“Up you get, Cap wants an update on everything we heard from the Dock before you forget it all.”
I flop onto my stomach with a groan, then regret the movement when all the liquid inside me sloshes around and threatens to make a reappearance. The drinks from the Dry Dock are always toxic enough going down and, no doubt, they’ll be ten times as bad coming back up again.
The next thing I know, there’s a thud on the cabin door, rattling my brain against my skull, and I groan again.
“Up. Now,” Torin grumbles through the door.
I force myself up and onto my feet, dragging my arse out of bed and along the passageway to Cap’s office. Pausing outside, I close my eyes, begging the world to stop spinning around in front of me.
Slipping inside, quiet as a mouse, I manage to trip over my own feet and stumble into the room. Cap doesn’t seem to notice, hisattention focused across his desk at Torin, who raises an eyebrow at me. Reva and Aster are both sitting beside him. Reva twists around to look at me, her lips quirking in a half smile as I plop into the final remaining seat. I give them a half salute, somehow smacking myself in the face in the process.
“We couldn’t confirm it was Kit with her, but it certainly sounded like the same sorceress that was in Port Yarrow,” Torin says.
“Who we can no longer track, and we don’t have a clue which direction they’ve gone in,” Cap replies.
“Exactly.”
Cap adjusts his hat and then grabs his whittling knife, hacking at a new piece of wood with a furious intensity that has me sharing a concerned look with Torin.
“What do you think she wants with Kit?” Reva asks quietly.
Aster taps her forearm and spells something out for her, causing her to scrunch up her nose.
“Power.”
“And what do you think is the likelihood of her losing interest in Kit and just... letting him go?”
He shakes his head, then leans his forehead against hers when her expression falls further.“She’ll keep him until he’s stopped being useful to her.”
“And who knows how long that’ll be,” Finch mutters. “Kit’s talented, sure, but he’s also human.”
“Or ‘mostly human’, as he’d say,” I rasp. My mouth is drier than a bucket of ashes right now, and my head is starting to pound as I’m sobering up.
“I’ve been thinking about this since we got back,” Reva says, making a hint of unease pinch at my gut at the thought of her wracking her brain while I’ve been sleeping off my inebriation. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to have imbibed so much at the Dock.
“Aster told me that the sorceress used to have people working with her,” Reva adds. “It sounds like they didn’t part on good terms, so maybe we could try to find her old partners, see if they would know where she might go next?” She hesitates, running a hand through her cloud of hair and scowling as her fingers catch on a knot.
“And I know we can’t exactly go to the authorities,” she continues. “But is there a sorcerers’ guild or something? People who are keeping tabs on them or keeping them in check?”
Ahh, fuck. I close my eyes and tip my head back, knowing exactly what I’ll see once I peel my eyelids open again.
Yup, both Tor and Finch are looking at me expectantly.
“You did something before,” I rasp at Reva, then wince as I smell my own foul breath. Ugh, those drinks were even more toxic than usual. “Did some jiggery-pokery, right? Told us which direction Kit was headed? Can’t you just do that again?”
Her face seems weirdly close to mine, and I have to shut my eyes again so I don’t have to see the little pout that appears on her pink lips.
“I was using Aster’s magic, and it doesn’t seem to have restored itself yet,” she replies, shifting in her seat with a tired sigh. “We tried to recreate what we did the other day and I don’t know why it didn’t work, but it didn’t.”
“Jack,” Finch taps his desk, and I snap my eyes open, faced with his damn expectant expression. He knows exactly what I’m going to say, because there’s nothing else I can say.
Then I turn to Reva and give her a bland smile. “There are people who keep tabs on all the registered sorcerers. People who have binders filled with their details.” Running my hand over my face, I fail to soothe the pounding at my temples and stifle a groan. “Would Aster be able to recognise their unglamoured faces?”
She relays the question, and he nods, his expression grim.
Yeah, I’d imagine if anyone had held me against my will, I’d remember their faces too. Which begs the question—
“How’d they keep you there?” I ask him. “If you have inh...inherenant—” I cough over my slurred attempt at pronouncing the word. “If you’ve got natural magic and they don’t. How could they keep you there?”
