“Are you okay?” the girl asked me, her face lined with real concern.

I could only imagine how I seemed to her, my breath staggered, my eyes shot through with fear. I must have looked psychotic, haunted.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Sorry. It probably wasn’t the best idea to walk through the park by myself this late.” I extended a shaking, cold, wet hand. “I’m Rory.”

“Lalani,” she said with a smile, grasping my hand. “This is my brother, Nicholas.”

“S’up,” the kid behind her said with a nod and a smirk.

“Lalani and Nick were on the ferry, but they swam to shore on their own,” Liam said, looking at Lalani with a proud expression.

“You guys weren’t hurt?” I asked.

Nicholas shook his head. “We’re from Hawaii, originally. We know how to deal with rough water.”

“Hawaii,” Liam said giddily. “Isn’t that so cool?”

“Awesome,” I said, realizing suddenly what was going on here. Liam had a crush. A big one. On a visitor. “You’re still going to Joaquin’s, right?”

“Oh, yeah. I was just on my way. These guys are headed down to the hotel,” Liam said. He turned to Lalani. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon?”

“Rain or shine,” she replied, blushing.

Rain. It would definitely be rain.

Liam looked uncertain for a second, like he wanted to kiss her, but then he glanced at me and Nick and thought the better of it. Instead, he raised an awkward hand. “Okay. Bye.”

Lalani giggled. “Bye.”

Nick rolled his eyes, and they walked off together.

“We’re going surfing,” Liam said, staring after Lalani until the darkness swallowed her and her brother.

“That’s nice,” I said as we turned our steps down the alley between the Thirsty Swan and the Crab Shack next door. I had to leap over a puddle the size of a small lake, and Liam followed. “So, crushing on a visitor, huh?”

“Is it that obvious?” he asked.

“Kind of.” We skirted a Dumpster and found the set of stairs that supposedly led up to Joaquin’s apartment. “Just be careful.”

“What do you mean?” he asked as we began to climb. The staircase was slim and rickety, made with whitewashed boards that looked as if they’d been hammered together two centuries ago.

“Just…I don’t want you to get hurt,” I said, realizing in the back of my mind that—considering recent events—I might not be the best person to be giving romantic advice. Or instructions on how to protect his heart. “She’s going to be leaving soon. Moving on.”

Hopefully, anyway, I added silently.

“Oh. Right.” We paused on the tiny landing at the top of the stairs, outside the plain wooden door. He was silent and pensive for a split second before adding brightly, “Or maybe she’ll become a Lifer!”

I knocked on the door, smiling in spite of myself. It was nice to have someone around who was optimistic. I could hardly believe that earlier today I’d half suspected him of being an ax murderer. Joaquin opened the door, and his brows knit. He seemed confused at the sight of me and Liam together, but recovered quickly.

“Hey. Come on in.”

“How did I not know you live here?” I asked as Liam slipped inside.

“We moved here when we left the house on Sunset. Which you also never visited,” Joaquin replied with a teasing grin.

As I stepped over the threshold, I was pleasantly surprised. The living area was long and wide, mirroring the exact space taken up by the restaurant and bar below. A clean, modern kitchen and dining area were separated by half walls and columns from a sunken living room, where couches and chairs were set up in a conversational circle around a coffee table. Candles flickered inside hurricane-style holders, and two doors at the very far end were open to reveal a gray-and-white bathroom and what appeared to be a fairly large bedroom. A hallway led down the right side of the apartment toward the back.

Liam joined Bea, Lauren, and Fisher on the living room couches, where they were chatting as they sipped beer and soda from heavy-looking crystal mugs. Bea’s red curly hair was pulled back in a messy bun, as it had been ever since the rain started, and she wore a black-and-gray henley and jeans. Lauren’s short, glossy black hair was pushed back with a striped headband, and her blue Juniper Landing sweatshirt was so long it allowed only an inch of her khaki shorts to peek from under the bottom hem. Liam had shed his rain jacket to reveal a deep-burgundy T-shirt with some kind of blown-out logo on it and seriously distressed jeans. A trendy boy, definitely. Fisher was in his usual uniform of dark cargos and a light blue T-shirt so tight I could see every single one of his muscles.

“Hey, guys,” I said, handing Joaquin my soaked jacket as he closed the door behind me.

“Rory!” Lauren and Bea cheered.

“Where’s Darcy?” Fisher asked, straightening up to better see the door, as if expecting her to suddenly appear.

“She has a shift at the daycare with Krista. She’s coming straight from there.” I glanced over my shoulder at Joaquin. “Is Ursula home?”

He was reaching up into a high cabinet but turned to nod at the hallway. “She’s still not feeling well, so she went to bed early.”

The large metal bowl he was pulling out smacked against the top of the cabinet and let out a clang. The baskets underneath it started to spill out.

I reached up to grab the baskets before they could scatter everywhere, and he put the bowl down on the table, which was littered with bags of chips, plastic containers of dip, and some random vegetables.

“Are we having a party?” I asked. “I thought this was an initiation.”

“Is it weird?” he asked, showing a flash of uncharacteristic uncertainty. “I just thought, if I’m hosting…”

“No,” I said, and couldn’t help laughing. “It’s not weird.”

“Good.” His arms flexed beneath the short sleeves of his red T-shirt as he started to chop a pepper. I watched his hands as he worked, so adept and sure. It was riveting.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” I asked.

He lifted his hand and sucked a bit of pepper juice off his thumb. “When you cook for yourself for a hundred years, you develop some skills.” He nodded toward the dining area. “Could you grab me the wooden platter? It’s in the sideboard over there.”

“Sure.”

For some reason, I felt my heart rate thrumming in my wrists as I moved across the room, and I felt conspicuous. Fisher said something that made Bea and Lauren laugh and Liam blush. No one was paying any attention to me. As I bent to retrieve the platter from a low shelf, I noticed an old scrapbook open on top of the sideboard, its pages browned at the edges. The black-and-white and sepia-toned photos were held to the pages with black corner stickers. The book was flanked by a lit candle on each side, but they were both set a careful distance away from the book. I glanced at the first photo—a grainy shot of a lanky, smiling boy and a younger, round-faced girl in turn-of-the-century clothing—and dropped the heavy platter. It hit the corner of the sideboard with a serious clatter, but I somehow managed to grab it before it fell to the floor.

“God, Rory! Give me a heart attack!” Lauren said, hand to her chest.

“You okay?” Joaquin asked, coming up behind me.

“That’s you!” I blurted.

Joaquin nodded. “Yeah. That’s me and my sister, Maria.”

His sister. The one he’d killed in a car accident. His expression went distant for a moment as he eyed the photograph—not sad, exactly, just not here.

“How did you get this?” I asked. “Did you have it with you when you died?”

It seemed unlikely, considering he’d committed suicide alone in his attic. But the only things any of us had with us in Juniper Landing were those things we’d had on our person when we’d perished. Or in my and Darcy’s case, in our bags, since we’d been going into witness protection when Steven Nell attacked.

“No. It was my sister’s.” He took the platter from me, our fingers grazing. “I found it in the relic room about fifty years ago.”