Chapter 5 #2
“Ah, well, that was Kit’s clever idea,” he replies. “The deeper curse will then sink into his body like a slow dripping tap. The longer he wears them, the stronger it’ll become.”
I clear my throat. “And wh-what does the curse do?”
“It’s simple. The moment he thinks of a single one of us, he instantly forgets all about it.”
“And what if he doesn’t wear them?” I ask. “I’d imagine he isn’t someone who regularly receives mail-order underwear.”
“Then we try again,” Finch replies. “We send something else along in the post for him to open until something sticks.”
“But why would he open random parcels from an unknown sender? Why would anyone give them to him in the first place?”
Finch’s lips quirk up, his eyes sparkling in the lantern light. “Why do you think, love?”
I glance over at the pile of material again. “Because that’s part of the curse, too.”
“It’s a clever one.” He gives a proud nod. “Subtle but multilayered. My brother might have outdone himself.”
My chest constricts. I had dinner with the rest of the crew tonight, and all night I’ve been fighting the feeling that I was missing something. Someone.
Kit.
He’s normally the one everyone gravitates toward. The life and soul of any gathering.
“Have you—“ I break the silence, almost surprising myself by the high pitch of my voice. “Is Kit all right?”
Finch pauses in what he’s doing, his tentacles slowly lowering as he puts down his tools.
My stomach sinks. From what I’ve seen so far, Finch’s tentacles are like overexcited puppies, always desperate for movement and pets.
If they’re stopping still, it makes me concerned by what he might come out with next.
“We have two different fathers, did he ever tell you that?” Finch cocks his head to one side, intense grey eyes fixed on my face as I shake my head. “My ol’ dad was an interesting man. A little odd.” He smiles.
“I remember being five or so and coming across him calling to the clouds, requesting they change form since he didn’t like rabbits and one of them was shaped just like one. He genuinely thought that when they shifted, it was his doing.”
Somehow that explains a lot. Finch is an interesting mix of vagueness and intensity himself, with his intriguing taste in hats and aversion to buttons.
“He got crushed by a rampaging Pegasus about a year later.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, and Finch gives me a sad half-smile that has a tiny butterfly fluttering its wings in my chest.
“My mother met Kit’s dad a few months later. She was a joyful woman, always laughing and singing, and she took in laundry and sewing for a living. She couldn’t afford for the two of us to live on her single income, so she married again quickly.”
“What was Kit’s dad like?”
“He was the opposite of my old dad. Worked away a lot, always looking for the next best thing so he could provide for the four of us.” He clears his throat, tentacles shifting awkwardly before patting him on the shoulder.
“Anyway, it turned out he had a whole other family. I was ten and Kit was barely more than a toddler. He was this jolly little baby, wandering about and shoving whatever he found into his mouth or ears. Kit’s Pops decided his other family was easier to deal with than the two of us, so he left us with our poor single mother and just...
didn’t return when he said he would. Not the next day, or the next week, or the next year. ”
And now I’m a little sad and I still have no idea what point he’s trying to make.
“Are you saying Kit takes after your mum or your dad?”
“I think both of us were a bit of a surprise to our parents,” Finch replies, looking uncharacteristically serious.
“With my oddities and Kit’s gregariousness.
” He shrugs. “But one thing being around Kit’s dad taught him was that keeping secrets never ends well.
He’s been talking about being on the straight and narrow for a while now.
And I think it’d be his nightmare come true if he got arrested for getting us out of that circle of the underworld. ”
There always feels like Finch leaves a lot unsaid that you’re left to interpret, but tonight he’s being particularly opaque. Or maybe it’s because I need sleep and my head is pounding.
He must have had to look after Kit from a crazy young age, which explains how close they are even though they’ve been living separate lives since Kit hates the water. It also explains why Kit was so determined to get his brother out of the labs and to curse that damned place into the abyss.
Even so, Finch hasn’t answered my question.
“Finch, where is Kit?”
I feel like that’s been the question etched onto my soul recently. I thought we were done with it after getting Kit back.
“Kit’s been spending a lot of time here,” he says. “Working on his curses and learning more about the king. If you can’t find him at any point, he’s probably in here. Right now, though, he’s in bed. He passed out a couple of hours ago and I carried him there myself.”
I give a grateful nod, happy to have finally got an answer.
“Would you show me how you made this?” I ask, gesturing to the chair he’s putting together. I’m not sure I mean what I’m saying, or I just want something to break the tension. “It looks like magic to me, with the way it all fits together.”
Finch smirks. “I assure you, love, it’s entirely mundane. But maybe I’ll show you with the next one and you can put the pieces together? Something tells me you’ll be good at that.”
And so, he does exactly that. It’s late into the night by the time we’re done and, by then, I’m flagging. I slump down in my seat, resting my head against the chair back as my eyes grow more and more heavy.
I try to force my eyes open, but there’s a low voice in my ear. “Stay like that if you like. Sleep if you can. I’ll make sure you get back to bed so you don’t crick your neck.”
When I wake, I’m back in my own bed with Frannie’s heavy breathing vibrating through the wall. Two things strike me.
The first is that Finch is surprisingly good company.
And the second is that I have no recollection of how I got back to bed.