“Of course I have opinions,” Gunner says. “I’m smarter than both of you. Why wouldn’t I?”
Caleb barks a laugh at that, and I can’t help laughing too until another tentacle slams against the lighthouse.
“Oh man,” I say. “I don’t like this.”
“How long do you think before the bread’s done?” Caleb says. He walks over to me, lacing his arm around my waist.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Probably 30, 45 minutes. It’s not a huge loaf. The cast iron pan isn’t heated though, so that could slow the temp. You know, I don’t think it has to be perfect though. I think that we just need to bake it.”
“And then what? Eat it?” Caleb asks.
“Maybe. Maybe that is what we do,” I say slowly.
My phone rings, and it hits me. I haven’t sent any updates to my sisters.
Oh no.
“Shit,” I say. “I forgot to tell anyone that I was here. They’re probably freaking out.”
“Well, call them now,” Caleb says. The voice of reason has always been his thing. I’m not sure how long it’s going to take me to get used to having a voice of reason again besides Gunner, but he eggs me on just as much as he reasons with me, so that’s a little bit of a different thing.
“But like, do you think the kraken could pull us into the water from the lighthouse?” I ask him. “It’s on a rock, right, Mist Point? That’s what you told me.”
“The lighthouse is safe, Ivy. You’re safe. If it can withstand decades of storms and flood waters and everything else the coast has thrown at her, I don’t think a giant magical kraken could pull us into the ocean.”
“Umm. I think that the giant magical part might make a little bit of a difference,” I say.
“Ivy, call your sisters.”
“Fine,” I say.
It doesn’t take me long at all to cross over to where my purse is thrown on the floor, and I tug my phone out only to find that it’s only got about fifteen percent battery left, which of course it does. Why would it have more battery?
“Do you have a charger?” I ask.
“Of course I have a charger,” Caleb says.
“Right, of course you do.”
Sure enough I have about six missed calls from my sisters and twenty text messages. I scroll through them pretty quickly and decide to just give up and call Rose, the one who’s called me the most.
She answers on the first ring.
“Where the hell are you? Are you safe? Are you okay? The whole downtown is flooded. Everyone’s freaking out on social media.”
“I’m fine. I’m at the lighthouse with Caleb. We tried to get Hazel’s car but we couldn’t get to it, and we turned around and went straight to the lighthouse so we could ride out the storm.”
“Well, you could have texted us,” Rose says, clearly annoyed.
“You tell her,” I hear Posey shout from the back.
“Yeah, tell her to get some—” Hazel’s voice floats through the phone and I cringe, really hoping Caleb didn’t hear that. It’s not like I have them on speakerphone, but it would still be embarrassing.
Unfortunately for both of us, though, he’s still staring at that glowing eye in the shore.
“The thing is,” I say, “we kind of have a new problem.”
“You mean besides the flooding?” Rose asks.
