“We have to look for them!” Katie insisted.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “We can’t. If you found them now, they’d tear you to pieces. They… they’re not them.”
“Then... what can we do? Give up?” Katie demanded.
“We can get that boat ready to shove off, and wait as long as we can before dawn,” I said. “Then we pray that maybe they’ll come back in time.”
But I didn’t really believe it.
“What if they don’t? They just disappear with the island?”
When I couldn’t bear to answer, Brann spoke up. “It won’t matter, if we don’t get this boat fixed. That’s number one right now.”
Keegan nodded. “That’s you. Brann the Plan.” He took Katie’s hand. “C’mon, Katie.” He lead her back into the shallows, and for once, she didn’t pull her hand away. As we followed them, Katie filled me in. There were two problems. First, there was a hole in the hull below the water line. Second, the tide. It was extreme, due to the full moon. Right now, the tide was so low, they couldn’t even get the boat off the rocks. It would be hours before the water got deep enough to float the boat.
“But… will that be in time to escape before sunrise?”
“Assuming we can fix the leak,” Brann said, resolute as always.
Despair and exhaustion were catching up to me. My magical near overdose left me with more than a hangover. I felt like I’d been rode hard and put away wet. And looked like it.
“We can work on the boat, Keira,” Keegan said kindly. “Why don’t you take a little snooze?”
That sounded so great. I could have dropped down on the beach right there, and been asleep before I hit the sand. Then, I remembered. “No. I can’t. I have to stay awake, and you all have to help me.”
Brann got a sense of what I meant. “It’s the sleepwalking, isn’t it?”
I nodded as I told them “Yes. If I fall asleep, if I even doze off and dream, Dub will come for me. It’s how he finds me. He can enter my dreams.”
“Of course!” Brann said with such vigor I expected him to shout Eureka. “I’m an idiot. How could I fail to recognize the obvious.”
I shook my head. “Brann, shut up. How could you? People don’t have real monsters enter them through their dreams.”
“Obviously, they do,” he said. “You’re proof of that.”
Keegan stuck his hand out to us now. “What?” I said.
“The bet! Don’t try to welsh, you know that’s pretty damn weird. Again.”
Brann showed me the hole in the hull. “There she is. Ugly as a blind cobbler’s thumb.”
A jagged submerged rock had punched a hole in the hull. It didn’t matter whether it happened when we struck the shore this morning, or the weight of the boat as the tide went out, we had to find a way to patch it.
“How are we going to do that?” Katie asked. “That rock is still poking through the hole. Don’t you have to get it off first?”
“How?” Keegan replied. “That old rust bucket must weigh 30 ton.”
“So? I thought you were Mr. Big Ass Mojo now. Too much for you?”
“I... uh...” Keegan suddenly looked very unsure of himself. He turned to Brann and me. “Maybe if all three of us combined our power, we could levitate it enough to get if off the rocks, eh?”
Brann spoke up first. “I used up an awful lot of dark magic, getting us away from Dub. I’ve recovered somewhat, but... well, with Keira so depleted, I’d prioritize both of us getting, you know, recharged. Just in case we have visitors.”
We all knew what he meant. We needed Katie’s orbs to light up the boat for any kind of work, but if the Dickweed Trio found us, we’d need everything we had to survive an attack by all three.
“Well, Keegan,” Katie said. “Before today, you managed pretty well in a scrap even without magic.”
“Yeah, but I dunno ...” he said, looking sheepish.
Katie always did have a knack for inspiring folks. Especially men folks. She moved up next to him, reaching out to run a finger along his arm, which I knew from experience was hard as a bough of oak. “Wow. This feels as strong as that shillelagh you swing so well.” To her credit, she refrained from batting her eyes as she said “I just feel so safe whenever I’m with you. You’re so incredible. Maybe you could just give it a try.”
Keegan loved the flattery. He turned to the boat – and then dropped his eyes to the water, looking utterly deflated. Silently, he shook his head ‘no’...
One thing I’ve never seen Katie do is give up. She just changes tactics. So she got tough. “What’s wrong, you great hulking poof? I suspect I’ll be fighting you for a stall in the bean jax, if you’ll dare show your gloomy puss in the pub again.” But even this failed to get a rise out of Keegan. Then, inspiration struck her. “All right, you sandbagging cute hoor. I know your game. Okay, we’ll play it your way. Put up or shut up.”
“Put up...? What?”
“Oh, so now you’re holding everybody’s marker, all of a sudden you’re after trying to make us think you’re afraid of another friendly little wager?”
That did it. “Me? Afraid to match a Leprechaun’s luck against the likes of you lot? Get outta that garden, ya scrawny gick.”
“Oh? So you’ll take the bet then?”
“Name your stakes, you gee-eyed git.”
“Double or nothing. On every penny we owe you so far.”
“Ha! Done and done!” And the look of confidence on Keegan’s face could almost lift the boat all by itself. He turned around, facing the boat. He cracked his knuckles, stared lasers at the boat, then slowly closed his eyes. Then he began to mutter to himself.
At first I figured it was some mystical incantation. Then I realized he was just getting psyched by cussing us all out. Especially Katie.
“Manky melters, gotta be half a bubble off
