ONE
I GAVE UP on sleep by 4:00 a.m. And if I’d left then, in the predawn dark, I would have easily made it to the front door without being heard. But my family has a rule—one of many, actually. Don’t go down to the caves when you can’t see where you’re going.
I’ve learned, as I’ve gotten older, which rules are for bending and which aren’t. Even my grandmother didn’t obey absolutely all of them to the letter. But that one, I’ve never touched.
So as usual, my escape attempt begins at dawn.
The floorboards creak traitorously under my feet. Back home, I knew every squeaky spot; I knew exactly how much weight they could take without giving you away. You had to wrangle every part of that house, from the noise to the summer cross breeze through the windows. But with enough patience and box fans, you could make it wholly yours.
I’ve lived with my best friend, Rue, and her parents, Scott and Mercedes, for four months. And since then, I’ve learned all the ways in which their house thinks it knows what’s best for you. The pipes thrum and sigh and talk. The central air drifts with a mind of its own. And I can never seem to get from the second floor to the first without making at least one sound.
My heart starts going queasy-fast. The problem is, this isn’t going to feel good either way, whether I succeed or fail. The Atwood family doesn’t have as many rules as mine, but they gave me one when I moved in: I should treat this place like home. But even when I’m not actively trying to betray their trust, I always get this strange, guilty squirm when I’m wandering alone. It’s always going to feel at least a little like trespassing.
I ease my weight down the stairs and slip into the kitchen. Setting my water shoes neatly on the floor, I finally toe them on. And then I reach for the handle of the back porch door.
“Good morning, Alana.”
I whirl around. There is no way to whirl around casually. But I give it my best shot.
Opposite the kitchen, Scott Atwood stretches in the living room armchair, refolding his newspaper to lay it on the side table. His windbreaker and boots are already on. And because he is the kind of person you can’t get mad at no matter how hard you try, he’s smiling at me.
I wave weakly. “Hi, Scott.”
“Ready to go?” he says, as if I didn’t try to sneak out under his nose.
I smile tightly, hold up a single finger for one second. And then I double back toward the stairs. If I’m leaving the proper, well-behaved way, at least I can wash my face.
I meet Scott in the driveway, where he’s already got his park service truck running for me. It’s only a little over a mile to where we’re going, but the warmth is nice. Eases some of the sting of failure.
Whatever my face is doing right now, Scott notices. “Are you angry?”
I consider saying no. But Scott has known me a little too long for that. “Not at you,” I say, which is more or less the truth. His daily escort is the least embarrassing part of this entire setup. But it’s the one part that isn’t explicitly required of me. So here I am, waging a months-long war against a man trying to give me a five-minute ride.
It would be less excruciating if he weren’t looking at me with such understanding right now.
“It’s not as if I don’t appreciate the rides . . .” I eventually say.
“I know you do,” he says. “You’ve mentioned it. Often.”
“But I really can do this part alone.” I squirm. And then I regret it. Squirming is not going to make me look like a person who can get herself to work.
He takes his eyes off the road long enough to give me that unfailingly gentle look. “I know you’re nervous about tonight.”
I sink in the seat. I swear I didn’t used to be this transparent. “Not that nervous.” At his raised eyebrow, I add, “Five out of ten. At most.”
Because I don’t have that much to be nervous about, do I? They’re not going to take the family business away. Not when I’m the only member of the family left to run it. And though that doesn’t mean I’m above consequences for my mistakes, no one seems to consider what happened a mistake. They call it “an incident.” “An accident.” “That day,” if you’re town council chair Lena Russo and too squeamish to use direct language.
Tonight is a formality, really. A formality where almost all of the adults in my life gather to determine whether or not I can do, without supervision, the job I’ve had since I was eight years old.
So, you know. Maybe I’m a six out of ten.
“This isn’t a punishment,” Scott says. “You remember that, right?”
“I know it’s not,” I mumble. From you, I add silently. “But it’s not going to happen again, Scott. I don’t think one bad day should—”
“I think one bad day demonstrated that the way we’ve been doing things wasn’t that safe to begin with,” he cuts in, still gentle. “I know you want the council to decide that you’re ready tonight. I hope that they do.”
My smile feels tired. “But?”
“But if they do,” he says, “I’m not going to force you to let me keep driving you, Alana. I just hope you’ll consider it. Not as punishment, or supervision. As backup.”
Scott smoothly pulls the pickup into his usual parking space. My morning headache sends a warning pulse, right between my brows. “I’ll think about it?” I say. I’m going to say no, of course. But I owe him the thinking-about-it part.
He nods, unbuckling his seat belt. “That’s all I ask.”
The narrow beach along Cave’s Echo Cove is almost completely inaccessible. The opening from the ocean side is too narrow and rocky to take a boat into, and the only way to get in by land is to take the stairs down the bluff at the back edge of the Stinnet property. The Stinnet family has owned this house almost as long as my family, the Harlows, have been coming to the cove. I’ve started most mornings since I was eight years old unlocking and unlatching their gate, waving to whoever’s awake as I cross the backyard.
This morning, it’s both Mae Stinnet and her wife, Ayako, drinking coffee in their usual spot on the screened porch. Mae is fully dressed for the day, her close-cropped silver hair glinting in the sun as she nods to me. Ayako, still in her bathrobe and curlers, puts down her coffee to wave.
It’s not unusual for either of them to wake with the sun. But since my accident, I don’t think they’ve missed a day. I smile, wave, and try not to let their concern itch.
Scott follows me as I make my way back through the narrow line of trees, past the fence built to keep Mae and Ayako’s kids from the bluff when they were too young to know better. And finally, we’re here.
There’s a deck chair set back a safe distance from the edge, and as usual, Scott settles in it with a grunt. Sometimes he brings a book. Today it looks like he’s going to be content to watch the pink-gray roil of low tide.
I move to the steps, resting a hand on the banister. “I’m going to head down before Lena gets here.” At Scott’s look, I raise both my hands. “I’ll watch my footing.”
“It’s not your footing that worries me,” Scott says.
“I’ll watch the boss’s, too.” I smile dryly. “Want me to tell her you said hi?”
“You can tell her I said to be good to you,” he says.
I smile. She’d only take it as an invitation to be worse. But it’s a nice thought, nonetheless.
The trees bow against the force of the sea breeze. But the wood under my feet is as solid as ever. It’s not a long way down. But mornings like this, it feels long enough.
The wet sand sinks a little under my water shoes. The tide is just starting to go out: there’s only a thin strip at the top of the beach that isn’t dark with seawater. The waves are quiet enough today that I can hear the soft humming, drifting all the way down the beach. So if nothing else, the boss is in a good mood.
But unexpectedly, I’m not alone here. There’s a beach chair set up so far from the water that it’s trying to become one with the rock face. And sitting on the chair, tapping fitfully at her phone, is town council chair Lena Russo.
It’s surprising enough that, despite my promise to watch where I’m going, I trip a little over my own feet. Lena Standard Time tends to be about ten to twenty minutes after she said she’d show up—traffic, she always says, as if Whistler Beach isn’t four miles long. It’s rare that she beats me here.
She smiles, and it wobbles. Everything about Lena is a little tremulous, from her petite features to her big blue doe eyes. She doesn’t look like one of the most powerful people in town. But there are times she likes being in charge, and times she doesn’t. And the closer she gets to Cave’s Echo Cove, the more she dislikes it.
“Alana,” she says. “How are you?”
The first thing anyone in Whistler will say about Lena is that she’s too empathetic for her own good. The kind of person who comes to your relative’s funeral and cries harder than you do. But when she asks me, specifically, how I am, she asks like she’s afraid of the answer.
“Doing okay!” I say, awkwardly clapping my hands. “I’m gonna go straight in, if that’s okay . . .”
“Of course. Don’t let me keep you.” Lena’s uncertain mouth solidifies into a thin-lipped smile. “It’s okay if I don’t go with you?”
“Of course,” I echo. I’m not sure why she still asks. I don’t think I’ve seen Lena venture even halfway down the beach.
At the point where the bluff juts out into the water, there are three caves, carved hollow by time and the pounding surf. The third and final one, right at the edge of the bluff where the rock face swings out into the cove, is wide and high. At low tide, the path to the cave is fully above water. But today, my water shoes and I have shin-deep water to slog through.
I gasp softly as a wave slaps the back of my bare calves. And the humming—a bright, full-bodied rendition of “Greensleeves”—stops.
I take a slow breath in and close my eyes into my exhale. I take ten, maybe fifteen seconds to let the nerves flutter up. And when I step into the cave, I’m calm. I have to be, after all.
It’s quiet for a moment, after my footsteps fade. Then, from the back wall, I hear a sigh, like something uncurling.
I’ve never seen her smile. I’ve never needed to. The air itself shifts when she’s happy, like a front moving in.
“Good morning, chickadee,” she says. “Made it down here safely?”
I reach into my hoodie pocket for my phone and turn on the flashlight app, illuminating the floor of the cave: sand giving way to dark stone, and at the edge of the beam, four little rows of beach rocks, smoothed by waves. I leave the back of the cave in full darkness. There are some things you don’t need to see first thing in the morning. Or ever, really.
“You realize you don’t need to ask that every time,” I say.
“Just making sure, little love.” She laughs. She has a laugh like bells. If you heard it without knowing any better, you would think it belonged to something kind. “You know I love Little Lena—or I would, I’m sure, if she ever came to say hello. But I have to make sure she’s keeping you safe. What would Caroline have thought of me if I let you get seriously hurt?”
Instinctively, I twitch. The thing is, she could be mentioning my grandmother completely innocently—in a way, Grandma was her best friend in a long time. But there’s a reminder in it, too. When you dismount those steps, you’re supposed to be unshakable. Even when she could barely walk, Grandma’s footing was always so sure across the sand and stones of Cave’s Echo Cove.
And then there’s me. Who, within two weeks of taking over the business, slipped on a stone on a dark February day and broke my ankle, sprained both wrists, and nearly froze to death right here on the beach. It’s frankly unbelievably lucky that the only things damaged that day were a few small bones and ligaments—down here, I’m the least important thing that could have been broken. But averted disasters aside, it was also the kind of weakness I’ve been told never to show her.
I don’t think she needed a reason not to see me as a threat, though. She never has.
“You’re in a good mood,” I say, rather than address any of that.
She clicks her tongue. “Am I not allowed to hum, now?”
“I mean, you can,” I say. “But you usually have a reason.”
She considers that. “As a matter of fact, I am in a good mood. It’s the first day of your summer vacation, isn’t it?”
I narrow my eyes in the direction of the back wall. “I didn’t realize you were keeping track.”
“I’m responsible for your education now, aren’t I?” she muses. “For lack of better options.”
“Ouch,” I say. The word rolls lightly off my tongue, even as my stomach does a neat twist. “I think I can be responsible for my own education, actually.”
“You Harlows,” she says. Not without fondness. “You never think you need my advice. You know I was the one who encouraged your great-aunt Rachel to go to medical school, don’t you?”
I’ll bite. The biggest threat isn’t her bad moods—it’s her boredom. “Is that so,” I say.
“Her father wanted her to become a secretary,” she sighs. “But she was like you. Always chafed at orders.”
I squeeze my nails into my palms. Lightly, but hard enough to bite. Her easy familiarity never used to bother me, not until Grandma died. Maybe because I never had to think, until now, about where it comes from. All my life, the once-sprawling Harlow family had three members: Grandma, Mom, and me. Grandma’s gone. Mom may be alive, but she’s gone all the same.
Now there’s no one but me to make the daily trek to this cave. And she’s the only living thing left who has known me all seventeen years of my life. Knows things even Rue doesn’t.
“All that aside,” she says. “Can’t I be excited to see you more often for the next two months?”
Abruptly tired of this conversation, I kneel where the stone floor rises out of the water. This is the real danger of her talkative moods. They’ll get you distracted. “Aren’t you just excited to eatmore often?”
“Well.” The wind skitters against the mouth of the cave. “Food is best enjoyed with company. And you know things always pick up over the summer.”
“Mm,” I say. “People have more time to make appointments.”
“People have more time to think about what ails them,” she says. “It’s like your great-uncle Gregory always used to say. Sadness sells.”
I let myself laugh. “Great-Uncle Gregory also left Whistler to start an accounting firm in New Jersey. So apparently it wasn’t selling well enough.”
I shift my attention to the pattern of rocks against the ground, four rows of eight stones across that stand between me and the sound of her voice. They wouldn’t look like much if you stumbled in by accident, though thankfully the town makes sure no one ever does. They’re beautiful rocks. They don’t look like the bars of a prison.
For all that the pattern is terrifyingly fragile, the magic it holds is as deep as roots in the earth—and just as hard to break. The upkeep, on the other hand, is simple. All the heavy lifting was done long before I was born. The spell only needs two things to survive: blood, and the sea.
For the latter, we have tides rushing in and out of the cave and the stones smoothed by generations of surf. For the former, only the blood of the spellworker’s line will do. And for the foreseeable future, that’s mine.
“But enough of that,” she says, as I lay my Swiss Army knife against the rocks. “Have you given any thought to your class schedule for next year?”
“Bold of you to assume I’m going to think about classes before August,” I mumble. I need to stay focused for this part. But I’ve done this enough that I can work and humor her at the same time.
Thankfully, this doesn’t require much concentration. Just a little blood, a lot of counting, and as much calm as you can summon. After this long, I’m pretty good at all of them.
There are thirty-two different stones making up the seal. Only four of them need blood. The spell is a living thing is how Grandma explained it. And you don’t eat with your whole body, do you? Just with your mouth.
I could pick out all four by sight now. They look the same as the rest, though after all these years it’s hard not to see them as hungry. It’s been a long time since I needed the mnemonic Grandma made up when Mom was ten, fussy, and refused to memorize the numbers: the far-off sea touches every frozen shore. But counting them out relaxes me a little further. And the deliberateness of it satisfies one more Harlow family rule. When you touch up the seal, make sure the boss is watching you.
The first letter of each word in the mnemonic corresponds to the first letter of a number: eight numbers in total for four stones. The trick is the numbers come in pairs. The far is three and five, meaning the first stone sits three rows up and five stones across. I skim it with my fingertips, but I don’t feel anything. It’s not hungry today.
“This is your senior year,” she nudges. “Colleges are going to be looking at your class schedule.”
Off sea: one row up, seven across. Like the rest of my family, I didn’t inherit the magic that sealed her here. But it still lies curled in our blood, only just strong enough to sense the movements within the seal. Where the seal is fresh, it feels warm, like laundry from the dryer. Where the magic has started to fray, it feels like an itch.
One-seven is steady, too. So I keep going.
“Ha. Nice try, but you’re stuck with me,” I say, half paying attention. The most important thing in here is not to react. It’s the first thing we learn as Harlows: as weak as what’s left of this magic is, it still needs to be handled very, very carefully. And us Harlows have known for generations that if your emotions waver, your magic might waver, too.
Which means that this close to the seal, you need to keep a tight grip on yourself. But I’ve been doing it for so long now, it’s easy enough to work and listen to her at the same time.
“I wouldn’t dare to hope otherwise,” she says dryly. “But even I know there are schools where you could drive from here. We had a client last week from Bowdoin.”
Touches every: two up, eight across. This one feels steady, too. “Which one was she?”
“Pink curly hair like cotton candy,” she says. I hum, remembering. She was a nervous one. Although so many of them are. “Smart kid. You’re smarter, though. Or you could be, if you challenged yourself.”
My hand spasms over the stone. “Is this about the AP Calculus thing? Because I told you, most colleges have special classes. Math for English majors or whatever.”
“I recall,” she says. “It sounded like excuses then, too.”
“Wow,” I say, deceptively light. “Okay, Mom.”
The air in the cave prickles. “Don’t go comparing me to Amber,” she says mildly. “She wouldn’t know what level of math you’re in if I held a gun to her head.”
I laugh. I always laugh when I’m too close to anger—it defuses the tension, calms me before that anger affects the seal. But it’s just as important, Grandma told me, to hide your sore spots from her for their own sake. One day the boss will know how to hurt me better than anyone else. And I should delay that day as much as I can.
To be fair, though, she also really, really dislikes Mom. So maybe she wasn’t even trying to rattle me.
“You shouldn’t bring her up,” I say. “You know it stresses Lena out.”
“And you know she’s not listening to us. Little Lena, your grays are showing.” She waits for a long, demonstrative beat. “See? We could talk about anything. She wouldn’t hear a word.”
“Lucky Lena,” I mumble, shifting my attention to the final stone. Frozen shore. Fourth row, six across. And I know, even before my finger falls over it, that it’s coming loose from the tether of the spell. I can feel the itch of it under my fingernails.
My inhale comes in a little short. I never had nerves about this before. About anything, really. But since Grandma’s death, I seem to have more than I know what to do with.
Calm, I remind myself. You’re calm. My six-out-of-ten nerves can wait. Here, at any rate, I know what I’m doing. At least I’d better.
I pick up the cool handle of the Swiss Army knife. I don’t hesitate like I used to, when I was little: muscle memory knows how hard to press to puncture the skin, to get a small but workable drop of blood.
“You should swap that out,” she says. “It’s starting to rust.”
My breath slips out of its controlled exhale a little. “Are you going to let me finish,” I say, “or are we going to—”
I get a second’s warning, a flash of movement from the back wall, before she lunges.
My first stupid instinct is to flinch.
But I catch myself just as fast, snap forward to press my bleeding finger to the stone. I fumble, hit the rock floor, almost miss, but it’s only a few wasted seconds of scrabbling. The rush of air, the sound of claws skitters, then stops. A heavy exhale stirs the hair off my shoulders. And we both go still.
My hands are trembling where they’re pressed against the floor. I can hear my own nails clicking softly against the stone. My throat burns like I’m drowning, itches to gasp for big ragged lungfuls of air. I control it carefully. Take deep breaths, in and out, until my heart slows.
The seal feels steady, even under my shaking hands. It’s still a long, cold moment before I trust it to hold.
My eyes have started to adjust a little, here in the dark. I can see the solid edges of the boss’s shoulders now, the outline of her torso. The wisps of the movement always rippling under her skin. She lets out a hot puff of air, and it curdles as she laughs.
“You’ve got a ways to go, don’t you,” she says. “Your grandmother would have seen that coming even as a child.”
I laugh, too. This time I don’t bother to make it sound all that happy. “I could scream, you know.”
“You really think Little Lena would do anything about it?” It’s not sarcasm. She’s always found sarcasm “crude”—she’s told me that every time I’ve ever rolled my eyes at her. It’s curious. A genuine question. “Technically, dear, it’s not their job to punish me. That one’s yours. ...
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