Page 47 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“Welcome to Keel Watch Harbor. You aren’t an official resident until Sarah’s offended you in some way.”
Dinner was the first normal meal we’d had together in the last few days, and I held my questions about Keel Watch Harbor’s sordid history of missing persons at bay. I must’ve been pulling at my eyelashes at some point because as I let Gams blather on about Von Leer and my upcoming phone interview, I found my fingertips grasping at empty space where I was certain eyelashes had been that morning. The black remnants of my mascara under my fingernails confirmed my suspicions.
“When is that again?” Gams asked, gathering our salad bowls to take to the sink. If she had noticed the broken glassware in the trash from the night before, she didn’t say anything.
“The phone interview? Two weeks from yesterday. I’ll need that morning off.”
“Consider it done.” She winked at me, then noticed the broken ceramic chicken on the windowsill. She picked it up to turn it over in her hand and inspect the crack. “Shame. I really liked that one.”
She tutted and slipped it into her cardigan pocket.
“And if the interview goes well—”
“It will,” Gams interrupted with a kind of ferocity that suggested she believed she could get me into Von Leer through sheer willpower.
“Right.Whenthe interview goes well, I’m thinking about taking a long weekend next month to tour the campus.”
Gams lit up at the idea, which would’ve made me feel guilty about my ulterior motives to corner my biological father and interrogate him about Skalterra if it weren’t for her dragging me into her plot to sabotage the search for Riley.
“Just tell me when, and I’ll give you both a few days off.”
I faltered.
“Both?” I repeated.
“You and Liam.”
No, that wouldn’t work for me.
“I don’t need Liam.” My cheeks warmed at Gams’s ensuing laughter.
“No? Then who is going to show you around campus? How were you planning on getting there?”
“There’s a train—”
“Perfect. I’ll pay for both of your tickets and a hotel room.”
“Hotel room?” I blanched. “No, that’s not—”
“The train schedule isn’t day-trip friendly. Don’t worry, it’ll be a double room. AndIwon’t worry because I know Liam is a good boy and thatyouaren’t into those sorts of things.”
“But—”
“That poor thing needs the distraction, Wren. You’d be doing him a favor by taking him.”
I swung my backpack onto the small, two-person table that stood in the center of the kitchen. Riley’s remaining posters slipped from the open zipper and scattered across the linoleum.
“I’d be doing him a favor by actually helping him find his cousin, instead of actively working against him.”
Gams narrowed her eyes at me, pausing in her scrubbing of our dinner bowls.
“We’ve been over this. Riley is gone.”
“Right.” I nodded. “Just like Margaret, and the Tracewell brothers, and Liam’s parents.”
Gams’s face paled, and her neck bobbed with a nervous gulp. Then, she turned stony, any sign that I’d caught her off guard squashed.
“What’ve you been up to today, Wren Warrender?” she demanded. “I told you, nothing good comes from outsiders poking around Keel Watch Harbor, and that includes you.”
