3. Chapter 3
“Please tell me you’re joking.” I searched Ben’s eyes for any sign of morbid humour, but found none.
“It’s only in the early stages,” Ben said. “He’s not in the hospital and he’s doing okay.”
Sure, he was doing okay so far. But we all knew that it wouldn’t take long for him to decline.
“For now,” Adrian said.
“Would you lighten up?” Kira said, stirring the potion. “We’ve got a plan, and we’re about ready to get it done.”
“You are?” I pulled Ben over to the cauldron and positioned him between me and Adrian before we sat down. “Did you do it?”
“We haven’t done it yet.” Kira fluttered her wings on the last word. “But we’ve pinpointed the time, which means you two-” she pointed at me and Ben with two fingers, “-need to be quick about it, okay?”
“Can someone please explain to me what the plan even is?” Adrian said.
“And why should we?” Allison asked through the long hoodie sleeve she held to her mouth. “You might betray us, and we’ve had enough of that lately, thank you.”
I exchanged awkward looks with Ben. She really wasn’t over the whole Freddie debacle.
“We’re all friends here, aren’t we?” Ben asked, tapping his knee.
Adrian snorted.
“Why are you even here if you don’t want to cooperate with us?” I asked.
He had been nothing but a thorn in our sides since he insisted he’d ‘help’ us.
“I’m here to make sure my brother doesn’t get screwed over by an Arrowood. And I don’t mean the good kind. Apparently it’s too late for that,” Adrian said. “If you have a plan, I want to know what it is and if I can help.”
“You can’t help,” Ben said. He looked at Kira, who narrowed her eyes at him. “But I’d like everyone here to know what’s happening.”
“Fine.” Kira tapped the spoon on the edge of the cauldron and pointed it at Adrian. “But if anyone gets tipped off, you’re out on your ass.”
Adrian leaned closer to the cauldron, glaring at Kira over the top of it. “I’m no snitch.”
“Great.” I grabbed the spoon off Kira and dunked it back into the potion. “So here’s what we’re doing. The forest covens have locked down the phoenix and the Tree of Life since Freddie had stolen her egg. Ben and I need to get to the phoenix and communicate to her that our families are deeply sorry for what our family feud did to her egg-.”
“I’m sorry, the family feud?” Adrian asked. “Didn’t your cousin do this?”
“That’s what I said when we came up with this plan. It was just going to be me. But Ben...”
“Decided we were all to blame for this.” Ben fixed Adrian with a stern look. “Like it or not, we all had a role to play, so we’re going to represent both families and see if we can appease it.”
“And what makes you think this is going to work?” Adrian folded his arms.
“We don’t know if it will,” I said. “But at this point...do we have any other options?”
Ben’s hand grasped mine once I’d finished speaking. It was a long shot, and we both knew it, but doing nothing meant surrendering to our fates. And I, for one, was not prepared to do that yet.
“Ali and I will cut off the magical defense systems near to where the phoenix is located,” Kira said. “Using this potion, we can deactivate it for maybe fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes?” Ben rubbed his chin with his other hand. “That doesn’t give us long.”
“It’s all we could manage,” Allison said. “This potion requires a lot of ingredients as it is, and they aren’t exactly in abundance right now.”
I squeezed Ben’s hand. The timing wasn’t ideal, but the fact we had any time at all was something to be grateful for.
“I’ll swim us in through the spring underneath the forest,” I said. “It shouldn’t take us long to get from the barrier to the phoenix, maybe two or three minutes tops.”
“With air breaks?” Ben grinned at me.
I scowled back. The last time I had gotten carried away with swimming, I had forgotten he needed to breathe and nearly drowned him. That wasn’t a mistake I would make again in a hurry.
“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth.
***
When we had finished nailing down the specifics of the plan, we bottled the potion, packed up the cauldron, and headed out. I locked the scuba centre up and hugged Kira and Allison goodbye.
“See you tomorrow evening at the inn,” Kira said. “We might need some Dutch courage before we do this.”
Kira rarely turned to alcohol for her courage, but nobody could blame here, given that we were essentially breaking into the forest during a lockdown. Even plotting to do so flew in the face of everything her coven expected of her.
The inn at the edge of the forest, which hadn’t changed its interior design since the 1700s, had little in the way of modern conveniences. But so long as the inn had some strong liquor and some shot glasses, they would have everything we needed.
“See you later.” Allison waved before wrapping her arms around Kira’s neck.
Kira beat her wings and flew up toward the starry sky, showering us with fairy dust. I didn’t look away until they disappeared over the trees, breathing a sigh. I missed them. These late night meetings were the closest we had gotten to brunch in too long.
“Ready to go?” Ben heaved his surf board off the top of his car and tucked it under his arm.
“Go where?” Adrian eyed us as I took Ben’s free hand.
“We’re going swimming,” I said.
“Now? But it’s nearly midnight!”
“We always swim at this time,” Ben said, tugging me down the trail toward the beach.
“But... but...!” Adrian spluttered. “How are you going to get back to the hotel?”
“I’ll drive him back.” I waved at Adrian, hoping it would encourage him to leave.
Adrian had learned about the relationship between me and Ben a month ago, but time hadn’t made him any more receptive to the idea. He trusted Ben inherently and kept our secret solely to maintain their brotherly bond, but that didn’t make the idea any easier to swallow, apparently.
“I’m coming,” Adrian said and followed us in a frog-march.
“Dude.” Ben jutted his surfboard in Adrian’s direction and fixed him with a warning stare.
“What? She might drown you.”
I stiffened so suddenly that my muscles ached. If Adrian ever found out I had almost accidentally done that once, he definitely wouldn’t leave us alone.
“You’re an idiot,” Ben said. “Go home.”
“I told you, I’m coming.” Adrian continued to walk toward us, his shoulders squared.
“Ugh.” Ben rolled his eyes and tugged me toward the beach. “If we ignore him, maybe he’ll go away.”
I chuckled. Unless Adrian planned to get into the ocean with us, I could swim us far enough out to lose him.
We made our way down to the beach, the night air tinged with salt. The sound of the waves had me awash with a rare peace. In such troubling times, there wasn’t much to find, but I could always find it here, and especially with Ben.
Adrian sat down on the beach and covered his eyes at Ben’s command so we could shed our clothing. Ben swam out on his surfboard while I took the first opportunity to dive beneath the surface and allowed my tail to manifest. Ever since I had swum more regularly, it was far less insistent to be freed.
I popped up next to Ben, who straddled his surfboard as he bobbed up and down on the gentle waves. I scraped my hair out of my face and folded my arms on the front of his surfboard.
“Think he’ll give up?” I asked, nodding at the beach.
“Doubt it.” Ben leaned forward on his elbows. “I don’t think he’s worried about you. He’s just worried, full stop.”
“You sure about that?” Following us to the beach because he thought I’d drown Ben seemed personal.
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Ben traced his finger along my arm. “Granddad’s illness has him more anxious than usual.”
“And what about you?” I gazed up at him, searching his eyes for a crack in his carefree mask.
The curse that tied the entire Everhart family together in death meant that if anything happened to Dorian, they would all die... including Ben. The thought sank into me like blood into water, inking out all the happiness in that moment.
Ben smiled with one side of his mouth. “I’m counting on our plan.”
“Yeah... me too.” If we could somehow appease the phoenix by arriving together, maybe we could stop the illness and heal everyone who had it. Which would buy us far more time to undo the curse that Isadora had cast on the Everharts.
It wasn’t as if we hadn’t tried for weeks to undo it, but without a phoenix egg, we stood no chance. Unfortunately, even if we had one on hand, using it would probably subject us to yet more curses.
“Come on.” Ben splashed me in the face and I blinked away the water to glare at him. “This is supposed to be a break from all that, remember?”
“You can’t just drop a bomb on me like that and expect it not to affect anything.” Losing Dorian to this illness meant losing Ben... and I couldn’t bear the thought of it.
“Maeve...” Ben took my hand in his and brought it to his lips to press a kiss on my knuckles. “If these curses carry on, we’re all going to die on this island eventually. The only hope for any of us is for us to break them. Whether I die sooner or later... the outcome won’t change unless we change it.”
“You’re a real ray of sunshine.”
“Well, it is the middle of the night.”
“Ha. Ha.”
But I couldn’t deny that he was right. We all had a limited time left, whether we died by the magical illness or starvation, if we didn’t do something. Maybe we had to take what few moments we could to enjoy our lives and-.
“Ben!” Adrian’s cry reached us across the water.
We looked back toward the beach to see him waving his arms, his mobile phone screen in one hand lit like a tiny beacon. My heart sank.
Whatever news he had, it wasn’t good.