Cass nodded, eyes bright with tears. Harmony kept her gaze on the water, the lights, anywhere but on Lisa.
Inside, she understood something she didn’t want to name. Tonight had marked them. They weren’t just visitors anymore. They were witnesses. Maybe targets. Maybe something else.
Around them, statements were taken. Nobody had seen anything. Lisa had been dancing, then walking, then gone. People had been flirting, drinking, arguing, forgiving. No one had been looking where they should’ve been.
Torie sobbed until she lost her voice. Candy rocked, muttering that it all felt wrong, but she couldn’t say why. Mary drifted toward the grass, murmuring half-prayers to someone who might or might not be listening.
“You’re shaking,” Cass whispered, fingers tightening on Harmony’s arm.
Harmony didn’t answer.
Behind them, something cracked—shells maybe. When Harmony turned, nothing was there. The sound bounced strangely around the rocks. Catalina was full of corners where a person could stand and hear everything.
She stared at the blurred line where the harbor lights met the sky. The sea stared back with its indifferent gaze. She looked away first.
Death had come to the edge of their circle. The fire, the music, the flirting, the jokes—nothing had stopped it. The night had split open, and whatever had stepped through wasn’t finished.
Deep in the shadows beyond the firelight, someone else watched the scene unfold, breath syncing with the waves. Whether they were satisfied or terrified by what they’d seen, only they knew.
Harmony wasn’t the only one memorizing every detail. Someone else was storing it away too, already wondering what they might do with it later.
Chapter Six
First Blood
My hands won’t stop shaking. It wasn’t planned. There was simply a moment—a breath between impulse and reason—and I stepped into it. But underneath the shaking ran something steadier, something frighteningly calm, as if the island itself were steadying my pulse.
One second, she was laughing, spinning near the fire, hair catching the gold of the firelight. Then, in a blink, the world folded inward, and I was inside the bubble. The island was too quiet, the kind of calm that presses against your ribs until you can’t breathe. When she laughed, something split open inside me. When the laughter stopped, something else took its place. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was the island. Maybe it was both of us breathing the same air.
It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t hate. It was a pull—ancient, wordless. What would it feel like, I wondered, to hold a life . . . and then to let it go?
Her skin was warm, and her pulse fluttered like something trapped. Then—nothing. For one sickening heartbeat, I wished I could take it back. I wished I’d stepped away instead of forward.
I thought I’d cry. I thought I’d run. Instead, I watched the ocean reach for her, gentle, almost tender, and I saw how beautiful stillness could be. When she stopped moving, even the night seemed to bow. The air around me pulsed—soft, rhythmic—like a breath drawn in and held.
People say that guilt screams, but they never mention how it whispers. They don’t tell us how it settles into bones like tidewater, patient and cold. I hear it now—beneath the crackling fire, beneath the crash of waves—a soft pulse beneath the dirt. The island keeps score. And tonight, I was the one who gave the required sacrifice.
I threw up after. My body rejected what my mind couldn’t name. Then I wiped my mouth as the ocean took away the evidence of my weakness. I fixed her dress, smoothed out her hair, and arranged her so the light touched her face just right. I wiped my hands on the sand, dragging my fingers through it until the grit bit into my skin hard enough to feel like penance. When I stood, thin streaks of damp earth marked her ankle—like the ghost of where something had held her.
I stepped back to take it all in, to make sure the picture matched what I’d seen in my head. For a moment, something felt wrong, a detail nudging at the edge of my mind like a frame slightly out of focus. I couldn’t name it. I told myself it was shock, and forced the unease down.
I have to go back now. I need to act normal. I need to smile, to breathe, to pretend nothing extraordinary has happened. When they notice she’s gone, I’ll help them look for the killer. I’ll say all of the right things, just like they expect.
I might not ever sleep again. I fear that every time I close my eyes, I’ll see her lying there—the way the moonlight curvesacross her throat, her color draining like watercolor in the tide. I’ll wash my hands again and again, but I fear the blood won’t leave them. I tell myself it was a moment—a fracture—something that won’t happen again. But the thought vibrates wrong inside me.
I return to the group, and no one notices I’ve been gone. They drink and laugh with one another. It’s not unusual for someone to disappear for a while. It’s forgettable. It doesn’t take long for the cries to start. I act just as shocked as the rest. One of them looks at me for a moment too long. I don’t know if it’s suspicion or fear—or if it’s simply my imagination turning against me.
The cries grow as someone realizes she’s gone. The group surges toward the water, their voices sharp with terror. I follow, slow and quiet, a hum beneath my ribs rising like a second heartbeat. The waves roll in, wiping away prints, wiping away truth. The night is too still now. Too patient.
Somewhere in the circle of firelight and fear, another mind is already shaping this into a story of their own. I can feel it in the way a few of them watch the scene, not just with horror, but with terrible curiosity.
I ease back and listen. I hear them saying it was a stranger, some tourist on the island for a day, someone who might’ve come over on the last ferry of the night. If only they knew how close I stand to them, how calm I am. I mimic their panic, but it feels distant, like I’m performing through a fog.
Now I’m sitting among them, their faces flickering in the dying firelight—each wearing a different version of horror or sadness. One woman’s mascara bleeds. Another wipes their mouth, muttering that they can’t remember a thing. One person’s eyes are far away, staring at something only they can see—the one who sees more than the others. One jaw tightens. One keeps glancing at the waves as if Lisa might rise and walkout of them. I memorize these faces most of all. The ones who notice too much become problems later.
I step back from the shore, feeling the sand tighten around my heels as if it hates to let me go. Shadows move around me—either in accusation . . . or invitation. I don’t know yet which it is. I don’t know what I’m becoming. I do know that I can’t turn back. Someone watched me walking back. I could feel it like a hand between my shoulder blades. Their gaze slid off me the second I turned, polite and disinterested on the surface, but I know better. It wasn’t the frantic, unfocused stare of someone in shock. It was sharper, assessing, like they are taking notes of their own.
Maybe they think it’s strange that I’m not shaking. It’s begun, and I no longer have a choice. I didn’t just take a life. I created a moment. Most people believe that monsters are born . . . but maybe instead, we’re chosen. By who, though—that’s the question humming beneath my skin: the island, fate, or someone who’s been watching far longer than any of us know.
