Hold Fast - Part Two
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
I lay in quiet, drowsy silence for some time after waking up, lost in a half-asleep trance. Listening to the rain and the rush of the waves. Such a soothing sound, especially when I’m enveloped in Aiden’s warmth. I drift in and out of my dreams, the cold of the morning air against my cheek, the heat of Aiden’s chest beneath my palm. It rises and falls with each deep, dreaming breath he takes. Lulling me back to sleep.
Until I’m suddenly drawn to a much sharper state of wakefulness, roused by the sound of a big splash.
I stir groggily in the hammock, then sit up and push my hair out of my eyes, listening hard. Did I imagine it? I don’t think so. It sounded pretty close to our boat, too.
I brush a kiss onto Aiden’s temple, then stumble out of the hammock and pull a flannel on over my pajamas. Beams of pale sunlight are falling into the passageway when I open the door, which means the door to the main deck is also open.
I head up the little set of stairs, step out into the chilly morning with a shiver, and stop where I am, hearing another soft splash. This time I’m sure it came from the far end of Moondancer, and I’m realizing – the little swim platform has been let down.
Holding a railing to adjust for my morning clumsiness, I pick my way over to the platform in the light, flickering rain. I get there right as Robin pops up in the blue-grey water, pushing her bangs out of her eyes.
“Morning,” she calls up when she spots me.
“Good morning!” I drop down to a crouch, staring at her incredulously. “How are you swimming right now? Isn’t it freezing?”
“Sure, but nothing wakes you up quicker, and it’s not cold enough to be painful. Besides, swimming in the ocean in this kind of rain is the best.”
I stare at her suspiciously until she laughs and taps the platform. “Put your feet in, you’ll see.”
I sit down and cautiously ease my feet into the water. For a second it’s an icy shock that wakes me all the way up with a soft gasp, but then – not so bad.
“Oh, it’s okay,” I murmur, so surprised that Robin breathes out another laugh.
“It’s all about knowing where the warm currents are. Relatively warm, that is,” she adds with a grin, catching the skeptical look on my face.
She folds her elbows on the swim platform next to me, and the droplets of saltwater running down her arms draw my eyes to her tattoos. She’s swimming in a sports bra and board shorts, so I can see for the first time that she has an elaborate mermaid figurehead inked down the side of her shoulder, done in American traditional style. Some words form an arch beneath it: Fair winds and following seas. A blessing for safe journeys, I think.
The ink of the words looks much more recent than the artwork. My thoughts drift to what that sailor on the docks told Noah, about Robin being more careful with herself since she met Faith.
I stare at the tattooed words distractedly, so lost in my thoughts that I nearly jump when Robin speaks again.
“So?” She puts an arm out in a wide, sweeping gesture. “How do you like the view?”
For the first time, I lift my gaze to the landscape around me. The rain and mist are still a big factor, but in daylight everything that was lost to the shadows before is revealed to my eyes, all at once.
“Oh!” I say again softly, this time on a sigh of wide-eyed appreciation.
The inlet is a long, winding ribbon of glassy blue, cutting through rocky coastal lowlands on each side. Massive mountains look down on us from my right. Quiet, serene, evergreen landscape sits to my left. The lowlands are sprawled with gracefully tall grasses, bright purple clumps of verbena, showers of multicolored wildflowers with satiny petals. All of it tumbled by the rain, dripping softly. Further back from the water the trees begin. Mountain hemlocks and tanoaks, with dense clusters of coffeeberry and blueblossom at their feet.
Far off ahead of me, I can see the route we must have traveled up last night, leading back towards the ocean. I’m startled to discover that the water has a few jagged rock formations breaking the surface. How did we avoid those last night in the dark? Thank god for Robin…
I twist around to look behind me, where the inlet continues further inland past Moondancer’s bow. I can follow it with my eyes a good stretch off into the distance, but eventually it folds into the curve of the landscape and disappears from my sight.
The water’s surface is dancing with raindrops, each one making a tiny ripple before disappearing. Light waves are splashing at the boat, but the ocean off in the far distance looks much choppier. The mountains must offer us some shelter from the wind. They glow before my admiring eyes, their white-tipped peaks illuminated with the pearly, misty sunlight.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Robin agrees, when I let out a soft sound of amazement. “This is why people brave the inlet to camp here.”
“I get it,” I answer reverently, watching two distant birds soar over the forested slopes of the mountains. “How beautiful! Nothing compares to the old-growth.”
Robin lets her appreciative gaze wander, too. “I prefer the ocean myself, but… it’s not like I don’t see what you mean.”
I put my legs into the water up to my knees, letting the brisk chill wake me all the way up. I’m not usually so clear-headed at this hour of the morning. It’s nice, especially when the view is this good.
“Wait until Will sees this,” I murmur, then turn my head in surprise as Will appears just to my left on the swim platform. “Oh, good morning-”
“I’m here!” he says breathlessly, his green eyes wildly bright. “I’ve been here since dawn! You should have seen the sunrise, Jamie, over the mountains! Oh! Fair stopped my breath! Is Aiden awake? He mustn’t miss this!”
Will rushes off towards the door without waiting for an answer. I watch him go with a wide grin on my face.
“Okay, what the fuck, Jamie?” Robin says, spreading one inky hand at me in bewilderment.
“What?”
“This whole thing with ghosts, and illusions, and – look, I thought some more about what you guys said yesterday. About the Ghost Office, and what you’re doing here, and what you’ve done before. I realized that I don’t think you actually explained anything. Your explanation actually took away things that I thought I understood before. Like, somehow I know less now.”
“That’s a complaint Aiden and I receive a lot,” I tell her apologetically. “Not our best talent, I’m afraid. Sorry about that. Do you want me to try again?”
Robin gives that some consideration, then shakes her head.
“Guess not. It doesn’t help. I’m just confused because you two are making me feel like there really is a ghost on my boat. The only other explanation I can think of is that you two have some kind of very intricate shared delusion. Which… weirdly seems like a more complicated, less likely explanation than… there just really being a ghost.”
She stops and narrows her eyes at me, searching my face.
It’s dawning on me that normally people don’t take us seriously when we say we’re ghost hunters because they don’t really believe in the paranormal. That’s why we can get away with talking about it right in front of them. Robin, on the other hand, is a self-professed believer already…
“Right,” I answer, slowly, hesitantly.
Robin’s eyes suddenly open very wide. “Jamie. Is – is there really a ghost on my boat? Did you and Aiden bring an actual ghost onto my boat?”
“I, um… that’s why we told you yesterday,” I falter, as Robin’s incredulous eyes grow wider and wider. “Is – didn’t you say it was cool?”
“Jamie!” she explodes furiously, splashing my legs with seawater. “You brought it up so casual, I didn’t fucking know you were serious! Do you know what kind of luck it is-?”
“That’s why we asked, why we explained!” I jump in pleadingly, then find myself struggling not to laugh as Robin sinks down into the water until it’s just above the tip of her nose and begins blowing angry bubbles, like her rage is literally boiling the ocean around her. “Why we tried to explain! Oh, he’s not bad luck, Robin, it’s a myth, it isn’t true! Please don’t say that to him, either! You might hurt his feelings.”
“What-?” Robin draws her head out of the water again, blinking hard. “That’s – I never – hurt the ghost’s feelings?”
“Yes! He’s our friend, a dear friend! And he wants to help us, which makes him good luck, if anything.”
Robin stares hard at me for a long moment, then bows her head slightly and lifts a hand.
“Okay,” she says, in a very carefully composed voice. “Fine. There’s a ghost with us. Here’s what I’m doing with that information: shelving it. Because I need to find Faith, and nothing else matters to me right now.”
“Oh, good!” I flash her a grateful, relieved smile. “That’s fair enough! Shelf away.”
“Nothing else matters,” Robin murmurs, half to herself.
She folds her arms on the swimming platform again and rests her chin on them, gazing distractedly off at the distant, towering mountains. I stare at her in surprise, because… it really does feel like she’s already forgotten about the fact that there’s an actual ghost on her boat. Her thoughts are already back to being centered completely around Faith. I can tell from the expression in her eyes.
I twist around as Aiden comes out onto the deck, followed by a glowingly beaming Will. He stops and lets out a low whistle when he sees the landscape around us, and Will grins in agreement.
Aiden has the ghost glasses on, but I’m guessing it was Robin’s brief moment of shouting at me that woke him up. He’s in a hurry to reach me, visibly relieved when he sees that nothing is going on. He bends down over me to kiss my forehead, then gives Robin a drowsy nod.
“Morning, Captain,” he rumbles, his deep voice still rough with sleep. “Everything all good out here?”
“Mhm,” Robin says absently, only half listening. “Thought I’d take a swim to clear my head, and also peek under the boat for a burned shipwreck by the dock.”
“Oh. Good idea.” Aiden takes off his snapback and starts trying to shake his sleep-tousled hair into order. “Was there anything?”
“Not that I saw. Might be that a boat burned here, but I don’t think one sank here. At least not recently. There’d be signs.”
I tilt my head to the side in surprise. “So the boat that piece of canvas came from… it could have survived the fire?”
Robin nods, still gazing off into the distance at nothing. “Maybe, yeah. Could’ve been a smaller fire than what we were picturing…”
Aiden seems to sense how far away Robin is at the moment. He straightens up and pulls his snapback down over his hair.
“Think I’ll get going on some coffee. Why don’t you come with me, Will? I can catch you up on what you missed last night. The campground keeper paid us a visit after you left.”
I watch them head back down to the tiny kitchen below decks, then look at Robin again. She floats in the rainy ocean beside the boat, her gaze traveling slowly over the landscape. Her hair has been released from the usual waist-long braid, dark auburn swirling softly in the current around her. I give her a long moment of quiet to think.
She doesn’t seem to notice when Aiden comes back out and puts a cup of coffee into my hands, then sits down next to me with his own and puts his legs in the water. Will floats up to sit lightly on the edge of Moondancer, putting his feet in the ocean like he could feel it, too.
He and Aiden look curiously at Robin, then at me.
“I’m glad you don’t mind us helping you investigate,” I say tentatively, watching Robin’s face. “Now that we’re all on the same page – do you have any leads? Can you think of anyone with a grudge against Faith? Anyone who’d want to hurt her?”
Robin’s eyes snap abruptly to me, blazing up again, full of outrage at the mere suggestion.
“My sweet Faith! No, nobody would ever want to hurt her, except the ones who want to hurt all of us. She’s the dearest little soul in the world, with the sweetest face you’ve ever seen. All you have to do to love her is look at her. And suddenly you – you feel like you should fill your whole boat with flowers before you take her aboard…”
Robin trails off, blushing deeply as she realizes what she’s saying. She lowers her gaze to the water, her tattooed fingers picking at the swim platform.
I find myself with a half-sad smile on my face, watching her. “Sounds like it was love at first sight.”
Robin brushes some seawater out of her face, her wet eyelashes fluttering as she blinks away the rain.
“Bhavini met her while I was away on an expedition,” she answers, so quietly that her voice only just reaches us over the soft rainfall on the ocean. “I met her with a bunch of my crew right after we got back. We were all drinking at Harbor Lights, so Bhavini introduced us. She wasn’t trying to set us up or anything, but the instant I laid eyes on Faith, I – I just knew she was for me. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but I did, I knew. And she knew, too. Somehow. Even though I wasn’t – wasn’t really myself, yet. I know she knew, because five minutes after I met her, her foot was playing with mine under the table.”
“Seriously?” I laugh, startled. “Oh, my god. What do you even do in that situation?”
Robin shrugs her shoulders, a faint smile coming into her eyes at the memory.
“If you’re me? Peek under the table to see if it’s really the gorgeous girl you just met, and not one of your crew doing it by accident. Sit back up and see her listening to the conversation like nothing’s going on, but she’s still doing it. Sit there absolutely fuckin’ stunned for a while.” Robin breaks into another brief smile as this draws a laugh from all of us. “Then drop something on the floor so you have an excuse to look under the table again, make sure you’re not imagining it. Have a moment of impulse like you’ve never had before and stroke her ankle a little bit while you’re down there. Come back up from beneath the table and see her blushing, smiling at you. Feel more out of your depth than you’ve ever been before in your life. Immediately start falling in love.”
I laugh softly again, and Aiden smiles beside me, his head tilted to the side. Will is smiling, too, leaning back on his hands.
“Bold move from Faith,” Aiden comments, offering a mug of coffee to Robin.
“I was about to say!” Will laughs. “Brave one, isn’t she?”
Robin accepts the coffee, half-smiling when I repeat what Will said.
“That’s just what Faith is like, though. Such a brave one, especially for such a little thing. She moved away from home, all the way to a new state, all alone, all so she could get away from her family and be herself. She used to be afraid of boats and sailing, because her dad was a monster to her and he likes them, but she got past that once she was with me. We actually won a race together with Moondancer right before I left on my last expedition. Got our picture in the paper and everything. So yes, she is brave.”
Robin pauses, then adds affectionately -
“And she’s unbelievably stubborn, but in her own way. She’ll listen to your whole argument with a sweet little smile, she’ll be very thoughtful, she’ll even help you remember examples you forgot about, and then when you get to the end – you realize you haven’t changed her mind at all. Not one bit. You just can’t shake her, once she’s decided about something.”
Robin lifts her gaze to me and Aiden, warring emotions battling it out in her eyes. She looks like she wants to smile, and like she wants to cry. Her hands on the swim platform are gripping the coffee mug very tightly. Her voice has gone raspy.
“You know, you just… you spend so long with everything feeling like grey nothing, and you don’t even know what’s wrong. And then you meet someone so sweet and beautiful and patient, just – endlessly patient while you try to figure it all out, someone who’d even let you live quietly as yourself with her for a long time before you tell anybody else the truth. Someone who understands everything… and suddenly you get all that stuff you only heard other people talk about before. Smitten when she’s there, pining like crazy when she isn’t. On top of the whole goddamn world when she’s happy. Lower – lower than you ever thought you could be, when she’s upset. Only thing worse is when she’s in real trouble… I – I know that, now…”
Robin trails off, her smoldering, passionate eyes blinking quickly away from me and Aiden.
We look at each other, the smiles gone from our faces, then glance at Will. He’s grown serious, too, watching Robin with a pained expression on his face.
He gets abruptly to his feet, his green eyes filled with newfound determination.
“Then let’s go find her,” he says.
~~~~
A quick breakfast and a few hastily gulped-down cups of coffee later, we’re headed up the meadowed path towards the cabins. Robin leads the way, squeezing some remaining water from her braid. A losing battle, because the rain is still spilling softly down, blanketing the landscape with white mist. The wooden cabins seem to rise up out of it all at once.
They form a wide, loose circle, surrounded on all sides by tall evergreens and dense bushes. A few picnic tables are clustered up at the center. A truck covered with a tarp is parked beside one of the cabins. I think must be the campground keeper’s cabin. It’s bigger than the others, and I can hear the faint noise of a switched-on TV coming from it. Will strides ahead of us and disappears into that cabin, melting right through the wall as the rest of us stop to look around.
It feels like this campground was a cheerful place once, but the paint on the cabins has been allowed to fade, and all of them show signs of disrepair. A broken step, a roof sagging beneath too many leaves, a window with a crack – each one has something. The total emptiness of the place takes the warmth out of it, too.
“Midway through some repairs, are they?” Robin growls, obviously irritated.
I see her point. Bruce definitely lied to us last night. There’s no sign anywhere of repairs being underway, even though they’re clearly needed. The only thing here that’s still in pretty good shape is his own cabin. And, based on what I can see beneath the tarp, his truck. There are certainly some glitzy parts sparkling under there. I can’t help wondering if that’s where the campground maintenance funds have gone.
Will comes back out through the wall of Bruce’s cabin.
“The keeper is in there,” he calls out, crossing back to us. “He’s watching television. Found his wayward daughter, it would seem. She’s in one of the bedrooms upstairs.”
I wince unhappily, hearing that. I was hoping that Maggie had somehow managed to avoid her dad all night. I know she isn’t who we came here to help, but it’s increasingly difficult for me not to fret about her situation, too.
“What’s she doing?” I ask worriedly.
“Pacing around like a lioness,” Will answers, rejoining our group with a mistrustful frown on his face. “I must say, I don’t care for her father. I’ll admit I walked through him on purpose just now. Gave him a shiver.”
“Okay, how do we want to approach this?” Aiden leans against the faded sign with the campground rules, then snaps back upright when it creaks and sags alarmingly. “We could ask Bruce if he’s seen anything unusual, but… do we think we’re gonna get any help from him?”
“He’s already lied to us once,” I point out doubtfully. “So… yeah, probably not. I think he just wants us gone as soon as possible.”
“Before we can corrupt his daughter somehow,” Robin says irritably, then flames up with sudden anger. “No, we won’t talk to him! The man is clearly a swine! I don’t even want him to know why we’re here!”
I put my fingers to my lips and glance anxiously at Bruce’s cabin as Robin’s volume rises. Aiden gently cuts her off, to my immense relief.
“How about this, Robin? I’ll go talk to Bruce.”
Robin’s eyes flash with wildfire indignation. “No! I just said-”
“Not about anything in particular,” Aiden quickly explains. “I’m just gonna go distract him while you guys check the cabins for anything out of the ordinary.”
“Oh.” Robin considers, then lets the anger go out of her eyes. “Fine. Good thinking. Jamie, you’ll come with me?”
“Sure! Will, do you want to-?”
I break off to look up at him in surprise. He’s risen high up above us, to float where he can get a broader view of the campground. He’s squinting at something off in the distance, his eyebrows furrowed.
“Back in a moment,” he calls down to me, then goes zipping into the air as a streak of silver light, headed off to the east.
Aiden – who looks very cute in his dark blue henley, which his iron muscles shape out very nicely – touches a hand to my back, then sets off for the keeper’s cabin. I follow Robin as she heads around to the back of the cabins, keeping close to the cover of the trees.
We decide to split up to check them faster, so I approach the first cabin on my own, then immediately wonder if maybe I should call Will back to help me. It doesn’t look easy to see inside. The windows are dusty, the lights are off, and the rainy sunlight is falling at exactly the wrong angle to let me see in.
But when I put my face up to the glass, my eyes surprise me by sharpening up. My Vision must be charged up from sleeping in a hammock of Aiden’s magic last night.
I peer in through the window, letting my Vision adjust itself until I can see with excellent clarity. There are two sets of bunkbeds in the cabin, bare of bedding. An empty night table. A lot of dust. Nothing else.
Some part of me was hoping that Faith would be secretly hiding out in one of these cabins. Or that she stopped here, and left behind some kind of sign. But there’s nothing. Each cabin is the same as all the rest. Silent, empty, and in disrepair.
Based on the slump of Robin’s shoulders when she rejoins me, there was nothing in the cabins she checked, either. She looks kind of mad, actually, stomping up to me with her eyes blazing indignantly.
“Place is falling apart,” she mutters, stuffing her fists in the pockets of her rain jacket. “The campground never looked like this when the old keeper was here. Not like it was ever fancy, but it was never a wreck, either.”
Aiden, striding up to join us, looks pretty irritated too.
“Talking to that man is fucking painful,” he growls, the blue of his eyes darkened with anger. “He won’t say a word about anything, until I ask if there’s any wildlife in the area we should be aware of. Then he’s got a long list of dangerous animals they apparently have in spades around here. All reasons why he thinks we should leave.”
“Fuck that,” Robin growls, to a firm nod of agreement from Aiden.
“Did you guys find anything?”
“I found Bruce’s boat,” Robin says, folding her arms over her chest. “He has it stored behind his cabin. Doesn’t show any signs of being burned, but maybe he’s worried that could change.”
Aiden blows a strand of glossy chestnut out of his eyes in exasperation. “I’m about ready to burn it myself. Anything in the cabins?”
“No,” I answer sadly, trying to keep the disappointment from my voice. “But maybe Will found something-”
I stop in surprise as Will materializes beside me, having let me accidentally summon him.
“I knew I saw smoke!” he blurts out excitedly, pointing off into the distance. “There are other campers here! Three lads, packing up and putting out their fire.”
Aiden and I look sharply at each other. Robin watches us, then stares in Will’s direction like she’s trying to see what we see.
“Maybe those guys saw something?” I whisper.
Aiden nods hopefully, turning to Robin. “Which way is it to the tent campground? Will says there are people there.”
Robin gives us a dazed look, then silently sets off, leading us to the pathway at the far end of the circle of cabins.
The journey there was quick enough for Will, moving as a streak of light. But it takes us about fifteen minutes of walking, mostly going through wooded land and tall grass. The landscape is very beautiful as soon as the dilapidated cabins fall out of sight. The trees are either deep shades of evergreen, or autumn gold and red. Every color looks twice as vivid in the mist.
Robin seems preoccupied, so I turn to Aiden as we walk, dropping my voice to a soft volume.
“Should we check in with Ralph and Noah? They said we should update them if we could.”
“I’ve been keeping an eye on my phone, but I don’t think we can get reception anywhere except at the cabins.” Aiden slips his phone out of his pocket to double-check, then tucks it away again with a sigh. “Yeah, no dice. We could call them when we get back, though. Whenever we get some alone time.”
“Okay!” I agree brightly. “Sounds good. Maybe we’ll have something to report by then.”
~~~~
The campground field is a big, grassy, wide-open space, fringed with rain-drenched evergreens. On the far end of the field there’s a little cluster of people, busy packing up their campsite. Three lads, as Will put it.
They do look younger than us, but not by that much. Two of them are in the process of hurriedly breaking down their tents. The third one is seated on a log by the campfire, slowly, reluctantly rolling up his sleeping bag.
He spots us and points, saying something to the other two guys. They spin around to face us, squinting through the rain.
“There are people here!” Robin blurts out in disbelief, then raises one hand in a wave. “Hey!”
“Hey, yourself!” comes the distant shout back.
We strike out across the field towards the guys. Robin striding the fastest, nearly breaking into a run. We’re all slightly out of breath by the time we stop in front of their campsite.
“Other campers!” the tallest one of the group says, giving us a warm, relieved smile. “What’s good? I’m Kendrick, this is my friend Xavier. That’s my little brother Kaden sitting over there.”
“Nice to meet you!” I pant, still getting my breath back.
“Feels good to see some friendly faces,” Kendrick tells us. “Friendly-looking, anyways.”
“We are friendly, but we’re not really here to camp,” Robin answers, gently waving away the joint Kendrick just offered her. “I’m Robin, this is Jamie, Aiden, and Will.”
The three guys look around in confusion for Will, then back at Robin as she breathlessly goes on – “We’re looking for someone who’s gone missing. You haven’t seen her, have you? Her name is Faith.”
Robin holds out her phone with a picture pulled up on the screen. Kendrick leans in to take a look at it, with Xavier peering over his shoulder and Kaden sitting up so Robin can show it to him, too. Xavier shakes his head, and Kaden winces apologetically.
“No, we haven’t seen her,” Kendrick says. “Sorry.”
Robin slowly lowers her phone, then silently slips it back into her pocket and drags the sleeve of her jacket under her nose.
“D’you say she went missing? Around here?” Xavier gets back to work on the broken-down tent in his hands, catching Kendrick’s eye in alarm. “Jesus, man, what’s next? This place is fucked up. This is exactly why we’re getting up out of here.”
“Oh, you’re leaving?” Aiden asks, bummed out.
I get why he sounds that way. I get why Kendrick, Kaden, and Xavier look so relieved to see us, too. Being here alone with the campground keeper isn’t the greatest feeling, to be honest.
“We’re cutting our trip way short,” Kendrick explains, then takes a second, longer look at Robin, catching the tattoos on her fingers. “Hang on… did you say your name is Robin? You’re not Captain Robin Cole, are you?”
Robin draws back in bewildered surprise. “Yeah, I am…”
“No way! My cousin Christian sailed with you on some mapping expeditions. He was really proud of being part of your crew.”
Robin blinks in surprise, then nods. “Oh, Christian, yeah. He’s a good kid. Shaping up to be an excellent sailor.”
“Wait, so she’s a captain,” Xavier murmurs to Kendrick hopefully. “Maybe she can help us? Hey, Captain – we’re trying to leave early, and Christian said he’d come get us, but he doesn’t want to take his dad’s little boat up the inlet. He said it’s not really made for that.”
Based on the alarmed expression on Robin’s face, she agrees with Christian’s assessment.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend him attempting that trip,” she tells Kendrick urgently. “You should tell him not to. That would be dangerous.”
“But… he’s already on his way, though,” Kendrick says, worry and guilt suddenly filling his eyes. “We told him we were in a big hurry to get out of here, so he’s coming to get us… Is it that dangerous? We were talking about finding some way to meet him down at the end of the inlet, so he doesn’t have to do it. Maybe hike there, or something?”
“Unless she could drop us off,” Xavier jumps in hopefully, gesturing at Robin.
Kendrick bites his lip, then looks uncertainly at Robin. “Would you? Please? If it’s not a lot of trouble?”
Robin hesitates unhappily. I can tell what she’s thinking – that it would take us a while, and that’s time we could be using to look for Faith – but it’s equally obvious that she doesn’t want Christian attempting the inlet in his dad’s boat.
“Okay,” she says, kicking sand over the embers in the campfire. “But we have to go fast.”
Kendrick and Xavier look at her with such obvious relief that we know that plan is just fine with them. Aiden goes around the fire to help Xavier break down the remaining tent, and a few minutes later we’re all walking down the path back to the cabins.
It all happens so fast that it takes me a minute to realize Will is missing. Before I can summon him, he reappears breathlessly at my side. He looks deeply offended, half in disbelief.
“Jamie – that man, Bruce, the campground keeper – he’s aboard Moondancer! He’s going through everything on the deck, searching it!”
I stare at Will in bewildered, thunderstruck outrage for a second, then steal a glance at Robin, who’s leading the way.
“I’ll tell Robin later,” I whisper to Will. “Maybe go back and keep an eye on him, but there’s nothing on deck for him to find, and he can’t get below decks. I don’t think.”
“No, the door is locked. I saw him try and give up. I suspect he’ll be back in his cabin by the time you return.”
Will is almost exactly right. We arrive back at the cabins just in time to see Bruce’s door click shut after him. Robin glances at it suspiciously, but doesn’t slow down.
I’m paying more attention to Kaden, the one who was sitting by the campfire before, who still has yet to say anything. I notice him staring hard at the second-floor windows of Bruce’s cabin when we go past it. He pauses for a moment, holding his cane tightly, then catches Kendrick’s arm and says something in his ear.
Kendrick answers just as quietly and urgently, then pulls on Kaden’s arm, hurrying him up. Aiden and I exchange a swift, puzzled glance with each other behind them.
There’s no chance to talk about anything until we’re back on Moondancer, because the rain is starting to fall harder and harder. Robin shows no signs of letting that slow her down, however. Kendrick helps his brother onto the boat, Xavier hops down after them, and immediately Moondancer is pulling away.
“Should I have left you guys to keep looking for your illusion?” Robin asks quietly, when I stop by the helm station beside her.
“No,” I answer uneasily, thinking of Bruce searching our boat. “I think we should stick together.”
Robin nods in agreement, then turns to Kendrick. He’s twisted around on his lounge seat to watch the dock fall away into the distance, his eyes full of considerable relief.
Robin’s eyes are full of disappointment. As much as I want to be optimistic, I understand how she’s feeling. Nothing in the cabins, no information from the campers…
“Are you sure you haven’t seen her?” Robin blurts out abruptly, looking over her shoulder at Kendrick. “Faith? Do you want to look at the picture again, or… or have you seen anything unusual at all?”
Xavier lets out a forced laugh. “There’s unusual shit going on, that’s for sure. But the only one we saw is that other girl. Think her name was Margot?”
“Maggie,” Kaden corrects him quietly.
Robin, Aiden, Will, and I look at each other for a brief, startled moment.
“What kind of unusual stuff?” Robin asks immediately. “What happened with Maggie?”
“Okay, so we get here two days ago, right?” Kendrick begins, accepting a beer from Aiden. “That campground manager guy, Bruce, he was fuckin’ weird right off the bat. I swear it was like he was trying to get rid of us the second he laid eyes on us.”
“We thought maybe he didn’t want us to see what a shitty state the cabins are in,” Xavier goes on. “We took one look at them and decided the tents and the field was better. But even there it was weird. He showed up and started listing off all these reasons why it was dangerous to camp right now, talking all this bullshit. Just trying to get rid of us again.”
“Then last night that girl showed up at our bonfire,” Kendrick tells us, “Just out of the blue. She hung out with us for like twenty minutes, and then Bruce shows up, and it turns out she’s his daughter. And the guy had a shotgun, which I guess is for the wildlife, but I sure as hell didn’t like that he was holding it while he screamed at us like that.”
“Yep, so we decided we’ve had more than enough of this fucking place,” Xavier finishes.
“He screamed at you?” Robin asks Kendrick, outraged on his behalf.
“He told us his daughter is only sixteen, which so far as I know doesn’t make it a crime for her to sit with us by a campfire. But the way he got in our faces, you’d think it was! I don’t even think she came looking for us because she wanted to party. She didn’t seem to care about what we thought of her. If anything I got the feeling she was scoping us out.” He uses his beer to gesture at Kaden. “Seemed to decide she liked my little brother the best. She tried to pull him aside right before her dad showed up.”
I turn to look at Kaden, who’s still barely said a word. He’s sitting on the furthest of the lounge seats, staring anxiously over his shoulder at the dock as it disappears completely into the mist and rain. He’s clearly the youngest one in their group by a couple of years. I’d put him at seventeen, maybe eighteen.
Clinging to the railings, I make my way over to him and sit down beside him.
“Are you hurt?” I ask, concerned.
He looks at me in confusion, then drops his gaze to the cane in his hands, which he was using the whole way back to Moondancer.
“Oh – no, I’m fine. I’ve always got this.”
I’m realizing now that the cane is covered in many different crust band stickers, so maybe I should have known. The stickers go with his hoodie, which has the name of a band on it that I can’t read, because it’s written in what I can only describe as death metal font. He’s got a couple of studs in each ear and a smaller one in his eyebrow, which glints beneath the twists of dark hair falling down over his temple.
He has big, nutmeg-brown eyes, which are full of worry.
“You’re the only one who doesn’t seem sure about leaving,” I go on tentatively, watching his face. “Kind of seemed like your brother had to drag you away.”
“Our mom always tells him to look out for me,” Kaden says, shooting a look of affectionate frustration at Kendrick. “So he doesn’t want me mixed up with any girl whose dad is gonna wave a shotgun in my face. But it wasn’t even like that, I don’t think! I mean, she is real cute…” A flustered rush of heat glows around Kaden’s cheeks. “And she did ask me to go into the forest with her alone. But once we got there she said she needed to talk to me about something important.”
“What was it?” I ask immediately, and then, when Kaden blinks at me in suspicious confusion – “We’re trying to find a missing person, so anything you can tell us might help.”
“Okay… she said she wanted me to give someone a message when we got back to Port Sitka.”
I stare at Kaden in mounting confusion. “What message? To who?”
Kaden shrugs his lean shoulders unhappily, picking at the strings of his hoodie. “I don’t know. That’s as far as she got before her dad showed up and dragged her away.”
I exchange a swift glance with Will, who’s come over to listen.
“Maggie didn’t seem afraid of him, more – pissed off, frustrated,” Kaden goes on anxiously, twisting his hands around his cane. “But I still felt like I should do something. I started to follow them, and she waved me off on the low, then started shouting back at her dad, making this big distraction so he wouldn’t see that I had tried. It was fucking chaos. Girl’s got a set of lungs on her. She can really scream.”
He says this last part admiringly, like only a metalhead would. But very quickly he looks upset again, stealing a worried glance in the direction of the now very far away dock.
“But I feel bad just leaving. Feel like I should have at least tried to get the message from her before we took off.” He briefly meets my eyes, a pained expression flashing through his own. “She said it was really important, that she was trusting me…”
I take a second to process all of that, then ask – “What if we try to talk to Maggie, and get the message from her?”
Kaden looks at me with instant, obvious relief. “Would you? But her dad…”
“We’ll – try to find a way,” I assure him. “We’ve got a few days to tackle it.”
“Thank you,” he says, on a huge exhale. “I’d really appreciate that.”
I don’t know why, but I’m increasingly sure that we need to talk to Maggie anyways. And what the hell was her dad doing, searching Moondancer while we weren’t there? What was he looking for? At least we know where Maggie was last night when he was looking for her, but that’s it…
Yeah, we need to talk to Maggie. Hopefully we can drop these guys off and get back to the campground really quick, but I’m not sure. The weather is increasingly heavy, and as we glide closer to the ocean Moondancer has to battle bigger and sharper waves.
It’s a relief when we spot the other boat in the distance, just outside of the inlet on the open sea. It’s much bigger than I pictured it, though. I’m noticing that Robin looks a little confused as she sizes it up.
“That’s not Christian, is it?” she shouts over the rain and waves to Kendrick, who just got to his feet for a look.
“No… holy shit, it’s the boat we hired to drop us off and pick us up in the first place. We got in touch with them first, last night. But they said due to the last-minute change they didn’t know when they could get here, so we called Christian instead…”
“Well, that’ll work!” Robin shouts over the rain. “Use the radio to tell Christian he’s not needed once you’re aboard, alright?”
“Alright!” Kendrick shouts back, holding tight to the railings. “Thank you again, thank you so much!”
He gets Kaden off of Moondancer and onto the other boat first, with the help of a hand extended by one of its crew. Then he follows with Xavier, moving quickly to take full advantage of the brief lull in the waves.
All three of them stand on the deck to wave goodbye as Robin eases Moondancer away. I wave back, then make my way up to the helm station, keeping my head bowed against the rain.
“You look worried!” I shout to Robin, who really does.
“I’m just thinking… if they called Christian last night, and he left early this morning… he should be pretty close by now,” she shouts back, peering intently through the windshield. “Could be the weather slowed him down, but it’s weird we’re not seeing him! I’d feel better about it if I could get him on the radio!”
Aiden, who had gone downstairs to put away anything still left on the kitchen counter, leans out onto the main deck with his snapback pulled down low over his eyes.
“Robin!” he shouts, raising his deep voice over the rain. “Is Christian from Ketterbridge, by any chance?”
“Yeah, but he moved to Port Sitka a few years ago! Why?”
My heart just stopped in my chest. I think I already know why. Aiden is keeping his head down, but I know this posture by heart. The way his whole body has tensed up, like some painful noise is attacking his ears.
I rush down the stairs into the passageway, pushing Aiden down them before me. The moment we’re out of sight, I push up the brim of his snapback and peer up into his face. My heart drops so fast it could hit the ocean floor once I catch a glimpse of him.
His eyes are shining ice-blue, filled with swirling, blazing Guardian light.
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