All too soon, Harlow broke the surface again and looked at me.
“Charlotte! Look! Dive down and look!” Her words hit me like arrows, and I bit down hard, clenching my jaw against the panic that felt like a rampant fire loose in my chest.
Vanessa. I had to find Vanessa.
I ducked under the water, but didn’t make it more than a couple of inches before my lungs spasmed, the terror pulsing through them. I sucked in involuntarily, and sputtered as I shoved upward. I heaved as I broke the surface.
Harlow looked at me as she came up from a deep dive.
“Charlotte! What the fuck are you doing! We have to find Vanessa!”
“I’m trying!” I shrieked, raising my arms and sending myself underwater once more.
And once more, the terror that seized me once I was under was unbearable. My hands shook as I fought to get above the surface, but something stopped me. There was something touching my foot. I opened my eyes, trying to see below in the pitch-black waves. I felt it again. Something touched me.
I tried to reach down—to grab whatever it was. I prayed that it was Vanessa.
A finger grazed mine. I let out a scream and tried to dive farther. I tried to reach her, but she sank lower, and I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure if it was the water or my fear that stopped me more.
I shoved upward again.
“Harlow!” I screamed. “I found her! She’s here, Harlow! Help!”
“Get her! I have the boat, Charlotte! We need the boat!”
“I can’t!” I breathed. The feel of the water around my feet, the swirling darkness wrapping around my body, was already sending me over the edge of another panic attack. I tried to go under, but I froze.
My sister was drowning, and I couldn’t move.
Harlow screamed out a string of curses, and then there was a splash of water as she swam.
She dove, the splashing around us sounding in the dark for a moment before there was silence.
Silence as I treaded water, waiting for Harlow to come up. Waiting to see if she found Vanessa.
I screamed into the night, a terrifying sound of fear and helplessness. The sound of it was foreign even to me—I sounded like a wounded animal. I tried to go underwater again, but the fear kept me afloat.
Then Harlow broke the surface, and I cried out as I saw Vanessa in her arms, her dark hair plastered against her face.
“Help me!” Harlow cried, and we swam back to the boat. I got in first and then reached down. It took everything I had to pull Vanessa back into the boat. I set her on her back, and it was then I realized she wasn’t breathing.
Harlow heaved herself into the boat, spilling onto the deck.
“She’s not breathing!”
“What?”
“She’s—she’s not breathing, Harlow!” I shrieked.
Harlow skidded forward on her knees, putting her ear to Vanessa’s mouth.
I couldn’t tell if she was whispering out a prayer or a curse. Knowing Harlow, it was likely she was doing both.
I pulled back against the inside edge of the boat as Harlow pumped on Vanessa’s chest.
One two three four five six seven eight. Mouth to mouth. Again. One two three four five six seven eight.
I wrapped my hands around my hair and pulled on the roots.
Vanessa wasn’t breathing. She wasn’t breathing because I couldn’t dive down and save her. I couldn’t save her, and those few extra seconds could have been the difference.
One two three four five six seven eight, Harlow pumped.
“Don’t you fucking dare, Nessa,” Harlow choked out. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
A sob ripped from her throat as I pulled my knees to my chest and let out a small cry.
Four
Up until I was fifteen, the worst thing I’d ever done was buy a couple of G-strings without telling my mother. The worst thing I’d ever seen was when my best friend Lindsay found her cat’s lower half in the gutter outside her house.
My life was caramel Frappuccinos, cheer practice, and Friday-night sleepovers.
I played with my younger sister, Iris, and my younger brother, Jack. Carmen was the oldest, and we made it our mission to annoy her as much as possible.
Up until I was fifteen, everything I thought about my life was a lie.
I was raised on stories about Oddities. Everyone was. I think that’s the weirdest part of the whole thing. I grew up hearing tales about the freaks, the anomalies—Oddities—the magicians. We talked about them like they were weird, but we all wanted to know what it was like to have power. I remember joking about the silly-sounding ones. A kid who realized he could pop a bag of popcorn by putting his hand on the bag, or a girl who could break glass with her voice. Then there were horror stories told in the dark during camp, like the one with a girl who woke up early one morning with yellow eyes and a thirst for blood so intense she tore the family dog apart. Those stories kept me up at night long after I’d laughed about them over campfires.
But the stories always had a hero . . . the reason Oddities could never hurt us. The Wardens—Oddities who protected humanity. Shadows in black who made sure nonmagical people would never be hurt by the magicians.
For most of my life these stories were just fun things we whispered in the dark over the edge of our sleeping bags at a sleepover. Until I woke up one morning and started feeling a pulse in the center of my palms that felt like it was latching on to other people . . . like it was somehow inside them.
I stayed in denial for as long as I could. But I wondered, as I lay in my bed late at night, if the stories might be true. Parents tell their kids about Santa Claus knowing that, at some point, they’ll realize it was just a game—something sweet to make childhood more wondrous and magical. As the sharp, humming something pulsed under my skin, I wondered if parents were betting on the fact that we’d realize the reverse about Oddities: that they were real. If they told us it was just a story because they wanted to keep our childhoods safe and carefree for as long as they could.
I begged my parents to take me to the doctor, and I prayed it would be nerve pain, maybe something from cheer. But they didn’t find anything. Next, they took me to a psychologist, who was convinced I was nervous about college applications and this was my way of acting out.
Nothing is wrong, Vesper, my mom whispered to me. But I felt a thirst in me I was worried about controlling.
One night, my dad sat me down and told me to do it to him—whatever I was afraid of being able to do.
“You can’t be serious, Dad,” I remember saying.
He set his hands on his knees on the couch across from me. “Very. I’m going to show you that there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
I raised my palm. It tingled, a singsong threat threading through my blood. And I focused . . .
But nothing happened. The power fizzled out, and I looked down at my hand.
“See? There’s nothing to worry about,” he told me.
It wasn’t that I was controlling my power. It was that there was something much bigger than me stopping me from showing it to anyone.
But on July Fourth, everything changed.
It was ravenous that night. I could feel it—hunger pangs in the tips of my fingers that stretched to that place deep in my chest. The last thing I wanted to do was go to the Independence Day party by the lake, but my whole family was going, and I knew that getting out of it would be harder than just saying yes.