ChapterOne
October 2048 - Demon’s Tooth, Farallon Islands, The Elvish Protectorate
Clementine Ortega was being hunted.
At least, she was pretty sure she was. It was hard to say for certain, but the likelihood that a predator stalked her in the violent, wind-tossed surf was high. In all honesty, she was surprised it had taken as long as it had for one of her new neighbors to notice her.
It was a rare, bright sort of day. The sky was clear of even the wispiest of clouds and the sun warmed the barren slope of the triangular island, giving the thin grass that clung to its face an almost uncanny glow. Everything, from the green of the scrubby vegetation to the blue of the sky, seemed too sharp, too saturated. It was as if she’d stepped into a dream.
Most days on Demon’s Tooth, the unofficial name for the largest island in the Farallon chain, were not very pretty. It was a lucky day when she could see the outline of San Francisco from her beach. Mostly she saw nothing but an empty stretch of dark water and fog.
Dipping her paint roller into the tray perilously balanced on top of an overturned bucket, Clementine made sure it was good and coated in the thick, weather-resistant paint before turning back to the thick metal wall of her new home. The salty breeze picked up her wavy hair. It would have tossed strands into her mouth and eyes if she hadn’t pulled it back with a pale green scarf knotted into a bow behind her left ear.
Moving with calm efficiency, she rolled the baby-blue paint onto the wall and pretended like she didn’t feel a predator’s gaze on the back of her neck.
After several strokes, Clementine twisted to peer in the direction of the city, ostensibly to admire the view, but really to scan the waves, looking for the heart-stopping sight of a dark fin cutting through the waves.
She stood on the tiny island chain’s only semi-accessible beach. All around her, walls of sheer, weatherbeaten rock made the island a fortress. Once upon a time, the Protectorate’s government tried to maintain a lighthouse on the top of the highest slope, but after three disastrous decades and a string of lost lives, they’d abandoned it to the elements.
She had no trouble understanding why they’d tried for so long, though. Peering into the distance, she could just make out the wavering outline of San Francisco. Between her beach and the shoreline lay a thirty-mile stretch of water known as Grim’s Bay.
There was no telling how many people had died in that stretch of treacherous water, but most estimates were in the low thousands. If even the elves, all-powerful and almost indestructible predators that they were, agreed to cede their rights to what could be an extremely lucrative shipping channel, the threat had to be extraordinary.
That threat was not simply the weather, which she’d learned was some of the deadliest and most unpredictable on the west coast. Nor was it the jagged rocks that ringed the Farallon Island chain and gave it the nicknameDemon’s Tooth.
It was the people who called Grim’s Bay home.
After over a dozen disappearances and murders, the islands had been abandoned by the Protectorate. Nearly two centuries had passed since then. No one in their right mind would choose to set foot on the islands, let alonelivethere.
Except Clementine, of course.
Despite all the warnings, despite her boss’s blatant attempts to dissuade her, despite her family’s vocal concerns, she was determined to make Demon’s Tooth hers.
She thought she’d been making good work of it, too.
Her sturdy hiking boots, well-worn and tied with fraying glow-in-the-dark laces, crunched in the pebbled, seashell-littered beach as she rolled paint onto the final section of the rectangular building that was her new home.
It had been air dropped onto the island the week prior to her arrival. The back half, where the entrance and a small garage were located, sat on the beach. The rest stretched out over a heap of huge, sea-life speckled boulders, supported by stilts, to hover over the water, where a moon pool would allow her to easily come and go in the miniature submersible they’d provided.
The house itself was rather sterile-looking. The walls were a uniform pale gray only broken up by at least a dozen large windows. This was not done for aesthetic purposes, but for safety. If danger approached, her bosses wanted her to be able to see it coming.
In that event, the home could be almost instantly converted into a bunker, which explained why it looked a little bit more like a shipping container than a cozy, seaside home.
After complaining about the dour design to her sister, Nelly had suggested a coat of bright paint — her solution to most issues. Nelly always knew what colors to use to make a space seem bright and cheerful, even when that was a tiny bedroom in a rundown cabin or a tent or a hole in the wall apartment. When it came to home renovation, Clementine was her little sister’s assistant.
She never complained. What was there to complain about, anyway, when you lived with your best friend in the whole world?
There was nothing in the world her little sister enjoyed more than a buttercup yellow or eye-watering magenta. When she was eleven, she’d declared that electric green was hernew colorand wore it exclusively for six straight months.
Nelly was always doing things like that — trying on new metaphorical hats, searching for something to define her identity outside of… well, her relationship with Clementine.
She’d hoped that three months would be enough to finally acclimate to living without her sister by her side, but every time she thought about her new life, Clementine was overwhelmed by a monumental sense of loss. Nelly was only a telepathic touch away, but after a lifetime of being attached at the hip, it was unnatural to not simply turn around to find her vibrant sister trailing behind her, ready to give her opinion at any moment.
Their sisterly bond was as rock-solid as it had ever been. They just happened to be thirteen-hundred miles away from each other. At Nelly’s request. Becauseshewanted to live her own life.
It used to hurt to think that her sister was so desperate to find herself outside of their bond, but?—
Don’t lie to yourself,she thought, scowling at her paint roller as she pushed it through the paint again.It still hurts. You can know something is healthy and still not like it.
