Oscar spun to face me. “Yeah, but you agree with me, right?”
“No.” I lied.
“Liar.” Rose and Oscar said as one.
Seas save me from the Bailey twins. Apparently, some miracles still occurred because if I were a betting man, I would wager that we’d arrived at our destination.
The house sat half-swallowed by the hillside, as if the island had grown tired of its presence and begun reclaiming it stone by stone. Built from black volcanic rock, the walls gleamed like wet obsidian with the mist that hung down from the valley. Moss climbed the seams, thick and vibrant, giving the whole structure the look of something risen from the earth rather than crafted by human hands.
Its roof—red tiles faded to rust—sagged under years of salt wind. A crooked chimney leaned against the sky, coughing out thin spools of smoke that smelled, strangely, of rosemary and burning sugarcane, a combination locals insisted wasn’t natural. A single window faced the footpath, narrow and deep-set.
The front door was made of heavy cedar, bleached grey, carved with symbols no church would claim—knotted spirals, crescent shapes, and something that looked too much like an eye. Beneath the eaves hung strings of shells and small bones that clicked together whenever wind passed, whispering warnings in a language only the superstitious pretended to understand.
“Maybe we don’t need a witch after all,” Oscar said, slowing his pace.
Rose nodded, but grabbed his arm and propelled him forward. “Cursed people don’t get to be picky about who they get help from.”
“I’m not cursed,” Oscar said.
“Yeah, but I am,” Rose said. “Which means you are, by extension. Two for one, right?”
“I don’t think that’s how this works,” Oscar said.
The door creaked open before any hand had lifted to knock.
She stepped into the threshold with the slow certainty of someone who had been expecting company for hours. A narrow woman, neither young nor old, her face carved with the kind of fine lines that came from squinting into too much wind, too much sea-salt, too much truth. Her hair, long and unbound, spilled over her shoulders in a cascade of iron-gray streaked with volcanic black, as though the island itself had made her.
Her skin held the warm, sun-burnished tone of the Azorean coast, but something in its undertones felt older—ashen in certain angles, glowing faintly gold in others.
She wore a simple dress of faded indigo, the hem stained with soil and crushed herbs. Over it hung a shawl of rough-woven wool, dyed a red so deep it might once have been the color of dragon’s blood sap. Tiny objects dangled from its fringe—shell fragments, carved bone, a rusted key, a smooth piece of obsidian. They clicked softly as she moved, as if whispering on her behalf.
She stepped fully outside, barefoot on the stone, and the wind seemed to change.
All together, she was a sight to behold–the unmistakable air of a woman who knew more than men were comfortable with.
Above all that, though, the thing that made me stop in my tracks and know without a doubt that we were in the right place was her eyes.
Eerie bright blue.
Eyes I’d seen before.
She lifted her chin into the air, eyes locked on Rose, who stood frozen next to her brother.
“Ah, so my son finally did it, did he?” she said. “Found a chosen to hunt for his delusions of power.”
It was too easy. Too convenient. There was a trap here somewhere.
“Well,” said the one. “Come in and tell me what promise Arthur forced upon you to bring you to my door.”
Arthur.
“Captain Arthur Edmonds,” Dilly whispered.
The woman snorted. “Captain indeed.”
She turned, but before she disappeared into the house, she looked back and waved her hand.
“Well, are you four coming or not?”
