CHAPTER NINE ✹
Mother's Losses.

  𝕮ARMEN was at the farmhouse table when Iris woke up that morning. She was suddenly a tall child in the middle of the family kitchen, torturing a hangnail and a bit of gnawed skin on her bottom lip with her head spinning. She felt like a mouse who had crawled out of the crack in the wall, frightened in the shadow of the house's owner—she hadn't been home since before the storm. Now, she's back. Iris had left a blood-trail all along the ravaged island, right back to her mother's doorstep.

  "It's nice to see that you're alive," was the first thing Carmen drawls to her. "You know, I wasn't quite sure—bad storm, no text, no calls—...I heard from your father about a gun on the beach?"

  Iris's eye twitched. "So you're listening to what Dad tells you now?"

  "I asked Alex, too."

  Of course. Of course, it was Alex—ready to hand Iris over to their executioner mother. Did he want to lower her head to the chopping block, too? Hand Carmen the knife?

  "Of course, you did," she muttered.

  It's visceral, the look that crossed her mother's face. Ugly and full of spite. She looked like she might spit poison.

  "You don't get to come back here and give me attitude. You've been gone for days, Iris."

  "It's never been a problem before!"

  "JJ wasn't pulling guns on the grandson of the county district judge before!" Carmen hurled back.

  The accusation shattered against Iris's skin like the ceramic shards of her stepmother's priceless vase. She thought about JJ, upstairs—showering, using her things; about to dry himself with her towels. The sunkissed boy who slept over last night because he knew how rabbit-hearted she could get before a confrontation with her mother. She prayed that he couldn't hear. He relied a lot on Carmen's soft-spot for him.

  "You don't understand," mumbled Iris, staring at her hands. "It's—everything's complicated right now, Mom. John B, he's still—"

  One thing about Carmen Mariano, she kept her malice bared between her teeth. Teeth that ache with the regret of smoking too much in her youth, a cavity in one at the back—the filling of it put there by Ward's money, and her tongue always returned to it; a testament to love, or that she'd always carry him around with her in her bones. (Was that the same thing?)

  "Your father and I told you not to go there. We explicitly said—oh, it's pointless." A rough laugh scraped at her ribs like brittle nails. "It's pointless, Iris, because you never learn. You do this all the time. Don't you think we know better? Do you ever stop to look at us, and think maybe we want more for you than we ever had? You're not going to get that here."

  Iris ran her tongue along the cool bone of her own bared teeth. Malice wasn't there, but resentment certainly was.

  "He's got to you."

  "What?"

  "Ward. He won. He's in your head." Carmen started to inject, hysterical with mad, brutal laughter, and prayers of Iris's name: Iris Soleil, Iris Soleil, Iris Soleil. "He did! You're too blind to see it, and I feel sorry for you, Mom, I do—but this is exactly what he did to Alex! Mom, you know what he's like just as well as I do—"

  "That's enough, Iris Soleil. Enough."

  Carmen didn't have to yell to make Iris bleed. Quieter, she's more frightening. She measured how far she'll have to cut to reach the sorest parts, and exacted her words with fidelity. She meant to hurt. She meant to draw blood. She's always been like it, really.

  Iris picked at a scab with the callus of her thumb. "I'm trying to tell you. Everything's all apart right now, Mom. John B, he's lost. And things are so weird, and I can't talk to Alex anymore. Dad doesn't care. Not really. You always get it... Eventually."

  "Not this time, Iris," her mother sighed, looking at the fruit bowl in front of her; overhanging grapes and a rotting peach. "I used to feel like I could trust you."

  "You can," she insisted shakily, spilling further into the room. The trembly body of her edged closer to the farmhouse table, but her mother made no move to reach for her hand or hold her. "I'm just, I'm sick of him being here. Taking Phoebe away, throwing money at Alex like he's a charity case, turning you against me—"

  "That's not what's happening here, Iris."

  "Isn't it?"

  "Erm. Morning, ladies." Iris briefly glanced over her shoulder. JJ was there. He's wearing a button-up that used to belong to Alex before Ward got him a whole new wardrobe for Princeton—the old, threadbare stuff that used to hang off her brother now scatter her bedroom or the Chateau. Water dripped from his wet, shaggy hair; onto his collarbones, onto the floorboards. He's smiling at her, all warm and nervous. He heard. He definitely heard.

  "JJ," her mother said wearily, "not now. Go home."

  Iris's neck stung with how quickly she looked back at her. "Mom!"

  "I mean it, JJ. This isn't the time."

  "Oh. Yep, erm. Right away, ma'am—"

  "JJ, stay," Iris snapped. Her eyes lingered on Carmen. "He's not going anywhere. He's not the problem here."

  Carmen's eyes narrowed in cold blood. "This is my house."

  "And whose name is on the deeds?"

  Like mother, like daughter.

  "Get out." Carmen stood from the kitchen table, jabbed her finger right at the front door, and yanked the knife right back. "Get out, Iris, I mean it. And don't come back until you're ready to apologise."

  A scoff tore through her. "Apologise—"

  "Out!"

  Iris left the house with a door-slam and not a single word. JJ, however, lingers.

  "Miss M, I swear—Iris, she ain't..." JJ worried at the chapped skin of his lip and toyed with the closure of his cap, dangling from his fingers, "this ain't on her, yeah? There's been some crazy, wack-ass shit going on 'round here, and Iris is just doing her best. I mean, isn't she always? It's Iris—"

  "I know my daughter, JJ."

  JJ faltered. "M'not saying—"

  "You care about her?" It hollowed her ruthlessly, so did his flinch—violent, amazed; the twitchy lilt of his brows, and the disbelief that she even had to ask.

  "It's Iris," he says again.

  "Where did you get the gun?"

  The bird that felt like it was stuck in his throat died in-flight and sunk right to the pit of his stomach. "Miss M, you know that I wouldn't let—"

  "And that boat everyone's looking for: the Grady White. You lot found it. Didn't you?"

  "I don't know what...—"

  "I know my daughter, JJ," Carmen said again. Her eyes stared through the window above the sink hollowly. "Just go."

  He found Iris at the end of the road, her cigarette burned almost to the filter. Soon enough, the warmth of it would lick at her skin, clot it in burns. She's catatonic as she waited for him, and JJ didn't think before slinging an arm around her—their ribs touch, and he wanted to bury her inside of his. JJ Maybank was getting a bit sick of her family treating her like this confused, lost little girl. They think she belonged in Tannyhill: JJ knew differently. She wasn't theirs to keep taking from. Against him, she was thin enough for him to feel bone.

  All so gluttonous, yet they starve her like a rabbit in a trap. JJ hated the lot of them.

  "We'll go mine. Grab m'bike. Head to John B's and figure out this compass. Yeah?" He kissed the top of her head roughly, squishing his cheek against her hair. When he felt her nod against him, inhaling the last, minty-menthol drag of her cig, JJ's nails gently bit her shoulder and he let her go. "All right. C'mon, then. Let's get outta here."

  On the back of JJ's beloved dirt bike, Iris felt more whole. She had her arms around her middle, and he always drove safer when he had someone with him—like Pope, or her. He had scratches on his abdomen from nail scrapes when he went too fast. One time, Iris bit his shoulder to get him to slow down. He's more careful now. It let the rest of the island sink in. Beaten roof shingles, dismantled fences, ravaged pylons. Thinking about how much better Figure Eight must look left a bad taste in Iris's throat; it made her hold JJ tighter, and his foot naturally pressed a little heavy on the gas. She didn't even bother reprimanding him for it. The thrill of a crash might distract her from all the intrusive thoughts about her mother's wrath—Alex betraying her, again; the thought that she might not see Phoebe for a few more days; Ward, unscathed, as always.

  Her head buried between JJ's shoulders. He asked her something, but it's lost in the wind. All Iris could hear was the whisper of Carmen in her blood, and her own words, spiteful and exacting. She used her mother's tenderest insecurity against her: the house. It belonged to Ward on paper, but Carmen always tried her best to fill those walls with the love it was absent of when they moved in. It was unfair of Iris throw that in her face—but Carmen ripped that agony out of her with her own bloody fists. She's always the first to sink the knife in and always the first to be the target of pity. Iris's head spun with the lot of it. The guilt and the rage. She's a bit sick of being this delicate, angry thing.

  "You all right?" JJ helped her off the bike. The sun's glare split through the Chateau's oak, but he was tall enough to protect her from it. "You kinda spaced for a sec there."

  "M'fine."

  He hummed absently, giving a stray lock of Iris's hair a tug. "Okay, sunshine. Let's go mess with John B, yeah?"

  JJ quietly crept along the length of the veranda, sending a mischievous wink over his shoulder to Iris and pressing a finger to his lips with a silent 'shush'. Rolling her eyes fondly, she snatched the DCS summons sellotaped to the Chateau's front door as JJ raised his fist to rap his knuckles against the nicked cedar.

  "DCS, open up! We know you're in there!" he yelled, roughening his voice by an octave or two.

  Grinning, he gestured for Iris next. Panicking, she cleared her throat, mimicking the haughty accent of a mainlander in a pantsuit, "John B, it's Cheryl—open up, we just want to talk!"

  JJ bit his tongue to stifle his laugh, and yanked her over to the window. Through the rain-spots and mildew, Iris could just about make out John B's blanched frame, recoiling into the starched blanket on the pull-out before JJ banged violently on the glass. John B flinched, arms instinctively lifting from his sides in halfhearted fists. When he saw JJ and Iris outside on the porch, nursing sore stomachs from how hard they were laughing, he buried his face miserably in his still-swollen hands.

  "Got ya, slick," JJ wheezed. "Should'a seen your face. Your face was like..." He feigned a jolt and a frightened yelp.

  John B pointed reproachfully at Iris. "That Cheryl voice—not cool, Irie."

  "C'mon, Bee," she sung, making her way into the Chateau, "it was funny."

  As she sunk onto the futon next to him, he naturally threw an arm around her shoulders. JJ strolled in next, heading right for the kitchen to snatch a beer from the lukewarm fridge that hadn't been working since before Agatha. He knocked off the cap using the scratched countertop, then heaved himself up onto the island, kicking his legs all childlike and absentminded as he swigged from the bottle.

  "How was home?" John B asked conversationally.

  "Cheery." Iris lolled her head onto his shoulder. "Completely unrelated, but can I crash here for a few days?"

  He chuckled, smoothing down her windswept hair. "'Course. Oh, by the way—'ran in to Sarah this morning, on My Druthers. Ya know, whilst I was putting back the scuba gear."

  She stiffened. "Seriously? What did she do? Did she snitch? What did she say?"

  "Shit, Irie. Your sister's a priss, but she's not a villain," John B laughed amiably. "She swore to not tell."

  "And you believed her?"

  "Well. Yeah?"

  Iris flicked his thick skull. "Then, you're more of an idiot than I thought."

  The thought of her sister knowing that John B poached scuba gear from their dad's beloved boat left a sickening weight in the pit of Iris's stomach. The thought of her sister in general often made her sick, really. The kind of sickness you feel when feeble hands try to wrench open that locked basement in your belly, to empty out all the rot and stagnant yearning. Sarah made her hollow, queasy, and uncertain—Iris was half the girl her sister was, half the daughter. Now, she had John B in the palm of her sweetened, little hand and could very well deliver him to their father on a silver platter—low-hanging fruit, a blow to Iris's favour.

  Even more overwrought than before, Iris abruptly got up from the pull-out and started pacing the length of the living room, yanking at the roots of her hair.

  "Listen, it's fine, all right," John B tried to reason. "Sarah's not gonna say anything—and, besides, your dad's the least of our worries right now. Like, we got shot at last night. Unless the two of you forgot that?"

  "Actually, I did forget all about that, John B," snapped Iris, slanting him a vicious look. "Yep, completely flew over my head—like the bullets shot at us!"

  He pinned her with a satiric glare, and JJ slithered down from the countertop to mediate. "You both need to chill out. We're all good. Ace, actually. Princess isn't saying shit, and I'm glocked up—so, we're safe. Yeah? We should be figuring out this shit with your old man's compass."

  "He's right," John B mumbled, his thumb smoothing over the cool, marked brass of his dad's compass.

  Iris stared at it, their aeruginous treasure, and then at him, her oldest friend. His mouth pursed into a sullen frown as he looked at it, mourning all over again.

  "Yeah," she sighed, lowering herself to the arm of the couch, "yeah, okay. What's the plan?"

  "I think I need to talk to Lana Grubbs."

  Totally illogical, but they all go for it anyway. John B and JJ pile into the front of the Twinkie as Iris made herself comfortable on the backbench, legs kicked up, head lazying against a buckwheat pillow left behind by Kiara. She was still thinking about the argument with her mother that morning as the boys bickered away at the front. There was that ill-eased knot in her ribs that felt a bit like the ongoing unravelling of a girl's entire life. The same ribbon she's always felt that she shared with Alex—the cartilaginous length of it just as raw and pinkish and scarred within him as it did in her. She wondered if his felt as gnarled. She wondered if he could even tell what she was feeling with a single look anymore.

  What was he thinking, when he told Carmen about JJ and the gun? Inside her heart, there's still a little girl who yearned for it to have just been her big brother looking out for her. But Alex knew better than to tell their mother if that his intention—to look out for Iris. Their mother was full of rage and love that the likes of them could not understand. To tell her something so tender, so volatile, was to hand an already splintery woman a knife that she should not ever know the delicate weight of.

  "...—I'm just saying, I don't understand why you don't at least try with Kiara!" JJ was saying. "She clearly likes you. Right, Iris?"

  Iris's features pinched. "Erm. I d'know. Maybe?"

  "Oh, c'mon!" he bellyached, throwing his head back against the headrest. "She so does. She's all like, oh, John B!"

  "Is that what she does?" John B taunted drolly.

  "She's sketchy about you diving, then she kissed you—"

  "She kissed me on the cheek! It's not like we were makin' out or something."

  JJ shook his head aggressively. "Low-hanging fruit, bro. Don't pretend like you don't notice. I see it in your eyes—you're like, 'I kinda like that,' and you start blushing n'shit."

  "I blush?" Routledge challenged.

  "Yeah."

  "Really?"

  "Yeah."

  "And we're just gonna ignore the fact that you and Irie aren't, and haven't been since, like, the third grade—one-hundred times worse?" he retorted, cutting him a dry look.

  Iris faltered. "Erm, hold up."

  "For the last time, bro," JJ interjected impatiently, "Iris and I are different."

  It did amuse her that JJ was always preemptively talking about the two of them like there was something there that no one else could really understand. She supposed there was. Still, it was a thorn in her side—all these little comments stab her; JJ used the ripe flesh of her love for him as a pin-cushion. He says these things, and then he stuck his tongue down the throat of somebody he barely knew.

  Admittedly, Iris was a bit sick of lingering in the marshy sweet-grass of the sunniest bits in JJ's mind, waiting for him to be mature enough to address why they were 'different.' It's not like she was in love with him or anything—but if there's an ache there in the both of them, she either wanted to sink her teeth into it or amputate it, before they're left with the same incurable bleed as her parents. Some days, she thinks they should just kiss and get it over with. That's what most friends do when they feel like this. Get it out of their systems. Maybe JJ thought differently. It seemed like the kind of thing they should probably sit down and talk about, but instead he had all these quick remarks on the tip of his tongue about the inevitability of them—he used the word 'preordained' the other day; told her he got it from Pope. Iris didn't want to even touch why it left such a bad taste in her mouth, at the thought of JJ talking about her with Pope.

  There's the saccharine skin of something maudlin and old rotting in the cavity of her big molar, and JJ called Kie low-hanging fruit—what did that make Iris?

  Her mother?

  Then, he was grabbing Big John's compass from the dashboard, and John B was trying to snatch it back—the two of them smacking each other's hands in a boyish squabble.

  "—M'just looking at it, bro," said JJ dryly. "I gotta admit, your father's compass in Scooter's boat, that's freaky."

  "Yeah, that's why we're going to talk to Ms. Lana: to figure this whole thing out," John B supplied.

  JJ hummed. "I'm should she would just love to talk to us. It's not like her husband just drowned or anything."

  "Always so negative, Maybank," Iris chided.

  "Just saying. If one of you died, and someone came knocking at my door, mouthing off about a compass, I'd probably shoot them in the leg."

  "That's because you're fucked in the head."

  The Grubbs' marshland shack was exactly how Iris imagined it. John B drove through the overgrown brambles of an unkempt driveway, all three of them catching the hand-painted sign on the brick wall surrounding the property—'Welcome to Tree Spirit,' it animatedly read, 'your Reiki Headquarters.' Iris had to laugh.

  They parked up in the shade of an alder, John B cranking open the back and ushering Iris out like she was a kid. She glanced over the sun-bleached grass, and the fading, vibrant paint smothering the shack ahead. Then, wryly, she looked at the boys.

  "You know what this house looks like?" John B mused.

  "Whoever lives here smokes too much weed," replied JJ drolly.

  Iris patted him on the back. "This is your future, my friend."

  "Ha, ha." He stuck his foot out, tripping her over. "Bitch."

  She delivered a kick to his calf. "Dick."

  "Shut up, both of you," hissed John B. He cocked his head toward the shack, tapped the shell of his ear, and harshly mouthed 'listen.'

  Iris's brows furrowed, but then she heard the unmistakable sound of fracturing ceramic—a plate being hurled against a wall, the smattering of shards against floorboards. A man's voice, rough and terrorising, followed by a woman's whimpering, hiccoughed through blubbered fear.

  "Yeah, no," said Iris, pacing back slowly, "I'm out. I'll wait in the Twinkie. Good luck—"

  John B yanked her back by a firm grip around her elbow. "Shush. Wait."

  "It's a little too soon, man," mumbled JJ, antsy, "maybe we should—"

  "Shut up, JJ."

  "Tell me where it is, or I'll fuck you up!"

  A woman's sob. Just as strangled as Lana's when she threw herself over Scooter's bloated, purpling corpse—only now fraught in terror. She gasped a frightened word or two through another wail, and her desperation's answered with more carnage. Furniture thrown, maybe. A chair kicked over. Iris wanted out.

  "I'll sink you in the fucking—"

  Lana screamed, all lung-rattling and anguished. There's more ravaging, and John B tore Iris closer to the house, shoving her flush against the wooden panels and slamming his hand forcibly to her mouth before she could swear at him.

  "I don't know!" Lana wailed wretchedly. "I swear it, I swear—"

  "Is it in this house?" another man's voice snarled viciously. "Is it somewhere else?"

  A slap pealed against the walls, the type that stings. Iris's eyes blown wide, they felt like they might pop out of the sockets. Exchanging a look with the boys, she murmured a soft 'fuck' against the sweaty palm John B's still got covering her mouth, and slumped bonelessly against the side of the shack.

  "Please," she blubbered, in despair, "please, I don't know—I don't—"

  "Do you still think we should stay?" seethed JJ, cutting a stern glare at John B, who hissed a shush in response.

  "The compass wasn't in the boat! Where is it, Lana?"

  "This fucking compass," swore Iris against John B's hand, all muffled and bitter.

  "I don't know! I don't know, I don't—"

  Something must've been thrown against the inside of the wall they were against, because a flurry of chipped plaster sprinkled from the open window down onto their hands as imperceptibly as snowdrift. It settled onto their heads in thick, white layers, and Iris could only imagine the nasty patches of dandruff it must look like she had.

  "Is that," JJ touched at the flakes, "paint?"

  "Yes, it's paint," John B seethed, smacking his hand down.

  "Let's get the hell outta here, man," one of the men sneered to the other.

  At the smattering of footsteps heading down steps, John B finally let go of Iris to start edging round the corner of the house.

  "We should just go," said JJ, voice thready with nerves, "this has got smuggler—"

  "Shut up," whispered John B.

  "Smuggler written all over it."

  "Can you see 'em?" Iris asked, not moving an inch from under the window.

  "Shit, yeah—go back, go back, go back."

  JJ's shoulder roughly hit hers as he pressed himself back against the wall, cursing at the throb in his tailbone from how hard he shoved himself to it. Iris, apprehensive, peered around at him out to the wharf. Two men with patchy, dark beards and the burly shoulders of lumberjacks were starting up the engine of an all too familiar boat, and her heart plummeted with the gracelessness of a flightless, dead bird.

  "Dude, those are the guys that shot at us," said JJ scathingly.

  "No, shit. They must've been looking for the compass in the Grady White," mumbled Iris. "I don't like this. We should just—"

  John B ignored the both of them. "Come on."

  They crept along the dense outskirts of the shack, batting away dishevelled branches and the slovenly undergrowth. Iris's hummingbird heart was pattering against her ribs harder than it had ever warbled before, and JJ's frantic muttering didn't help one bit. Neither did John B's stoicism as he inched through the front door of the house—it was splintered at the hinges, torn, and limp; like a broken wing. Glass shards scatter the floorboards, ceramic parings dust a stained rug, and the dismembered limbs of second-hand furniture were all over the ravaged living room. The stomach of this house looked the skin of the island.

  "Ms. Lana?" John B called out, craning his neck to-and-from. "Ms. Lana!"

  He threw himself towards the offshoot bathroom, and by the time Iris and JJ reach him, he's knelt at Lana Grubbs' trembling side, extending a hand out to her like she's a startled creature. Whimpers were getting caught in her sore throat, and her cheekbone's swollen with a rosy, nicked welt. Whoever hit her, hit her with a ringed, merciless backhand.

  "Shit," Iris muttered. She crouched, too, hands trembly in hesitation. "Ms. Lana, are you...—"

  "Dude, she's tweaking," said JJ, tapping Iris's shoulder.

  "Do you need a doctor?" John B asked the shaking woman. All she did was hiccough on a sob. "Let's call the Sheriff's Department—"

  "No, no, no—no cops, please," she rasped desperately, finally looking at them. Her eyes were wet with tears and wide in terror. It's like they were still here.

  JJ blinked. "Mhm, that's not good. C'mon, guys—let's just go."

  "You shouldn't be here," Lana whimpered, shaking her head wretchedly.

  "Yup," said JJ, letting his nails dig into Iris's shoulder, "that's enough for me. Let's go."

  "JJ, wait."

  "They were looking for something...But, I don't—I swear, I don't have—"

  John B unfurled the brass chain of his father's compass then, showing the roughened surface of it to Lana's askance eyes. "Does it have anything to do with this?"

  The woman's entire face fell. A bead of blood trickled from the scrape on her cheekbone, and she quivered backwards until the back of her skull hit the broken sink-basin behind her.

  "This is my father's," he told her, thready with grief and a longing plea, "and Scooter had it. Why?"

  Lana's chest wheezed. "Scooter didn't have it, okay? Don't tell anyone you have that!"

  "Why?"

  Shakily, Iris slowly got back to her feet, JJ's hand curling firm around her bicep.

  "They can't know!" Lana wept. "You've gotta get out of here!"

  John B's desperate now; intrigued, doglike, shaking with it all. He demands, all of this thrumming in him like red-hot blood, "What do you know about the compass?"

  "Go! Get out!"

  "John B, c'mon," Iris murmured to him softly, bending down to thread her hand with his, "c'mon, we gotta go. John B."

  JJ led her neurotically out of the house, and Iris kept a gentle hold on John B. She felt like he might slip between her fingers; he was all ghostlike as they step back into the sunlight. She thought, for one terrible moment, that he might empty his stomach into a decaying meadowsweet outside. It was then when she buried her hand into the back pocket of his shorts, snatched out the keys for the Twinkie, and made the executive decision to drive them back to the Chateau.

  He was catatonic the entire way, muttering all sorts of madness to himself through soft, doleful pants. JJ freaked out, of course. He was practically bouncing off the walls with hyper-activeness—more so than usual. It was a genuine surprise that Iris managed to maintain the focus she needed to keep them from careening off the road and into the estuary, or some margined shrubbery. At some point, she must've told JJ to text the others to meet them back at the Chateau, because Kiara's car was parked in the makeshift driveway, and she was already waiting on the porch with a twitchy Pope.

  "I'll let them explain," Iris chewed out, stalking right inside to grab a beer and her cigarettes.

  All sorts of on edged, Iris walked back out onto the porch a couple of minutes later with a lit cigarette dangling from her pursed lips and a blood-warm bottle of Corona beading condensation stickily down her bare wrist.

  "—and all we hear is just, Bam! Bam! Bam!" JJ was dramatising. "Knocking paint off the wall, G, from the inside! All right? And I'm just looking at them, like—wait, first off. Look at this shit."

  He barrelled over to where Pope and Kiara were sat, listening with equally disturbed expressions, and started to shake all the flakes of wall shavings out of his shaggy hair.

  "That's dandruff," said Kie distastefully, "disgusting."

  Pope swatted him away, all the debris landing like snowfall in his lap. "All right, thanks, JJ."

  "Look at all that. All right? That's paint," JJ told them solemnly. "At that point, I was just, like—I'm waiting for death."

  "Okay, that's excessive," Iris interjected, blowing out an exhale of smoke through the corner of her mouth.

  "Is it, sunshine? Is it really?"

  "Oh, okay, so—" Pope glanced between the two of them, "you saw the guys that shot at us, right?"

  "Yeah," JJ rasped.

  He massaged at his temples. "Did you get a good description of them? What did they look like?"

  "Yeah, anything," Kie supplied, tucking an awry tendril behind her ear, "anything's helpful."

  "Anything we can bring to a police report?"

  JJ floundered. "Burly."

  Pope stared at him. "Burly."

  "Yeah. You know, like—"

  "That's not very helpful," Kiara said bluntly.

  "Iris," Pope turned to her, expectant and doe-eyed, "anything better than—burly?"

  "I dunno. Dark hair. Scary. Tall."

  "You guys are great at this. Aren't you?"

  "Okay, well, like—the type of guy at my dad's garage!" JJ offered. "I mean, you guys know he made cargo hides for drug smugglers."

  "Yeah," Kie said impatiently, "yeah, we know—"

  "All right, so, I can tell you in full confidence, that these boys—these killers..." JJ went into the chest-pocket of his shirt, retrieving his Juul to take a solemn hit, "they're square groupers."

  Silence.

  All Iris could hear was grasshoppers chirping in the arrowheads, and the rooster's crowing.

  "They're square groupers," Pope deadpanned, burying the heels of his hands into his eyes, "like, narco square groupers? Pablo Escobar square groupers?"

  "Yeah, man."

  "You guys, not everything is a kingpin movie," Kie cut in.

  Iris stubbed out the filter of her cigarette on the porch's railing and flicked it into the pickerelweed bellow. "Felt like it, Kie."

  "What does this square grouper look like?" Pope challenged then. "Specifically."

  "You weren't there, bro—"

  "Well, you don't know what to look for!"

  "I wasn't taking little, mental Polaroids the entire time, man, I was under duress, okay?" said JJ desperately. He let out a shaky, rasped breath, and slung a heavy arm around Iris's shoulder, staring at both of their shoes gravely. "But, I can tell you—I can tell to you, by the way that Ms. Lana was screaming, that these guys are serious, serious hombres, man. It's a heavy vibe right now, okay? I'm not liking this very much."

  "Okay, but why would they want the compass?" demanded Kiara.

  Pope gestured at her in collusion. "It's a piece of shit. You couldn't pawn it off for five bucks if you wanted to—no offence, John B, I know it's in your family—"

  "Not cool, Pius," Iris whistled reproachfully. "That was his pops'."

  "I know that, I'm just saying—"

  "Well, maybe, don't?"

  "C'mon, Irie, you know as well as I do that that thing is—"

  "My dad." All heads turned to John B. He had that singleminded, crazed look in his eyes that Iris noticed he always got when he was about to spiral; when he's stuck in his own head, and caught up in all the seaweed tendrils that held his father softly as he drowned. "My dad's office. He always kept the office locked because he was worried about his competitors stealing his Royal Merchant research..."

  Steadfast, he brushed past the lot of them and into the Chateau. Iris and the others shared similar glances, stomachs heavy, before reaching the silent agreement to follow in after him.

  "...We used to laugh at him about it, like he was gonna find it. But now that he's gone, I've just kinda—" John B halted at the dust-gathered threshold of his father's lifelong work. "I just left it as he kept it."

  "Yeah, for when he gets back," Kie supplied optimistically.

  Iris sunk her elbow into her ribs, cutting her with a stern glare. Kie's shoulders raised helplessly, as Pope and JJ solemnly shook their heads.

  John B smiled at Kiara, all soft and thankful. "Yeah."

  The inside of Big John's office was pretty much how Iris figured the inside of his mind might've looked like. An unstable, obsessive exhibition of yellowing books on the Royal Merchant wreck; the bulletin board on the wall tacked with photocopies of old paintings, coordinates scrawled onto post-its, and newspaper clippings; the ashtray full of cigarette butts that looked like it had never been cleaned out, and a slant of light.

  Pope lingered in the doorway. "I've slept over here, like, 600 times and I've never seen this door opened."

  Kie hummed in agreement as JJ and Iris exchanged a quick, pained look. They had. Once, maybe twice—one of the nights where Big John's bad-temperament wasn't as erratic, thanks to a joint, or a crate of beer. He'd barked out his fond nickname for John B, "bird," and beckoned the other two in after them, then proceeded to spend the rest of the night warming their bellies with laughter and booze, telling them all about the Royal Merchant's lost treasure, all blown pupils and a madness that his boy couldn't put his finger on. Iris could. She'd seen that kind of mania before—in the eyes of her own parents. Their irises lost to their obsession, swallowing the colour, wine-dark and greedy.

  Big John got like that about treasure and history, getting off of the Cut. Iris thought a part of her dad longed to get back to it—or, at least, the  tear the tender flesh away until he reached bone, until he reached Carmen. She's all he wants, really.

  John B snatched a smaller cork board from atop of the drawers, setting it onto a tall pile of old books. "Here, look. This is the original owner, right here."

  He jabbed his finger at the first scrap of parchment.

  "Okay," Kie nodded, "Robert Q. Routledge, 1880 to 1920. There's the lucky compass, right there." She pointed at the grainy photograph of John B's ancestor, and the compass—shinier, then; more worth something—dangling from his pocket.

  "Actually, erm..." John B glimpsed around at them awkwardly, "he was shot after he bought it."

  Iris blinked. "Oh?"

  "Yeah, then, uh, the compass was shipped back to Henry—" he pointed at the next owner, a farmer of sorts, in a soiled apron at the doorway of a shack-like house, "He was killed in a crop-dusting accident when he had the compass. After he died, the compass was given to Stephen—Stephen had the compass with him when he died in Vietnam."

  "Let me guess," said JJ, droll, "he died in action, right?"

  John B's shoulder lifted gauchely. "Uh, sort of. Uh, actually, he was killed by a banana truck. In—in country."

  Iris met Pope's eye, mouthing, "Banana truck?"

  "Anyways, after that, Stephen passed the compass down to him—my dad."

  "Hm. Sounds like there's a reoccurring theme here," JJ lamented.

  Pope nodded. "Yeah, erm, you have a death compass."

  "No, I do not—"

  "You have a death compass!"

  "Seriously, dude, get rid of it!" chimed JJ. "It's cursed, and it's made its way back to you."

  "What if killed Scooter?" muttered Iris, blinking at her shoes. "Bee, your compass killed someone—"

  "You're freaking him out!" Kie shrilled in protest.

  John B sunk back into his father's desk chair, exacting all four of them with a dry glare. "Look, my dad used to talk about this compartment in here. Soldiers used to hide secret notes."

  They all pursed their lips as he unscrewed the top from the compass. His face fell in discontent when nothing fell out. Determinedly, he gave it another shake, and just when Iris was about to deliver a monologue about denial being the first stage, Kie bent down, pointing at the inside of the compass.

  "What's that?"

  Squinting, the hope returned to John B's eyes. "That wasn't there before! This is my dad's handwriting..."

  "How can you know that?" Pope challenged.

  "Because he does these weird Rs with the—" he turned it around, showcasing the engraving. Redfield. "See it?"

  JJ stepped closer. "Can I see it? Red—Rout...—no, I think that's an A...—"

  "Redfield," Kie cut in, "it says Redfield."

  "Right."

  Iris smiled weakly. "We really need to sort you out a dyslexia assessment, J."

  "I am not—"

  "You do." Kie looked at him very markedly when she said this, then returned her softening gaze to John B. "Okay, so, what's Redfield?"

  "Besides the most name in the county?" wisecracked Pope.

  "Okay, well, maybe—maybe it's a clue?" offered John B desperately. "Maybe it's a clue to where he's hiding."

  A thoughtless scoff left Pop. "A clue? C'mon, that's—" Kie shook her head at him, and he emptied his throat, "But, if it's a clue, maybe it's an anagram?"

  "Yes, perfect! Anagram. You need paper." Enthusiastic, John B slapped a sheet of paper down in front of Pope, and Iris absently handed him the ballpoint JJ stole. "Here you go?"

  "How can you concentrate with that thing crowing at you?" Pope mumbled irately, starting to scrawl down ideas.

  "JJ and Irie love the rooster," John B said distractedly.

  Kie frowned dejectedly. "I love the rooster."

  "I can't even hear it anymore," said Iris dryly, "you get used to it, Benedict."

  She and JJ lingered over both of Pope's shoulders as he penned down words that Iris was pretty sure did not exist. JJ stammered over each one, spiritlessly trying to make sense out of the gibberish.

  "What about—Ritalin?"

  "You need Ritalin," Iris retorted.

  Kie scratched at the nape of her neck. "Dreidel? Fiddler...—"

  Pope shook his head, impatient. "Let's stick with what's actually here, people. Defile. Does that, I don't know, mean anything to anyone?"

  "Unless Big John had better game than we all thought?" Iris offered.

  "I..." He blinked at her. "I seriously doubt that."

  "—Guys! Somebody's here." John B beckoned them all frantically over to the shuttered window. Iris's eyes swept over his shoulder to the driveway of the Chateau, just as two dark-haired men traipsed out from behind the Twinkie. She felt a hand steadily close around her throat. Sure, neither her nor the boys got a proper look at the square groupers earlier at Ms. Lana's, but the vague outline of brawny shoulders and cold-bloodedness was enough to go off. This was them.

  "Guys," Kie's voice trembled in panic, "guys, is that them?"

  Iris chewed on the inside of her cheek. "Shit."

  "Fuck," spat JJ, dragging his fingers through his hair, and miserably down his face.

  "This is suboptimal," declared Pope.

  "We're gonna die," muttered Iris, nodding. She turned, again, to her feet. "This is it. We're gonna die."

  Meanwhile, JJ's losing it. "John B, I told you—"

  John B charged at him. He's seizing a handful of JJ's shirt, flattening the palm of it against that hummingbird, startled heart of his, and pressing a finger to his mouth. "Listen, where's the gun?"

  "Gun? I, uh, I can't—"

  "Now, you don't have the gun, the one time we need the gun?" Kie panicked.

  "It was, erm—"

  "Think, JJ," interjected Iris desperately.

  He looked at her, nodding mutedly. "My backpack. It was in my—where's...—"

  "The porch!" said John B, shoving him toward the door.

  "The porch. Shit, yeah. The porch."

  JJ flung himself out of the door, and Iris didn't even think before pursuing him. The others yell her name, it all bled together. Her trainers squeaked against the floorboards as she skidded down the hallway after him, stumbling into the kitchen.

  A voice, snarled, brutal, the very same belonging to the brute who attacked Lana earlier, yelled then from the porch, "John Routledge, come on out!"

  "Shit," cursed JJ, almost slipping over himself right at the door. He turned, about to barrel right back to the office, until he saw Iris. Stood as a frightened deer in headlights in the kitchen, staring right over his shoulder at the door, paler, more scared, than he's ever saw her. "What the...—go back, idiot! C'mon, c'mon."

  He snatched her wrist roughly, enough to bruise. They were back in the office before Iris could get a lungful, and in a blur, she's shoved against the door, two hands slamming against her shoulders with a touch that's hard enough to reach bone. JJ's eyes stared back into her eyes, feral and mad. It's that look again. Of her parents, of Big John. Only a little more hysterical.

  "Are you stupid?" he demanded. "Like, seriously—m'asking you, for real, are you—"

  "JJ," John B seethed, "the gun. Where is it?"

  JJ looked over his shoulder, and his hold on Iris slackened. "They're on the front porch."

  "Routledge!" one of them bellowed, knocking over a piece of furniture in his pursuit. "Where you at, boy?"

  "Window. Window, guys—" Kie ushered them all over to the window, and the boys all scrambled to yank it open. Iris remained at the door, back flush against the mahogany. When the window didn't so much as budge, Kiara impatiently hissed, "What's happening? Why's it not—"

  "It's painted shut, all right?" JJ snapped.

  The sound of glass shattering had Iris burying her head with a hollow dip between her shoulders, chin almost touching her sternum. John B didn't have the money to replace windows. This was his home, and they were ruining it.

  After some rummaging, Kiara found a letter-opener, and slammed it into JJ's awaiting hand. He started working it on the sealant, tonguing his cheek in concentration.

  "Hey, check the back room!"

  "Don't do that," Iris whispered pathetically. Heavy footfall from the hallway suggested that just maybe they didn't listen. "Great."

  The first kick they deliver to the door splintered the wood. The second carved a hole in it. By the third, Pope was dashing over to tear Iris away, his hands falling over her as soft as snowdrift as he asked her what she was thinking, why she hadn't moved.

  JJ got the window open. The others were already sprinting across the overgrown lawn, and Pope legged Iris up out through the tight space, chasing after her over the starched grass. It scratched her ankles to run through so quickly, and sweat was gathering on the nape of her neck in smearing layers, sticking the hairs to the back of her throat. Kiara had waited for her at the foot of chicken-coop, and as soon as Iris reached her, she was curling a hot, sticky hand around her wrist and yanking her inside of it. John B and JJ were already crammed inside, panting. Her eyes swept over to JJ first—his palm was square against his heart and he couldn't breathe. All over again, he's a boy in a sweatshirt a few sizes too big at her mother's doorstep, and she's letting him in. He tells her that it's a bit like being eaten, this anxiety of his, but it's one of the few things that genuinely belong to him in the world—so maybe he should be grateful for it, he laughed. It's unsightly to see him like this; Iris wished she could reach him. But the rooster's cawing louder than it ever had and Kiara's holding her so tight that she might leave claw-marks.

  "Do something, Pope," JJ said feverishly, "shut him up."

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "Pet him, or talk to him, I don't know!" Kiara wept.

  "He's looking over here," John B hissed, peering through the gaps in the spruce-planks.

  JJ's throwing himself forward and his hands were around the rooster's neck. Next, Iris was ten. She was at the Chateau, playing football in the backyard with John B and JJ—it was more tamed then, less weeded and full of thickets. Big John had been gone for almost three days, without much of an explanation to his doe-eyed son. He returned with a cockerel, palm-sized, his fleshy comb & wattles trembling at the fresh air as John B stepped out of his pickup. A gift, he told his boy.

  The bone-crunch was sickening. The bird's limp in JJ's shaky hands.

  Kie choked a whimpering sob against the hand that wasn't leaving dents in Iris's flesh.

  "Ratter!" a gruff voice barked. "What the hell are you doin'? Let's go!"

  Only when the sound of the SUV's engine was far away enough for Iris to not hear it did she move. Her fingers untangle from Kie's, and John B quickly replaced her stead—smoothing his thumb over Kiara's knuckles with a weak smile. Iris knelt next to the dead rooster, hesitating. JJ stared at it stoically. Shaken, he was almost twitchy when he finally looked at her. There wasn't really any words.

  "You good?" she asked delicately.

  "M'good. M'alright." JJ slumped out of his crouch, his tailbone roughly hitting the floor of the coop. "M'okay."

  Pope, shuddering, turned to John B. "What now?"

  "We find Redfield."  

a/n: de nile is a river in egypt ur dad is DEAD!!! sry this chapter is soooo lameeeee btw. i hate action scenes - that whole home invasion thing was so tricky. but im experimenting with longer chaps (this one is almost 8k words, lol), so lemme know if u dig it or not.

also, i hope everyone who celebrates had a lovely, warm holiday season, and everyone who doesn't still had a great day. wishing u all the very best for the new year's to come - all the happiness in the world, and all that jazz.

love, dani x