Meredith
Present Day
It was the eyes that finally convinced her. Regina’s eyes in the photograph, piercing and impenetrable, were exactly like the eyes of the woman calling herself Gina. It was impossible, though. Gina didn’t look older than eighty; Regina Holm would be well over a hundred. Dust.
Was this woman some kind of lost descendant? Someone obsessed with the curse and the lighthouse? Was that where Alice fit in? Was she trying to recreate something from the past? She thought about the story of the missing girls—Tempest and Calamity looked to be about the right age. Her stomach turned as she imagined some sick play where Gina drowned the two of them for the sake of history. But what about Alice? Meredith’s head was spinning trying to make sense of it.
She nodded at the girl in the picture. “Marina, right?”
“Yep.” Calamity licked her thumb and wiped a smudge from the frame. “Pretty, isn’t she?”
“Sure.”
“Almost as pretty as Alice.”
Hearing her daughter’s name out of her captor’s mouth caused physical pain. She thought about breaking the frame, using the glass as a weapon, but even if she managed to get her hands free, Tempest would have her on the ground before she had a chance to touch the thing.
“We should get back,” Tempest said.
Meredith turned to the other girl. “Calamity, right?”
Calamity started, thrown by the attention. “Uh-huh.”
Meredith had to fight back the urge to scream at her. Calamity looked sixteen or so, but her mannerisms, her behavior, were like a toddler. “You like Alice, huh?”
Calamity smiled. Her front two teeth were crooked. “She’s funny.”
Eyes burning, Meredith blinked back the tears. “She sure is. Do you know what she named a stuffed octopus her uncle made for her?”
Calamity shook her head, eyes wide.
“Octopussy!”
Calamity threw her head back in a deep belly laugh. Meredith could tell it was forced. She didn’t get the joke, but it didn’t matter. Calamity wanted to please, and laughing would please Meredith.
Meredith laughed along before adding, “She hasn’t gotten to see him all finished, though.”
“How come?”
“Because she’s here.” Meredith spoke slowly. “She’s not supposed to be here. You know that?”
Calamity nodded weakly, her fingers tangled together in front of her.
“Enough.” Tempest grabbed Meredith’s arm, nails digging into the soft part. “Let’s go.”
Calamity walked behind them on the way back to the little house where Meredith met Gina. Meredith shot occasional looks over her shoulder only to have Tempest yank her back around.
“What is your problem?” Meredith spat.
Tempest scowled. “You.”
“Oh yeah? Let me go then. No more problem.”
“Shut up.” Tempest pulled Meredith close enough she could smell her stale breath. “Or the next time Alice sees mommy, she’ll be a streak in the dirt.”
Spittle had gathered at the corner of Tempest’s mouth. Meredith almost believed the threat. Almost was enough to keep her mouth shut. For now.
Finally back at the house, Tempest opened the door and Meredith spotted Alice immediately, in the kitchen, standing on a chair, her hands covered in pancake batter. Gina stood over her, arms on either side, caging her in. Directing her. Alice wore clothes Meredith didn’t recognize, horribly outdated and too big, falling off a shoulder. The sleeve of her shirt kept dipping into the batter.
Meredith wanted to run to her, to snatch her up and disappear into the woods until she could figure out how to get off the island without the women chasing her, but she knew the second she stepped away from Tempest, Alice could be in danger. There was a large knife sitting on a clean cutting board between them.
Alice finally looked up and smiled with her whole face. Her eyes practically bulged. “Mommy!”
Gina whispered something in Alice’s ear, and she shrank, nodding.
“What did you say to her?” Meredith demanded.
“Just teaching the girl some manners. It’s rude to yell indoors, isn’t it, sweetheart?”
Alice nodded feebly.
Meredith’s whole body burned, but she forced herself to remain calm. Tempest was aggressive, but she was predictable. Gina was volatile. Unpredictable. She couldn’t risk setting her off. Couldn’t risk her hurting Alice. “Everything’s going to be okay, kiddo.”
Gina’s laugh was like silverware clinking on a plate. “Well, of course it’s all going to be okay.” She poked Alice’s side. “She’s a big silly, isn’t she?”
Alice’s shoulders tensed, like she didn’t know who to acknowledge. Meredith forced a weak smile to try to put her at ease.
“While Alice and I finish up here, why don’t you set the table, Calamity? Tempest and Meredith can have a seat.”
Tempest escorted Meredith to a little table with mismatching chairs where they sat, Tempest only releasing Meredith’s arm when Calamity laid a fork in front of her.
“You can get rid of the ties,” Gina said. “I don’t think we’ll have a problem.” She raised an eyebrow at Meredith, her long fingers digging into Alice’s shoulders so hard she winced. “Right?”
Meredith hesitated a beat, letting the threat sink in. She was getting use of her hands back. It was a start. She nodded.
“That’s what I thought. Tempest?”
Tempest wasn’t gentle about removing the ropes, dragging the barely loosened tie over Meredith’s hands. Her wrists popped, and the burn from the rope stung.
Ignoring the pain, she grabbed a fork and held it on its end, the tines upright like a trident.
Alice came to the table carrying a plate of pancakes with Gina on her heels. She set the plate down in front of Meredith, and when her hand came down, Meredith grabbed it and pulled it to her lips. She needed to feel her skin, to know this was real. She was here. Alive.
Gina pulled Alice away and gestured for her to sit next to Gina, on the opposite side of the table. Meredith lifted her leg beneath the table, tapping her toe against Alice’s. Calamity sat on Meredith’s other side and twirled a strand of Alice’s hair around her finger. Alice forced a smile that looked more like a grimace. She was a smart girl, keeping her head down, giving them what they wanted until Meredith could get them out of there.
“Getting along like sisters,” Gina observed. “Isn’t it sweet?”
Looking at Gina, all Meredith could think about was the photograph. Even as her mind screamed impossible, here was the proof directly in front of her. There was no denying the eyes, the shape of the mouth, the stiff posture. This was no descendant. The resemblance was too perfect. Gina sipped from the steaming mug she brought to the table, meeting Meredith’s gaze over the rim. She winked.
“How did you do it?” Meredith asked.
“Well.” Gina leaned conspiratorially over the table. “You start with eggs and flour and milk. A pinch of salt. Sugar, of course—”
“Not the pancakes.”
Gina raised an eyebrow.
“We went to the lighthouse,” Tempest admitted. “She saw the picture.”
Gina forked a pancake onto Alice’s plate, which she doused in syrup. “I see.”
Beside Meredith, Tempest squirmed. For all her bluster, she seemed afraid of getting in trouble with Gina. It made Meredith all the more anxious to get Alice off the island.
Gina continued, “Good picture, isn’t it? My favorite, actually.” She looked at Meredith with an expression Meredith couldn’t quite read. “As for how, I don’t know the answer to that. But I have a theory.”
Meredith waited for Gina to explain, but she didn’t seem in a hurry to tell Meredith anything Gina didn’t think she needed to know.
Meredith looked at Alice, who was watching her, face all screwed up with concern. She could only imagine how she looked to her, bruised and beaten.
“Eat, kiddo,” Meredith said. “I bet you’re hungry.” Even though Meredith’s stomach was in knots, she forced herself to swallow a bite of the rubbery pancake. It was all the encouragement Alice needed to fall on hers like a starving puppy.
Looking at Gina, Meredith said, “What do you want?”
Ignoring her, Gina stroked Alice’s hair. “She reminds me of my daughter. My first daughter. Marina.”
Tempest scowled into her plate.
“She was a beautiful girl, with long, dark hair just like this. I used to braid it and twist it into all kinds of beautiful shapes. I bet I could do something lovely with this.” She twirled Alice’s hair around her finger, then held it in place to admire the effect. “Alice is a bit more energetic than Marina was, but that fades with time and training.”
Plastic plates. Plastic cups. Meredith had a fork, but it was unlikely she’d stab it anywhere that’d do any damage before Tempest was on her. “You’re not doing anything with Alice, understand?”
“Mom…” Alice wriggled out of Gina’s embrace but didn’t dare try to leave the table. Whatever Gina had done to her over the last two days had stuck.
“It’s okay.” Meredith tried to smile. “I’m okay.”
She tried to cut another piece of the pancake—just be calm, be normal, keep Alice from panicking until Tempest was just distracted enough—but it was like her arm was made of concrete. Her whole body slowed, her blood turned to sludge, and when she looked up at Gina, it was like her eyes were half a second slower than the rest of her. Her heart fluttered in her chest.
She wobbled a little in her seat. Tempest chuckled.
Gina spread a thick pat of butter on her pancake, glancing up at Meredith with a mix of curiosity and something else. Fear? No. Frustration. “A mild sedative. You’ll be fine.”
Mild? Meredith rubbed her eyes, but it only made everything swim faster, more out of focus. Bile rose in the back of her throat. She swallowed it down, a hard lump.
“You drugged me.”
“To be safe.”
“Safe,” Meredith scoffed.
“The rope was obviously scaring Alice, but I need you compliant.”
“I don’t…” Meredith murmured. She chewed the inside of her cheek hoping the pain would focus her, but she barely felt it. She couldn’t think. It reminded her of the way she’d felt that first day in the lighthouse, outside of her body, out of control. She struggled to keep her words from slurring. “You done this before. To me.”
Gina frowned. “No. I haven’t.”
Meredith nodded. “Yes. In the lighthouse.” Realization dawned. “In the water. In the jar.” She groaned as a dull thump started in the back of her head. God, get it together. Just breathe. What the hell had Gina given her?
“Mommy?” Alice’s voice crept toward that pitch that meant she was going to cry. Meredith ached once, hard, like the period at the end of a sentence.
Gina shushed her. “Mommy’s fine. She’s just sleepy.” She stroked Alice’s hair, careful eyes still on Meredith. Something seemed to occur to her, and she paused, hand still on Alice’s head. “Was it like everything fell away except the sound of the ocean?”
Meredith nodded.
The corner of her mouth twitched. “That wasn’t me. That was Liza.”
The name rang a faint bell, but it slipped away. “I don’t know who that is.”
“Of course you do.” Gina’s eyes flashed. “You’ve seen her. We all have.”
The face in the water. The voice in her dreams. Calamity and Alice wore near twin frowns. Tempest chewed the inside of her cheek.
The temperature in the room dropped.
“Who is she?”
Gina’s smile dipped slightly. “We’ll get to that.” She pushed her plate away. “In all your research—don’t look at me like that; Tempest saw Grace’s journals in your living room—in all that time, what did you learn?”
Tempest had been there that night. Who else? Regina? Calamity? Or someone else? She became fixated on this “someone else” she decided had to exist. Were they here now? What would they do to her? To Alice? Between the drugs and getting the shit kicked out of her, it was a miracle she was upright. She needed to know who the other people were. To know what she was up against.
“Who helped you build the lighthouse?” Meredith asked.
“My dad.” Calamity beamed. “He’s good at building stuff.”
“Quiet, Cally. You’re distracting me.” Gina focused her intense gaze on Meredith. “I want to know what you know so I can fill in the gaps.” She grinned. “I’m getting old, you know. Can’t be wasting time retelling stories you’ve already heard.”
“I know you did something to her, and now she wants our daughters. My daughter.”
Because that was what she’d told herself, left alone with her fear and the water for company. But she’d been wrong, hadn’t she? Here was proof. A real person had abducted Alice.
Still, some intrinsic animal instinct had felt the danger each time she walked the shoreline. Still felt it, a red beacon flashing across her mind.
“Crass, but yes. That’s correct.” Gina tapped the side of her mug with a long red fingernail. Tempest stood and took the mug into the kitchen, where she poured hot water from a pot on the stove into it. She withdrew a blue velvet bag from the cabinet and, from that, pulled a clump of dry petals. Something in Meredith’s mind clicked.
“Thalia petals?” Meredith asked.
“For warding off evil,” Alice said smartly, a near-perfect parrot of Judith. She caught Meredith’s eye and offered a brave smile.
“Smart girl,” Gina said.
Thalias at Judith’s funeral. Thalias in the house. Thalias in her pocket. Meredith had thought her mother’s paranoia would hurt Alice. Maybe it had protected her after all.
After steeping the bundle for several seconds, Tempest scooped most of it out and then topped off the concoction with a heavy glob of honey. She brought it to the table. Meredith didn’t realize Gina’s muscles were tense until she had the mug in hand and her shoulders dropped and her jaw unclenched.
“I had a friend once,” Gina said. “She could do things. Manipulate the natural world in a way no one else could. She taught me about Thalias. About protection.”
“You’re saying Thalias can protect you? From Liza?” Saying her name felt like a curse.
“Of course not.” She sipped her tea. “I’m saying they…help.”
As the drugs moved through her system, Meredith’s own thoughts became harder to follow. She struggled to cling to reason. For every excuse she conjured for Gina, for the curse, a but followed.
None of it explained why Gina had taken Alice.
Meredith stared down at the congealed pancake in front of her, sticky syrup cloudy with the remains of the sedative. “What do you want?”
“A daughter,” Gina said simply. “My daughter.”
Meredith didn’t like the way she looked at Alice when she said it.
Gina sighed and continued. “The first thing you need to understand is that none of this—as much as you’re all willing to pin the blame on me—is my fault. Liza was nosy and spoiled, and what happened to her was an accident. Pure and simple.”
Meredith wondered how many times Gina had told herself the same thing.
“I did what any sane woman would have done. She was my late husband’s favorite niece. Preferred her even to his own children, though God knows why.” She leaned across the table, unblinking. “He was having an affair. It was clear he was going to leave me—the only question was when. I didn’t have much time, and this would have been just the excuse he needed to be rid of me, saving himself the problem of divorce.”
“Sounds like you killed her,” Meredith said.
“It was an accident! She slipped and broke her neck. It was her own stupidity.” Gina huffed. “I cleaned up the mess. That’s all. They assumed she ran away. I gave them hope and saved them heartache.”
“By dumping her in the ocean, right?”
Scowling, Gina tore the crust from a piece of toast. “No wonder your wife is leaving you. You’re so negative.”
The shot hit home. “You don’t know anything about my life.”
“I know more than you think.” Gina tossed the crust on the table. “And you’re missing the point completely.”
“I doubt that.”
“The point is that something was taken from me too. Marina was, and still is, the brightest star in my sky. Liza—or whatever twisted thing is left of her—took my daughter, and until recently, I thought I’d never see her again. You ask why I would choose to stay alive when I could just as easily hurl myself off the lighthouse and end my suffering.” Her face darkened. “I’ve spent the last century trapped on this godforsaken island, most of it alone. Before Liza took everything from me, I spent my whole life catering to others. I existed to nurture, to please. I gave everything I had to my husband and children, leaving nothing for myself. By the time I’d come out the other side of the dark hole that was mourning Marina, I had no idea who I was. I thought I could at least count on time to end my misery, but for better or worse, I’m still here. Still suffering. For years I accepted that my life had no purpose. I had nothing to give myself to. But now…” She wrapped her arm around Alice. “Now I have purpose.”
On either side of Meredith, Tempest and Calamity squirmed.
Gina continued, “I can see by the way you look at Alice, you know how it feels.”
“Because she’s my child.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong.”
Meredith watched Gina lean closer to Alice, pulling her toward her, angry red nails digging into Alice’s delicate skin. Meredith started to stand on shaky legs, but Tempest was quickly on her feet. She brandished the knife from the kitchen, had probably slipped it into the room when she brought in the tea. Her hand twitched, and she ground her teeth. With every breath, she leaned a hair closer to Meredith.
Meredith slowly sat back down, never taking her eyes off the knife. “I’m dying to know what you mean by that.” The anger felt good. Cleared her head a little.
Gina kissed the top of Alice’s head. “Can’t you see it? The resemblance? It’s clear her upbringing has dampened her potential, but with the proper mothering, I have no doubt she’ll prosper.” When Meredith didn’t immediately respond, she said, “Alice is my Marina come back to me. I can feel her here. A mother knows.”
“You’re insane if you think I’m going to just give you my child.”
“You’re going to give her to me, and you’re going to walk away. Start a new life somewhere. Or don’t. Throw yourself off a cliff for all I care. Either way, you’ll be free of the cape, and I will have my daughter back.” She grabbed Meredith’s hand across the table and squeezed, crushing her knuckles. “Your choice.”