Page 10 of Freeing Hook

WENDY

When I wake, it’s to a dreadful cocktail. A pounding headache, a clear memory, and a vibrant recollection of every horrible thing I said when the faerie dust was working its way out of my system.

Charlie perches on the stool beside the bed, chin tucked into her palms, elbows docked on crossed knees. Her braid swings behind her as she shakes her head to the tune she’s humming quietly under her breath. She looks as if she might perish from boredom.

My mind recounts every awful word I called her over the past few days, my stomach turning over at the obscenities.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my throat dry. It still feels like sandpaper, and though the desire for faerie dust still haunts the back of my mind, it no longer feels like going without it is going to rip my skull in half from the inside out.

Charlie flinches, like the sound of my voice is the agreed-upon signal to fling her hands in front of her face to protect herself from an oncoming projectile.

“Oh,” she says, blinking a few times as she examines me. “You’re you.”

I nod, embarrassment wafting over me as I curl the blanket, damp from how I sweated through my clothes, around my reddening neck. “I called you some awful things.”

Charlie shrugs, her carefree demeanor returning. “The name-calling wasn’t all that bad. It was the spitting I could have done without.”

When my eyes go wide with mortification, Charlie hesitates for a moment, then, still balancing cross-legged on the stool, extends her hand. I take it hesitantly, and when she shakes it, it’s like a shark shaking a wet fish in its clamped jaw.

“You’re going to have to work on that handshake if you want to make it as a privateer,” she says, and I don’t miss how she rubs her palm on her pants like it’s a nervous tick. I’m not sure what’s more mortifying—that she’s wiping my sweat off her palm, or that she is kind enough to hide that she’s doing it.

“I don’t think offering me an apprenticeship is what the captain has in mind,” I say, propping myself up against the cedar headboard.

Charlie whistles. “The captain was right about you.”

I crane my brow in question.

She offers me a teasing smile. “He said you were lacking in the humor department.”

Pain trickles down my chest, and it must show on my face, because Charlie immediately retracts her words. “To be fair to you, though, the captain’s sense of humor is the acquired sort. Like drinking coffee black.”

I crinkle my nose. I’ve only had coffee once. The beans don’t grow anywhere close to Estelle, and though my family lived in a harbor city, the tariffs in the tropical countries were too high for the ships to bother venturing that far south very often. The only reason I’ve tried it at all is that my parents invited a potential suitor from the island of Kalawai to stay with us the summer after my sixteenth birthday. He’d smuggled his own stores ofcoffee into Estelle, insisting he couldn’t be expected to live without it for an entire month.

Charlie stretches her legs out on the stool. “It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

I’m no longer sure if we’re talking about coffee or the captain’s sense of humor. “I really am sorry for the horrible things I said. And the scratching.”

Charlie bounces up from her stool, her long braid slapping at its wooden seat. “And the spitting?”

I cringe. “Especially the spitting.”

She places her hands on her hips, then grins. “Consider it in the past, then. Just—please don’t continue to bring it up. I know how aristocrats are about that sort of thing.”

“I’m so—” I blush, then swallow, chuckling nervously when she offers me an I-told-you-so sort of look.

“So…” Charlie says. “Cap says I’m supposed to orient you to theIasoonce you’ve, you know, recovered.”

“TheIaso?” There’s something about the name that rings in my memory.

“Name of the ship. Well, and the captain’s wife, but I wouldn’t bring her up again if I were you. She’s dead. But I guess you already know that.”

I cock my brow. “How do you know I know that?”

Charlie bites her tongue and juts her jaw out to the side like she’s considering her words. “You might have mentioned it while you were in an…unfortunate mood.”

Oh. Right. My mouth goes dry as I remember my last words to the captain. I can’t decide if I’m more ashamed of being so hateful about the captain’s dead wife, or that I accused him of lusting after me.

“Yeah, if that were me, I’m not sure I’d be able to look the captain in the eyes again,” says Charlie with a commiserating grimace.

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