Chapter Eight
Valli
As soon as we step inside the office, Nixie rattles off her coffee order.
“Dark roast, machine is in the back. Largest cup, two fingers of room at the top. One-and-a-half raw sugars, cut the packet—don’t eyeball it, and dissolve it before anything else touches that cup.
Then heavy cream until it turns the color of wet sand, not dry sand—if you don’t know the difference, you’ll learn.
Top it off with one shake of cinnamon. Don’t screw that up and we’ll start the day off good. ”
I laugh and then write it down.
“Good girl, the last one tried to memorize it. Make it snappy, we have an island to run.”
I make the coffee, googling the color of wet sand. I can’t say I frequent the beach enough to know the difference.
Once I deem it good enough, I place it on her desk. She peers down at it, and I hold my breath until she nods.
The radio on her desk crackles, and the day starts.
Within an hour, I understand the reason every assistant before me left.
It’s not that Nixie is cruel; she moves fast. She holds four different conversations on the radio, on three different channels, and expects me to know which one I’m involved in.
She talks in shorthand, doesn’t explain it, and never doubles back.
Then says things like, “pull the blue folder,” when there are nine blue folders, and the test is knowing which one.
“Which date?” I ask, my hand resting on the drawer.
“See? That’s the right question. Your predecessor would have brought me all of them and then cried.”
By ten, my notepad has three ruled columns for tasks. Now. Today. Before I die. Nixie glances at it while dictating an email, then stops mid-sentence and taps the page with a manicured nail.
“That’s why I hired you, though I’m happy for you to continue working after your death.” She moves toward the door, grabbing her coat. “On your feet, we are walking now. If you’re going to hold my island in your hands, you need to know how heavy it is.”
Here is what I learn about Fear Island as I walk with Nixie at a speed which is somewhere in the middle of a brisk walk and an urgent police chase.
The island runs twice a day, which I already knew.
“Daytime, we are family friendly—they scream, laugh, eat a lot of food with sugar in it. The day side pays the bills and keeps the lawyers bored. Nighttime”—she taps her clipboard, the pink one everyone warned me not to touch—“is what we’re actually here for.
Contracts, profiles, and consent forms thick enough to stop a bullet.
Every hunter is matched to every guest by hand. My hand and now yours.”
She shows me how she does it, and it’s worrisome how good she is.
“Bachelorette, they’ll book a night package before they leave,” she says as she points out a group as we pass.
“The tall one has already asked about wristbands, which she should only do in private. We do not advertise what we do here at night. We run as invite only, but we have a portal certain people can find.”
We stop past security, where Vesper is draped across a chair in front of a wall of screens, looking like a gothic princess. She and Nixie have a conversation that’s comprised of mostly insults, and results in three schedule changes.
“She likes you,” Vesper tells me on my way out. “You would have cried by now if she didn’t.”
I nod and quickly follow behind Nixie, and she leads us to Ares’s bar.
There he walks her through a delivery problem, which she helps him solve in less than four minutes.
Vero surfaces from a corner booth and asks if I have come to my senses yet and decided that I want a real man because the Scarecrow isn’t right in the head.
Nixie responds before me. “Vero, Valli and Kayla must be similar. When she finds that real man, I’ll tell her to let Valli know.”
Ares laughs, and Vero grumbles something, but must decide not to push his luck as we leave.
She then shows me the medic station and the three ways to reach it from any zone. Nixie stops at the corner of the haunted mazes and points out sight lines that I have never noticed; how there is no place on the main paths guests can stand without being visible from at least two camera angles.
“People think the scary thing about the island is my hunters,” she says. “But the scariest thing about the island is me. The hunters are the teeth. I’m the one who decides the target that gets bitten.”
By lunchtime my feet hurt. By two I’ve fielded a vendor dispute, found a lost child, and took a phone call from a woman who wanted to book “whatever made her sister scream like that” for her husband’s birthday.
By three, I hit my first wall. Nixie asks me for the vendor contact sheet, and I bring her the wrong year’s information.
She looks at it and then at me. “Wrong.”
At first, I want to recoil into myself, hit with reminders of George and his insults. But Nixie simply waits with a raised brow while I find the right sheet, and when I hand it to her, she says, “Faster next time. Don’t go into your head—I’m not them.”
I freeze for a second. How the hell did she know? She saves the big thing I have heard her mention a few times for the end of the day. Unlocking the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and pulling out a thick binder, she drops it on my desk with a thud that rattles my corn-husk star.
The cover says HARVEST MOON in her handwriting.
“One night a year, the island runs from sundown to sunup for invitation only. Every hunter is active in every zone. Eleven months ago, we sold out. There is a waitlist with over four hundred names on it and multiple marriage proposals with my name on them if I let them in,” she says, sitting on the edge of my desk.
“It’s the biggest day we run and I have not slept properly in weeks.
It’s the actual reason you have a job; I cannot build that day alone.
The last three who tried to help me no longer have a job. ”
I open the binder to find guest profiles, medical forms, hunter assignments, and a fold-out map of the island covered in writing, the timings down to the minute.
“Every single guest on the list gets matched by hand. Every limit and trigger is read and cross-checked. Nothing on my island happens to anyone that they did not sign up for.”
She taps the map, and her nails land on the cornfield.
“And this is the centerpiece—it always is. Which brings me to my last item of business.” She looks at me and my stomach falls.
If she tells me my Cave is to be involved with someone else, I will lose my mind.
“I need my scarecrow back, Valli. Benched hunters don’t headline.
Whatever he has going on in his head, it needs to be fixed for this event. ”
“What does Cave’s involvement look like?” I grit out.
Nixie laughs. “He is not one of the fuckers,” she says. “As my hunters couple up, I outsource, and trust me, I have a long list. But I need to know his head is in the game. People want to be chased through there, roughed up a little, but with no broken bones or cause to call the authorities.”
“He is fine,” I say, knowing it’s not one hundred percent true, but that he is getting there.
“I have known him for a long time, and I wasn’t sure he knew what he was outside that field. So believe me, nobody wants him cleared more than I do. Which is why you’re going to help me run his evaluation. You’re the only person alive he’ll behave for. Now go home.”
I’m at the door, dead on my feet and weirdly happy about today when she calls my name.
“Valli.” She doesn’t look up from her desk. “You did well today. This is the only time I’ll say it out loud, so enjoy it.”
By the time I reach the shed, the smell hits me—garlic, butter, and something roasting. When I walk through the doors, I see candles lit in jars and string lights hanging above the table.
Noa is wearing an apron and smiles when he spots me. “Before you say anything, Cipher has warned me that the number of candles I used was, quote, a fire code violation, and I want you to know I listened and then added six more.”
“Noa.”
“Rue helped me with the chicken, but the love is all mine.”
I cross the shed and take his face in both of my hands and kiss him. He makes a small sound into my mouth, and when I pull back, his eyes are still shut. “It’s perfect.”
“Thank god! I thought it may have been too much.”
I laugh. This is what he thinks is too much—a nice dinner—yet spending so much money on my sister isn’t enough? I really do not understand these men sometimes, but I’m glad I get to try.
Dinner is all four of us. Noa retells my first day back to me, having gathered intelligence, as he calls it, from Khodi and Vesper, who reported to him I didn’t cry. When I tell them about Harvest Moon, Noa lights up like a kid at Christmas, Cipher nods, and Cave goes still.
“Nixie wants you back for it,” I tell him straight. “She asked me to help run your evaluation. The cornfield is the headliner, and I know you’ll be ready not to murder anyone.”
“I don’t understand why people would even want to run through there, but it happens every time we do a Harvest Moon. One person out of all of them becomes the target, and last time he strapped them to his post and threw corn at them. How is that a good time?” Noa snickers.
When our plates are empty, Cipher stands and starts stacking them, and then the least subtle thing I have ever witnessed happens.
“So, Cave, that thing we discussed needs doing now. At another place.”
Cave rises and takes one lingering look at me, then claps Noa’s shoulder on his way past, leaving Noa and me alone under the string lights surrounded by candles.
“They think they’re smooth,” he says.
I chuckle. “They’re really not.”
“I’ve got you all night—well, evening. We played rock, paper, scissors for it. Cipher always goes rock and still hasn’t figured out that we know. I missed you. I know it was only two days you were gone, and I know how that sounds, but I’m told I love hard, so . . .”
“The text limit was a bit much,” I reply with a laugh.
He groans and drops his head. “The betrayal, who told you?”
I snort. “You did, remember? You told your own secret.”
“That does sound like me.” He lifts his head with a grin. “You’ve been on your feet all day. I have a proposal, and I want you to hear the whole thing before you laugh.”
“I’m listening.”
“Hot water, me washing your hair, candles, and simply being with me, in any way you want. I need to feel your skin against mine.”
I stand and hold out my hand. “Bring a candle.”
He grabs four and we go into the bathroom. He places them around the room, and we leave the lights off as he runs the water, steam filling the room.
I take a washcloth and help him remove his zombie makeup, revealing underneath the man I’m falling for, all sun-brown skin, a crooked nose, and a big smile full of pearly white teeth.
“There you are.”
“Here I am,” he says. “You’re staring.”
“You’re gorgeous.”
“I know, it’s a burden.”
I lean forward and kiss the joke right off his lips. Our pace increases—everything is zero to one hundred with Noa. His hands find my shirt, he peels it up, and he mutters, “Goodbye shirt,” against my jaw, and I’m laughing while he strips me naked.
He pulls back and strips off his own clothes as I step into the shower; the water is hot and melts away the day.
Noa gets in and I tip my head beneath the spray, then he picks up the shampoo and does what he promised.
He washes my hair, his fingers working slowly against my scalp until my knees go weak.
“Good?” he asks.
“If you stop, I’ll have you buried in your own cemetery.”
“That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
He rinses my hair, and his mouth lands on the curve of my neck, his hands roam over my breasts, his thumbs dragging until I gasp, trailing down my stomach, gripping my hips, and pulling me into his body so I can feel how hard he is.
“You feel so good. I have thought so much about having you by myself and all the things I would do.”
“Show me,” I whisper.
He turns me and walks me back until I hit the tiled wall, his body caging mine until he drops to his knees and looks up at me through wet lashes, water running off his ridiculously handsome face.
“I talk too much, so let me put my mouth to better use.”
His tongue finds my clit, and my head thuds back against the wall.
When it comes to sex, Noa is exactly like always—enthusiastic and relentless.
He works me over with his tongue and curls two fingers inside me.
He pays attention to every whimper, and when my thighs shake, he hooks my knee over his shoulder and holds me open.
Noa keeps me pinned, and I come with my fingers in his hair and crying out his name.
Noa surfaces, grinning like he won the lottery. “Better use?”
“Get up here,” I demand with a laugh. He slides up my body, kissing wet skin as he goes.
I wrap my hand around his cock when it gets within range, and his forehead drops to mine.
“Okay, yes, that feels . . . fuck, so good.”
“How do you want me?” I ask him.
“Every way, forever. Alphabetically, if that’s even possible.” I squeeze and he groans. “Wall, like this, I want to see your face. I will always want to see your face.”
Lifting me and pressing me against the wall, Noa helps lock my legs around him, but he pauses there, his tip pressed against me, water falling over us both.
Then he pushes into me slowly, both of us groaning at the sensation.
He fucks me against the wall, as the water pours down over us and the light of the candles dances with the shadows.
His deep, rolling thrusts knock the air out of me, yet he talks through it all, narrating every part.
“You feel . . . You have no idea, it’s like I’m home.”
He shifts his grip, angling deeper, grinding against me exactly where I need with every stroke.
My second orgasm builds faster, and as it breaks, I push my head forward, burying it in his neck.
He follows me over seconds later, his hips stuttering, my name on his lips. Then both of us simply hold each other.
“So,” Noa says, not putting me down. “On a scale of one to ten.”
I tighten my legs around him. “It was amazing, Noa, but it wasn’t enough.”
He pulls back to look at me. “Yeah, it never will be—that’s the whole point of forever. We can start with tonight, though. Let’s get you dry and move on to round two.”
“I love the sound of that; I need more of you.”
Noa helps me out of the shower and towels me dry, then picks me up bridal-style and takes me to our new bed. I don’t know where Cipher and Cave went, but I’m grateful they have given me time with Noa. Even if they resorted to rock, paper, scissors to decide who got to spend the night with me first.