feed his tongue into me. But suddenly the force is gone, and the cold breeze that slips between us, warm compared to his lips, is like a slap on my face.
I open my eyes. He is still there. It’s just me and him, on the path. From here I can see the Outfitters, and the cabin, and yet I am helplessly alone with him. Whatever he is.
“Do you believe I’m real now?” he says, a small smile tugging at his lips.
I nod, shivering. “Are you a ghost?”
“You’re not like the others. You’re much more in tune with the river than they are. They don’t see or hear the things you do.”
“But why?”
“Ah, Mistress. You mean no one has explained it to you?”
Mistress? Is that a term of endearment? “No,” I mutter.
“All right. Then I will.”
I take a deep breath, which calms me a little. Just a little. Not so much that my entire body isn’t shaking, but enough so that my voice comes out even. “So, explain.”
He holds up a finger, scolding me as if I were a child. “You need patience.”
“Maybe you need to be a little less mysterious,” I counter.
He raises his eyebrows. “All right. I’ll give you that. What are your questions?”
“The river,” I say. “It always sounds like it’s whispering.”
“They have something to say to you.”
“They? Who are they?”
“Let them tell you. They want to tell you. Just listen.”
“I’ve tried,” I say. “Most of the time it’s just pieces, fragments. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“They’re all trying to speak to you at once. The longer and closer you listen, the more you’ll be able to make out the individual voices.”
“But who are they?”
He doesn’t say anything, but I already know. I don’t know if I could stand to hear the answer. And there’s something strange about the way he’s staring at me so intently, as if he’s waited all his life to have this conversation with me. Which is crazy, because I’ve only just met him. “Who are you?”
“I heard your friends telling the story. The story of my life and, it seems, my untimely death.” He laughs. “Don’t look so shocked. I said I was real. But I never said I was still alive.”
My heart shudders in my chest. “So you are a … ghost?”
“Well, I wouldn’t use that term. I prefer to say that I’m traveling on a different plane. But I suppose ‘ghost’ is what humans would call me, yes.”
“Then why can I see you?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you can see and hear all of us, can you not? That’s why all the voices are in your head, and you’re having a hard time sorting them out.”
“All of who?”
“All of those who met their fate on the water,” he answers. “Because we need you. She needs you.”
My breath hitches. “She?”
“The whispers you’ve heard,” he says. “Surely one of the voices you’ve heard has sounded familiar?”
I shake my head. That the river is whispering at all is so much to wrap my brain around, I haven’t had time to think that a voice might be familiar to me. “I don’t … I don’t think so.” I murmur, but all at once I know what he is going to say. And as sure as I’m standing there, I know it’s the truth.
“It’s your mother,” he says. “And she has been waiting for you.”
“My mother?” I repeat, the word sounding strange coming off my tongue since I haven’t uttered it in nearly a decade. “But she died in New Jersey.”
“All waterways are connected. And her body was never found, yes? So she is one of us. She is here.”
“Here? You’re crazy.” My voice quavers. So much for the idea of keeping the Nia Levesque legend five hundred miles away. I can only think back to her funeral. The coffin was empty. In it, we placed her favorite necklace and a scarf she always wore, and a picture of all of us together. My father never said as much, and we never discussed it, but obviously the body hadn’t been found. She wasn’t the first person lost on the river whose body was never recovered. “Then where is she?”
“I’ve come to take you to her,” he says, extending his hand to me.
Instinctively I reach out to grab it, but a breeze picks up, skittering old leaves down the path and digging under my hairline, sending a chill down my back. When I touch them, his fingers are so icy they sting. I try to pull