Chapter 21

"Wade is attuned to you now,"Liam says, glancing around us. "You'll need to be extra careful to keep your business inside the warded areas. I never should have let you stray like I did."

"Are you going to explain about the wards and the island's creepy messaging system?"

Liam keeps walking, conveniently ignoring me, as usual. I study the lines of his strong back etched in the waning moonlight, the rhythmic stride of his gait. Tyler was a blackbelt, but even he wasn't this fierce. Would this island have turned him into a savage, too? I have so many questions, my head might explode.

We trek on, stopping to rest on some rocks. Liam slips into the brush.

"Have some," he says when he emerges, offering me three fat translucent berries swirled with gold. "These are Quenchers. They satisfy both thirst and hunger."

I hesitate. "Things sure have a way of popping up when you need some."

"Says the girl who can summon extinct plants from the ground like a snake charmer." Sitting beside me, Liam smiles. The fierce warrior has resumed the guise of a tired boy, silver eyes gleaming beneath his mop of unkempt black curls. I breathe in hard and swallow the Quenchers. Unlike the horrible nightberries, these are juicy and sweet as peaches.

"Mmmm," I say, savoring the sweetness.

With a gentle finger, Liam wipes a trickle of juice from my chin. My face goes hot in the cool air. I tip my head toward him, then wrench my gaze away. No, idiot, no! One minute he's a cold-blooded fighter and the next, he's feeding me berries.

He's beautiful. And strange. And savage. Maybe I ought to be frightened of him, but I'm not. Despite myself, I like him…and more than that, I like how I am around him: fully present, one with nature. The way I'm meant to be. I guess that's why it pisses me off so much when he ignores and dismisses me. Or when, like now, he looks into my eyes like he's trying to tell me something that he can't bring himself to say.

I can't let him manipulate me like this. I've got to get a grip.

Liam clears his throat, rising to his feet. "Come on. We've got to go."

"Back to the boat? What if someone realizes I…"

"Forget the damn boat. We're going to my place."

"Your place? What about Evan? Or my dad?"

Mr. Gruff doesn't respond. Instead, he plows ahead without looking back to see if I follow. Cheeks burning with irritation, of course I do, because I have no clue where we are or where else to go.

Finally, we reach a broad field. The rising sun bathes it in shades of gold and lime green, its tall grasses dotted with gemlike glimmers of crimson, magenta, and bright blue wildflowers. I stop and take in the wonder of it, oddly at peace despite the harrowing night, despite the fact that I stole a boat and have no idea when I'll get the chance to return it. But I'm also sure Mrs. Bailey will be much too busy fussing over her son to notice it's gone.

Liam has gone grim again, sunk deep into his own thoughts. We've hiked a good distance through the field when he slips into some thick brush and rolls out his dirt bike. He revs the engine, and we take off in a ground-eating growl, racing over stepped expanses of rock. We follow a steep and twisting dirt road up an incline. Finally, Liam brings the bike to a stop before what appears to be a sheer rock wall.

"Here we are," he says, his voice catching slightly, "home sweet home."

He rolls the bike into a small hollow in the rock. I follow him up the endless stairs carved into the cliff to the top, which levels off to a scrubby field. At the other end, sunlight glints on the thatched roof of a low sprawling building, part garden trellis and part shack. The ocean sparkles silver beyond.

"We don't get visitors," Liam says, "so expect Lila to wig out."

"You call your mother by her first name?" I blurt, stupidly. Maybe because the vibrations are so strong here, they've scrambled my brains. Or maybe it's the way the sun turns his eyes to diamonds.

"You disapprove?"

"No." I swallow hard.

Not even sure if I'm awake or dreaming, I follow behind him toward the ramshackle structure. Twisting vines smother most of it, as if the surrounding plant life is determined to pull it back into the earth. With its whitewashed walls and thatched roof, Liam's home looks like it comes from another continent and century altogether.

We enter through a weathered front door into a large room, dark despite the brilliance of the day. Watery candlelight flickers across thick support beams, from which hang bunches of dried herbs and flowers. Shelves crammed with bottles, jugs, pots, and canisters line the walls from floor to ceiling. The room smells of smoke tinged with traces of sweetness and decay.

It's pretty lived-in for a summer cottage.

Lila O'Donnell dozes fitfully in a rocking chair before a fire in the stone hearth, her paper-white skin pulled taut across her face. The formidable power that emanated from her at the beach party is nowhere in evidence. She stirs and twitches in her sleep.

"Aurora isn't doing well," Liam says quietly, his voice hushed. "This latest episode has been particularly rough on Lila."

"Latest episode?"

He speaks through gritted teeth. "The Lamberts have been trying to harm my sister for years. This isn't the first time."

"Why do you allow it?" I ask, but Liam ignores me and lights a row of votive candles, revealing a figure laid out on the floor in the shadows beyond the firelight. I cover my mouth to stifle a gasp. Aurora is as still as a corpse, a blanket woven entirely from flowers and stems covering her. "She's not…"

The sick feeling from our encounter with Wade returns full force. I reel and grip the back of a chair, the candlelit space suddenly too hot and too small.

Liam kneels beside his sister and pushes away the slick curls clinging to her battered face. Her breaths are shallow, watery rasps, each one a struggle. "She's been like this since we brought her home," he says. "We've tried everything, but none of our treatments have helped. The plant is our only hope. You called it; you should help us perform the healing."

He's so tender with Aurora, so gentle. It wrenches at my heart. "And for some reason," I say, watching them, "you think I can save her?"

Liam gets to his feet and faces me, eyes glinting in the firelight, sharp as twin blades. He steps closer, voice low. "Yes, Rosalie Gatell," he says. "I do."

Before I can ask him what he means, he pads over to his mother and gently shakes her awake. Lila's eyes blink drowsily open, then focus on me, the dark intensity flaring to a cold burn. "Who is this?" she snaps, leaping to her feet. "Why did you bring a—what is she doing here?"

"Easy, Lila," Liam soothes. "This is Mr. Gatell's daughter, Rosalie. She's brought something for us."

Lila sniffs the air, and her gaze falls on the bundle of salttain cuttings Liam set down near the door. She rushes over and lifts one of the wilting blooms to her nose. "It's a miracle." Awe morphs into suspicion, and she steps toward me, her eyes fixed on mine—liquid coal set in bone china. "How were you able to find this plant when no one has seen so much as a seedling for a decade?"

"I don't know." Trembling, uncomfortably aware of the dual gazes of mother and son searing into me, I retreat until I bump against a wall.

"You don't know?" she says in a mocking, singsong tone. My ribcage wrenches tight, as if she's latched onto the strings that lace me together and yanked them.

"Watch your words, Lila," Liam warns.

Lila studies me, looking as if she's either going to smack me or demand I leave. She squints as if that might help bring me into better focus, until finally, she extends a slim hand and rests it on my shoulder. "I don't understand how this is possible. I believed your da was just some Landsider celebrity, hiding out here. Maybe he is. But you, my dear, are most certainly of the Hand."

"The Hand?" My voice cracks. I think of the symbolic hands I've seen everywhere since arriving on the island—not to mention Tyler's charm. "What do you mean?"

"No one who is not born of the Hand can summon salttain. No Outsider can tap into the full strength of the earth's energies as you have done."

She grabs my wrists and flips them over, examining my palms. To me they look like their usual sweaty, nondescript selves, but Lila peers closer as if she sees something I can't. She sighs, releasing me.

"You are a puzzlement. But I'm certain, in time, the marks will emerge. Something's triggered this ability to track and call the salttain in you. We can talk more later—but now, there's no time to explain."

She kneels beside her daughter. Pulling back the blanket of flowers to reveal the discolored flesh of Aurora's bare chest, Lila dips a rag into a bowl, gently dabs her daughter's mottled skin, and chants phrases in a language whose meaning dances just out of reach. At her direction, Liam and I mash the crowns of the salttain plant, scoop the mixture into small smudge pots that we place beside the candles, and light them. The room fills with a thick, musky smoke that coats the back of my throat and makes me lightheaded.

The three of us stand beside Aurora's makeshift bed, close our eyes, and join hands. A jolt of power surges through their palms into mine. Liam and his mother chant that same oddly familiar phrase in a repetitive monotone until I find myself speaking it, too. The room darkens. Voices fill my head.

You are born to this, Rosalie, one says before it fades back in with the others. I search for Tyler's among them, but come up short.

The darkness behind my lids expands to smother the diffused light of the fire. My body goes numb. Weightless, I feel my awareness lifted from the floor, a helium balloon floating in a formless void.

I fall and land hard on the cold wood floor, unable to move, my chest aching with each breath. Beyond the prison of my flesh, I hear garbled voices. Though my eyes are open, I can make out only vague flashes of light. I want to escape, to free myself from this cage, but something drags me further and further inward.

I'm not Rosalie at all.

I'm inside Aurora's mind. There she is, a phantom version of herself the night of her beating, bruised and bloody in her torn aqua dress.

Come to me, I say. Follow and I'll show you the way home.

Aurora extends a hand and I reach for it. When our fingers touch, the darkness explodes with light, and we're catapulted backward. Still inside this strange, in-between space, I soar and land with a splash, sinking into a bottomless pool of cold black water.