He hesitated just long enough for my stomach to drop.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “He still hasn’t come home.”
“And neither has Mrs. Henderson.” I took a deep breath. “Do you know what this means?”
Ethan shook his head.
“Madame Celeste was right.”
“No. Anything but that.”
“It’s true. She said the oarfish predicted an earthquake. We just had an earthquake.”
The aftershocks hadn’t even started, but somehow, I knew—this was only the beginning.
*ETHAN
For the past few days, everything had been bedlam.
No power. No cell service. No way to know if help was coming or if we were on our own indefinitely.
Southern California had gone dark, and in the absence of electricity, people had turned to candlelight. At night, the beach below Grandpa’s house flickered with hundreds of tiny flames—lanterns, torches, makeshift fire pits. Families huddled together, some wrapped in blankets, others staring out at the ocean like it held answers.
But none of it mattered as much as the three names running circles through my mind.
Grandpa. Celeste. Mrs. Henderson.
Gone.
No note. No sign of where they’d gone or if they’d left together. Just an empty house and more questions than I could handle.
I exhaled, rubbing a hand over my face as I sat on the porch railing, staring out at the dark horizon. Beside me, Clare pulled her knees to her chest, arms wrapped around them. The golden light of the sunset caught in her hair, making her look like she belonged to another world, someplace untouched by disaster.
“They’ll turn up,” she said softly.
I shook my head. “You don’t know that.”
“No, I don’t,” she admitted. “But worrying ourselves sick won’t help, either.”
She had a point, but I still felt useless. And angry. And—
She reached out and took my hand.
I looked down at our fingers intertwined. Then up at her.
She was watching me, her green eyes steady and calm, like she was anchoring me. And maybe she was.
“Ethan,” she said, barely above a whisper.
Before I could think about it—before I could talk myself out of it—I leaned in.
So did she.
The moment our lips met, the world faded. No earthquake. No missing people. No chaos. Just warmth. Just Clare.
Then, just as we pulled away, breathless, a burst of light flared across the horizon.
The green flash.
