10

 

Murmuring to myself, I washed the color of violence off my cuticles. The frigid water numbed my fingers and I wished it would do the same to my racing thoughts. What were the sheriff and Siyah talking about and why did it need to be done in secret? Still shaking, I tried to get my breathing under control, but Niklos’s vacant stare kept flashing in my mind sending my insides into a lurch. Steadying myself on the sink, I took in slow breaths as the red-tinged water swirled down the drain.

“Don’t crumble, Raven,” I whispered. “Sonja will need you.”

The thought of my sister, the sorrow that awaited her, sent the sting of tears to my eyes. She’d been worried he was in trouble. Had been sure Niklos would never leave her without word. Guilt over my doubt stabbed at me. I should have believed her.

Footsteps sounded just outside the bathroom, and I peered through the opening of the door at Siyah. He stood looking at me, his dark brows furrowed.

“What did he say to you?” I asked, drying my hands on the paper towel.

“That you need to stay on Noble.” Siyah didn’t move, his gaze resting on mine, searching.

His stillness unnerved me. Where was the rash temper, the challenging attitude towards anything and anyone in authority? He and Thompson talked outside as if they were childhood friends.

“Anything else?”

“What interests me, Raven, is not what Thompson said, but what you didn’t say.”

“What do you—”

“Raven…” He said my name in that low whisper, the one that made it impossible to keep anything from him. He tilted his head, catching my gaze with his deep blue one. Heat rushed to my face. Siyah could read me like no other. “What are you hiding?”

“I don’t think it’s relevant.” I turned to hide the blush, hoping he’d missed it.

“Why not let Thompson decide that?”

“Thompson? Since when is Siyah Cavaler a friend of the sheriff?” I shook my head. “You said earlier that there was unrest with the families. Is Thompson part of that?”

“That doesn’t concern you,” Siyah said, his jaw working. “And you’re answering me with questions. What did you keep from the sheriff?”

“Are you in trouble, Siyah?” I asked, thinking of him working the boardwalk on his own. He hadn’t told his father, that much I did know, but his friends and cousins? Where were they?

Siyah held me with an intense gaze. “I will ask again. What did you keep from Thompson?”

Not wanting to tell him about my room, to show once again how much of a mistake it was to come back to Noble, I sided-stepped his question with my own. “What unrest are you talking about? With the families, the island, what is it?”

Siyah sighed, and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms, waiting me out. I knew this game and two could play it. I crossed my arms also and pressed my lips together. We stood like that, staring at each other for long moments.

His eyes narrowed, but his posture remained relaxed. “Why were you out at night? Why did you not go to your room?”

“What unrest, Siyah?” I raised my chin waiting for an answer.

The corner of his lip quirked up slightly, but he didn’t give me one. The old fire of frustration ignited. I shrugged, trying to look uninterested. I headed for the table by the door.

“Fine. I see some things never change,” I said. “I should be with Sonja. She’ll find out soon if she has not heard already.”

“She wasn’t wrong about Niklos. He did not leave her.” Sadness flickered across his features.

“No, she wasn’t.” My voice cracked as I put the contents of my purse back, avoiding his eyes. “She never lost faith in him, in them. She will be crushed.”

“She’s young,” he said. “She’ll discover that although heartbreak feels like death, it rarely is.”

I whirled to face him, my eyes burning. “What happened to you, Siyah? My sister’s love is dead and you dismiss her loss like a schoolgirl who was stood up.”

He rose from the wall, strode towards me, his eyes dark with anger or sorrow, I couldn’t tell them apart in him.

“I don’t dismiss her heartbreak, Raven.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “I just know there is nothing to ease it.”

The image of the girl with the chestnut hair at his side, in his arms, flashed in my mind and my heart twisted. “Not for lack of effort,” I snapped.

Siyah closed the space between us quickly, the emotion rolling off of him so palpable I stepped backwards, my bottom hitting the wall behind me. Undeterred, the hurt of seeing him with her nearly crowded out my voice. “Is she even twenty, Siyah?”

He towered over me, a stricken look in his gaze. “You left, Raven. You did that.”

“And you know why,” I said, the pain cracking my voice. I pushed him away, needing to breathe, to escape the ache for him that flooded over. I hurried out of the club, not wanting to stay and let him see me fall apart. A patrol car pulled away from the building, and I ran after it, slamming my hand on the trunk. “Wait!”

Brake lights flared, and then Thompson leaned out his window. “Something wrong?”

“I – ”

Siyah stepped out of the club, scanning the parking lot.

I rounded the car and ducked into the front passenger seat. “Can you give me a ride to my family’s boat?”

Thompson glanced back at Siyah in the rearview mirror, but nodded. “Sure.”

I thought that the years would temper the way I reacted to Siyah, when instead, everything left unsaid seemed to rush to the surface the moment we spoke to each other. I swallowed the lump in my throat and studied the sheriff as he drove, trying to distract myself from what just happened.

Sheriff Thompson had unruly dark auburn hair and eyes that could not choose between gold and green. His rugged appearance seemed better suited to a motorcycle, not a sheriff’s car. He took us along the back road, one hand on the steering wheel, seemingly lost in thought.

I stared out at the strip of pitted asphalt just inside the headlights. Fog swirled in the beams and misted the windshield. I shivered in my seat more from the fight leaving me than the cold.

He flipped the heater up higher.

“Siyah said there’s been a lot happening lately on Noble.” I tried to sound casual. If Siyah wouldn’t tell me, then maybe his new friend, the sheriff, would. “Unrest in the families.”

“I think a better word would be suspicion run amok,” he said and looked over at me. “No offense.”

I shook my head. “I take none.”

“People are nervous, that’s all.” Thompson shrugged. “Random things taken all together can seem like something when it’s not.”

“Random like Niklos?”

The sheriff seemed to not be really saying anything, and I suspected he knew this.

“Well, no, Niklos had a definite knife wound. No, there were a couple of tourists who reported seeing strange, uh, figures on the shore. But they were intoxicated and diving at night. No one should be taking them seriously.”

“Some are?” I thought of the ghost stories that I’d heard as a child; specters and angry spirits in the woods or in the deep waters. “The Romany believe this?”

“No,” Thompson said, and then shrugged. “I don’t know. I get reports all the time of tremors or noises, but the woods and the caves are usually to blame.”

“The water pounding through the Devil’s Gate,” I said and nodded.

The cliffs overlooking the ocean were carved with caves that caught the waves, spewing and echoing during storms. “It can be frightening to those who’ve never seen it in the daytime.” Disappointed, I settled in my seat. “But nothing else like Niklos’s death. That’s good.”

“Well,” Thompson fidgeted, tapping his thumb on the steering wheel. “A Romany boy, a teenager, drowned three weeks ago while swimming.”

“Tragic, but not strange,” I said and wondered which of the families had suffered such a loss.

“But who swims alone in the summer? School is out and the riptide in that area is always bad this time of year. Everyone knows not to swim alone or you’ll get smashed to bits on the rocks.”

“Was he wearing clothes to swim in?”

“No, he…” Thompson’s brow furrowed. “His clothes were torn when we found him.”

“Would that happen if he fell off a boat and got trapped against the rocks?”

“No, he’d be pulverized, not shredded.”

“Oh.” My stomach lurched.

“I’m sorry. Forget about all that. You’ve got enough to deal with right now.” He pulled to a stop near the entrance of Black Shore Harbor and shut off the engine. He looked out at the boats, almost every craft had lights on. News of Niklos had already come to our community. Thompson sighed heavily, and got out. “You’ll come into the station and do the sketch with Harvey?”

“Yes, I will.” I forced a smile at him over the top of the patrol car. “Thank you.”

The scene inside my home with the sheriff was awkward and solemn. He was not part of our world, but he’d taken the time to tell my family himself rather than send his deputy, who was one of the Romany.

When he left, my sister huddled on her bed between my mother and myself and sobbed.

At one point, my father’s form filled the door, but he only looked at the women crying on the bed and rubbed his face with his palm as if trying to erase the expression of helpless sorrow on it.

We fell asleep embracing my sister.

When dawn peeked over the masts and a cold wind flared the windsocks, I awoke with a feeling of dread. I had to go back to my room at the Adder Inn. Someone left a threat buried in my pillow and I meant to find out who it was.