Even through the water, the sun directly overhead hurts me. I feel like it’s drying my skin up. When I see the old one has broken the surface and is now facedown in the waves, I worry about the smooth skin on her back. Is it cracking? Is she in pain?
Where is the angel?
My sister begins to thrash. Fight the waves, fight the water. She can’t swim, she can’t breathe—the waves rolling into shore are starting to carry us, push us toward the sand. I panic, rush toward her, but a wave takes her body and sweeps her out of my reach. Don’t worry, I’m coming, don’t worry, we’re in the shallows now—
The old one slams her feet into the ocean floor. She rights herself, lifts her head out of the water, and gasps for air. I pause, watch as she takes a step, then another, then another, away from the sea, out of the water. She can’t walk on the beach—what if people are nearby? The angel has to be here somewhere; he’ll protect her…. I peer through the water for signs of legs to indicate humans are on the beach. I see none—maybe this area isn’t popular, maybe no one will see her….
I close my eyes and lift out of the water slowly, very slowly. Water breaks away from the crown of my head, and I can feel the sun searing my scalp. The midday sun is nothing like the gentle evening one I see when I’m with Celia. I rise until just my eyes are out of the water, leave them closed for a moment while water runs down my forehead and lashes. When I open them, they tear up from the brightness.
Find her, find her—there. Just ahead, wading through the knee-high surf awkwardly, clumsily. Her skin is even more beautiful in the light; she looks like she’s carved from smooth pale blue stone, but it’s like she’s forgotten how to move in the water.
Movement catches my eyes—an angel? No, just a fisherman. He’s standing slightly down the beach, watching the old one with his mouth hanging open. He kneels and drops his rod by the bucket at his feet, grabs a battered towel, and takes a tentative step toward her. He’s old and fat, with a round belly and a large, floppy hat on his head. I look back to the old one. No wings, no light, nothing. As she clears the smallest of the waves, I look down to her feet, expecting to see blood.
There is none.
The fisherman calls out to her—what will she say? What will he do? The fisherman approaches her, looking both enchanted and afraid. He holds out the towel for her, keeping it at arm’s length.
The old one gingerly takes the towel from his hands, observes it. She carefully wraps it around her body, tucking it in at the top to stay put. The fisherman points back to his belongings; he’s talking, but I can’t hear him over the waves. He turns his back on her—
And that’s all it takes.
She’s on him instantly. Her arms wrap around his neck, her hair whips behind her.
I can’t hear him speaking, but I’m certain I’ll never forget the sound of his neck breaking. It shoots across the water, rattles my core.
I scream. I can’t stop myself. The water absorbs the sound, mutes me, but I scream anyway, then tremble as I watch the old one release the man’s lifeless body. She steps away delicately, like it was nothing. And then she runs. Up the beach, over shrubs, and around palmettos like a wild thing. She isn’t a human, she isn’t an ocean girl. She isn’t an angel.
I see movement at the top of the hill she’s running up. I recognize him even from this distance—not his features, exactly, but the way he holds himself. The way he watches the old one as she runs toward him. The way he looks at the ocean, the thick scars on his chest.
He’s the angel, the one who brought me here.
There are others behind him, men, tall and handsome like he is. Other girls with blue-green skin like mine. The old one joins them to little fanfare, like they were expecting her, not at all horrified by what they’ve just seen her do. They turn and walk away, moving like one creature, like a pack, animals prowling.
A scream ripples through my head, a memory; I blink, feel Naida’s voice bouncing in my brain. I remember, all at once, like I’m drowning in the memory.
Molly was right. He isn’t—they aren’t—angels.
They’re what made me Lo.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Naida
My sister screamed. The monster was coming toward us. It had teeth; it was a man, yet it wasn’t—a man’s face, a wolf’s teeth, a devil’s eyes. We’d seen the monster before, the night it killed our father, the night its fangs slid through his skin like his flesh was tissue paper. We thought we’d fought it off. We thought we were safe, that our dad had made the ultimate sacrifice to save us.
Yet here it was again. Back. For me.
The house was in shambles, and the sweet scent of dinner cooking fought against the iron-laced odor of blood. A tiny sound escaped from my quaking throat as I pressed against the wall behind the display cases. Keep breathing.
The noise brought the monster’s acid-colored eyes to mine. Old blood caked its greasy chin. It licked its lips.
“No!” someone screamed. My sister. She dashed across the room, slid over the counter, and crashed into me, holding her arms out. If I were brave, if I were bold, if I were more like her, I would have pushed her away from me right then. But instead, I shook, buried my face in her long dark hair, and prayed. Make it all stop. Please.
The monster raced across the floor—it’s coming, it’s coming, closer. There were thick scars on its chest, perfectly straight lines the size of my hands, like axe marks. I stared at them uselessly while my sister pressed against me, like her body was strong, like the monster’s claws couldn’t rip through her as effortlessly as they had my father six months before. She shook her head, pleading, begging, furious, emotions slamming into one another.
She was raging, while I slowly became calm.
It’s not that I wanted to die. I just didn’t see the point of fighting anymore. It was easier to give in than to continue running from the inevitable.
I wrapped my arms around her waist and hugged her. She thought it was because I was so scared.
But it was me saying good-bye.
I stopped listening to my sister’s shouts, ignored the thudding sounds as she threw anything within reach at the monster—a demon, a man, an animal, it was everything, everything terrible. It was darkness.
It took slow, deliberate steps toward us, claws clicking on the hardwood. I could already feel its sticky breath on me, the scent of rot on its tongue. I braced myself and, with all the strength I had left, shoved my sister aside. She screamed.