Chapter 11
Ifound the Yacht Club mid-morning, after a circuit of the south docks and a quick word with Gascha about the Chesapeake’s timber order.
The building sat at the far edge of the bay, half in shadow, the front deck boards gleaming where Teva had sanded and sealed them.
I’d been meaning to visit since Autumn first mentioned it, but the days had a way of stacking up, one urgent thing on top of another, until the things that weren’t on fire got pushed to tomorrow.
The front steps creaked under my boots. Teva had replaced three of them with fresh lumber, the new wood pale against the grayed old planks.
Inside, the ground floor smelled of damp and sawdust. Water stains mapped the walls in brown crescents, marking the high-water line from an earlier flood.
Most of the furniture was gone, hauled out for firewood or salvage, but Teva had swept the floor clean and arranged a few mismatched chairs along the far wall.
A single oil lamp hung from a hook, unlit in the daylight.
I climbed the repaired staircase. The banister was solid under my hand, the steps groaning once before settling.
The upper floor felt different. Cleaner.
The windows were open, salt air moving through in slow, steady pulls, carrying the channel’s cold and the faint brine smell of low tide.
Two massage tables sat parallel to the windows, each covered with a sheet of canvas that Teva must have salvaged from one of the yachts.
The fabric was clean and taut, pulled smooth at the corners.
Teva stood at the far wall, her back to me, arranging two wooden barrels on a low shelf.
She wore a simple wrap skirt, dark blue against her cerulean skin, and nothing above the waist. The light caught the curve of her spine, the flare of her hips, the way her deep blue hair fell loose past her shoulders.
She turned when she heard my boots on the top step, and her face opened into a smile that was warm and careful at once.
“James,” she said. “I was hoping you would come today.”
“You fixed the stairs,” I said.
She nodded. “The risers were rotten. I cut new ones from a dock piling I found on the beach.” She wiped her hands on a cloth, then reached for a ceramic cup on the shelf beside the barrels. “Try this.”
She filled the cup from the smaller barrel, the liquid dark purple and thick, and handed it to me with both hands, her baby-blue eyes steady on mine. The gesture was formal, almost ceremonial, but there was a quiet pleasure in it, the satisfaction of someone offering a thing they’d made.
I took the cup. The wine smelled like blackberry wine, if such a thing exists. I drank. It hit sweet on the tongue, then warmer as it went down, spreading through my chest with a heat that said the alcohol content was higher than the flavor let on.
“Autumn created it,” Teva said. She watched my face, reading it the way she read everyone, with that patient attention that made you feel seen in a way that wasn’t performative.
“The dust. With only a pinch. She said it would create any kind of drink she wanted, based on the basic ingredients.” She smiled. “You can taste the result.”
I drank again, then turned to the window.
The harbor spread below, Sea Hunter at anchor near the Casino, the Chesapeake’s masts rising rough and unfinished at the south docks.
A Ci Dyn work crew moved along the pier, carrying timber in pairs, their tails swinging in rhythm.
Beyond them, the channel lay flat and gray under a white sky.
Teva stood beside me, close enough that I caught the scent of her skin, clean and faintly floral. She didn’t speak. She watched the harbor with me, her presence easy in a way that required no words to fill it.
“How is Casey’s mission?” she asked after a while.
I drained the cup. “She checked in this morning. They’re near their destination. Things look on track.”
Teva waited. She had the patience of someone who’d learned that silence often got you more than asking.
“There was a close call,” I said. “Goblins on a smaller, faster yacht. One of them was a shaman. Nora blocked the spells with an anti-magic shield. I didn’t know she could do that. The rest of the team answered with rifles. It didn’t last long.”
I paused. Casey’s report had been short on detail, but the picture was clear enough: a deck full of bodies, the shaman down, the others dead or overboard, all in a matter of seconds.
“They found some human bodies on the boat,” I said. “A bad scene. Casey didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t push.”
Teva’s expression didn’t change. She took my empty cup, refilled it from the barrel, and handed it back. Her fingers brushed mine, warm and soft.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said.
We stood at the window a moment longer. The wine sat in my stomach, warm and heavy, working its way into the muscles I’d been carrying tight since yesterday. Since Heddy. Since the med bay and Autumn’s dust and the smell of infection gave way to a nice, clean scent.
“I had William and Nolan take a look at your wiring,” I said. “The junction box downstairs. They think we can run power down here soon.”
Teva’s eyes brightened. “From the Casino?”
“From the shuttle core. Ira salvaged it from the Shima wreck. It’s sitting in the Casino basement right now, getting connected to the Casino as a test. If we can integrate it into Avalon’s local grid, the whole town could run off it, with capacity to spare.”
She considered this, her head tilted slightly. “How long would that take?”
“Weeks, maybe. There is significant damage to the local grid. If they don’t disconnect unused areas or make repairs, hooking it up might cause a rash of fires.
So, it’s best not to rush it. The Frenchmen know their stuff, but this isn’t starship engineering.
It’s old copper wire and breaker boxes that were installed when Reagan was president. ”
“Reagan?” She dropped the question, but clearly didn’t expect an answer before moving on. “What would it mean for this place?” Teva asked. She gestured around us, the tables, the open windows. “I don’t mean just the lights. The whole feeling of it.”
I looked at her. That was the question I’d been hoping someone would ask. Not how many volts or how many amps, but what it would feel like to have a space that wasn’t running on lanterns and hope.
“It would mean heat in winter,” I said. “Refrigeration for the food you want to serve. Music that doesn’t come from a battery that dies halfway through dinner.
” I took another sip. The wine was doing its work, spreading warmth through my chest and into my arms. “It would mean this place could stay open after dark without everybody huddling around a single lamp.”
Teva’s amber eyes held mine. “How many people could it serve? Comfortably, I mean.”
“Depends on how many chairs you find. The core could handle the whole building easily. More than we need.”
She nodded, processing. “And power?”
“The shuttle core will handle it. Quiet enough you won’t notice it running.”
Her lips curved into a smile that reached her eyes. “Good. I’d like a place where people can sit and talk without everything feeling temporary.”
I shifted my weight, leaning against the windowsill, and felt the knot between my shoulder blades tighten. Two days of tension, maybe three, all coiled up along my spine like a spring wound too tight. I rolled my shoulders and winced.
Teva saw it. Of course, she saw it. Her gaze dropped to the line of my back, then up to my face, reading the set of my jaw the way she read everything, with that quiet, thorough attention that made you feel both exposed and understood.
“You should sit,” she said, delivered with the same warmth she used for everything, but with no question in it.
I shook my head, the automatic refusal forming, and my back protested with a sharp twinge that went all the way up my neck.
“Sit,” Teva said again. She moved to the nearest table, her hands reaching for a clay jar on the shelf. “Take your clothes off. I’ll warm the oil.”
I’ve had a few massages. Shore leave in Guam, once at the insistence of a girlfriend who’d heard the Navy knots could be ironed out by a five-foot granny with the grip of an industrial clamp.
She was right. I’d left that one bruised and lighter, half convinced I’d been mugged.
The standard etiquette, as I understood it, was to get undressed behind a curtain and arrange yourself under a towel or blanket before the practitioner returned.
Here, there was no curtain, and Teva made no attempt to look away as I stripped down to nothing and stretched out face-down on the table.
She covered my lower half with a folded towel.
I felt the draft on my ass and thighs but didn’t care.
She’d seen it all. More than that, she was pack, and the lines on what counted as embarrassment had been moving ever since the first day I’d let a fairy ride my shoulder or let a ci dyn girl nap on my lap while half the boat watched.
She rolled the oil in her hands, warming it, the sound of her palms working together quiet and exact.
The oil was light and cold at first. She started at the base of my neck, her thumbs working into the tension along the edge of my traps.
Every knot she found, she pressed and circled, using the full weight of her upper body to get leverage.
I’d spent most of the past week helping with manual labor, fixing everything I could, or scavenging the town for anything of use, and she found every inch that needed fixing.
She didn’t speak. The silence felt deliberate, not awkward, though music would have been nice.
The creak of the beams overhead filled in where the words left off.
Outside, I heard gulls and the distant voice of a woman singing.
Whoever she was, it was nice. Under it all, the whir of wind and the slow slap of water against the Yacht Club foundation.