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walking toward the water. I was transfixed. Was Jason Hancock going to come to the water’s edge? Could it be this easy? I felt like a crocodile lurking at the shore, watching a zebra come down for a drink.
Involuntarily, I floated closer.
But it wasn’t Jason Hancock. It was Lily coming down to the boat dock. She kicked off her sandals and hitched up her skirt before sitting at the end, letting her legs dangle off the edge of the dock and into the freezing water. Was that normal?
I dropped beneath the surface like a weighted line and searched for her scent. It was sweet, with a spicy edge like oranges or pine needles. When I resurfaced, I only let my eyes and nose break the waterline. I didn’t realize how close to shore I’d come, and my first instinct was panic. I dropped an inch.
“You don’t have to be so sneaky. I know you’re there,” she said.
Shit.
My heart hit my stomach like a fist.
Flash!
I was gone. I swam north twenty yards to a willow branch that hung low over the water like a bench.
Jason Hancock was walking the length of the dock toward his daughter. He was rubbing some kind of balm into his bare arms, and it made his skin glisten even in the fading light. “Sorry, hon,” he said. “You just looked peaceful sitting there. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
He sat down beside her and put his arm around her shoulders while I, lurking in the shadows, worked to lower my heart rate. I peered over the willow branch at them.
“Y’know Mom’s pissed about the house,” said Lily.
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“She’ll get over it.”
“It’s a pit, Dad. The whole place is falling apart, and you’re not exactly a handyman.”
He smiled. “I’ve got help, remember? You’ve always been too much of a worrier. Your mom will be fine.”
“I heard what she asked you,” Lily said. “How is this move supposed to make things better for
her
?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ll give you that Bayfield’s more quiet than Minneapolis, but is it really going to improve her health? I’m just wondering if moving here is more about your curiosity than anything else.”
“Lily Anne Hancock, your mother has always been my number one priority. All I’ve ever wanted is to make sure she’s taken care of.”
“Easy, Dad. I’m just wondering about Grandpa’s stories. Maybe you just wanted to— ”
“How do you like your room?” Hancock asked.
“Don’t avoid the conversation, Dad.”
“This
is
a conversation. It’s a question.”
“Fine,” said Lily. She bobbed her head slowly, considering her words. “It’s nice, I guess. Cozy.”
Hancock tested the water with his fingertips and groaned softly. “So maybe you’re a little bit right. This move is for your mom, but I can’t deny that it feels good to be here. I don’t know what it is, Lil, but it’s like this lake is calling me. Sometimes I really regret not having learned to swim.”
“If we were back in Minneapolis, you could take lessons at the Y.”
Hancock smirked and kissed his daughter’s cheek. “You’ve
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been a good sport. I know you miss the city, but thanks for giving this a shot. Leave the worrying to me, Lily. I’ll take care of your mom. You try and have some fun.”
“Fun. Sure,” Lily said. “Did you know Bayfield is, like, the apple capital of the upper Midwest?”
Hancock chuckled and withdrew his arm. “Maybe you and Sophie should go exploring tomorrow. Check out the town, the woods.”
I perked up at his suggestion and ventured out from under cover.
“Yeah. Sounds great, Dad. I’m sure Sophie would
love
a hike in the woods.”
Ah, sarcasm. This girl was more my style.
Jason Hancock threw his head back and laughed. “Yeah, maybe not,” he said. “She’s never been the outdoorsy type.”
Lily lay against her father’s shoulder. “I love you, Dad.”
I dove for the bottom and took a course toward Basswood. Someone might have argued I was meant to witness this father- daughter moment— that it was a sign Hancock and Lily had a stronger bond than I’d originally anticipated. But even though the older girl was more my type of target, I couldn’t abandon our plan just for personal preferences. Sophie was the girl. Besides, I didn’t really believe in signs.
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10
BEST- LAID PLANS
A ll night I worked on the details of my plan. Synchronicity would be important. Our art of persuasion would have to be spot- on perfect. What I hadn’t factored in was the weather, and that was one thing I couldn’t control. Well, one of many.
The new day brought with it a change in atmospheric pressure that prickled my skin and squeezed at my temples. There was an electrical charge buzzing between the tree branches, and the animals in the woods had all gone silent. How long could the rain hold off?
It was three o’clock when the Hancock sisters finally set
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off for their forced- march expedition into the woods. They stepped out their door just as the Pettits’
Handyman & Cabinetry
van pulled into the driveway. Jason Hancock followed his daughters out and greeted Mr. Pettit. Gabrielle and Jack climbed out of the passenger- side door. They jogged around the front to say hello to Lily.
As for me and my sisters, we’d only been on land for a few minutes. They were somewhere north of the Hancocks’ house, while I lurked in the trees just outside their front door. My leg muscles, still newly morphed, trembled beneath me. I leaned against a tree for support and strained to listen to the Hancocks’ and Pettits’ conversation.
Waves crashed against the shoreline, making it harder to catch everything. Something about fixing the roof, obviously. The Pettit man gestured at his kids. He nodded at Sophie. Gabrielle Pettit didn’t seem to be saying much. The men talked and pointed at the house. There was a moment of unexpected silence from the lake, and Lily said, “We were going to explore the woods.”
My back straightened, and I leaned forward.
Jack Pettit shook his head. He braced his hands on the toolbelt around his hips and pointed up at the sky. It had been overcast all morning, but now the clouds were less of a gray canvas and more like churning ashes. I looked anxiously at the Hancock girls to see what they’d decide.
Lily shrugged, and I rallied. She obviously didn’t like being told what to do. If she was anything like me, she’d storm off into the woods. Of course, that stubborn streak could pose a problem for me, too, if she refused to follow my lead and separate herself from her sister. Right on cue,
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Lily kissed her dad’s cheek and stomped off, dragging Sophie behind her.
I hit the Send button on my cell. “They’ve left. . . . Yes, both of them. . . . Due west. . . . I don’t know. You’ll have to think of something. . . . Wait, let me see.” I closed my eyes and inhaled. The familiar scent of oranges filled my nostrils, only more diluted by the air than it had been in the water. “Oranges,” I said, then searched past that scent for Sophie’s. I choked back on the sudden dryness of the air. “And talcum powder. . . . Yes, I’ll follow for a while, but I don’t want to get too close. Where are you? . . . I’ll call if they change direction, but you should pick up the scent in fifteen minutes.”
Lily still had her little sister by the hand. Sophie didn’t seem to be sharing any of Lily’s enthusiasm for adventure. She was complaining about something and gesturing at her sandals.
They followed a worn deer path until it intersected with something man- made. The new path was lined with timbers stripped of their bark. Wood chips filled the borders. Sophie’s ankles turned on the soft path and she stopped with a stamp of her foot. She folded her arms across her chest. I marveled at Lily’s patience.
“Here, take this,” said Lily. She removed her cardigan and handed it to her sister, leaving herself in only a lacy tank top. “Better?”
Sophie nodded and Lily’s mouth slipped into a smile I didn’t recognize. Was it mockery? No, it didn’t seem to be that, because she slipped her arm around her sister’s shoulders and squeezed. It was something softer. I paused and rummaged through the catalog of human expressions I kept
65
in my mind. But it wasn’t a human expression I landed on. It was my mermaid mother’s. I could almost hear her saying,
There, there, now, Calder, isn’t that better? You know, if you spent more time swimming and less time visiting the shipwrecks, you’d stay warmer.
I shook my head to clear the image and fixed my eyes on Lily’s face. Soaked it up. Memorized it. Her auburn hair captured the scarce bits of sunlight that broke through the trees. Each strand was a slightly different color, reflecting light like little rainbow beads. It cascaded down her back in loose curls. Her arms and legs were long and limber. She was surefooted. Her voice . . .
I snapped out of my reverie when I realized they’d moved too far for me to hear them anymore. They trudged on until the path stopped, as did the dense understory. The deciduous forest gave way to pines, now sparsely spaced in the silty soil.
I dug my cell out of my pocket and waited for Pavati to pick up. “Listen. Slight change of plans.”
Pavati’s voice came shrill through the phone.
“Let me talk to them first,” I said. The new plan was taking shape as I spoke. “I don’t want the older one to be unnecessarily nervous when you separate them. Give me five minutes and then show up. The younger one wants to turn back anyway. Use that opportunity. I’ll distract the older one. You offer to walk the younger one back to the house. Tallulah can knock her out as soon as you get her out of her sister’s sight.”
I clicked the phone off and shoved it into my pocket.
The Hancock sisters stopped to admire the lake from the
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higher vantage point— or at least one of them was. Sophie was picking bark off a pine tree, looking bored.
I made a little noise so as not to scare them with my sudden appearance. Still, Lily whirled around with a yelp. I put up my hands, palms forward, to calm her down.
“Whoa. Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you,” I said.
That will come later.
A huge smile spread across Sophie’s face, but Lily looked less certain.
“Hi, Calder,” said Sophie. “What are you doing out here?”
“Same thing as you,” I said. “Taking a walk. What do you think of the view? Pretty spectacular, isn’t it?”
Lily agreed, and she turned back toward the lake. “I heard they have sailboat races around Madeline Island sometimes.”
“Not till summer.” I thought about her reaction to Jack Pettit’s warning back at the house and said, “Hey, it’s getting kind of cold.” Hopefully I’d get the same defiant reaction from her. That would keep her from wanting to go back with Sophie once Pavati showed up. “For a girl,” I added.
Lily’s chin pulled up and her mouth tightened.
Bingo.
A familiar laugh broke out of the woods, and Pavati and Tallulah sauntered up the path toward us, heading in the direction the Hancock girls had just come from. Tallulah feigned surprise when she saw us standing there.
“Oh,” said Pavati. “Hello there, sweetheart.” She fixed her hypnotic eyes on Sophie, and I could feel the electricity in the air. I stole a look at Sophie, and she was— just as I knew she would be— getting that glassed- over look our prey assumed seconds before we dragged them under. Having been
67
on the receiving end of Pavati’s gift, I knew what Sophie was feeling. The spell acted as a sedative; she didn’t feel much. Humans rarely fought back. Tom Hancock had been one of the few. I hoped resistance wasn’t a family trait.
“Oh, I didn’t expect to see you here. These are my sisters,” I explained to Lily. She would never let Sophie go with strangers. I still wasn’t much more than that myself, but I hoped my introduction would ease her concerns.
Tallulah looked at me, surprised. We hadn’t talked about this kind of personal approach.
Pavati didn’t seem to notice. She was still smiling intently at Sophie. “You’re cold,” she suggested, and Sophie nodded, instinctively pulling Lily’s cardigan closer around her.
“Listen, Lily,” I said, summoning as much charm as I could. “If you’d like to keep exploring, I can show you something. It’s just a little farther up the path.”
“Sure,” she said. Her pupils dilated, and I gave a short nod that Tallulah picked up.
Tallulah said, “Well, how about we walk your sister back home, then?”
“That sounds great,” I answered for Lily, and although I was looking only at her, I heard her little sister repeat the word
great.
And just like that, they were gone, and I was alone with Lily. A wave of nausea rolled over me. There was something about her that terrified me, and I broke eye contact. Lily shook her head and looked back over the lake.
“So, what did you want to show me?” she asked.
“Um. It’s a rock formation. Just up ahead. Follow me.” I walked past her, and my hand brushed against hers. Electricity
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hummed on my fingers, and I was sure she felt it, too. She lifted her hand to her face and examined it.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Unless I’m about to have a seizure.”
“You’re not having a seizure,” I said, laughing. I dialed back my emotions to mitigate the electrical impulses that flowed naturally through my body. Fear, anger, any intense feeling— in this case a raging bout of nerves— always had to be kept on low. If I let my emotions take over my body, I could make a tree spontaneously combust just by leaning against it. It was my least favorite aspect of my makeup. Any resemblance to eels disgusted me. I preferred to think of Maris as the only slithery one of the four of us.
We stepped through the trees and up to the edge of the cliff. Basswood Island was at its closest point here, and I could still see the remains of our campfire from the night before. A trickle of gray ash caught in the wind and licked up from the spot.
The water and sky were now the same charcoal gray, turning Basswood into a dark, woodsy spaceship hovering in the air. I hoped Lily wouldn’t notice how stormy the sky was getting, and I could stretch this out a few more minutes.
Paper birch and aspen fringed the edge of the cliff, their gray- green bark a thin skin compared to the shingled bark of the pines. The aspens grew haphazardly, clinging to the bank, often shooting out in precarious angles over the water. I crept to the edge and started to climb down the bank, using an aspen as a railing.
“What are you doing?” Lily asked.
I could hear the alarm in her voice. I took as deep a