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“This isn’t Cotear’s room,” he grumbles. “This room smells faintly of Poko.”
“Which one is Cotear’s room?” I ask.
He nods his head to the left. I follow him to the opposite side of the home, stopping in the doorway. Connak swings the wardrobe open, and hanging where his clothing should be are maps of the island.
I turn to face him fully, my eyes narrow. “You were just going to keep hunting without bringing this up?”
“You were checking the rooms, too,” he argues. “I knew you would find it. Otherwise, I would have told you when I came down from my hunt.”
“That could have been too late.” I scrub my hand over my face. Connak isn’t the person who deserves my ire. “We need to search the property and take all that seems important. He can’t come back to get it.”
“The hunt—”
“We’ll find him,” I interrupt. “Ada needs to know where her missing items were going, Connak. And we need to talk with Isolde. They had her stuff, which means three things for us.”
Confusion crosses his features as his shoulders lose their tension. “Three?”
“One, whoever was delivering the clothes to Ada wasn’t giving her the undergarments. We need to know who that was,” I explain. “Two, she needs to decide what to do with her things now that we’ve found them.”
“And three?”
“We need to apologize.”
“Why?” he asks.
I frown, more disappointed in myself than him. “Because not all of us took the missing items seriously. In the end, we did. But not at first. We left her in that room, with no lock or protection, for far too long to walk away from this with our heads held high.”
“She knew something was going on,” he whispers to himself. “She knew she wasn’t safe. We should have let her stay at our house—”
“Should have,” I agree. “But we didn’t fight hard enough or fast enough. We have no idea what they’ve been doing with her stuff, or how much of it is here. What else was she missing that she didn’t even notice?”
He sighs, shaking out his arms as he completely dismisses the need to continue his hunt. “Where should we start?”
“Do we bring her here or take the items to her?” I counter.
“Bring her,” he replies without pause. “She’ll see connections that we overlook.”
“Then go find Ada,” I instruct him. “I’ll wait here.”
I expect him to argue, wanting to stay so the scent is still fresh in his mind, but he doesn’t. He simply nods and races out the door.
* * *
I thought I was angry.
We clearly know nothing of the storms that rage in Ada’s mind and body.
Every step she takes through the house is inaudible. Every breath is steady. Her hands don’t shake or fist at her sides. She doesn’t cross her arms over her chest to comfort herself.
But fury fills the space around her, a near physical presence that we must swim in until she calms.
Ada ambles through the rooms, soaking in everything before the first clap of thunder rings overhead in the otherwise sunny sky.
“When you followed his tracks,” she begins, glancing at Connak. “Did he go straight through the house, or did he veer into one of the rooms?”
“He went into his bedroom,” Connak answers quickly. “To the wardrobe, then out the back.”
Ada nods as she spins in a circle, making sure she hasn’t missed anything. “So he’s a ghost.”
