Page 24 of The Eighth Isle

“She is.” So real her face was permanently imprinted on the back of my lids.

“That’s enough, girls. Please, carry on,” Amika said, waving them away as she grabbed my arm gently and led me forward.

The girls moved to the side this time, but their eyes had turned dull, like they had finally believed that the stories were true. No more curiosity burned in them—they just looked afraid now. They looked disappointed.

I felt sorry for them. For all of them—every Enchanted who lived in the Seven Isles.

“I’m sorry about that—they’re just curious,” Amika said.

“Don’t be. It’s absolutely fine.” I just wished I’d had something better to tell those girls, something to ignite their hope, not ruin it the way I had.

Maybe I should have lied…

What would have been the point, though?

Amika led me around the witch hat and to the other side, through a low wooden gate and up stairs made of uneven rocks. They led to a sort of a cliff surrounded by grass and flowers, with a single one-story house at the very top, looking out at the ocean on one side, and at the town on the other.

It was breathtaking—the low fence surrounding the house painted black, and the white rabbits with red eyes jumping andflying over it, the black rooftop that looked like a witch hat, too, and the three rocking chairs on the raised porch in front of the round door.

On one of them sat Reeva Lorein all by herself, wearing a black dress, no witch hat on. She held a glass of lemonade in her hand as she slowly rocked back and forth and looked out at the ocean, vast and uninterrupted.

My God, she lookedbad.She looked sick. Her hair was a frizzy mess and her eyes a bit bloodshot and the bags under them purple like she hadn’t slept in days.

“Go ahead. She’ll speak to you when she sees you, I’m sure,” Amika said, and for some reason she waswhispering.

For some reason, her whisper panicked me a little bit.

“Is she not feeling well? Because I can come back another time,” I said—whispering, too. And though we were only ten feet away from where Reeva sat, she still hadn’t even turned her head toward us.

“No, no—she’s only distracted. A little company might do her well. Please, continue,” Amika said, shaking her head, trying her best to smile genuinely at me, but she failed.

I went ahead anyway. “Thank you, Amika.”

With my head up, I reminded myself who Reeva was. We were practicallyfriends,even if we only saw each other once. She wasn’t going to freak out because I came to see her unannounced.

Even so, when I stepped on the wooden porch, I slammed my feet against it on purpose, just in case she didn’t hear me still.

She did.

Her head turned and our eyes locked, and I could have sworn I was looking at a completely different person from the woman she had been at that party. Where her eyes had been a light amber, now they were dark, a mousy brown, not a spark in them. Even her cheeks were hollow.

Reeva looked completely spent.

“You came,” she said, then turned her head toward the ocean again.

For a moment I stayed there, frozen in place, waiting for her to say something else—to either invite me to sit with her, or to tell me to get lost.

She did neither.

“I did. How are you, Reeva?” I said and forced myself to move closer.

“How do I look to you?” she said, not a hint of amusement in her voice.

“Not very well,” I admitted, attempting a smile. “May I?”

“Yes, sure. Help yourself,” she said, waving a hand to the rocking chair at her side, so I sat down, hoping we’d both feel more comfortable that way. Amika and the others were gone, and I could barely see the rooftops of the other houses in town from here, but the view of the sky and the ocean was indeed breathtaking.

“Wow,” I whispered, taking it all in with a new eye as my chair rocked slightly on its own.

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