Chapter 7
Kit
I’m not sure I should be here. And I don’t just mean by the water’s edge, peering out at the waves as they crash against the sand at my feet. The forest behind me is thick and shrouding any moonlight that’s struggling to peer through the clouds.
That’s why I feel uneasy. It must be.
How can I feel anything less than fantastic after earlier? After being able to spend time with Reva and feeling her body against mine, even though I’ve been a shitty partner recently. I’ve just been so caught up, so distracted by—
Well, I’m not entirely sure what I’ve been caught up with. If someone asked me how I’ve been spending my days, I’m not sure what I’d tell them.
Something brushes my shoulder and I shove it out the way, earning myself a branch twatting me in the face as it fights back.
There’s a crack behind me and I spin around, on high alert even though we’re safe here.
There’s a thick ring of wards and curses surrounding the island, set to attack anyone who’s not the crew.
We’re safe. Protected.
So why do I feel like I have to keep looking over my shoulder?
My head’s a mess. I suppose that once someone plays around with your mind like the sorceress did to me, it’s hard to trust your own thoughts. The whole time I was stuck with her, my gut instinct was screaming that something was wrong. My gut screaming, mind muddled, body paralysed.
It was not a good combination.
There’s another sharp crack nearby, and I spin around. I’m half expecting there to be no one there. For it to be another sign that I’m losing my mind here.
“Got something for me?”
I practically jump out of my skin at the familiar voice, especially when Finch’s tentacle claps me on the shoulder before he steps out of the trees’ shadows.
“You scared the shit out of me. Why are you creeping around the woods?”
“You know you do this thing when you’re surprised, where you clutch your chest like a maidenly aunt with her delicate sensibilities upset.”
“Yeah, yeah, very funny. Did you follow me down here? Or have you been waiting around in the woods for hours?”
He shrugs, adjusting his hat to a jaunty angle, and I realise he’s in one of those moods. Like he’s a cranky toddler you can’t get anything useful out of.
“How long have you been out here?” he asks, eyeing my sodden shirt. “You’re soaking wet.”
I glance down at myself and see that he’s right. “Not long,” I reply.
Although now that I think about it, I can’t remember walking down here. Couldn’t say for exactly how long I’ve been standing here either.
I must be more sleep-deprived than I realised.
“I’m heading out,” Finch tells me. “Got anything for me?”
“Uh.” I pat my pockets and try not to let my surprise show when I find a small, neatly wrapped package in my pocket. I couldn’t tell anyone what’s inside as I can’t strictly remember putting it there. Or putting a curse on whatever thing is inside the wrapping.
But still, I hand it over.
“Good night for it,” I comment, nodding toward the water. Even when the moon appears momentarily, it’s still impossible to see anything. Not with the thick sea fret that’s taken over the entire region, spreading at least a mile out to sea and covering our tiny island entirely.
Finch just grunts and we peer out at the fog for a moment before he gives me a swift pat on the shoulder with one tentacle and a jaunty salute with the other. “Don’t stay out here too long.”
And then he steps into the mist, disappearing entirely within seconds.
It’s an oddly disconcerting experience to be surrounded by so much fog creeping around me. When I turn around, the darkness of the forest is absolute. I take a tentative step and then another, feeling branches I can’t see brush against my legs and arms with spindly caresses.
There’s a gnawing sense of anxiety that if I make one wrong turn, I won’t know which way to go toward the house.
There are plenty of steep edges if I head too close to the western side of the island.
A rocky cliff that’ll have me tumbling into the unforgiving water before I know it.
And right now, I’m unable to tell my arse from my elbow, let alone in which cardinal direction I’m headed.
I’m concentrating so hard on blindly moving through the forest, and the fog is so thick, I almost miss the small black bird flying overhead. It circles uncomfortably close to my face, flapping its wings before landing just in front of me as Jack retakes his human form.
“Where’ve you been?” he hails me.
“Checking the perimeter,” I reply dully. It’s the same answer I’ve given over and over for however long we’ve been here, because that’s all I’ve been doing.
I never thought of myself as an anxious person, but it’s almost become an obsession for me to check the countless wards and curses we’ve etched into the land.
Every check confirms that the barrier between us and the outside world is still in place.
All we need is a single breach, and it’ll all collapse.
And after Aster broke my decades-old curses on the Deadwood Cove with relative ease, I have to admit my confidence has taken a hit.
“I haven’t seen you in days, man,” Jack says. “Not since you were stuffing your face at midnight in the kitchen.” He smirks at me as a strange coldness runs through my veins, and I swallow hard.
“Right. The... kitchen,” I reply. “What can I say? I’m used to my own hours.”
“Did Cookie give you a massive bollocking? I heard he was in a bad mood.”
I shake my head, fighting a shiver, and quickly shift the subject from an encounter I can’t recall even a moment of.
“What were you doing out here, anyway?” I ask.
Jack shrugs. “Not a lot. Headed to town, the usual.”
I sway on my feet, brushing my wet hair from my clammy forehead.
“Hey, Kit, are you all right?” Jack says.
My gut tightens as a wave of heat and then cold runs through me. I stumble back as my knees feel oddly weak.
“You really don’t look good, man. Are you getting sick?”
I shake my head. “I’m fine. Just need some food and a good night’s sleep.”
What is happening to me? I can barely remember more than snippets of time from the past three weeks, ever since we’ve been here.
I’m trying to wrack my brain for conversations I’ve had and food I’ve eaten...
But I can’t.
“I want to ask you a question that’s going to sound strange,” I say. “But I need you to answer it anyway, all right?”
“That’s fine, man. I think we should get you back inside, though.
It’s cold enough to freeze your tits off out here and you’re soaked through.
If Torin saw you, he’d throw a fit and tell you that you’re going to catch your death.
” Jack flings his arm around my shoulders, and I ignore the fact that he’s naked as we stumble forward.
“When we last spoke to each other, do you remember what we talked about?” I ask.
He frowns at me as my foot catches in the sand and I stagger forward.
“I do,” he replies slowly. “It was a few days ago. We talked about the usual. No offence, but you’ve been kind of obsessive over the past few weeks.
Every time I see you, you’re heading to check the damn perimeter or you’ve just come back from there and you’re falling into bed. ”
He gives me a long, lingering look, and I huff out a sigh.
I know I deserve it. I know I sound weird and I’m being weird, but there’s not much I can do about that.
We pull to a halt as the fog swirls around us, and I have absolutely no idea where we are.
Fitting, really. It matches the inside of my head, like wading through smoke.
“I’m having some trouble remembering things. Remembering what it is I’ve been doing here,” I say, my gut flipping and flopping like a fish. “And what I’m thinking is that I know that woman messed with my head. I know she did something to me, or I’d never have gone with her otherwise.”
Jack’s face creases with understanding, his usual grin dimming. “You think she did something to you and it’s stopping you from remembering what you’ve been doing here?”
“I think I’ve been making and checking the perimeter,” I say. “Trying to keep us all safe here. But what if I haven’t been doing that? What if I don’t remember forming any of the curses?”
An icy shiver runs through me as the wind picks up, shifting the fog. Then there’s a sound like paper in the wind, and when I turn around, there’s no sign of Jack at all. I stagger forward right as the fog clears enough for me to make out the house a few hundred metres away.
I wonder if he’s messing with me. If he’s gone inside the house ahead of me. So I keep on moving forward until I’m inside.
Once I’m there, I find the house in uproar.
The lights are all on in every room. People are yelling, and there’s music playing from somewhere. Some of the crew are carousing around the foyer, arms around each other as they swig from tankards.
I push my soaked hair away from my face. “What is going on here?”
“We’re having a party,” someone tells me. “Courtesy of Cookie’s birthday.”
“Courtesy of the news, you mean,” another voice clamours.
At my clueless look, Dagger appears, stepping closer until he’s thrusting a drink into my hand. “Jack’s news. He found another five names on the arrest list.”
“We’re famous!”
I glance around, trying to find Jack in the crowd of warm bodies. “Is Jack here?”
“Nah.” Dagger shakes his head. “He was here and gone a couple of hours ago. Was headed straight back out to see if it was worse anywhere else.”
A couple of hours ago. Did I see him before or after that? Surely I wasn’t wandering around in the fog for hours, was I?
The frightening thing is, it’s just as likely that I was. There are apparently entire conversations I don’t remember having.
Just what else have I forgotten?