Chapter 26
Reva
Twenty minutes later and we finally reach a point in the city where Jack announces our lift will pick us up. I don’t realise at that moment quite how literally he means the words until he spins me around with a grin on his face.
In the middle of the street, there’s a huge basket the size of a cart with thick ropes trailing from it onto the street. Movement on the other side captures my attention and I step closer just in time to see a giant wing shifting and a long, thin tail that waves lazily through the air.
“Is that—”
“Our ride back to the ship.”
“I-it’s a gryphon,” I sputter. “This is your way of traveling ‘in style’?”
“Yup.”
“How much does this thing cost?” Torin asks while I gape at both him while Jack simply shrugs.
“We’re not the ones footing the bill, so it hardly matters.”
“I didn’t even know gryphons were real. I thought they were all just storybook monsters, like pixies and elves.”
All three of them share a look, and my eyes widen. “What? Are you saying—”
Aster’s the first one to break, his lips twisting into a grin as he silently laughs, and then the other two join in.
“Yeah, yeah. Chuckle it up.” I roll my eyes. “We’re seriously riding in this thing?”
“We are,” Jack replies, gesturing to the basket sitting on the ground beside its furry body.
“And it’s... safe?”
“As safe as sailing on a pirate ship crewed by beast-borne devils,” Jack says with a smile. “Now, hop on before anyone notices it’s missing.”
I’m already climbing gingerly into the basket while the gryphon lifts its huge head and gives a regal chuff. I’m already at the bottom, clutching my bag to my chest when his words sink in.
“Hang on ‘before anyone notices’? What do you mean before—”
But we’re already launching into the air, the gryphon’s powerful wings flapping as we rise higher and higher. The basket sways from side to side while the wind whistles around us, and I slump back, closing my eyes.
“So, we’re heading back to the ship then?” I yell over the sound of the wind as my hair whips me in the face.
Torin nods, shifting closer to me so that his body is blocking the worst of the wind. “Deadwood Cove isn’t somewhere you can go without having a plan. And Cap would have our balls if we headed there without him knowing about it.”
I nod, leaning back so that my head is resting on the hard basket behind me. A strange heaviness has taken over my limbs and it feels difficult to keep myself upright.
Maybe it’s the dip in adrenaline now catching up with me, but it doesn’t get better the longer we stay in the air. Aster’s the only one who seems to notice. He keeps shooting me concerned looks and asking me what’s wrong, but since I barely know myself, I don’t know what to say to him.
I close my eyes for a moment, hoping the swaying movement and the rhythmic thumping of the gryphon’s wings might help me drift off to sleep.
Despite the lethargy dragging me down, I can’t quite drift off. Instead, I wind up pulling my knees to my chest and find Torin’s steady gaze already focused on me.
“Are we going to talk about that thing in your chest now that we have some time on our hands?” he asks.
And nowhere to hide.
But he deserves to know.
“I’ve spent all my life skipping from place to place, moving on whenever anyone got too close,” I tell him, before my eyes shift to Jack who is sitting with his eyes closed. “But it was all for nothing.”
There’s no longer any need for me to keep my secrets. Secrets were supposed to keep me safe, to stop the worst from happening.
So much for that.
“I’m a selkie,” I tell them. “I don’t know if you know much about them?”
“A selkie,” Jack murmurs with a snort that seems entirely out of place following me revealing my closest kept secret. “And you thought that gryphons were mythical.”
Then Torin’s the one letting out a low chuckle, shaking his head. “Sorry. It’s just... Jack’s got a thing for mermaids. We’re always telling him they don’t exist, but all the legends—”
“—start with sailors spotting selkies in the water. A woman’s head pops up from beneath the waves, and a seal’s tail bobs in the water as she transforms.” I nod, glancing again at Jack, whose cheeks have gone an impressive shade of red.
“Yeah, I’ve heard them all before. You know, I grew up terrified sorcerers were going to steal my skin and use it in their rituals. ”
“They probably would,” Jack replies. “If they believed you existed.”
Well, I’m fairly sure one does now. Jack seems to realise as soon as the words come out by the way all that extra blood disappears from his face.
“Anyway, I gave Kit my sealskin for safekeeping and then he got himself abducted by a sorceress,” I say. “And it seems that the longer I’m away from my seal, the more I can feel our separation. Headaches, dizzy spells, aches and pains.”
Jack surprises me by reaching out to pat me on my knee, unconsciously echoing Aster’s words from days ago. “We’ll get it back for you. You’ll find we’re pretty good at that kind of thing.”
“And Kit’s not going to let that woman touch your skin,” Torin adds. “He’d let her tear his own skin off first.”
That’s something I am both hoping for and terrified of.
I MUST ACTUALLY FALL asleep after that. I wake from a deep sleep as someone carefully puts me to bed, turning my head slightly into a bulky bicep and breathing in the faded scent of cloves.
For a moment, I’m entirely weightless and totally safe, cocooned in a strong pair of arms. And then my awareness fades as I melt back into unconsciousness.
I’m woken some time later, having slept so deeply and in one position for so long that my ear aches. Sitting up, I’m aware of what woke me. Someone is tapping incessantly on the cabin door. I force myself up, pausing as my head swims and a wave of nausea rolls through me.
It’s impossible to know what time it is, but I’m alone in the cabin. Whether that means Aster’s already been to bed and risen again, or hasn’t slept at all, is impossible to say.
Bones is standing in the doorway, his craggy face pulled into a grin that distorts as he takes in my appearance. “Not feeling your best, pet?”
“I, uh, not really.”
He nods. “Cookie’s busy in the kitchen whipping something up. No doubt you’ll feel better after.”
My stomach protests, and I lean heavily against the doorframe, still too lost in the fog of sleep to argue. “Uh huh.”
Bones nods. “Right, well, there’s someone on the scrying glass for you in the captain’s office. They’ve been calling pretty constantly since you’ve been gone, and Cap’s threatening to string whoever it is up.”
“For me?” I ask, my stomach twisting again but for a different reason.
“A lady ogre, Cap says it was. Friend of yours.”
Frannie. I let out a breath, hit with a strange mixture of pleasure and disappointment.
What was I expecting? For Kit to have found a scrying glass and to have decided to skip speaking to his brother and insist on speaking to me?
I’m really not in tip-top form right now.
I stumble along behind Bones, trying to force myself to wake up while he chatters away, mostly about how they could have used my help yesterday after a few of the crew got into a scrap.
“Too much time together sends us all a little stir-crazy, y’know?”
“I can imagine.”
“Right, so, Dagger’s eye’s not exactly going to grow back, but you’d think he’d have learned not to fight with Yeti, wouldn’t you?”
I make a vague sound of assent, which seems to be enough for Bones to keep going, all the way until we reach the captain’s office.
“Not sure where anyone’s at, but Cap said you’re fine to head right in.”
Hesitating for a moment, I step into the captain’s empty office and head for the scrying glass screen in the corner.
Waving my hand in front of it, I wait for it to connect.
I’ve never had one of my own, since they’re pretty damn expensive, but I’m hoping that standing in front of it is enough to let the person on the other side know I’m here.
“Hello?”
The magic swirls, and Frannie’s face appears. She’s standing way too close to her side of the orb, so I get a superb view of her cheek and nostril and the wall behind her.
“Frannie?”
“Finally!” she exclaims, then lowers her voice.
“I’ve been trying you for a couple of days now and kept getting that captain with the terrible choice in headwear.
He’s not great at small talk, is he? Talks enough for two of you, but then loses track of what he’s saying and starts up talking about something totally different. ”
“I can’t say I’ve made much small talk with him,” I reply with a dry chuckle. “Sorry for not being here. We were off the ship, visiting Mistlemarch.”
“First a pirate ship and then city life, eh? What a grand adventure you’re having.
Meanwhile, everyone in this town is certifiably insane,” she says.
“Honestly, they come into the shop and don’t buy a single thing.
Most of them seem to spend their entire days chatting away while I feel like an interloper, asking them if they might want a two-hundred-year-old telescope so they can spy on their neighbour more easily. ”
I snort, plopping into a seat and feeling my shoulders relax. “It’s not going well then?”
“It’s going fantastically! The shop’s full every day, just like your man likes it.”
“Right.” My gut twists and I pull my knees up to my chest.
“I’ve had more conversations about people’s rubbish and their bins than I could wish for in a lifetime. I’m telling you, the town needs to start up those orgies again, even if it’s just to give them something else to talk about.”
I huff out a laugh, happy for Frannie to continue to burble on. “Right.”
“But speaking of the bins. I have some good news and bad news, which would you like first?”
“Uh, I’ll take the good news first.”
“Right, well, I heard from Mag that the wards finally went off at our old place. Seems like your Mr Fishy finally paid us a visit, but he didn’t bother to bring the authorities with him.”
It all feels so long ago that this was how it started. And it strikes me at that moment that if things hadn’t been so messy that night in Mag’s pub, then I might not have visited Kit and we might not have found Aster. It could have been days before I knew anything was wrong.
Maybe Mr Fishy’s appearance was a godsend, after all.
“What happened with the wards?” I ask.
“Well, he’s not dead,” Frannie says. “But he might wish he was. Mag went to check the place out. Found that the wards had stopped the fishy fucker from going into the house and had turned him into his namesake.”
“Had what?” I blink at her until she takes pity on me and my poor slow-moving brain.
“Turned him into a fish. Or part man, part fish, I guess. Top half’s all fishy, and the bottom is mostly man.” She clicks her tongue. “And people wonder why there are never stories of backward mermen in the old tales.”
“Do people really wonder that?”
Frannie ignores my question, pushing straight on to her next topic without taking a breath breath.
“Anyway, it’s good news since he won’t be coming back in a hurry.
Mag dropped him into the sea, and he seemed to swim off happily enough.
Of course, he can’t talk, so he couldn’t bring the authorities even if he tried.
Plus, it’s not like he can track us even if he magically found someone who could give him his head back. ”
“Right.” I don’t know if it’s Frannie’s rapid-fire speech, but I’m feeling dizzy again and I rub my forehead as I try to keep up. “If that was the good news, what’s the bad news?”
“They found Bert, the old fella who was complaining about the old coven house. Funnily enough, they found him right outside Mrs Higgs’ bins that everyone’s been complaining about.”
My throat feels dry as I lean forward, my pulse pounding. “And when you say ‘found him’, what—”
“He’s alive,” she replies quickly. “Although there doesn’t seem to be much life left in him.
One of the townspeople took him home with them, said he mostly sits and stares at nothing.
Once they got enough booze into him, he told them about the beautiful woman who lured him into her web.
He says he thought she was a vampire, although he didn’t seem to mind that too much.
” She pauses, clearing her throat as though there’s something more, but she doesn’t know how to put it.
“What else?”
“He said... he said she wouldn’t have stopped. He thought she was going to kill him, but she had this little box with her. It started blaring in the middle of the night and... interrupted her. He didn’t see her again after that.”
“A little box? What was it?”
“He wasn’t sure, but someone else said it sounded like it might have detected magic. Drew her in.”
“And that was the night Kit disappeared?”
She shrugs. “It’s hard to tell. He’s not got the best idea of how much time has passed or how long he’d been lying there collapsed by the bins.”
“That tracks.” This sorceress seems to have a habit of ditching people once they’ve proved their usefulness.
I just hope she doesn’t take too much from Noush or from Kit before we can get them away from her.