Page 95 of Angel of Water & Shadow

The chill in the air carved its way to my bones, carried by the onshore wind. Needles of brutal cold snuck past my jacket, teasing strands of hair out of my hood, turning my breaths into clouds. As the bright lights of a car crept past, my stomach dropped.

The goosebumps on my skin grew so sharp I thought they might pierce my windbreaker. I tightened the strings of my hood around my face and let my seething anger override the rush of panic. Reminding myself I had nothing to fear anymore.

If anything, the world should fear me.

I stuck to the shadows, where neither the moon nor the streetlamps shone.

When the ground began to slope, a barbed-wire fence seemed to pop out of nowhere in the dark. It shielded the entrance to the old truss that bridged the San Lorenzo River, connecting the east and west sides of town.

The surrounding eucalyptus hid a skyline of wood and steel, sporadically revealed by the wind parting their branches. Strips of moonlight and chips of bark floated to the pavement, the piles crackling beneath my feet as I drew near, and beams started to replace the tree trunks. In between them, an unobstructed view of the ocean and my favorite roller coaster greeted me.

I stepped onto the platform. My stomach dipped along with the soggy planks. The briny mist fell on my tongue and tickled my nostrils—the Santa Cruz version of snowflakes. I sneezed, and there was a snap—a decayed piece of wood fractured and collapsed, plummeting to the stagnant river below. My hand shot to my mouth, suppressing a gasp.

At this point even breathing seemed risky.

Filling my lungs with air, I braved the remaining panels, testing the durability of each with my toe. Breath slipped out of me with each creak and groan. I couldn’t remember the last time I walked this so late. Oh, actually, it was Grad Night. The night I met him.

My feet stopped shuffling as my eyes started to betray me again. I wouldn’t let him do this to me, wouldn’t let him have this moment. No more letting things that did not serve me take hold of me.

Cool air calmed the burn when I opened my eyes and stole a glance at the shimmering whitecaps. The tide bellowed around me. Conversational, in a way. Not with words, but in the thundering beat as it crashed against sand and rock, and the sluggish burble as it retreated. After midnight, the surf was even more unruly, spraying the tops of the bluffs, drenching the stairs to the Boardwalk, stealing the warning flags that dotted the shoreline. The ocean rebelled against the limits the world had set for it, and right now, I couldn’t have felt more connected to it.

I drifted to the end of the bridge, as if a riptide had swept me up and taken me to where the platform fused with the sidewalk.

Dodging an incoming headlight, I pressed myself against a muraled wall. I focused on counting the stains in the pavement, as if looking anywhere but the street would help keep me unseen.

Hoping the amusement park security guards were too sidetracked or bored to notice my presence, I hiked my upper body over the thick metal fence that barricaded the grounds.

I swung one foot around, and then the other, the blunt angles of the top bar digging into my chest as I teetered unsteadily at the top. Stifling a groan, I lost my grip and slipped off, my legs caving in and sending me to my kneecaps as I landed, the sharp pain radiating in a bullseye over the bone. I grasped a neon pillar and pushed off it to stand. Sticking to the shadows, I hobbled down the path.

A green-scaled dinosaur watched me with lifeless eyes from its fiberglass ledge above the tracks of the Cave Train. Its dead, red stare bored into me until I rounded a corner—and careened into a Neanderthal statue. My heart leapt out of my chest. Even in the day, they were creepy, but now, their permanent grins turned menacing in the darkness.

Both of us wobbled from the impact, but my body never stopped shaking, unlike his.

It was weird to see everything closed, no lines for the thrill rides, the amusement park barred and barren—like I was visiting the doppelgänger of the Beach Boardwalk, the macabre twin to its lively counterpart.

A draft whipped through the wide berth of the midway, evoking a distorted tune out of a claw machine—just the wind, I told myself. It set off a row of others, and I hurried past, their chipper melodies way too high-pitched and out of sync for my brain to detangle if I stayed and listened.

My wild-eyed expression stared back at me as I passed the carousel’s mirrored windows. I froze, swearing at a flutter of movement between the antique horses. Pressing my nose against the glass, I peered at the golden support poles, the painted mounts, the giant mouth of the clown that ate the rings from ring toss. Nothing. No one. Not for long, though.

Certain at any moment I’d bump into a security guard, I spun on my heels and launched into a jog—and hit a wall of flesh. It knocked me to the ground, and I blinked against stars that seemed to have dropped from the sky. When they no longer speckled my vision, I took in the person who’d literally stopped me in my tracks.

Thick-soled boots. An all-black uniform. A blinding flash of silver-white.

“Ryder?” I lifted myself to my elbows, my gaze darting between his hardened stare and his arrows. “What are you doing here?”

In the shade of the building, he loomed above me, with a full quiver peeking out from behind his shoulder. His broad shadow draped me with an air of indifference as I lay there, breathless. He said nothing—no offer to help, no outstretched hand—he was a ghost of himself, of the Ryder who once held me in this theme park.

Wincing at the weight on my sore knees, I stood up. He tracked me with a hunter’s precision, the hollowness to his eyes almost sucking the life out of me. I took a step back, but he matched every movement, cornering me in the merry-go-round’s alcove. Hands clenched at his sides, he left nothing but a breath between us.

He hadn’t come to apologize, that much was clear. So, what then?

“Do you need something? I’m kind of busy.” I shifted to go around him, but he blocked my way, and I noticed a thin braided thread of silver dangling from his fingers.

A shockwave of awareness jolted through me. My gaze followed the metal up to his fist, where a glimmer of blue snuck between his knuckles. There was no doubt in my mind—that was my necklace.

My hand drifted to the space surrounding my collarbone, as empty as my heart. “Why do you have that?”

He loosened his grip, letting the pendant peek out from between his fingers. “This old thing?”

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