Control (Book Seven) (Fated Saga Fantasy Series) (9 page)

“You, m
e and him,” retorted Meghan. “Believe me when I say it is a really long story... Ivan, maybe you can tell her all about it sometime.”

Meghan
tossed him a smile that said,
You’re welcome
.

His icy stare
pleaded that she stop.

“You know, you handle s
trange really well,” said Maria to Meghan. “I’m afraid I’m still rather confused. I barely know where I am. One minute, we were sailing, I should say, sinking, on the ocean and the next minute, we’re here.”

“I do handle weird a little too well,” agreed Meghan. “
I think it just means I’m adjusting to my impossible-to-deal-with, screwed up life.”

“Oh,” Maria replied
, clearly bewildered.

Meghan looked
closely at Maria’s kindly face. A while back, when Meghan had guessed that Ivan had a thing for Maria, she had thought she was sixteen. It would make her about eighteen now if she’d been correct. Perhaps she had been wrong though. Maria had a grown up look about her. An old soul sort of look. Meghan wondered if Ivan knew her birthday, and if she could trick him into admitting it.

“M
aria, when’s your birthday?” she asked boldly.

“It’s Meghan’s birthday today,” noted Ivan, thinking she was j
ust fishing for happy birthdays; that, or he realized she was trying to get him to slip up and answer it on Maria’s behalf, admitting that he knew, which he could have.

He eyed Meghan suspiciously.

Meghan wore
a wide toothy smile in reply.

Maria beamed watching the two of them react to each other. “Happy Birthday, Meghan,” she said.
“What birthday is this?”

“Sixteen.”

“Sixteen is a good birthday. I celebrated nineteen a few months back myself.”

Meghan had been
off by a year. And Ivan hadn’t fallen for her trick. She’d have to be more sneaky. Setting up someone was not easy!

“Well, bye for no
w,” said Meghan. “I hope your ankle feels better.”

“It’s much better already, thank you.”

Meghan turned and walked away, saying no more and leaving Ivan to assist Maria in rejoining the ship’s crew. He wanted to ask what had happened, but Ivan didn’t want to confuse Maria any more than she already was. He worried she had some unseen injury and wanted her to get checked out, first.

They’d
all learn what had happened on the ship, soon enough.

Ivan made his way to the
large meeting hall near the center of the village. It was the only space large enough to accommodate so many people.

Ivan made sure Maria
got inside and comfortable. She slid his coat off her shoulders and handed it back to him. He tried to tell her to keep it, but she refused.

“It is freezing out there. It is nice and toasty inside.”

He conceded and put it back on.

“Thank you, Ivan,” she whispered
softly. “I cannot express how relieving it is to see a familiar face.”

“I
understand how you feel,” he replied.

“Maybe, after everything calms down, you could actually tell me
a little bit more about what is going on.”

“
Sure,” he answered, his throat feeling scratchy. He cleared it again, saying goodbye. He left with a quick gait, once again with the need of getting more air. This time, the feeling in his heart wasn’t pain, but nerves sending shivers down his spine.

Meghan found him just minutes later.

“Wow! Can you believe it? Billie, Noah Flummer.... Maria,” she added in a playful tone.

“What exactly were you trying to do back there
anyway?” he stammered.

“Oh, yeah,
sorry. That did not come out like I intended it to. I was just trying to put in a good word for you. You know. She just happens to be the one gal you like and you literally whisk her off a ship...”

“That was
your idea of helping?”

“I said I know it didn’t come out right, geesh! I think I made up for it.”

“Meghan, they just arrived here, out of thin air, in some part assisted by your brother; they are clearly battered and confused, and all you can think about is setting me up?”

“Well, why not?”

“I don’t know as I will ever understand how your brain works,” he grumbled. “It had to be you...” he added under his breath, walking back towards the ship.

She
shrugged, not seeing the big deal and followed, assuming they would return once the chaos had calmed.

Chapter 3

Colin stepped gently into the lighthouse so as not to awaken Catrina. He closed the door, suddenly unable to move. She was not on the sofa where he had left her. The blanket was in a heap on the floor.

“Catrina,” he called out.
She did not answer. “Perfect. I left. She woke up, probably freaked out because I wasn’t here.”

He darted through
the lighthouse calling out for her. She wasn’t in the kitchen or the dining area. He knocked on the women’s restroom door but there was no answer.

“Maybe she went up to the
top of the light?”

He raced up the spiral staircase
two steps at a time, expecting to see her up there, searching for him. But it was empty. His heart skipped a few beats.

“Catrina,” he shouted mo
re forcefully, racing back down the stairs.

She was not there. She was nowhere.

He stepped back into the room where he had left her sleeping.

“I shouldn’t have left her. I knew
it was a bad idea...” he trailed off, horror reaching into every fiber of his being. He felt like a wrecking ball had hit him straight in the gut and thought he might be sick.

He had mad
e a terrible mistake. An error beyond forgiving.

In his hurry to save Billie and the ship, he had forgotten to leave Catrina cloaked. He had taken the protection cloak wit
h him, leaving her vulnerable and easy to find.

Someone must have traced the magic and taken
her.

His head swam with too many equally terrifying thoughts.

“What have I done?” he called out in a panic. “I have to find her.”

His heart thumped and his thoughts strummed at full pace, threatening to overwhelm him.
He struggled to catch his breath, each one coming out harder and more ragged. He turned in circles, unsure of where to start his search.

He fell
over, his legs faltering, and he half walked, half crawled, out of the lighthouse back onto the beach.

He needed to keep control. This was not the time to
lose it. He stood up but almost fell over, his legs feeling like jelly.

Anger stirred. Fear. Desperation to know where she was.

He let out a primal scream that shook the entire beach.

Sand flew into
the air, leaving a deep trench from the lighthouse to the water’s edge.

His thoughts begge
d for her to appear at his side, but she did not. Why could he not wish her back to him? Something was very wrong.

He stood up filled with determination to find her.

“Whoever is keeping her from me will pay!”

He rushed back inside,
searching for any clues he might have overlooked, trying to keep his mind calm and stay on task.

“This was
not here before,” he said, grabbing hold of a leaf floating in the air just above the sofa, as if waiting for him to find it.

He glanced around. All was quiet. He was alone.

He reached up to touch the leaf but backed away when a sinister voice suddenly emanated from it.

“If you e
ver want to see your girl alive again, you will follow the trail I left for you, and you will do it fast. It fades with every moment you waste.”

Colin had never traced magic before, but he did not hesitate. He gave the order in his mind and felt th
e magic within him searching for the trail.

A path started to form in the shape of hazy wisps of white, streaming out of the lighthouse.
Colin followed it without question or worry over what awaited him at the end of this trail.

If someone had Catrina,
he would do anything to get her back.

##

Mireya Mochrie had fallen asleep in her bedroom’s hidden crawlspace again. She sat up with a rush, fearing she had overslept. Her foot knocked over a glass vial filled with a pinkish liquid. She leaned over and grabbed the vial, thankful she had put the stopper in, and exited the crawl space into the bedroom’s loft.

After s
hutting the little door that led to the crawl space, she shoved a couple pillows up against the door, blocking it from view. She spread out some blankets to make it look as though she was sleeping in the loft.

She climbed down the ladder plunking herself onto t
he edge of her bed. She wasn’t late. Good. She set the vial of pink liquid next to her.

It was quiet. Too quiet. Almost painfully quiet.

She had never had a room of her own before and now that she did, she did not care for it. Mainly because this meant her brother, Jae, was gone and would never return. His bed remained made, never to be slept in again, at least not by her brother.

Mireya had turned fou
rteen just a month before he died. He missed her birthday party. He had been missing a lot of other things too, like skipping classes, or skipping school altogether. He wasn’t hanging out with his old friends anymore, he’d made new ones, like Darcy Scraggs. A girl he had once considered a bully. An enemy.

Mireya bounded off the bed in a flurry to get dressed.

“No point in dwe
lling on it now,” she chided herself.

She
grabbed a thick coat hanging by the bedroom door; she needed it for two reasons. One, it was a cold day. It was always cold now in Bedgewood Harbor. And two, she had cut into the liner inside the coat and sewn in a hidden pocket.

She grabbed the glass vial with the
pink liquid, shoving it into the hidden pocket, and took it, and herself, down the stairs. She didn’t need to look out the window to see that it was another gray day. It had been this way for weeks.

Since Jae had died, nothing had been the same.

Because Juliska Blackwell had lied to them all.

She had betrayed them all. She was responsible for her brother’s death, amongst others, like Garner and Ravana Sadorus.

Some Svoda were still missing, presumed dead.

The gray of the outside might as well have been the color of the inside of her house. It fit her mood today.

She hung her coat over the back of a chair, sat down and pulled on her boots.

She was not preparing for school.

Or to play with her friends.

Playing was no longer permitted in
Bedgewood Harbor. In fact, very little was permitted.

“Morning, Mom,” she spoke softly as she entered the kitchen.

“Oh, good morning, dear. Breakfast is on the table. I’ve just brought your father his.”

Mireya did not respond. She knew her mother would not give up. She also knew that if she looked right now, her father would be in the same spot he had been in since her brother’s death. And that he would not have touched a bite of his food.

“I’ll eat later,” Mireya told her. “Can’t be late, you know.”

Sheila Mochrie threw her daughter a wide, blank smile. “Have a go
od day, dear.”

Mireya shook
her head as she put on the thick coat.
Both my parents have completely checked out...

In
a way, she could not blame them. It was easier than dealing with their son’s death. It was much easier than dealing with the manner in which he died. It was also much easier than dealing with the current conditions of the island. 

Before leaving,
she stopped to say an obligatory goodbye to her father. It always gave her a start to see him now. His face was sunken in. His eyes glazed over, staring endlessly out a window, for what, she did not know.

“I’m leaving now. Bye, Dad.”

He did not respond to her. Not even a movement in her direction. Her dad has just vanished, deep inside himself, somewhere out of her reach.

Irving Mochrie might have been strict with her brother,
she’d seen it a hundred times. Sometimes overly so, but she never doubted, especially now, how much he had loved his son. He just wasn’t good at showing it. And now, it was too late.

For some reason Mireya could not get Jae out of her thoughts
today. It would lead nowhere good, to dwell on what she could not change.