Page 44 of In the Shadows
ways to fix them. He’d been invaluable to his father last year,
before he got sick, knowing he’d take over the business and spare
Thom the agony of a trade his mind was incompatible with. Ah,
sad fates! If only Charles could find a way around this truncation
of his own future.
No matter. All machines wore out with time, and the human
body was no different. In the meantime, he’d figure out how to
spin dreamy Minnie closer to him. He was determined to have a
kiss from her before too long.
Charles lay back on the picnic blanket, crossing his hands
behind his head to stare up at the blue sky fighting through the
lacework of branches. He was quite satisfied with the elements of
this summer and how they were working together. And when he
got melancholy, the ocean was constant and endless enough to
swallow up any notions of human significance.
The only disappointment was his mystery, Arthur. Charles
had been primed for more adventure, but Arthur denied them.
Right now he slept, propped up in the concave curve of a large tree
trunk, cradled by the roots so that he looked like something out of
one of Minnie’s fairy stories.
“Does he ever do anything but nap?” Charles wondered aloud.
He had hoped Arthur would be dark and brooding like the anti-
hero of Wuthering Heights, which he was reading at Minnie’s
insistence. But other than the odd bantering joke with Minnie or
Cora, he was silent and forgettable.
Cora’s eyes clouded with worry. “I think he must be ill.”
“Or cursed!” Minnie watched Arthur, an unreadable play of
emotions flitting across her features. “We did spy on a witch, after
all. Maybe she’s stealing his life away, bit by bit, to cheat death and
sneak
