LIAM WATCHED ME with a concerned expression as we made the crossing. That, I reminded myself, was a complication I didn’t need. Relationships required vulnerability and honesty. And I couldn’t offer either.
Our path brought us parallel to the jagged garland of rocks that connected the headland to the main island. Approaching from this angle, Belaya Skala was all tumbled grays and blacks, not the white that had given it its name. I knew from studying maps that the headland was roughly triangular, the tip of the broken crescent that was Bitter Rock. The leeward side—the side sheltered from the wind—was where the terns roosted on white rocks. Like Bitter Rock, there were no trees, and the biggest plants were low-lying bushes.
“Does anyone live here?” I asked as the engine cut and we puttered toward a sliver of shore. I knew the answer, but I was fishing for extra information.
“Not anymore,” Kenny replied. “There was the Landontown Fellowship, a sort of commune I guess you could say? But that, uh, didn’t last. It’s actually better land for building—lots more flat space—but for whatever reason nobody’s ever managed to stay there for long.”
“Not enough land to keep livestock, and hardly anything grows,” Dr. Kapoor added. It was true—but I wondered if that was deliberate, the way she implied that was why Landontown had faded. “Belaya Skala is only suitable for birds, looking at birds, and getting away from people.”
“Which is why we love it,” Kenny added, and Dr. Kapoor actually chuckled.
We all loaded up with bags and equipment, then hiked toward the eastern side of the headland. We heard the birds long before we saw them. They’d been a constant background chatter since we launched, but the sound became oppressive the closer we got. A thousand conversations in a dialect we didn’t understand. Though maybe Hardcastle and Kapoor did, after fifteen years.
The slight curve of the island cupped the remnants of the morning’s fog and kept the rocky hillside obscured as Kenny and Dr. Kapoor set up a pair of huge binoculars on a tripod. Hardcastle and Lily busied themselves with some kind of audio equipment—a parabolic microphone, bulky headphones, and a laptop in a waterproof case.
“Ms. Hayes,” Dr. Kapoor said, and I snapped to attention. “You’ll be assisting with a count today. If you get bored, I don’t care. If you have to pee, I don’t care. You stand and you watch until I release you. Got it?”
Liam swung a grin toward me, as if he was waiting to see my reaction. I just nodded. Do the job well. Don’t give her reason to question why she’s letting you stay.
“What should I do?” Abby asked.
Dr. Kapoor lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t wander off,” she said simply.
We’d come around to the southeastern tip of the headland. The shore stretching north and west was concave, creating a sheltered inlet of rocky cliffs, a steep snarl of rocks that were, as the explorer in Dr. Kapoor’s story discovered, white with bird guano. The angle of the shore and the hill we stood on gave us a clear view of the whole colony.
“Take a look,” Dr. Kapoor invited. Or rather, instructed. I stepped up to the binoculars. I could make out the nests tucked among the rocks. They were shallow bowls of twigs and grass. In pairs or singly, adult birds fussed and bobbled around chicks that ranged from grumpy-looking but cute balls of down to scraggly, skin-and-peach-fuzz creatures that looked like aliens.
“And we’re just counting the chicks?” I asked.
“No, I am counting the chicks,” Dr. Kapoor said. “You are standing right there and not interrupting.” She pointed toward an empty patch of grass near Abby. I shuffled over obediently.
Kenny pulled a binder and a laminated map of the nest sites, each numbered, out of his bag and sat cross-legged on the ground. He flipped the binder to a printed chart with empty cells and waited expectantly as Dr. Kapoor scanned the landscape before settling on a target.
“Nest nineteen,” she said. “One live chick. One egg, unhatched. Nest twenty . . . the second chick didn’t make it through the night; it’s not moving. One chick still living. Nest twenty-one . . .”
It went on like that for a while, with long pauses as Dr. Kapoor adjusted the binoculars and checked with Kenny that he was caught up. I shifted from foot to foot to keep my circulation going. Liam had put in earbuds and found a rock to sit on. Abby paced a short distance away, her camera out and clicking away as she took landscape shots.
Hardcastle had the headphones on, pointing at something on the laptop screen and talking to Lily. I tried not to watch him too carefully, too obviously, but I couldn’t help it—looking at him made my skin crawl, but looking away made me feel like I was turning my back on something dangerous. When he took off the headphones and looked up at me, I jerked, certain that my suspicion was written on my face.
“Why don’t you three go explore the rest of the island?” Hardcastle asked.
Dr. Kapoor’s head whipped up. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked. “Sophia should know the lay of the land, at least, and Liam’s gotten the tour already, so he can show the ladies around.”
Liam popped out one earbud, looking hopeful. Abby kept her back to the adults, studiously examining her camera, but she looked as hungry as I felt to see this place.
Dr. Kapoor considered. Then she relented. “Keep your radio on you,” she told Liam.
“Got it.” Liam straightened up, stretching. The movement emphasized his long frame. My own build could generously be described as skeletal, but the rain shell I’d donned over my usual uniform of a T-shirt and jeans made me look shapeless.
We left the others and tracked over the back side of a hill. It was good to move after standing still for so long, and it must have shown.
“I thought she’d leave you stood there all day,” Liam said. “You know, if you’re lucky, maybe she’ll let you look at a bird for more than two seconds by the end of the summer. But you have to establish that trust first. Prove yourself.”
I snorted. “I guess I was expecting things to be a bit more hands-on.”
“In a week or two they’ll do the banding on the chicks. That’s a lot more interesting, Kenny says. But most of the action happens back at the LARC itself. Kenny’s doing something with DNA, and Lily and Hardcastle are doing this whole study on the bird calls—apparently they’re unusually varied, or something? I was sort of tuning her and Kenny out at that point, I’ll be honest. They get a bit overexcited. Tend to ramble. Then again, I seem to be rambling, myself. So stones, glass houses, et cetera.” He slanted his smile at me.
“So can you show us around town?” Abby asked. She’d stopped to take a picture of Bitter Rock, beyond the channel of gray water and the black fangs of the isthmus, and she hustled to catch up.
“You mean Landontown?” Liam said with a frown. “There’s not much there.”
“But it is why I came,” she reminded him.
“I suppose it’s either that or an exciting tour of the island’s best rocks,” Liam said with a shrug. “This way, then. So you know about the Cole Landon debacle?” He was asking me.
I feigned ignorance, shaking my head. “Isn’t that the guy who founded the LARC?”
“His widow founded the LARC, actually. He was an eccentric millionaire. He had this group of what you might call followers. They were all into this idea of getting back to the land and living communally. He bought Bitter Rock and brought all his people here. They built the Landontown Fellowship.” He pointed down the hill. It dropped away for a bit, then leveled out into a plateau before the hill fell away again to the sea and a barren beach. There were only a dozen structures standing; a few more that had collapsed or burned down.
“And they all vanished,” Abby said. Her camera clicked.
“Right,” Liam said. “There are lots of theories. Mass suicide—they were kind of a cult. Storm. Murder. Cole Landon’s widow was the only survivor. She was visiting relatives at the time. She established the LARC and never set foot here again.”
Above the town to the north was a short, curved concrete wall with a gap running along the center. Something metal stuck out from the gap. “What’s that?” I asked.
“Artillery,” Liam said. “Don’t worry, it’s just decorative at this point. There’s a bunker, too, right over there.” He pointed out along the hillside. A metal door was set into the hillside, surrounded by more concrete and rubble that indicated there must have once been a wall a few feet in front of the door. “There was an airstrip here during the second world war. The bunker’s flooded or something, though—can’t get in.”
“Have you tried?” Abby asked.
“No,” he said. “Not being a huge fan of tetanus, I have somehow resisted the allure of a ruined hole in the ground.”
Abby raised her eyebrows. “I’ve got all my shots.” But she didn’t press the issue. We headed down the hill, taking short, careful steps over the dew-slicked grass. A signpost stood at the entrance to the town, but the sign itself was long gone. Abby strode out ahead, snapping pictures as she went, and Liam and I naturally fell back at a more sedate pace.
“You know a lot about the island,” I said. “How often do you come here?”
“Not very,” Liam answered. “Twice since I was a kid, that’s all. Usually quality time with Dr. Kapoor is arranged at some neutral third location, where my mum doesn’t have to see her, and Dr. Kapoor can rely on guided tours to supply quality content instead of filling the silence herself.”
“I’m picking up that you’re not very close,” I said.
We’d stopped, and Liam put his hands in his pockets, looking out over the ruined buildings. “My parents split when I was young. Right after Dr. Kapoor came to work here, actually. After that, quality time required several months of notice. My grandparents—her parents—fly out to see me for months at a time and help out, but she can’t be bothered. So, yes, we have issues.”
“Is that why . . .” I cleared my throat and gestured generally at his wrist, suddenly embarrassed. “You didn’t seem to care about hiding it, so . . .”
“This?” He laughed, pulling his sleeve up to bare the bandage. “I didn’t do this to myself. Well, I did, but it was stupidity, not intent.”
“I see.” My cheeks flamed. “I thought—”
“Oh, I’m horrifically depressed,” he assured me cheerfully. “And intensely medicated. I’m all right just now,” he added, seeing my look of alarm. “I have good days and bad ones and a lot of mediocre ones. And I overcompensate with a cheerful demeanor, or so my therapist says. It’s under control, promise. I just . . . had a bad patch, recently, and got into a bit of trouble.”
“Trouble that left your arm cut up?” I asked.
He winced. “Wounds inflicted by a prisoner I was retrieving from confinement.”
“You staged a jailbreak?”
“I stole a falcon,” he answered. “She was being used as the mascot for an amateur football team and wasn’t being cared for properly, so I arranged a rescue. She did not appreciate my chivalry, however, and this was the result.”
Abby chuckled. I jumped a little—I’d almost forgotten that she was there. Judging by the look Liam gave her, so had he. “You gotta ask the damsels if they want to be rescued,” she called over her shoulder.
“Right, so when you’re kidnapped I’ll go ahead and wait for a signed consent form before I rescue you, then?” he called back. He sounded jokey, but there was a definite barb under the words.
“I can rescue myself, thanks,” she shot back.
“Glad that’s settled,” I declared before just joking turned into actually arguing. Abby shook her head ruefully and ducked inside one of the buildings—the biggest one still standing.
“Sorry to pry,” I added, somewhat belatedly.
“I don’t mind talking about it with you. Oddly,” Liam said, a little quirk in the corner of his mouth. Like I was a puzzle, but he was patient enough to hold off on solving me. It should have irritated me, but the truth was I didn’t entirely hate the idea of being solved by Liam Kapoor.
“Hey, guys?” Abby called. She leaned out the door. Her eyes were wide. “You should come see this.”
The building Abby beckoned us toward was larger than the others, and when I stepped past the rotting front stoop and inside, I realized why. It was a church. Small and cramped, but with vaulted ceilings, the bare rafters gave it the acoustics of a larger building. Once, eight pews had stood in two orderly rows. Now two remained in place, the others overturned and rotted apart, cast up near the door like someone had dragged them there. At the front of the room was a small wooden altar. On it was a triple-paneled wood painting, hints of paint still flecked here and there, but whatever figures had graced it were obscured completely by age.
“I didn’t think Landontown would have a church,” I said, looking around.
“It’s older than Landontown,” Liam told me. “There’s never been any known Native settlement, probably because it’s so inhospitable. But a group of Russian fur trappers and fishermen, plus a few Native Alaskans who’d intermarried, tried to make a go of it in the nineteenth century. Unsuccessfully, I might add. Turns out ‘any source of food at all’ is kind of important. Mrs. Popova’s actually descended from one of those intermarried families. Landon’s people restored the church for the history, but they didn’t use it.”
“Not for worship, at least,” Abby said. I gave her a quizzical look, and she pointed past me. I turned.
It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at. Broken boards were nailed to either side of the door. Almost as if . . .
“Someone boarded up the doors,” I said.
“The last transmission from Landontown said some of them had taken shelter in the church,” Abby said.
Liam touched one of the pieces of splintered wood, his face troubled. “They meant shelter from a storm,” he said.
“You don’t board up doors just to keep out the rain.” She gave him a level look.
He gave a little shake—and then snorted. I watched him push his unease away, but he didn’t have a void to cast it into. It lingered, a sour note in his expression even as he dismissed her. “So which is your favorite conspiracy theory? I’m partial to ‘little green men ate all the hippies,’ myself,” he said. She glared at him. “What do you think, Sophia? I mean, I’m not saying it was aliens . . .”
I didn’t respond. There was something else by the door. Something scratched into the sill beneath the window. I trailed my fingers over the faded letters. WE ARE NOT ALONE. A declaration of faith? Or a warning? I’d listened to the supposed recording of the last transmission out of Landontown. We thought we were alone, the man had said.
I could hear Abby and Liam arguing behind me—Abby pointing out all the inconsistencies with the idea that a storm had obliterated Landontown to the last man, Liam responding by coming up with increasingly absurd explanations. Outside, a few wisps of mist had begun to gather low to the ground, between the buildings. A single pane of the window was still intact, speckled with dust and grit. I found myself checking my reflection instinctively.
At first, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. No wild hair, wearing the same clothes I was, facing the proper way. And then I realized—the girl in the reflection was standing in an empty room. Liam and Abby, arguing away behind me, were nowhere to be seen.
The girl’s lips moved, forming a single word: Run.
In the darkness behind her, a shadowed figure emerged, spreading its wings.