“She’s asleep,” Maeve said slowly.
Spencer’s stomach dropped.
“No, I don’t think she is,” he said immediately, and Maeve frowned.
“What do you mean no?”
“She’s not.”
Arietta narrowed her eyes.
“How would you know that?”
Because she got a note supposedly from me because my brother drugged me andI think he just handed her directly to the male she ran from… Spencer didn’t say that aloud, he just swallowed hard against the nausea rising again and said, “She’s in danger.”
Silence crashed down instantly. Maeve’s expression sharpened violently, Arietta moved first. She disappeared down the hallway toward Jessica’s room.
The seconds stretched unbearably. Spencer fought to stay standing, using the door frame to hold himself up. Every instinct he possessed screamed at him to move, to find her and fix the mess he had caused.
Arietta returned, and only one look at her face told Spencer everything, confirming his own fears.
“She’s gone.”
28
Edith had expected violence,maybe some struggling, a touch of magic and maybe even a dramatic chase through the park.
Instead, everything happened calmly, which somehow made it worse.
Mark stood beside her as they walked down toward the harbour before dawn, one hand lightly gripping her upper arm, not tight enough to bruise, not rough enough to draw attention.
Just firm and controlled like she was already contained, and Edith hated him for that. Hated the casual ease in his posture. Hated the fact he wouldn’t look her directly in the eye anymore.
But most of all, she hated herself for trusting his brother. The silver cuffs around her wrists burned faintly against her skin. Not physically but magically, suppressing her abilities. Gerald had placed them on her himself before they’d left the park.
He had done it gently, and that had somehow been the most horrifying part.
“Behave,” he’d murmured as the silver clicked shut around her wrists. “You’ll only make things harder for yourself otherwise.”
Edith had tried to wrench away immediately. But the magic in the cuffs had surged, sharp and cold through her veins, forcing the shift beneath her skin back down violently.
Gerald had simply smiled. “There now,” he’d said softly. “That’s better.”
Edith wanted to set him on fire, it wouldn’t have taken much, just a snort in his direction and she could have made him light up like a bonfire. Unfortunately, the cuffs made that difficult.
The harbour was quiet when they arrived, dawn still barely touching the horizon. Mist curled low across the docks while old fishing boats rocked gently against weathered wood.
A ghost pirate waited beside one of them. Translucent and bearded as well as aggressively uninterested in morality. “Mainland crossing costs extra at this hour,” the pirate grumbled.
Gerald handed him a heavy pouch without argument. He weighed it in his hand and the coins clinked loudly.
“There’s half,” Gerald said smoothly. “The rest when we arrive at the dock.”
The pirate weighed the pouch in his spectral hand. “Pleasure doin’ business.”
Edith stared at him in disbelief. “You’re taking bribes to help kidnap people?”
The ghost pirate shrugged. “I’m dead, sweetheart. Ethics stopped bein’ my problem in 1723.”
