes locked on us.

“Tell me Elizabeth’s not with him,” Sailor muttered, turning back toward the shelf in front of her.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “But he’s bad enough by himself.”

I hoped Mr. Connors would go on about his business, but his heavy footsteps on the wooden floor sounded as if they were coming straight for us. He stopped only a few steps away and I felt his eyes scanning the two of us.

“Shopping?” Mr. Connors said. “I thought your kind liked to just steal the catches right out of my crab pots. Easy dinner for you, right?”

Ignore him,
I thought, trying to send a silent message to Sailor. She seemed to be unusually interested in a jar of spaghetti sauce.

“I got a visitor this morning,” Mr. Connors said. “That fool guidance counselor from your school. Seems you all brain-washed him into believing your stories about
bad finfolk
coming to take over. He tried to tell me not to go out on my boat anymore. Like I have a choice. I don’t fish, my family ain’t got no food. Not that it matters, with your kind stealing my catches anyway.”

“You should listen to Mr. Richter,” I said. “These finfolk could come at any time. You don’t want to be out there, facing them alone.”

Mr. Connors sneered at me. “I ain’t scared of nobody, boy, least of all freaks like you. I’ve dealt with the trash of your kind long enough to know that the only good finfolk is a dead one. Like your daddy.”

I clenched my teeth, but I forced myself not to slam my fist into his jaw.

His gaze flicked toward Sailor and he looked her up and down, his lip curling. “Too bad you found your mama still alive, girl. Just when we thought we’d rid this island of one piece of trash, you had to go and bring her back.”

I reached out to grab Sailor and hold her back before she could lunge at Mr. Connors, but another figure stepped between us. Jim Moody stared at Mr. Connors, an ancient double barrel shotgun clutched in his hands.

“Harry,” Mr. Moody said, his eyes never leaving the other man’s face. “I’ll have to ask you leave my store. I ain’t tolerating harassment of my customers.”

Mr. Connors’s face twisted into a snarl. “Ain’t I your customer, Jim? Or you gone soft over these freaks too?”

The shotgun rose steadily as Mr. Moody aimed it at Mr. Connors’s chest. “I’ll ask one more time, Harry. Leave, or you’ll never make it out of here in one piece.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve grown a conscience now,” Mr. Connors snarled. “She may be your granddaughter, but she’s just as much an abomination as the rest of them. You made a mistake long ago with her grandma. We can all understand that, the way they use their songs to manipulate and control us. But if you don’t watch yourself, Jim, the rest of us might not be so understanding anymore.”

Mr. Moody raised the shotgun until the barrel was pointed at Mr. Connors’s head. “I’ll give you three seconds to get the hell out of my store.”

Mr. Connors opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. He shot us all one last glare before he stomped out of the store.

Mr. Moody lowered his gun, his shoulders sagging. Then he turned and looked at Sailor.

“If he bothers you again, let me know,” Mr. Moody said. He nodded once to me, then started back down the aisle, swinging the gun at his side.

“Thanks,” Sailor said. She didn’t look at him, but stared at the jar of spaghetti sauce she rolled back and forth between her hands.

Mr. Moody paused and glanced at her, then at the floor. “How is Gale? And…your mama?”

Sailor set the jar back on the shelf and then bent to pick up her shopping basket. “You should come see for yourself,” she said. She hitched the basket onto her arm and then disappeared out the door, the bell jingling behind her.

* * *

“It’s freezing out here,” Mara said as she sat down on the edge of my beach towel. She offered me a thermos. “I brought you some soup.”

The plastic bottle felt good on my cold fingers and I cupped my hands around it as I smiled gratefully at her. “Thanks,” I said.

Mara leaned close to me, slipping her arm through my elbow. “No problem. It sucks you got one of the late shifts.”

There were three of us at different points along the ocean side of the island, working in eight hour shifts. I had volunteered to take an overnight shift, but Lake insisted that the adults would do that. I had bitten my tongue to keep from pointing out that my eighteenth birthday had already passed and therefore, I was technically an adult.

“When do you think they’ll come?” Mara asked. The last bits of sunlight were fading behind the foggy clouds and we couldn’t see very far into the water. But I peered into the distance as hard as I could, my eyes watching for any shape that seemed out of the ordinary.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t think it will be much longer. Even without them knowing the exact way, they couldn’t have gotten too far behind.”

Mara’s grip on my arm tightened. “I keep hoping they won’t come. Maybe they’ll get lost.”

“Or eaten by sharks?” I asked, with a smirk.

Mara laughed. “We can only hope.”

I shared the hot soup with her, though I noticed she didn’t drink much. Mara had had an early day shift at Pirate’s Cove. I figured Lake had arranged that to put her at the least likely place for the finfolk to appear. My shift was near the lighthouse, where we all expected the finfolk to come. The light would guide them directly to our shores, but there was no way we could turn it off without risking other boats and ships running aground.

When Mr. Richter arrived to take over the watch for me, Mara and I walked back toward her house. The streets were still quiet and empty. It felt like mid-winter, not late summer.

“Why is it so cold and cloudy?” I asked. I slipped my arm around Mara’s shoulders and pulled her closer to me for warmth.

“It’s been this way since winter,” Mara said. “It’s like it never really went away.”

I looked up at the mist swirling in the sky over our heads. “It reminds me of Hether Blether,” I said. Something tickled in the back of my mind as I spoke this thought. Like I was missing something I had overlooked. But no matter how hard I searched my thoughts, I couldn’t figure out what it was.

“What do you think these finfolk will do when they get here?” Mara asked. “Will they make us all go back to Hether Blether with them? Will they move here?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure exactly what Domnall wants to do. He says he wants to save the finfolk from dying out, but if he just wants more people in Hether Blether, then we could give directions to anyone who wants to get there. His coming here is not a good sign. He has no sympathy for humans.”

We reached Mara’s door and paused on the steps, facing each other. I leaned my forehead against hers, closing my eyes and enjoying the warmth of her body.

“I wish everything could stay like this,” she said. “Just you and me.”

I kissed her, wrapping my arms tight around her waist and pressing her into me. I had wanted this, all those months I was gone. I wanted her, all of her.

But then I thought of my dad and I pulled away.

“What’s wrong?” Mara asked.

“Nothing,” I said. I couldn’t meet her eyes and when I tried to kiss her again, she moved out of the way.

“Don’t tell me nothing,” Mara said. “I’m the queen of ‘nothing.’ Something’s wrong. I can see it on your face.”

I traced a crack in the wooden railing next to me with my thumb. “Do you ever wonder what makes people attracted to each other?”

“You mean besides the prospect of sex?” Mara grinned.

My cheeks burned hot, but I went on.

“I mean, it all seems so fickle, doesn’t it? How can you be in love one day and want nothing to do with each other the next?”

Mara’s eyes narrowed as she studied me. “What is this about, Josh?” Her voice held a worried tone.

“My parents,” I said, and Mara’s expression relaxed a bit.

“What about them?” she asked.

I ran a hand over my hair. “I have to believe that at some point, my parents were in love. They got married, they made me. There must have been some kind of attraction there. So if that was true, why did my dad fall in love with someone else so easily?”

“Your dad made a conscious choice. He knew what he was doing and he could have chosen not to act on it.”

“What made him decide to throw away his marriage for another woman? Was it the human part of him, or was it the finfolk trapped inside?” The questions haunted me every second.

“It’s not a human or a finfolk thing, it’s a personal decision. He could have kept his distance from Sailor’s mom, or he could have divorced your mom first.”

“It just seems like it’s too easy to hurt someone you think you love,” I said.

“What’s really wrong with you?” Mara asked. “There’s more you’re not telling me.”

I closed my eyes, letting out a long breath. “What if I’m like him? I don’t want to hurt you, but what if I can’t stop myself from doing it one day?”

Mara gripped my chin, turning my face toward her so I could look into her eyes. “Josh, you are not your dad. Whatever he did, it was his choice. It doesn’t mean you’ll do the same things he did.”

I knew she was right. The words sounded so reasonable. But I couldn’t chase away the feeling inside me, like there was something waiting to fall apart because I’d make the wrong choice.