22. Pippi
“Alistair! Can you….no, you probably can’t, huh? Uggggggh , what am I doing ?”
Being crazy.
That was what I was doing.
I’d snuck out of the cottage while Jackson showered and got himself ready for dinner.
Well, I hadn’t fully snuck. I’d told him I was going for a walk.
( “Really, babe? Now? Well, whatever. Be careful.” That had been his exact response).
I just hadn’t disclosed where I was walking to: the dock.
I’d gone clean across it, even as the sloshing water underneath made my stomach flop and grumble.
And I now stood alone in the middle of a fog so gelatinous, it seemed to have swallowed up the rest of the world.
The head of a wave struck the edge of the dock, spitting a wad of foam and muck onto the edge of my skirt.
I squeaked and glared at the fizzing glob oozing over the graffiti print. “Ugh, great. Guess it’s a good thing I didn’t change yet.”
“Pippi?”
My heart leapt into my throat when Alistair’s voice filtered between my ears.
“Alistair?” I called again. “Can you hear me?”
“I can.”
Something was wrong.
His words were thicker. Slurred, almost. Not in the way people got when they’d had one drink too many. This resembled a watery lisp that stained a voice after a prolonged bout of crying. And his emotions were muted, as though the tears had drained him dry.
Oh, Alistair.
As a smaller wave swilled at the posts of the dock, munching on the wood with all the power of a chihuahua chomping on a tree trunk, a heavy plop sounded to my right.
I turned my head that way.
Alistair’s orange eye cut right through the fog. So vibrant, it could’ve been a beam of light shining from a boat or a lighthouse.
The sight of that large luminous eye would’ve been petrifying—a scene straight from a horror movie—if I hadn’t known that harsh stare belonged to the kindest of creatures.
“Are you alright, Pippi?” he asked.
“That’s actually the question I was going to ask you,” I said.
“You s-screamed,” Alistair continued.
“I…Oh. Yeah. No. That wasn’t a scream. Well, it was . But just because my skirt got wet. Nothing else.”
“You l-look…” he stuttered. Sighed. “There is a word for this…your… color is not the same.”
“My color?”
“Your face.”
Which didn’t help, until he added the next bit.
“It doesn’t have color.”
“Oh. Pale? Is that the word you were looking for?”
“Yes!” He exhaled. “ Pale. You look pale. And is that not…for humans…it means they’re not well?”
“I mean, yes ”—I tapped my fingers against my cheeks—“but in my case, it’s just from fatigue. But thank you for pointing out that I should put some makeup on tonight so I don’t look like a corpse at dinner.”
“That was not …I…” Alistair waffled. “Corpses are… dead .”
“They sure are.”
“You don’t look dead.”
“Like the walking dead, maybe.”
“And m-make…up…makeup…Is that paint?”
“Also yes. You see my plan now, huh? I’m going to paint some color on my face so I don’t look like a zombie.
Kidding,” I added, softening my voice when Alistair’s eye rolled, looking pained.
“I’m kidding, Alistair. It’s a joke. I’m—” I bolted backward when another wave belched sizzling water over the top of the dock.
“I am fine. Completely. Just a little tired. And a lot worried about you. Are you okay, Alistair?”
He blinked. “Yes.”
“You didn’t sound okay earlier. When Rune Bloodworth and his posse came to town.”
“Ah.” Alistair’s voice shriveled a bit.
“You seemed upset.”
“I was.”
“Are you still?”
He paused for a moment, considering. “Yes.”
I inched forward, hating that he was so far away and that his eye was the only part of him I could see. Hating that there was pain in his voice and I didn’t know what to do or say to make it better. “I’m sorry, Alistair. Is there anything I can do? I’m a good listener, if you want to vent.”
A swelling wave rose in front of Alistair’s eye, temporarily dousing its light. “How do you always seem to know when I’m s-sad?”
“I just do. I’ve always been able to tell with people. Which, I mean, you’re not people. But you get my point…I hope.”
He said nothing. Just stared at me. Through me.
Heat danced over my skin.
Alistair’s eye rolled slowly, drinking me in. But he wasn’t only savoring the dips and curves of my body. He was searching deeper. Into my heart. My mind. My soul. Trying to read me, understand me, know me.
He was stripping me down.
Or, at least, that was what it felt like, with his eye peeling through my layers, leaving me bare, more naked than even I’d been on the night we met.
It was kind of thrilling.
And…arousing?
Heat spiked low in my belly—a heat that reveled in being pinned down and exposed.
I swallowed.
What on earth?
Alistair’s slitted pupils narrowed.
And I swore he knew my thoughts had fallen into a gutter. But he blinked again and said in the sweetest, tenderest voice, “May I tell you something?”
I swallowed again, willing my body to calm down. “Sure.”
“Do you…Can…” he blustered. Took a moment to collect himself and said, “There is a word for you…for what you feel. What you are. But it has slipped.”
“There’ve been a lot of words used for me. Depends on who you ask. My dad probably had about the best of the bunch, though. That ,” I added when the slit in Alistair’s eye narrowed, “is a story for another time.”
Never.
It’s a story for never.
“It’s not c-c-c…” A gusty sigh quivered the water around him. “ Normal. It’s not normal. To feel what you feel.”
“No. It’s not. Which is why I generally don’t advertise it.” I crossed my arms over my chest as a cold wash of reality trickled over my head.
It suddenly wasn’t arousing to have his gaze expose me, study me , like this.
It was humiliating.
“I’m sorry,” Alistair’s whisper caressed my brain, soothing the nerves his stare had flayed raw. “I didn’t mean to u-u-upset you.”
“You didn’t. I’m tired. And cranky, I think. And…”
“Unhappy?”
“Worried,” I said. “About you. I felt you earlier, Alistair, when the Brady Bunch?—”
“B-Brady. Bunch.”
“—arrived.”
“Brady Bunch. I know this.” His eye bobbed behind another wave.
“It’s a show.” I shrugged. “Another of Mom’s favorites. About a dysfunctional family. So I’m being ironic when I call the motley crew of snobby Sorcerers the Brady Bunch. I’m really talking about Rune Bloodworth and all his henchmen and henchwomen. Like Onyx.”
Pain squiggled in my chest.
Alistair’s pain.
He seemed to realize the agony worm had escaped, though, because he immediately clamped down on it, drawing it away from me.
“You know her?” I asked.
His eye closed, and the world got a little bleaker, scarier without its light. “I do.”
“Did she?—”
“I w-wish…want…don’t…don’t want to speak of Onyx.” Alistair’s eye opened a small, weary crack. “Not now. I’m sorry, Pippi.”
“Don’t be sorry. I get it. Believe me. So I guess we’re both leaving stories for another time, huh?”
He hummed in agreement.
“We’ll have to meet again then, right?”
He said nothing.
“Tomorrow night?”
Good grief, Pippi, get the hint and leave the poor guy alone!
But before my brain could shoot those needly barbs of doubt into my bloodstream, Alistair said, “I’d like that.” In a voice filled with hope—the sort you held your breath for, because you were afraid that any slight movement, even an exhale, would pulverize the thing you’d been clinging to.
My heart gave a heavy, hollow thump. “Tomorrow night, then. But if you want to talk sooner…well, I’ll be here all week. And you can probably just… talk . I don’t know what sort of range you have, but I’ve heard you from different parts of the isle, so we can test that range, if you’d like?”
Silence.
“Well,” I cleared my throat. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
As I moved to leave, he called to me.
“Pippi!”
I turned, scuffling my feet around to avoid getting pissed and spat on by the waves.
“You’re…what you are…what you feel… it…give me a m-m-moment. Please…”
His frustration wrapped a boiling band around my body. Aggravation at knowing what he wanted to say but having to hunt for the words as they swam away.
“Take your time,” I said. “It’s okay. Just take a breath and give yourself a moment to think it through. I’ll wait.”
“Be c-c-careful,” he finally stammered. “With your h-h-h-h-heart. Heart . Don’t let anyone d-d-d-destroy it.”
Oh, Alistair. You’re thirty-five years too late for that sage advice.
But I smiled. “I could say the same about your heart, Alistair. I hate to think of you in pain. So, I’ll tell you what.
For the next week, we’ll look out for each other, yeah?
I’ll guard your heart, and you can guard mine.
And we’ll…I guess we’ll see where we are by the time I go home. Sound like a plan?”
He said nothing, but he didn’t need to. He let me feel his answer.
And it left me almost giddy.