Hart is gone by the time I wake up. I sit up and swing my feet to the floor, but I don’t get out of bed. Instead, I take the picture off my bedside table and hold it to the light streaming in the window. Hart didn’t have any details about what he said my mother could do. The power that she had. Just a vague story Leo told him once when they were out fishing.

Maybe a tall tale to pass a long, hot afternoon.

But maybe not.

The hiding place draws power. It always has. The original group of spiritualists and seekers came down in 1887 from somewhere in upstate New York. They were tired of being run out of town after town by church people, and they were looking for a place where nobody would bother them.

Except the dead, of course.

So here came the psychics, wading into the swamp with their crystal balls and their tarot cards held high.

Honey’s great-grandmother was one of them.

Elora’s and Hart’s families are both descended from that founding group, too.

Even before that, though, the runaway enslaved and the Creole people, along with the Houma and Chitimacha and others who shared these swamps, used to tell stories about this area. The Acadian settlers, too. Strange things happened here, they all said.

I think about Case and Wrynn. Bilocation. And the gift of healing.

And Zale. The power of the sea and the sky.

But if my mother had some gift like that – some deep power, like Sera said – I’ve never known anything about it.

And I certainly didn’t inherit it.

I get dressed and wander into the kitchen to find Honey sitting at the table. She dumps a spoonful of sugar into her coffee and stirs as she listens to the radio.

Someone from the National Hurricane Center reports that Elizabeth has emerged from this side of the Florida peninsula, and that she’s strengthening as she crosses the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters. In only a few hours, winds have increased to over one hundred miles an hour. She’s a category 2 now.

Honey keeps stirring, and the radio station goes live to a press conference where the governor of Louisiana is declaring a state of emergency ahead of the storm’s predicted arrival here.

“I’m not leaving,” I say as I sit down across from Honey with a bowl of cereal.

She sighs. “Grey –”

“We don’t even know what’s going to happen yet. Give me a little while longer,” I beg. “Maybe it won’t be bad.” I’m stirring my cereal around, but I haven’t made myself take a bite yet. “I can’t leave. Not until I know what happened to Elora.”

“Sugar Bee, in the end, not everything is knowable.” Honey takes a small sip of her coffee. “Even for those of us entrusted with the gift of sight.”

“This isn’t the end,” I tell her. “And this is knowable. I feel it.”

Honey studies my face for a long minute before she nods. “One more day. But I won’t take chances with your safety. If it looks like we’re going to take a direct hit, you’re going home.”

“I already am home,” I remind her.

All that morning and afternoon, we stay busy in the bookstore. I spend the whole day helping clueless people pick out decks of tarot cards and incense and books on astrology. I even sell that ugly Himalayan salt lamp.

Case’s mama, Ophelia, comes in to pick up some herbal tea and to talk to Honey about the storm. It’s the first time I’ve seen her all summer, and she gives me a big hug. It makes me ashamed of the way I treated Case. The things I was ready to believe about him, just because I was desperate for an answer. I can’t help but wonder what he told her about his bashed-in face. That missing tooth. I imagine her laying a gentle hand on his cheek, to make the bleeding stop.

Wrynn hides behind her mama, just peeking out at me through that long red hair of hers. I see her snake out a skinny, freckled arm to snag some peppermints from Honey’s candy dish. But she doesn’t say a word. And I’m glad. I can’t stand to hear any more rougarou talk. I have too much on my mind as it is.

All day, I keep waiting for an opening to bring up what Hart told me last night.

About my mother.

It’s late afternoon when I finally get my chance. There’s a lull between customers, and I jump right into the deep end. I figure I don’t have time for wading.

“What was my mother’s gift?”

Honey glances up from her word search to give me a strange look. Her earrings are dangly stars, and she has a bright purple scarf tied around her head. “You know she could see colors.”

“You mean auras,” I say. “People’s energy, or whatever.”

“That’s right,” Honey tells me. “We’re all made up of energy. And that frequency creates a field around us. Different energies show up as different colors.”

“Like grey.”

“I know it’s not the most exciting color in the world, Sugar Bee.” I roll my eyes. Honey says her own aura is pink. “But grey is symbolic of a long spiritual journey. It means you’re an old soul. You’ve traveled a long path in this life. That’s something to be proud of.”

“Right.” I’ve heard all this a million times. “But could she do anything else?”

Honey looks at me for a few seconds. “We are all of us capable of so many more things than we know, Sugar Bee. Beautiful things. And terrible things.”

The bell over the door jingles, and a trio of stunning girls washes in on a wave of laughter. One of them has gotten engaged, and they’re looking for a reading. They want to know, should she marry DeShawn? Or hold out hope for something better?

Last summer, Honey would have made an appointment for them to see Miss Cassiopeia, Romance Counselor. But Becky has had her sign flipped to closed since I got here, so Honey leads them to the alcove in the corner and pulls the curtain. Things get busy again after that, and she never offers me any more information. And I never get another chance to ask.

But I can’t stop thinking about it. Because there’s an idea forming in my head. And I hope like hell I’m wrong.

After dinner, I go to my room and pull out those twin hummingbirds. I weigh them. One in each hand.

Beautiful things.

And terrible things.

My pixie cut is too short for hair clips to look right on me, but I sweep my bangs back on each side and slide the hummingbirds into my hair anyway. Then I don’t even bother to put on boots. I just set off into the bayou in my flip-flops, before I have time to chicken out and change my mind. I don’t get very far before I have to slip my flip-flops off and carry them. And then I’m barefoot. Mud up to my knees. Just like Wrynn.

And Zale.

He’s already waiting for me out at Li’l Pass, and the first thing I say when I see him is, “I need you to take me to Keller’s Island.”

“Okay,” he says. He’s staring at those hummingbird hair clips. Both of them. And I see the questions burning in his ice-fire eyes. But he doesn’t ask them. He just takes my hand in his, and I feel that tingling warmth course through me.

I leave my flip-flops sitting on top of the old flatbed trailer, and we trudge side by side through the long grass and the mud. And we don’t say much. At least not out loud. But every so often, I hear the sound of the ocean. Like a seashell held to my ear.

Zale has an old flatboat hidden down at Holbert’s Pond, about a half mile south of our spot at Li’l Pass. He pulls the rip cord, and the ancient motor coughs and sputters, then comes to life with a cloud of black smoke.

As we head out into the bayou, I glance back over my shoulder, and the lights along the boardwalk get smaller and smaller until they disappear behind us.

And then there’s nothing but dark stretching out as far as I can see.

Keller’s Island is a little bit of forested high ground that sits way back in the bayou. It’s surrounded by deep water on three sides. Ringed with bald cypress trees at the edges and thick with huge live oaks in the center.

When we were growing up, after what happened to Ember and Orli, the older kids would go back there to party sometimes. It was a deserted place for them to get drunk and smoke weed and hook up in the dark. A spot to scare the daylights out of each other with real-life ghost stories.

But not for us. Not for the Summer Children.

We left it to the dead.

Even when we got big enough to do our own partying, that place was off limits. We used to skirt wide around there when we were out in our airboats and ATVs. We’d point out the tree line. Whisper what happened there. Tell the story. Say the names like a ritual.

But we only went there one time.

To Killer’s Island.

Hart took us all there the summer we were fourteen. We were supposed to be fishing, but he convinced us to take a detour on the way home. Some kind of sick field trip to see the place where all our childhood nightmares were born.

It was bright daylight when the eight of us stood there together behind the ruins of Dempsey Fontenot’s burned-out cabin and stared at the pond where Ember and Orli died, but it still scared me so bad I couldn’t sleep for weeks. I felt uneasy all the rest of that summer. I couldn’t seem to wash the mud of that place off me, no matter how hard I scrubbed.

Now the idea of visiting there in the dark makes me sick to my stomach.

The journey doesn’t take long by boat, and pretty soon I see the dark outline of tall trees standing sentry against the night sky. The closer we get, the bigger they get.

And the smaller I feel.

We fly back through the bayou toward that thick stand of trees. But really, we’re flying back through time. All the way back to where this whole thing started, maybe.

Thirteen summers back.

To the beginning of it all.

What’s past is prologue.

Zale runs the boat up into the shallow water, then hops out to drag it to shore. He takes my hand and helps me out, and I gasp from the shock of his touch. I wonder if that will ever wear off.

I hope it doesn’t.

We hike through the thick woods and thicker dark, ducking low-hanging branches dripping with Spanish moss and dodging thorns that grab at us like fingers until we reach the tiny clearing at the center of the little island.

When we step out of the trees and into the moonshine, we’re standing right behind what’s left of the old Fontenot cabin. Dempsey lit it up like a bonfire, they always told us. I’ve heard that story so many times. Burned it to ashes before he cleared out.

After he drowned Ember and Orli and left them in the pond to rot.

Now, thirteen years down the road from that horrible summer, there’s not much left to mark the spot. No monuments or memorials. No little white wooden crosses. Just a pile of fire- blackened logs.

My eyes adjust, and I look around the clearing to see signs of life.

A tiny tent leans at the edge of the tree line. A few belongings are scattered around. A bedroll. A razor lying on a rock. There’s a fire ring. And a cooking pot with no handle. A discarded can of beans lies nearby, and a homemade fishing pole leans against a tree.

I take all that in. Because I can’t stand to look at the spot where Zale’s own childhood nightmares were born.

The bones of the cabin where his twin brother died.

Aeron.

Number twelve.

I don’t want to look at the drowning pool, either. I’m trying not to imagine Ember and Orli. White dresses billowing out around them. Trailing blue ribbons the color of a cloudless Louisiana sky.

Fish nibbling at their staring eyes – swimming in and out of their open mouths.

I don’t want to know what they looked like when they pulled them out of the water.

Faces gone. Limbs swollen black.

But somehow I do know.

Zale is silent. I feel him watching me. Waiting. Curious. And I don’t know if I can do what I need to do. I’m not sure I have the strength.

The deep power.

But I have to try. Because it’s the secrets that fester.

I let go of Zale’s hand and slip the little silver hummingbirds out of my hair. I hold them tight in my fists. Then I close my eyes and think about my mother. I don’t move. I stay so still so long that my legs become cypress trees, rooted deep in the soft ground. I become part of the landscape of the bayou. Like the saw grass and the water hyacinth and the duckweed.

And then I open my eyes.

Zale doesn’t move. He doesn’t talk. I don’t even hear him breathing.

I wonder if he’s still there. I hope he is. But I can’t turn my head to see, because I’m staring at my mother. Not inside my head, like a dream. But standing right there in front of me. Flesh and blood.

She isn’t looking in my direction, though. Her green eyes are fixed ahead. Focused toward the cabin. She’s beautiful. Young and slender. Radiant in the grey predawn light. But the look on her face is fierce. Determined.

There’s an explosion of light, and my mother smiles.

Satisfied.

I see the orange glow of the fire reflecting off the little silver hummingbirds clipped in her long hair.

Two of them.

And then I feel the heat.

I smell the smoke as real as anything.

But it’s all silent. No voices. No crackle and snap of flames.

Dead still.

The smoke fills up my nose and burns the back of my throat, so I turn away.

Away from the cabin.

Away from my mother.

Away from the other woman. The one who runs right by me as she slips unnoticed out the back of the inferno, clutching a little blond boy to her chest.

My eyes come to rest on the stagnant pond. The drowning pool. Two small shapes float side by side in the center of all that black water.

Firelight on white dresses.

Blue ribbons like the strings of a kite.

And just for a split second, I hear voices. Like someone turned the radio up.

All the way.

Angry shouting.

The noise of a crowd.

One person is sobbing.

Someone else is screaming.

The next thing I know, that’s all gone and I’m on the ground. Zale is holding me. Calling my name. Hugging me to his chest. Everywhere our bodies touch, there’s that tingle. He helps me to my feet, but I’m unsteady, so he keeps a hand on my elbow.

I open my fingers to stare at the little silver hummingbirds, and I know I have to tell him the truth. Even though I don’t want to. Because we’re all bound up by our secrets.

And that has to stop with me.

“My mother,” I whisper. “She’s the one who started the fire.”

Overhead, there’s a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning so loud and so bright that I’m temporarily deaf and blind. My ears ring and I see spots. A surge of electricity rips into my elbow and up my arm to slam straight into my chest. It’s a white- hot burning. Immediate and violent. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I cry out in pain, and the force of the jolt knocks me backward. I land in the mud at the edge of the drowning pool, and I just sit there with my hand over my racing heart, gasping for breath. My muscles are cramping, and my vision is blurry. Everything tingles. And there’s a strange metallic taste in my mouth. Thunder rolls again. The power in it makes me shake.

“I’m sorry,” Zale tells me. “I didn’t mean – I’m so sorry, Grey.”

“I need to go home,” I whisper.

Zale holds out his hand to help me up, but I hesitate. I’m still struggling for breath. “It’s okay,” he tells me. “I promise.”

So I let him help me to my feet, but I’m too weak to stand. He scoops me up like I don’t weigh anything at all, and I wrap my arms around his neck. Zale’s skin is warm and soft. Alive with energy.

It’s fully night now, but he never stumbles. He carries me out of the woods and down to the edge of the water. But he doesn’t say a word. And then we’re in the boat.

Killer’s Island fades to black behind us.

Zale is taking it slow because of the dark, navigating the shallow channels with a sureness that Hart and Case would be hard-pressed to match. Like he’s lived here all his life.

Like he belongs.

“Are you sure?” he finally asks me.

“I saw her.”

“What about my father? Did you see –”

“No,” I say, and I reach out to brush my trembling fingers through his blond hair. “I’m sorry.”

We leave the boat at Holbert’s Pond again, and I don’t bother to go back to Li’l Pass for my flip-flops. I’m not as weak as I was, so I insist on walking. But Zale keeps his arm around my waist, and the buzz of that contact keeps me warm. He walks me all the way back to the boardwalk. Right up to the steps this time. He refuses to leave me alone in the dark.

We stand there staring at each other for a few seconds, then Zale pulls me to his chest. I feel his lips brush the top of my head. It’s so good. That tingling closeness. And his heart beating against mine. There’s so much I want to tell him, but I can’t find the right words. I don’t know how he can even stand to touch me, after what my mother did.

When he knows what she took from him.

“Grey,” he whispers, “look at me.” And he tilts my face up toward his. “Whatever your mother did, you’re not responsible for it.” I nod, but I’m not sure I believe him. His eyes are dark blue now. Like the night sky. “Did I hurt you bad? Before?” I shake my head, and he lets out a breath of relief. “I’m glad.” He lays a hand on my cheek. Little zips and zaps. Harmless. “I’d never mean to hurt you, Grey.” His eyes flash in the dark. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course,” I tell him. “You’d never hurt anyone on purpose.”

He’s so gentle. More summer rain than lightning storm.

“I know,” he says, and the wind picks up. “But sometimes people get hurt anyway.”

Thunder rumbles low across the bayou.

Zale leans in close, and I think maybe he’s going to kiss me.

Really kiss me.

But he doesn’t. He just whispers in my ear. Four words of absolute truth.

“There’s a storm comin’.”

Then he disappears into the shadows, and I climb the wooden steps to the boardwalk. But before I go inside, I stand on the front porch of the Mystic Rose and watch the river for a really long time while I listen to the night singing of Evie’s wind chimes.

Elora is standing right beside me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can just almost glimpse her dazzling smile. That long dark hair. If I just turned my head a little . . .

But I don’t turn my head. Because what if I’m wrong?

Across from me, on the dock, someone has put up more safety ropes. The rot has been spreading all summer. One whole side is blocked off now.

I turn and pull open the front door of the bookstore. Not locked. Of course. It’s never locked. There’s no crime to speak of in La Cachette. Never has been.

Unless you count arson, I mean.

And kidnapping.

Murder.

I close the door as softly as I can and twist the bolt behind me.

All the lights are off in the house, but I hear the radio playing in the kitchen. “Louisiana Blues.” I tiptoe in to get a glass of milk, and Sweet-N-Low stirs on his pillow. His collar jingles, and he whimpers in his sleep.

I open the fridge, and light spills across the linoleum floor. A weather update breaks in over the music, and I pause to listen.

“The National Hurricane Center is predicting that Elizabeth will become a major storm by the time it reaches the central Gulf of Mexico.” The voice on the radio is almost breathless with excitement. “The eye is now four hundred and sixty miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River. Everyone in the listening area is urged to prepare for an extreme weather event.”

The announcer goes away, and the harmonica comes back. Blues guitar.

And that’s when I hear my name. I freeze, afraid that – somehow – the shadow of my dead mother has followed me home from Keller’s Island.

But when I turn around, Honey is sitting at the kitchen table, all lit up in the refrigerator’s glow. She has on her old pink robe. Curlers in her hair. And I wonder what she’s doing down here. Sitting at the table. Listening to Muddy Waters moan “Louisiana Blues” into the dark.

But then I see the picture in her hand. The one of me and my mom. The one I left on the table beside my bed.

The one with the haunted eyes.

Honey looks down at the photo, then back up at me.

“Sugar Bee,” she says, “we need to talk.”