Girl of the Night Garden

Poke grumbles beneath his breath, but takes to the sky only a moment later, flying hard for the blot on the horizon, apparently resigned to the fact that our party of three has become a party of four, at least for the time being.

I wait until he’s out of sight before kneeling next to Declan and reaching out to rub Wig between the ears with one finger.

“Missed you, you, you,” Wig squeaks with a shiver of pleasure.

“I missed you, too,” I whisper, gaze drifting to Declan’s sleeping face. I will miss him, as well, when it’s time for Wig and Poke and I to leave.

We only have three days before the new moon rises and we’re summoned away to perform our duties for the garden.

Hopefully that will be enough time to reconcile myself to losing my first human friend.

Chapter Eight

Declan

I wake up weak and sore with a dry throat so wicked I can’t think of anything but water.

Cool water wetting my lips, slipping over my fat, scratchy tongue, rushing down my throat and filling my belly until my stomach bulges like a melon strapped to my spine.

“Water,” I croak, my voice raspy and weak.

I smack my lips, squinting as a warm breeze rushes across my face and light pricks at my eyeballs. Above me, silvery leaves swim against a bright blue sky. I’m lying on my back beneath an olive tree, an ancient one judging by the muscles bulging beneath its gnarly trunk.

I’ve scouted all over Amaria, but I can’t remember spotting a monster olive like this during my rambles.

I have no clue where I am, or how the devil I got here.

Slowly, I roll my two-hundred-pound head to the side, struggling to sort out why I feel like I’ve been beaten within an inch of my life. My eyes focus on a sea of tall grass and a hill rolling down toward a crumbling stone amphitheater. Far beyond and below it, the sea sparkles so blue and peaceful it’s hard to believe the storm last night ever happened.

The storm.

The boat and the lightning on the water, the pain and blackness snatching me away as I fell from my seat.

I fainted, I remember that now, but what happened after? How did I get all the way up here, so far from the ocean? Clara couldn’t have carried me, so someone else must have—

Clara.

Where is she?

“Clara?” I croak, my voice raw and dry. Fear gives me the energy to sit up and stay that way, despite my spinning head complaining that I moved too fast. “Clara?” I call again, glancing around, but I see nothing living except a tiny mouse cringing in one of the hollows of the olive tree’s bone-white trunk.

I stare at the creature, but instead of scrambling for safety, it stares back, wringing its tiny hands like the mothers who stood on the London docks watching our ship set sail for Italy.

“Have you seen Clara?” I ask it, simply because there’s no one else to ask.

It bounces on its toes, one small paw waving toward the water, looking for all the world as if it understood me. I shake my head at my folly—and then immediately regret it as the tree, the rodent, and everything else spins around me.

I’m clearly delirious. And I can’t remember being this worried. Ever.

What if Clara’s hurt or…worse than hurt? What if she fell overboard while I was unconscious last night? What if pirates found our boat and snatched her away?

But neither of those things would explain how I came to be halfway up a mountain under a tree.

I sigh, rubbing at my aching neck as I run my dry tongue across even drier lips. “Well, whatever happened, I’m not getting any closer to answers sitting on my arse, now am I?” I mutter.

The mouse burrows its head deeper into its shoulders and covers its head with its paws.

“No, hiding isn’t the answer. Hiding is never the answer. Just puts off trouble you should deal with before it gets any bigger.”

The mouse wrinkles its nose—a little judgmentally, I think, but I don’t have any more time to waste on rodents.

I have to find Clara. Now.

I lean onto my hands, struggling to arrange my unsteady feet beneath me. But before I can put my land legs to the test, I hear voices from the bottom of the hill.

I look up too fast and the world does a jig, but it steadies quicker than before. Within a few seconds I spot two girls—one in a wrinkled yellow linen dress, with sun-streaked curly brown hair tumbling around her shoulders, and the other a willowy thing in an old gown, with hair so extraordinary it makes my jaw drop.

And then I see her face and those eyes—those ocean eyes I was afraid I might never see again—and my arse plops right back into the dirt.