A ribbon of anger coils around my bones, and my muscles burn. I can’t tamp down the reactive flame fast enough to prevent my next words from hitting the air. “Maybe if you had imposed yours harder, you could’ve found her killer.”
The immediate shock of hurt contorts his features. The resulting lash of guilt strikes back at me, my gaze falling to the leather bracelet circling his wrist. A pang of regret murmurs through the bruised organ in my chest.
“Shit. I didn’t mean that?—”
“I know,” he says, saving me the awkward apology. He tips his head up and glances around the scene, then scrubs the back of his neck with his hand. “Come on. I saw a beach bar on the way here. Let’s go clear our heads.”
While he wraps up with Valdes, I grab my briefcase and start the climb toward the top of the dune. I only make it halfway before my lungs fail to pull a full breath, and my ears pulse with the struggle.
Palm flattened to my chest, I seal my eyes shut and take measured breaths, fighting back the dizziness.
One. Two. Three.
The attack fades, replaced by the dull ache of cold fury. I clench my teeth, gritty with the grains of sand, and lower my hand.
The climb up is always so hard. It’s what makes us want to give up, to give in. To finally let the darkness have us.
Every day, giving in feels easier.
In a previous life, I was something of an artist. Though Darby knows this, he won’t blatantly come right out with it, instead using vague metaphors to deliver his point. Still, being reminded of what existed in the before feels as raw as my sand-beaten flesh.
When I reach the top of the dune, I let the bite of wind assault my skin and glance around at the darkened habitat. Caseworkers churn within the lighted tent, the inside aglow like a firefly jar.
It’s deceptively beautiful, the violence hidden within.
As the night wind intensifies, the illuminated bodies of the lightning bugs fade out, save for one errant straggler striving to claim shelter in the sea oats. She’s tossed by the sand spray, pitched to the ground. Caught in the fury of the storm, the firefly is a victim of the cruel elements.
I lower myself to the grass and pluck the beetle from the sand. Cradling the insect in my palm, I realize just how delicate she is, how fragile. Even if she survives the storm, there’s a predator waiting to descend on her in her weakest moment.
As she crawls along my thumb, I think about how cunning thefemme fatalefirefly is—how she lies in wait, mimicking the flash signals of other fireflies to attract and lure in a male. In essence, she tricks him, convincing the male that she’s like him, allowing her to get close before she kills.
My gaze shifts to the star pattern on my wrist, the only link I stillhave to my before—and that’s when I see it, a beacon flashing from the sand.
Hand trembling, I brush away the grains, my breath stalling as I uncover a brass object. One moment where I war with indecision, then I curl my fingers around the piece of evidence.
Darby appears at the top of the dune, all concern washed from his face. “You ready?”
My resolve never more firm, I clench the slender brass in my palm and nod. “Yes.”
I will find him.
Before I stand, I release the firefly back to the sand, where a fiddler crab makes her its target.
Yet, nature gave her a way to fight back, to get even. Her veins are primed with poison.
In death, she will have her revenge.
The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re connected to everything that ever was, is, or will be.
—CARL SAGAN,COSMOS
3
Luminary
First contact (C1): The moment when the moon first touches the solar disk, marking the beginning of an eclipse.
COLLINS
