Chapter Five
Darkness Before the Light
The night cracked open in gold and shadow, bonfires throwing sparks like tiny stars trying to escape. Music, salt air, and laughter wrapped around those who’d come to be free for a few hours, pretending the world beyond the sand didn’t exist.
Harmony sank into the cool sand with her drink, letting the fire lick at her shins.
For a moment, the heat felt too sharp, like it was leaning toward her instead of away.
She blamed the tequila she hadn’t yet finished and forced the unease down.
A cheer went up near the waterline. Someone spilled liquor, a dark stain on the sand.
Two silhouettes slipped away from the circle without a word.
Conversations rose and fell in waves, loud and careless. Everyone behaved as if they were safe.
A few people lingered at the edges of the firelight—faces she didn’t recognize. Locals, maybe. Or not. One man watched the group longer than he should have, expression unreadable. When Harmony looked again, he was gone.
Lisa spun near the fire in wild, bright joy, her white dress fluttering, her skin lit by flame. Tosh leaned back, danger wrapped in charm, eyes tracking her with a lazy smile that made women forgive him for things they shouldn’t.
Lisa stumbled, and for a brief moment, Tosh’s body twitched as if he might go to her. Their eyes met, and something passed between them that said this was more than a fling, whether either of them admitted it or not.
Torie arrived just in time to catch the look between Tosh and Lisa. Her lip trembled, just once. Blink and you’d miss it. Her face smoothed over.
“Maybe Lisa’s auditioning for something,” Torie murmured, her tone wrapped in sugar with just enough venom to sting.
Cass glanced toward the shoreline. “She’s trying too hard.” Worry edged the comment, though she tried to hide it.
“She’s trying just hard enough,” Candy said, swaying near the fire, guitar slung low, eyes already glossy. “Lisa’s just . . . high on the moonlight. You should try it sometime.”
Torie’s smile thinned, then snapped back into place. “Whatever she’s on, it won’t last.”
The flames burned low and steady, illuminating their faces and making the darkness just beyond them feel thicker. Harmony noticed how abruptly the light ended, how quickly the shadows took over.
Zach sat slightly apart from the group, whittling a piece of driftwood into the suggestion of a heart.
He had the kind of stillness that felt both safe and slightly dangerous, like a man who knew exactly how quickly things could go wrong, and how to fix them when they did.
He listened more than he spoke, filed details away, and didn’t forget.
The fire flared near him, and he glanced up.
His gaze lingered for a heartbeat on someone across the flames, something tender flickering and then vanishing.
Most people missed it. Harmony didn’t. There was distance around him, as if he carried his secrets like tools in a belt, ready to use when needed.
Mary was perched on a rock, hands folded, eyes on the horizon. Her dark hair lifted in the breeze. For a brief moment, her mouth curved, her features softening, as if whatever she saw out past the dark water pleased her. The sharpness she carried in her shoulders eased, then returned.
Mary always looked like she believed the world owed her a correction, that the scales had once tipped the wrong way and never returned. Harmony had often wondered what Mary would do if she ever decided to collect.
Someone whispered Harmony’s name—soft, almost testing it—but when she scanned the faces in the firelight, no one was looking at her.
Harmony watched the shadows, certain for a heartbeat that someone—or something—was moving against the tide.
She was pulled back to the present when the conversation continued.
“Should we play something?” Candy asked, fingers already at the strings. “A song for ghosts?”
A hush slid over the group, small but sharp, tightening the air for a second. Tosh broke it.
“No ghosts tonight,” he said. “Only impulse and darkness.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” Harmony asked.
Tosh grinned. “That’s why I like you, Harmony. You make doom sound elegant.”
“Practice,” she said, eyes on the flames. She didn’t want to look too long into the dark.
Candy strummed a chord. Her voice wove through the night, snagging on certain words like it knew more than she did.
Her fingers slipped once, the sound fraying at the edges.
Harmony listened, something pulling low in her chest. The melody drifted toward the water and dissolved into a silence that didn’t belong on a beach full of people. It felt too alert. Too expectant.
The night pretended to be beautiful. Time loosened.
Bodies swayed. Lovers disappeared into the black gaps between coves.
Harmony couldn’t stop tracking them, noting each pair that vanished, each person who wandered alone.
She’d spent her life observing; she didn’t know how to stop.
Watching had always felt harmless. Safer to turn people into stories than to interfere.
Laughter rose again. Someone staggered into the shadows and stayed gone too long.
A cold gust twisted the smoke into a tight spiral and sent it upward.
Danger was out there. One among them wasn’t afraid of it.
They’d slipped away unnoticed. Time passed.
No one could’ve said for how long. Someone came back, their absence unmarked.
Then . . . a scream tore the night in half.
Torie was the first to stand. “What was that?” Her voice cracked.
Harmony was already on her feet, heart punching her ribs, thoughts sharpening. She scanned the dark beyond the flames.
Candy was the first to move. “Lisa!” she shouted, bolting toward the shoreline and stumbling in the sand.
Zach dropped his knife and grabbed a flashlight from his backpack. Harmony swayed, and he steadied her with one hand. For a moment, the chaos blurred, and it was just the two of them in a small, held circle.
“Be careful,” he said, voice low. There was something in his eyes that made her stomach dip—not fear exactly, but something that knew where fear could go.
“I should probably take that advice,” she whispered. “But I think it’s too late.”
They moved forward together.
The flashlight beam skimmed along the wet sand until it collided with a still body at the water’s edge. The tide crept over the side of her still body, then retreated. The wound on Lisa’s neck was deep and precise. Someone had arranged her: arms set, hair spread, body posed like a photograph.
“Strange,” Harmony murmured before she could stop herself. The angle, the neatness, the way the cut sat on her throat. Something about it was wrong.
Torie’s scream came next, shredding the air. She dropped to her knees and clutched at Tosh. “Do something!”
Candy lurched forward, took one look, slapped a hand over her mouth, and then turned away to retch.
Mary’s face emptied. She knelt beside Lisa, careful not to touch, just staring at her eyes. “Close them,” she whispered. “Close her eyes.”
“No one touch her!” Zach said sharply. “Back up.”
He looked at Tosh, who hadn’t moved. Tosh’s face had gone chalk-white, his eyes bouncing between Lisa and Torie as if unable to land. “She was just—she was—” His voice broke. “She was just dancing.”
Harmony’s attention snagged on a small mark on Lisa’s wrist, separate from the throat wound. The sand around her legs was disturbed, as if she’d been dragged and then someone had tried to erase it.
Something small glinted near Lisa’s shoulder—a scrap of something in the sand. Harmony leaned a fraction closer, but a wave rolled in and scrubbed it away.
“Call someone,” Cass said, trembling. “Call the police.”
“No service out here,” Zach muttered. “I’ll go.” He turned and jogged up the beach toward the road. The dark swallowed him quickly.
“He’ll find help,” Tosh said, but his voice was hollow. “He will.” The fire crackled and popped behind them, indifferent.
Candy was sobbing openly now. “Who would do this? She was just—she was—”
“Alive,” Torie said. “She was alive five minutes ago.”
Mary rose, eyes on the water. “She crossed the wrong person,” she murmured, more to herself than to anyone. “Justice comes eventually, even if it’s late.”
When help came, it did so quietly at first. A pair of lights. Low voices. The smell of salt and diesel. By then, the group had retreated, huddled in a loose cluster. Cass’s breathing hitched. Torie was folded against Tosh. Candy blinked like she couldn’t quite bring the scene into focus.
Harmony stood slightly apart, arms wrapped around herself, her drink abandoned in the sand behind her. Mist kissed her face. The night felt too clear. She couldn’t stop staring at Lisa: the way her hair fanned in the surf, the placement of her hands, the eerie calm in the middle of horror.
When Zach returned, he said simply, “I got help.”
Torie turned on him. “You were gone for an hour.”
Harmony realized he wasn’t even out of breath. If he’d run the whole way as he’d said, shouldn’t he have been?
“The station’s on the other side of town.” His tone was even. No one argued.
The tide kept rolling in, retreating, rolling in again. It sounded like applause.
The first deputies from Avalon Station emerged from the dark like silhouettes cut from it—tan uniforms, steady movements, no wasted steps.
These were the men who usually dealt with loud music, lost tourists, and the occasional bar fight.
They knew everyone’s names and most of their secrets.
Tonight, their kindness was tucked away behind a layer of training they rarely had to use.
Catalina didn’t get many murders. When they did, procedure closed in fast.
Deputy Arthur Evans led the way, tall and anchored, moving with the kind of quiet authority that didn’t need to be announced. His flashlight cut across the sand in deliberate arcs.