All the Hearts You Eat

1. THE BODY

The sea wanted blood. Ivory Sloan had known that all her life, traveling from one coastal town or another along the eastern United States. She had spent most of her twenty-nine years with a passable understanding for the Atlantic Ocean and its hazards-jellyfish, undertow, strangers.

She should have expected to find death at the shores of Cape Morning.

A gray overcast painted the sky as she approached the water; New England coastal summer made for uncertain vacations against its sudden storm fronts, and there was no better deterrent for tourists than a chilly early twilight mixed with chances of unpleasant weather. Unlikely for other locals to wander the shore yet, either.

For a few minutes each morning, this stretch of beach belonged to Ivory. One of the rare perks of renting her stuffy attic room-ready access to the water. Before true daylight lured overheated tourists to the beach and cooped her up in the café until evening, she wanted her morning swim.

Down wooden steps and a grassy slope, white sand led the way to chopping waves. Ivory passed an enormous driftwood tree that had been lying on the shore the past few months. It had supposedly floated down from Canada, but no one could be sure. Scars marked its trunk where barnacles once clung to the bark.

Ivory crossed her arms and slid her pastel pink hoodie up her midriff, past her chest, and over her head. She folded it with care and laid it in the sand beside the driftwood tree, and then she set her boots and socks on top. Her jeans joined the pile last, revealing in full her black one-piece swimsuit and her inner thigh tattoo.

I am a creature of life, it read in curving letters and black ink.

Her swimsuit's dark hue made each part of her torso look smaller, shrinking her chest, belly chub, and the swell between her legs. She didn't want anyone to see that part of her, especially after she emerged from the water, swimsuit clinging to her skin. Neither locals nor tourists would understand. Or worse, they might understand, and she had no control over what they might decide to do with that understanding.

One quick swim, that was all she wanted. In and out from here to Ghost Cat Island, the tiny sea-slick patch of rock standing not far from shore, and no stranger would stroll close enough when she fetched her clothes off the beach to eyeball the outline of her tits or her dick.

The sand was cold against her feet as she padded toward the Atlantic. Wet impressions dotted the shore's edge behind her before the next wave splashed her knees and flattened the sand. A chill hit her skin, but it would fade once her muscles went to work.

She had reached waist-deep water, the waves frothing at her arms and chest, when she noticed the man standing on the beach.

Her knees buckled, tugging her down so that the surf pushed at her chin. She hardly ever saw anyone out this early, at least not in June. Maybe in July or August when the daytime sun boiled the air, but not in the beginning stretch of summer.

Had the man seen her swimsuit, its details? He might spot her now if she slid away. She didn't know him, his intentions, anything. Why the hell was he here?

Maybe because the sea wanted blood.

She couldn't hold here in the shallows to wait for him to leave, no telling how long that might be. Better she risk going back for her clothes and heading home now.

She kept one dark blue eye on the beach as she retreated from the water. The man stood stiff in his khakis and coat, a white ballcap hugging his gray locks. He didn't seem to notice her, all his attention zeroed in on the tide three feet past his boots. A pale tangle of driftwood lay ahead of him. Was he local? One of the summer people? A drifter? Ivory had never seen him before, but that hardly mattered with eight thousand people living here, not to mention the legion of tourists. The man held a phone to his ear, scowling as he spoke.

Ivory only realized who he'd been talking to when the sirens sounded from afar. Within moments, flashes of red and blue flickered over the grassy slope between the summerhouses and the beach. She froze halfway between the water and the driftwood tree and looked-really looked-at where the man was staring. And exactly what he'd called in.

The white shape lying in the tide was a dead body.

Ivory stumbled toward the driftwood tree, eyes locked on the frothing water, splashing at pale skin.

Over the past few days, families and college kids had swarmed Cape Morning's tree-choked roads, cramped town, and windy beach to swim and tan and drink themselves brainless. A different scene from Florida, but a clean beach on a warm day drew tourists nonetheless. Did this body belong to one of them?

Ivory kept backing up until her hip banged against the driftwood tree. Her clothing pile collapsed in her shaking hands. She pushed her head into the hoodie and yanked her damp hair through in clingy dark red locks. Never mind the wet swimsuit getting her clothes and boots soaked as she hurried into them. There would be time to dry and change into something else when she reached home before her barista shift.

But she couldn't leave yet. A sudden heaviness tugged her toward the prone trunk of the driftwood tree.

She sat and watched as the man with the phone turned toward the distant uniformed strangers, descending the wooden steps to the beach. No rush-dead was dead. Nothing they could do but investigate and then carry the dead away.

Ivory sucked at the wind, trying to catch her breath. Lightheadedness sent her doubling over, and it became easier to breathe with her eyes focused on the sand.

Where she spotted a piece of pink-tinted paper at her feet, partway pinned beneath the driftwood trunk.

She pinched its corner and worked it free. The wind tried to snatch it, but she held on firm. It looked torn from a journal or diary. A transparent flower pattern wreathed its edges, and curls of black ink scrawled over its front.

Don't call me a suicide. I want to live.

I've simply chosen one death over another

After I've been robbed of life.

-Cabrina Aphrodite Brite

Ivory glanced at the dead body, and then back to the words. The authorities had neared the man who'd called them to the beach. If they spotted Ivory, they might want to question her, and she didn't care to talk.

What about her secret find? A suicide note might determine the future of Cabrina's body, how her family saw her life. But it wasn't really a suicide note, the first line said as much. It was more a death poem, and a poem couldn't count as evidence, could it?

Ivory understood, but others might not. The family would ache to think their dear girl, Cabrina Brite, had taken her own life. Broken hearts. Only pain.

But Ivory could help. She folded the poem in half and tucked it inside her hoodie pocket.

Her legs shuddered as she stood from the driftwood seat. Not ready to go, but she couldn't stay here. She didn't want to watch the authorities, closer now, take photographs of Cabrina Brite, or inspect her every inch, or draw her from the water like scavenging gulls picking at beach debris.

As she walked back the way she'd come, Ivory turned to watch the sea. She scarcely made out Ghost Cat Island beneath the overcast. It was so tiny that she never tried to stand on it when she swam out, only touching it and then returning to shore.

But that was the nearest land to where Cabrina might have died in the night. Had she, too, meant to swim out to the small scrap of rock?

Ivory had heard stories of locals glimpsing feline shapes upon the island. There were tales old and new of their lithe paws walking on ocean waves as if the bobbing water were gray-blue hills, fur glimmering with sunshine. No one ever found them-there was nothing on that lifeless rock to find-but that didn't stop anyone from looking. Or from telling the stories.

Cabrina might have been the same, looking for ghost cats, no more solid than flying saucers or that monster at Lake Champlain. Mirages at best, lies at worst, but sometimes people liked the lies.

Ivory knew she shouldn't entertain fantasies of ghosts. They might show up and then stick around.

Gray clouds parted, and the sun cast a sharp glare off the water. Shapes flashed across the glittering waves. Ivory shaded her eyes under one hand and squinted for a better look at Ghost Cat Island.

A figure slid over the island's rocky nub, its shape bowing under the sun like a distorted shadow play on a bedroom wall. One sleek leg stretched in a molten glow, almost human. The figure's next step dragged it down, close to the rock, and sprouted new limbs, melting its shape into that of a pacing four-legged beast.

It briefly sloshed and crawled above the watery sunshine. Then the figure's next step sent it climbing a slope of light until it stood tall on two legs, with two arms at its sides, its glowing silhouette thin and pale. Like someone Ivory might have seen lying in the surf. Someone who'd left a death poem wedged beneath a driftwood tree.

Cabrina? she wondered.

The sunlight glinted off a fresh wave and stabbed Ivory's eyes shut. She threw both hands over them, croaking with pain, and then she blinked into the shadows of her palms until the dancing white dots settled behind her eyelids.

When she looked again, grayness had retaken the shore, and only rolling waves broke across Ghost Cat Island....