Page 59 of The Worst of Them

She paused, taken aback. “What?”

“The knife,” Fay repeated, pulling her from attention Jack to look at Cecily. “That’s not what he’s upset about.”

“How do you know about the knife?” Cecily asked.

Maria rolled onto her elbow. “Fay is the resident mind reader and seer of all things holy and…unholy, I suppose.” She shrugged one shoulder. “She knows things⁠—”

“Not everything,” Fay interjected lightly. “Unless I know where to look.”

“And we don’t know what the hell that means,” Maria said with dry amusement. “We stopped asking questions years ago. You get used to it.”

Knowing things seemed like the most natural answer to Fay’s mysterious air—and it made Cecily curious.

“Why is he angry?” she asked. Even if it wasn’t the knife, she could count several other reasons for him to be livid with her.

Fay stared over the water into the distance. “I don’t know,” she said, the words too light to be anything but a lie.

Cecily chewed her lip, unsure what to make of that. In the absence of an answer—she guessed she wouldn’t get one—Frederick’s words from outside the tavern began to niggle at the back of her mind. She nervously asked, “What did Frederick mean when…when he asked Jack about me being the flavor of the week?”

Surely this question would have an answer.

Maria’s eyes widened as understanding dawned. “Oh, he meant no offense towards you. He was mocking Jack because he’s never brought a girl around us. You know how men are.”

Cecily shook her head. She knew very little about men other than prison guards, pirates, and her father—and he’d been lovely, never cutting or crass.

Maria smirked. “Most of the women on this island would sell their souls for a few minutes alone with Jack, and he knows it. He used to humor them, but he stopped warming beds a while ago. Now he just tortures them all with his presence.” She lifted her bottle and drank.

“I’d bet he was just trying to be more noble,” Fay said.

Maria scrubbed her hand over her mouth. “That’s boring. I think Jack gets off on making women want him.” She flung a hand toward the men down the beach, their joyful volume raised by the booze in their bottles. “It’ll be worse now, thanks to that infernal scar on his face. Now he’s handsome and dangerous and everyone will only love him more. God help us all.”

“I was in love with Jack once,” Fay said wistfully.

“So was I,” Maria said blandly. “And everyone else who’s ever seen him.” Her dark eyes trailed over Cecily, assessing. A silent question lingered in her eyes.

Are you in love with him?

These were Jack’s friends—they knew and loved him, and Cecily wondered if that made them predisposed to dislike her simply because Jack did. Minding the gnawing ache growing in her middle, Cecily glared at the sea.

Maria could assume what she wished, but Cecily wasn’t in anything but pain.

“How do you do it?” Hester asked, studying Fay. “Knowing things that aren’t said, and such.”

“I was murdered,” Fay said airily. “But Killian found my body and put me in a pool during a full moon on the summer solstice. When I woke, I was blonde and I knew things.”

“I swear on our lives it’s true,” Maria said before Cecily or Hester could doubt it. Her tone turned bitter. “She was an apothecary, but some new soldiers in town didn’t like her business or her so-called premonitions, so they murdered her. Knife to the gut, and they threw her in a trash heap. She won’t tell you that, though, because she doesn’t like being pitied so…” her lips twisted, “don’t pity her. Killian gets huffy if she does, and he’s already murderous enough.”

Hester shook her head emphatically. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“My hair used to be like yours,” Fay said to Cecily. “Dark as raven feathers. The others thought I was a stranger until Killian told them otherwise.” She glanced at Killian down the beach and sighed wistfully. “The first thing I knew when I came back was that he loved me. I knew it like he’d confessed it a thousand times, even though he’d never said a thing about it. He’d been content to pine in silence for years, but he couldn’t after what he did.”

Maria gagged.

“He gave half his soul to bring me back,” Fay said. “Now he’s part of me, and I’m part of him, and even though he’s not entirely whole, he’s enough.” She waved down the beach. Killian smiled back at her—a full grin, like Fay was indeed the other half of his soul.

It made Cecily want to die a little.

As the afternoon passed, the ladies traded stories and rum. Cecily didn’t drink, as she had never had liquor and was too nervous to start now as the others lost their inhibitions and grew far more honest and hilarious as they spoke mostly of their relationships in excruciating detail.