Page 93 of The Scarlet Veil

“Youdrink it.”

“I drink all manner of things that you don’t, and let me assure you—absinthe is perhaps themostoffensive among them. Have you ever tried it?”

“No.” I plant my feet determinedly, stubbornly, and at last, he allows me to wrench the bottle away from him. I clutch it to my chest. “I stole a sip of my mother’s wine once, though. It can’t be much different.”

Michal stares as if I’ve lost my mind, perhaps plucked it from my head and tossed it out the window. And perhaps I have. Perhaps I don’t care. I wrestle with the bottle’s cork beneath his critical gaze, just managing to unstopper it when a distant crash sounds outside.

Both of our faces snap upward.

“What was—?” I start to ask.

In the blink of an eye, however, Michal disappears up the stairs. I hasten to follow, clumsy and slow in his wake, and some of the absinthe spills onto my hands. Its spicy scent—anise and fennel and something else—wrinkles my nose as I dart up the stairs and skid to a halt on the quarterdeck, sliding a little in the rain. Itcomes down in great sheets now, as if God himself pours buckets of it upon our heads. In seconds, it soaks me to the skin, but I push sopping hair from my face to follow Michal’s line of sight.

To the north, just visible through the gale, another ship struggles to remain aloft in fifty-foot waves. Its foremast has splintered in the winds, and the entire vessel pitches sideways, precariously close to capsizing. My entire body goes cold with realization.

“Michal!” The wind carries away my shout, however, and I duck swiftly as another bolt of lightning flashes. Caskets slide in every direction. The crew—half-drowned—rush to secure them, but even compulsion is no match for the storm. With another earsplitting crack, one wooden box crashes into another, and both pitch over the railing and into the sea. “Michal!” Wind tearing at my cloak and hair, I fight to reach him, to seize his arm. “That ship—the entire crew is going to drown if we don’t—”

“We cannot help them.”

At his words, the splintered mast of the other ship separates completely, and a vicious swell drags the bow under, along with half of the ship’s crew. The other men shout and charge forward to secure the vessel, but it’s too late. Their ship sinks in earnest now. In the next second, lightning strikes another mast, and its sails spark and catch fire. Horror fills my belly at the sight, and my hand tightens on Michal’s sleeve. “But we have to help them! Michal!”

But he only gestures dispassionately to the churning water around us. Sharp, broken bits of other ships pierce the waves like tombstones rising up in a cemetery. And that’s what it is, I realize—a cemetery. “There is no saving them,” Michal says. “No one finds Requiem except those who are born or created there.”

“What?”

“The isle is secret, Célie.” Voice curt, Michal turns his back on the sinking ship, on the dying men, but I can’t tear my eyes away. He seizes my elbow and steers me to the sheltered alcove by the stairs. “Your precious Louise’s ancestor cast a spell of protection around it many years ago. Most simply drift off course when they near Requiem, but others—like our friends here—are too skilled to be dissuaded. And so the enchantment kills them. They never reach the isle.”

“It—itkillsthem?” I repeat in disbelief.

“Except on a witch’s holy days.” Lightning bleaches Michal’s hair bone white, casting shadows beneath his eyes and cheeks, and when his mouth twists viciously, he truly looks like a denizen of Hell. “A clever loophole, that. La Dame des Sorcières claimed it as a protection for her people—a counterbalance to the enchantment. For three weeks of the year, Requiem lies completely exposed and vulnerable to the outside world.” He arches a meaningful brow. “Samhain is one of those days.”

I clench the bottle of absinthe so hard that my fingers ache. The sea has claimed all but the ship’s stern now. My stomach plummets as the men’s shouts fade beneath the roaring wind, the deafening thunder. Though I stumble forward, determined to—tohelpthem somehow, to lower the lifeboat, I manage only three steps before Michal catches my cloak and drags me back to shelter. A wave surges up and over the handrail a half second later. I cling to him helplessly as our ship pitches in response. “So Lou and the others—they won’t be able to pass through the enchantment until All Hallows’ Eve?”

“At midnight precisely.”

“And if they come early?”

Together, our eyes follow the last man as the sea swallows him whole. “Pray they don’t,” Michal says simply.

By the time he finishes speaking, the entirety of the ship and its crew have vanished. Just... vanished. My heart beats a heavy, painful rhythm in my chest. It’s like they never existed at all.

We stay that way for another long moment, staring out at the waves as wind and rain lash around us. I only realize that I still clutch Michal when he firmly disentangles himself and turns to stalk belowdecks. At the last second, however, he hesitates, casting an unreadable look over his shoulder. “The lifeboat wouldn’t have saved them,” he says.

My chest aches because it’s true.

And when he disappears down the stairs, I lift the bottle of absinthe to my lips and drink.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

La Fée Verte

I take a shot for each person I’ve seen die.

Michal—who has apparently grown a conscience in the five minutes since I’ve joined him—stops me after three.

“Howdareyou?” Swaying with the turbulent waves, I thrust my wet hair from my cheeks indignantly. They already feel warm, flushed, as if I’ve been lying in the sun for hours instead of drowning above deck. My throat, too, burns like I’ve been drinking acid. I peer suspiciously at the bottle now clutched in Michal’s hand, squinting at the green fairy on the label. Her smile appears innocuous enough. “I amtryingto honor the dead, but you”—a particularly violent swell rocks the entire ship, and I stagger into him—“you wouldn’t understand that, would you?”

He rolls his eyes and steadies my elbow. “Probably not.”

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