Its curiosity bore down on him. He shielded his own thoughts against it, like a tiny bug clinging to the earth as winds raged overhead.
“I’m not sure this is going to work,” he admitted.
“Preeooo?” Maggie prowled closer. “Phwoof!”
“That’s what we’re after, yeah.Phwoof, and a big flame to cook tea on.”
“Phwoof!” she repeated, and breathed flame onto the sticks.
Carol stared wide-eyed. Out of the corner of his mouth, Moss asked: “Did you know she could do that?”
She shook her head.
He stared at the little dragon, who was puffed up almost spherical with pride. “Didyouknow you could do that?”
“Pree-thwwwwp.”
“I guess that answers that.”
Carol sat back, stunned. “On the one hand, having a fire is good.”
“On the other?”
She grimaced. “On the other, I don’t know how I feel about Maggie having evenmorespecial powers to freak me out with. Invisibility and teleportation were enough, you know?”
“Invi—what?!”
She looked at him strangely. “I thought you knew about dragons already?”
“Sure. I knowaboutthem. They’re basically our neighbors down south. Doesn’t mean we know all their tricks, though.”
To his surprise, she accepted his answer. Unease twisted in his gut.
The day crawled by. They had a fire now. Moss busied himself building it up and figuring out their next meal, pulling together more shellfish to cook on the coals and kelp to wrap them in. Carol and Maggie went out to look for more driftwood. He found oysters off the other side of the island. Fresh oysters! It was so close to a fantasy island getaway.
And so fucking far from it at the same time.
When dusk began to creep over the horizon, it was a relief. It was another night on a lumpy cave floor with no idea where the hell they were, sure—but they had hot food, a warm fire, and the sky wasn’t dumping an ocean’s worth of rain on them. Sideways.
There had been no sign of the creatures that had attacked Carol and Maggie.
And no sign of his kraken, either. For hours.
He could practically taste the lure now. The bright and shiny promise of a future where the kraken stayed dormant. Nothing more than an extra pair of eyes behind his, content to watch the world go by.
If he wasn’t careful, the hook hiding behind that shining hope would gut him.
14
Carol
Daylight seemed to last longer than it should. The afternoon brought a biting wind, and then a veil of cloud that made everything gray and bright until night sank in with a suddenness that reminded her how isolated they were. The sun was gone, then the last glow of dusk, and outside their little circle of firelight there was nothing but the dark.
It took her breath away. She’d lived in NYC most of her adult life, and of course the city was never dark, but even when she was a kid, out on the boat with her family, the nights hadn’t been like this. Here there were no distant signal lights from other boats, or blinking buoys out to sea. No dusty haze of a far-off coastal town or docks.Just their little firelight, and beyond it, the cloud-black night. The air was still chilly, with a constant salt wind, but the smell of woodsmoke and food cooking on the embers turned isolation into cozy comfort.
There were so many things they should have talked about—important, life-changing things—but without speaking a word about it, they both seemed to come to a silent agreementnottotalk about any of them. At least, she assumed that was what was happening.
Instead, they talked about the sea.
