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 likehe 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.
Chapter 27
Torin
Reva sits in the middle of Captain Finch’s office, looking mighty uncomfortable as the three of us try to pinpoint Kit’s location by staring at her bond with Kit.
“Southwest.” Jack nods sagely.
Finch steals the spectacles right off Jack’s face, glancing at Reva with an amused huff. “That’s south-southwest.” He pulls them off again and hands them over to me to confirm.
I nod and give Bones a nudge, and he hurries off to tell Dagger, who’s currently steering the ship.
“See, I told you,” Finch says to Jack. “You keep getting distracted by how shiny that bond with Kit is.”
“Aster’s too,” Jack says. “Tor’s is... not so great. I told him he needs to commence wooing immediately.”
My ears go hot, even as Reva breaks in, “It’s not Torin’s fault. He’s perfect. I just think there’s something... not right with it.”
I try to keep my breathing slow and steady, even though a flaming blade in my gut would sting less.
Of course, the bond between us would be wrong. I’m tainted.
Reva opens her mouth, shooting me an apologetic look that does nothing to soothe the sharp pain in my chest.
“That came out wrong,” she says. “It’s just... I told you what happened to my skin. I think because Noush is so far away, our bond didn’t form properly.” She glances at Finch before turning back tome. “Both Kit and Aster touched my sealskin. That was how our bonds formed, so maybe that’s what you need to do too. I tried to do some reading at the library, but, funnily enough, I couldn’t find anything about selkie mate bonds.”
My gut feels hollow. All that might be true, but I’m betting even if we’d followed direct instructions, there would still be something fucked up about any bond I try to form.
I’m fairly sure the monster inside of me doesn’t have a soul. And I doubtless lost my own decades ago.
“But even those bonds feel like they’ve changed since they formed,” she continues. “When they first formed with the other two, I could feel their heartbeats right in my chest as though they were my own. But I can’t feel that anymore, only when I’m really focusing on them.”
I’m still shaking my head, because there’s a reason I’m as messed up as I am, and she should know exactly what it is. I know she’s seen the abomination in action, but it’s impossible for her to know quite how unnatural I am.
