CHAPTER ELEVEN ✹
Good Bones.

  "𝕴 don't like this."

  "You don't like anything, sunshine."

  "No—well, yeah—but I really don't like this. It's all off. We should've heard something by now."

  In the backyard of JJ's house, it's almost as if nothing bad had ever happened there. Pope swung by after delivering the last round of groceries to Figure Eight, and by that time, Luke started to stir. JJ and Iris crept out back to meet Pope, where the lemongrass was knee-length and the summer-scorched lawn was strewn with debilitated furniture. Out there, the sky's ineffable. It's not all so brutish in the outdoors, where Iris could breathe without her lungs wadding with the scent of sticky black-tar and the swell of boy-blood. Iris had kicked back on a stained sunlounger; the three of them sat under a panorama of marmalade afterglow—the day leaving with not a word from John B or Kie.

  "Listen," Pope weighed in diplomatically, sat on a beer-cooler with his toned arms splayed over his lap, "they're probably just laying low somewhere from the cops."

  "For two hours?" challenged Iris. Then, her head shook, teeth worrying at a hangnail, "Nah, this is bad. I bet John B's picking out his orange jumpsuit right now. Orange is one of his worst colours—"

  JJ wagged a finger. "Don't do my boy like that, Irie."

  "It's true! It washes him out, and—"

  "I meant," he interjected, lopsidedly smirking at her, "he isn't in the joint."

  Iris felt herself go ruddy-cheeked. "Oh."

  "Speaking of joints."

  Twin groans of chagrin had Iris and Pope both throwing their heads back. Iris's rolled longer to massage at the knots in her neck, until she threw it back against the brittle excuse of a headrest at the scuff of the sunlounger. The smell of weed filtered in her nostrils, telling her that JJ had just plucked a bud out from somewhere—the chest pocket of his button-up, the back pocket of his threadbare shorts; she wasn't sure. She listened to the familiar rustling of roach and rolling-papers, and Pope's ensuing monologue about JJ's lungs.

  It had been Iris's intention to act apathetic towards it, but there was an ache in the bottom of her stomach from not having a cigarette since mid-morning. She tried to pretend like it didn't affect her, but the hunger was very much there. Ever since she started smoking, Iris made half-ditched attempts at romanticising it—blackening her lungs with tar and grudges wasn't beautiful, though, or rare, or sweet. It's killing her, slowly. This whole rotten or eaten thing was a lie, Iris would kill herself before the island had the chance. She's diseased, like that.

  Her eye peeked open, just as JJ's tongue ran along the length of the paper. His fingers, deft, sunkissed, the rough knots of them glinting with cheap silver, pinched the roach in place as he licked the sticky strip of the rizla and sealed the joint. It wasn't in Iris's nature to confront uncomfortable feelings, so whatever's in her stomach watching JJ skin-up was something that will belong there—decaying with the rest of her unwanted appetites. She was so sure that he'd taste of the sun, and kind of envied the rolling paper. But those weren't thoughts Iris Mariano was meant to be thinking, so she watched him deeply as he put the blunt to his mouth, jaw hollowing at the first drag, and then made a grabby-hand.

  "Gimme." At his dry look, Iris smiled at him prettily, "Please?"

  Then, he was rolling his eyes and pushing off the beam he was up against. JJ's hands kept to the waistband of his loose-fitting shorts, readjusting them at his hips, and Iris sat up. She stretched, the hemline of her top grazing up her midriff—traumatising Pope all kinds as the sinews in her back drew taut to reach up and pinch the joint right from JJ's mouth. He blew the smoke of his last drag right in her face, and Iris got back at him by taking twos. The tendrils snaked through the thin membranes of her lungs. It tasted earthy and like the skunk hash JJ swiped from his cousin, Ricky.

  You see, there's nothing tender or romantic about it at all. It's just blackening.

  Iris was sure she could romanticise burying her fingers into every last fresh and old wound JJ had more than smoking.

  So, she had another hit.

  "All right, eager baby—hand it back." JJ smacked her as he took it back, and watched with a twitch in his lips as Iris melted back onto the sunlounger he put together with his bare hands on a sweltering day last August. Her hair splayed out around her, all pretty and uneven. Her collarbone's peeking out through the askew neckline of her baby-tee, slick with a shine of sweat. There's a certain light Iris got in her eyes whenever she smoked weed that made JJ not care one bit that she never bothered to learn rolling herself.

  He kind of liked that he could tell Pope was thinking the exact same thing—a debauchery of thoughts that he had learned to abstain, but JJ didn't have the shame. He liked being led to the slaughter, so he kept his eyes on Iris like she was a cool, tall glass of a water and he was a man in a draught.

  Their pretty Iris.

  All three of them were about as blissful as they could be when the unmistakable sound of the Twinkie's horn blared out.

  "Iris," JJ drawls, "did you leave the keys in the Twink again?"

  "I did not—"

  "She so did," John B called out. They all turned to him. The splinter of relief at seeing him was short-lived—he looked even worse than before; swollen-eyed (and not just from the contusion left by Topper's wrath), windswept hair, the purplish flush of a frightened, desperate boy again. Still, he's beckoning them all in with a twitchy smirk and looked alive enough. Warmth trickled back. He wasn't in orange.

  JJ went to adjust the waistline of his shorts again, the joint dangling absently from his pursed lips. "Let's ride."

  "We really need to get you a belt," muttered Iris, shaking her head fondly at the back of him as they all stalked over to the Twinkie.

  "This better be good, John B," Pope sung, cranking open the slide-door for him and Iris to clamber into the bank as JJ threw himself into the passenger's side.

  Iris knelt behind John B's chair, poking at his uninjured cheek. "Hey. Where've you been? You good, Bee?"

  John B's teeth affectionately nip at the tip of her finger before he started to reverse out of the narrow slip road. "Long story. Shoupe got my ass. And, uh, I ran into the square groupers again. 'Got electrocuted. Erm, what else—oh, yeah! I lost my job."

  Iris almost knocked her skull open on Pope's bare kneecap. "What?"

  "Yeah, erm—so. Electric fence, Peterkin took the compass, and you were right all along, Iris." It's weird, hearing one of them say that. Especially John B, with all his pride and brotherly instinct to prove her wrong at times. The weirdest bit, it didn't even make Iris feel good, to be right—not about this. "Sarah can't be trusted. I should've listened to you. She told your old man; about the scuba gear, about me poaching. He let me go."

  "Bee..." It left her in the softest of whispers. For some reason, Iris felt guilty. She hadn't snitched. She didn't fire a starving boy. Still, Iris felt at fault. "I'm so sorry—listen, I'll talk to him. Right now, if you wanna. I'll tell him that he has to give you the job back—"

  "Irie—"

  "God, she's—since we were kids, she's always been like this. She has no idea what it's like—none of it. To need things. To work." Iris read once that, sometimes, women give birth to their pain instead of children, and her father's first wife was such a perfect example of that. Mrs Cameron and her brood of golden-haired, mean, monstrous children. Iris's sister. Her blood. Her skin. She knew nothing of pain. Only sweetened hands and bubble-wrap. "I'm so sorry, Bee, really. She's a bitch. Always has been. Always will be."

  "Totally unrelated, but," JJ had that smarmy tone he had whenever he was about to say something he probably shouldn't, "if you and Sarah ever, ya know, have it out—can I be there, please? Y'know, for support reasons. I'll hold your hoops, all that—"

  Iris sunk the heel of her converse into the back of JJ's seat with a nasty, deep jab. It must've hit a kidney, because he moaned in pain and swung around to hit her back, but she scrambled backwards until her shoulders hit square into Pope's knees; twin stabs in themselves. But, he slung his arms around her shoulders and let her laze her head against the inside of his thigh, shorts all scratchy against her skin as JJ narrowed his eyes at them. Her mouth curled in return, cruel and bone-deep. The smirk's violent enough for him to tear himself back around and pretend to care about the road, and the trees, and anything other than Iris or Pope.

  "It's cool, Irie," reassured John B easily, "really. Greener pastures, all of that."

  Pope's fingers tap against Iris's clavicle in a nervous tick. "As for the electrocution...—?"

  "Oh, yeah. That was square groupers, after the compass again."

  "Which Peterkin now has. Right?"

  "Well, I'm not gonna say I'm glad to be rid of the thing," mumbled JJ, flicking the ashen stub of his blunt out the window.

  "She still won't say why she's after it, but yeah—the compass is in enemy territory. But, hey, que sera, sera," said John B optimistically. "We've got a brand new lead."

  Iris craned her neck back, furrowing her brows up at Pope, who only shrugged lamely and offered the same troubled scowl. "And that is?"

  "Redfield." At the explosion of groans, John B hastily let go of the steering-wheel to surrender his hands, "Hey, hey—no, I get it. The lighthouse, it...It was a half-shot, at best. But, this. Guys. Olivia Redfield. My great-grandmother. Redfield. I mean, c'mon. That's gotta mean something, right?"

  "Do I have to give you the full statistic for just how many people in this county have that surname, John B?" Pope taunted drolly. "Because I will, if it'll help you stop—"

  "It means something! You'll see," he insisted, dogged and mirrorbright eyes. "We just need to pick up Kie, and we'll..."

  He trailed off, and Iris couldn't see his expression from behind, but she could only imagine the pensive, forlorn little frown that had taken over his squirmy excitement. All of a sudden, John B's stiff and quiet. At the mention of Kie.

  "And we'll be back on track," he concluded prudently, as if now, he's not so sure.

  The Twinkie pulled up outside of the Wreck, the Carrera's restaurant, just as the sky was touched by the bluish bleed of dusk. John B elected Pope for the duty of convincing Kie to tag along, remaining very sketchy about why she wouldn't be all for it in the first place. Iris knew Kiara—she'd never turn down the taste of a thrill, unless something had unsettled her. The brittleness in Iris's ribs was nothing short of gruesome as she watched Pope shoulder into the Wreck, gingerly himself, now he had the forefront thought of a less-than-pleased Kiara Carrera under his skin.

  He was barely in there for three minutes before he was pushing back through the side-door, lifting his shoulders in a defeated shrug and resting his weight on the white parapets.

  "She said she's not coming!"

  "Why not?" JJ demanded first. Cross, he rolled his head to John B, swatting his bicep. "What'd you do to her, John B?"

  "Shit." Routledge bowed himself over the wheel, pressing his temple the sweaty knots of his knuckles; grease-stained and bloody. "Hang on. I'll deal with it."

  Iris squatted in the middle of the front seats, a reproachful presence at both of their shoulders, and flicked John B's head just as he cranked the door open. "Hey, listen to me this time—whatever you've done, just apologise. Even if it's not your fault—which I doubt—just, say sorry. This is Kie. Yeah?"

  "Yeah." John B rested his chin on his shoulder, staring at Iris thoughtfully. His butterfly eyelashes swept against his cheek with the gentle nod. "I know. Give me a sec."

  Pope's swarming back into Iris's air just as John B hopped out of the Twinkie, and his t-shirt clung with the hedonistic smell of whatever today's special was in the Twinkie. Iris's stomach yearned for it, and she edged closer, sniffing at the fabric. He smelt like pan-seared scallops, lobster bisque, and the faint kiss of musky cologne. Iris groaned.

  "Are you—quit sniffing me, Iris!" Pope batted her away.

  "You smell like food," Iris bellyached, lolling her head on his shoulder, "I'm so hungry."

  Pope was very rigid for a moment, then his fingertips unerringly found the fading bruises left there by JJ's that morning. It's so tenderly at first, and Pope trembled at her rabbit-feet pulse under the skin. He's so weird, she thought fondly. He's so wonderful, and Pope, and terrified to touch people—but Iris wanted him to melt into her.

  "Idiot," he mumbled to her affectionately, "did JJ not make you food?"

  "Dude," said JJ, insulted; he turned around entirely at the hip to throw an arm over the back of his chair and glare at the pair on the bench, "if you think my house has the facilities to feed her—"

  "You had to have something in, dude!"

  "Yeah, yeah, ok, Pope. Sure. Hey, Iris—what would you have wanted more: Benzos, or Ambien?"

  Iris's frown deepened. "Benzos sound pretty nice...—"

  "You weren't meant to—"

  "Is anyone else, like, totally bugging over John B right now, by the way?" Pope swept in, earnest-eyed and keen to avoid bickering. "Like, his dead great-grandmother—erm, I've never heard of Olivia Redfield. JJ, have you? Iris?"

  "Maybe he needs to get this all out of his system," she suggested tiredly, lifting a weak, airy hand, "once and for all, you know? Maybe he needs this—whatever this is...wild-fucking-goose-chase—to come to terms with everything. Maybe—"

  "Maybe he's lost it," JJ chirped, toothy-grin and only half-kidding.

  Iris scowled contentiously. "Not helpful."

  "Oh, when am I ever?"

  "He's got that right," muttered Pope inattentively, absentminded as he spoke, and as he tentatively turned Iris's face palm-up, fingertip tracing the lines and pinkish cicatrixes.

  JJ squinted boyishly. "What was that, Pope?"

  "Nothing." Innocent.

  "Oh, look who we have!" Iris beamed when Kie's head bobbed into the passenger window, startling the scowl clean off JJ's face. Kiara stuck her tongue at him sarcastically, flipping the bird. "I didn't think John B was gonna pull it off."

  "Nah, we're cool," said Kiara sweetly. "Ain't that right, John B?"

  John B was bracing himself back into the driver's seat, and sent a quick, hollow-cheeked smile to Iris. "Yep. We're cool."

  Translation: friend-zone.

  Iris wasn't really sure how to feel about it.

  "JJ," Kie pinched the tender skin of his bicep, "beat it. I shotgun."

  "I'm literally sat here, right now—"

  "JJ, just..." John B delicately held the bridge of his nose, weary, "please?"

  "God—fuckin' second-class citizen—fucking joke—sick of this shit—"

  Five minutes later, he was sprawled over Pope and Iris like a fat cat with a tummy full of warm milk, golden curls fanning out in all sorts of askance ways as Pope troublesomely untangled JJ's laces to knot them properly.

  The sun's gone now, and they were cruising over the highway with the sky bleeding a continuous haemorrhage of ink-blue and gunmetal tendrils. John B was telling them all about what he and Kiara had learned from the keeper at the lighthouse—that his calculations placed the lost treasure of the Royal Merchant at about ten minutes off-coast, thanks to the eye of the storm that ravaged it being on the island's left. The shoresman had been helpful at first—neurotic, Kie insisted, and almost as obsessive about the shipwreck as Big John—and all too obliging to tell them about his theories and histories. Until John B took out that godforsaken compass, then he spooked. Apparently, it was then when the lighthouse keeper frantically called the cops, mouthing off about kids on drugs trespassing the grounds and asking about madness.    

  Iris had to admit, it was weird—but a testament of life, evidence for Big John's survival? Not so sure. Hell, the carving in the compass could still just be one huge coincidence. They all looked pretty headless right now, chasing a pipe dream of a man, long-lost to the sea—even before the water logged his lungs, Big John's belonged to the ocean and to greed.

  "...You mind if I just relax on this one?" JJ droned, sealing the paper of a second blunt, rather enjoying having Iris rake her nails against his scalp and Pope fix his laces. "It's been a long day, and a lot of weird stuff's gone down—I'm just gonna lay low. Oh, did you wanna hit of this?"

  Dangling from his fingers, JJ offered out the joint to Pope, who briefly lifted his hand from his re-lacing to decline. "I keep the signal clear," he rejected wryly.

  "Dude, okay," he sighed, "you understand that your problem is that you don't get creative? If you got creative, then—"

  "Look, I...—I know I was wrong about the lighthouse, all right?" rambled John B, feverish. "And pretty much wrong about everything else going on," he added with a contrite wince, "but, I was right about one thing. Okay? My dad is trying to tell me something."

  A dull pang started to balloon behind Iris's eyes. "I'll have some of that."

  She nabbed the joint out of JJ's fingers, and swiped the Zippo off his breastbone, limp and silver-glinting. Christening it, Iris drew in the first puff.

  "Iris," said John B, trembly, pleading, "I know what you're thinking—"

  "I bet."

  "This is a good thing. Hell, if I find my dad, I don't even need that job on My Druthers. I know that you're worrying about—well, everything. And I love you for it. Yeah?" He breathed out feebly. The air's insecure and twinged by a wobbly laugh. "But, I feel it in my bones, Irie. This is real. This is my pops."

  Iris's mouth lingered around the roach, the aftertaste was minty and rotten. Her tastebuds prickled with it—a thousand, tiny nerve-endings misfiring and come to grief.

  Then, she's wetting her dried lips, absently returning the blunt to JJ, and trying to smile through the shadows around them enough for John B to catch it in the rearview.

  "I know, Bee. That's why we're here. Like, if we didn't love you right back, would we be grave-robbing with you?"

  "It's not—all right, we're not grave-robbing—"

  "Oh, okay. What would you call robbing a grave?"

  "Irie..."

  Kildare Cemetery's like something plucked from a gothic horror. The gnarled, entwined limbs of wormwoods snake out towards the miraculous to fashion a decaying canopy overhead—this grotesque foliage, looming balefully over them as their torchlights sputter knives of white-hot light down warped pathways and on the dirty faces of angel effigies. Iris had never necessarily been a big death fan—nor a graveyard fan, for that matter. Sure, it's another one of them malignant things that might be good for her devil-may-care attitude to romanticise, so everything else unholy and lethal tastes like sugar and honey. But she could never really get behind it.

  It's a monstrous place, and it held them in a pair of jaws. Iris wished she just stayed in the Twinkie.

  "This place is scary," Kie protested, flashlight hitting the wicked face of a devastating angel. "John B, what are we even doing here?"

  "Okay, so—you know how you're trying to remember a song and you can't remember who sings it?" he asked rabidly.

  Kiara shared a sidelong look with Iris. "Yeah..."

  "So, Redfield. This whole time I thought it was a place, right? But it's not a place," John B insisted, raising the gas-lamp he nabbed from the surf shack at the Chateau to the words etched onto a wily, overgrown mausoleum, "it's a person."

  JJ whistled. "Voi-effing-lá."

  Iris's mouth twitched. Worse, JJ caught it. The cocky grin in her periphery throws her all off kilter.

  "See, my great-great-grandmother. Olivia Redfield," lamented John B. "That was her maiden name."

  A thicket's grown over the stone like a callous, or second skin. It was so eerie-looking that it wasn't just the thought of making JJ pleased with himself that unnerved Iris. Everything about this was covering her skin in a hive-like itch, and she wanted to scratch it all off with her nails until she found cartilage or capillary.

  They've always been uncivilised, but disturbing the dead?

  "Help me with the door. C'mon," charged John B earnestly, cocking his head for the boys. Iris swept over, readily taking the gas-lamp from him as he and Pope started to pursue the weathered slab. "All right, on three—"

  Pope grunted, careening his entire bodyweight into it. "Are you pushing?"

  "M'pushing."

  "Push harder."

  JJ wormed his way between them, tonguing his cheek. "C'mon, I got it."

  "This door is, like, 700 pounds—it's not gonna budge," Pope asserted, voice straining haggardly.

  "We didn't come this far to get this far, all right? We got this," said JJ vehemently.

  "I knew this was a bad idea," Kie murmured to Iris, bumping their hips. "I told him, but he wouldn't listen, and now—"

  The savage hiss of a snake had JJ staggering backwards, the entire weight of his body falling onto Iris's feet as he stomped all over them in his recoil.

  "Ow, fuck, JJ—get off, asshole!" Iris pushed him off, the bones of her feet feeling as though they had been trod into thousands of little pieces. The snake slithered by her ankle, glutinous and fork-tongued as it went, and sprung over it, lurching right back into JJ. "Snakes. I hate snakes. Get it away—"

  "That's a moccasin, all right, sunshine!" yelled JJ, nails biting the inside of her wrist. "Ye olde Dr. Cottonmouth. Death in tall grass. Woof, woof," he barked at the copperhead, knees-bent as he scarpered after it, until Pope backhanded the scruff of his neck and the snake was eaten by the night.

  "You're gonna wake the freaking dead, man," Pope chastised, looking at him wide-eyed and bewildered.

  "They're afraid of dogs, everyone knows that, man," said JJ defensively. Rasping, he turned back to John B, who was still sizing up the crypt, undiscouraged. "Hey, hold up—if there's one of 'em, there's dozens. Look, watch. Woof, woof—"

  Iris smacked his chest. "JJ, what the fuck?"

  "You're scaring me, dude!" whimpered Kie, cradling her bare arms.

  He kept on barking.

  "JJ," seethed John B testily, "stop barking at the snakes!"

  "Look, John...—" Pope evoked.

  "I'm just making things clear," sung JJ.

  Pope put the tips of his fingers to JJ's ribs, shoving him. "Shut up. John B, look."

  "It's a snake," JJ whispered, Bambi-eyed. He blinked owlishly at Iris, "A snake."

  "Shut up."

  "We're not gonna get in there, all right? It's not budging," Pope admonished. "We should probably just go."

  Iris, shivering against the delicate chill of the wind, let her head bob furiously in agreement. "Don't have to tell me twice. Let's bounce."

  "I can get through," Kie mumbled faintly.

  "What?" said John B, so quietly that Iris barely heard it. He stared at her like that again, all tender-hearted and lachrymose—like she's this sprightly, sweetening breath of fresh air and his lungs were starving for her. "No, no, no," he started to blither when he finally realised what she meant. "You think you're gonna fit through the hole? Like, that hole?"

  "Look, this is about your dad. And, honestly, I really don't believe it, but you deserve to know the truth," Kie told him, as heartfelt and earnest as ever. "I'll do it."

  "Hey, wait a sec—wait." Iris's wrist snapped around Kiara's willowy wristbone. They all turned to her, pinching brows and questioning frowns. "We can't just...I mean, Kie, you can't go in alone."

  "Are you saying—"

  "Absolutely not," Pope spurned. "This is ridiculous. Neither of you are crawling through that gap."

  "What, you don't think we'll fit?" taunted Iris dryly.

  "That is not what I'm saying, Iris, and you—"

  An exasperated snarl curled at Kie's mouth. "Look, are we doing this, or not?"

  "We're doing it," said Iris decisively, eyes raking over the girl-sized fissure in the gravestone.

  It's like Kiara said, this was for John B.

  "We'll get those," chimed JJ, unravelling the vines and smothering ivy. The boys scrambled to help, wrenching at the roots to clear the path.

  "Are you sure about this? Like, I know that you hate snakes—and the dark, and small spaces, and—"

  "Thanks for the confidence, Kie," said Iris, teeth chattering, "really getting me going there. 'Wanna mention how much I'm scared of ghosts, too?"

  "Well, I wasn't gonna." Then, the severity in her expression was splitting and Kiara granted Iris a pretty, teasing smile, jabbing her with an elbow and a warm laugh. "Hey, you've got me."

  Iris blinked solemnly at the backs of their boys, all three still wrestling with tendrils and creepers. "Thank God."

  "All right, ladies, I've seen this in the movies several times—J's got you." As if he was about to perform a wall-squat, JJ wriggled himself until his back was flush against the crypt and crouched his bowed legs into right-angle from the worn stone. He cupped his hands, creating a makeshift footwell in his lap, and beckoned them over with the laidback jut of his jaw, his smile dimpled and self-assured. "Ready, Kie?"

  She stared phlegmatically over his head. "Remind me what we're looking for?"

  "You'll know when you see it," John B responded balefully.

  "Great," Iris breathed. "Real, yep—real helpful."

  "Hold my flashlight," charged Kie, slamming the torch into John B's awaiting hand.

  "Okay, Kie—so, you put your hands there. Yep. Foot...—All right, on three—Okay, never mind. Just forget about three."

  The soft footfall on the inside of the mausoleum, and a breezy sigh of relief, was Kiara's only proof of life as she disappeared into the crevice.

  "Iris?" she called out.

  "M'coming, Kie." Jittery, Iris walked up to JJ next, and the smirk he gave her was enough for her to want to crawl into that gap and never come out. Inverted, Iris lifted her leg; JJ held her first foot steady.

  His thumb absently stroked over the seashell charms on her anklet, and at her hesitation, his head tilted innocently. "You good?"

  "Amazing."

  Bracing, Iris white-knuckled the jagged opening and used JJ's hands to leg her up. Her knee scraped against the rough stone as she contorted herself almost embryonically to fit through the narrow rupture, and she swore she felt a bead of blood dribble down the length of her dirtied shin. Her converse hit the gravel with a dim thud, and Kiara's hands were quick to reach for hers, their fingers twining in desperation for touch.

  Around them, there was nothing but blackness, like they were in the middle of a dilated pupil. Iris couldn't even make out Kie's face, but she felt the bite of the girl's rings against her palms and the fan of spearmint breath tickling the baby-hairs at her parting. It's grounding enough to not have a total meltdown.

  "A flashlight, please?" Kie exclaimed for one of the boys.

  "Right. Yeah, here." It was Pope's voice that replied, and his hand that must've slipped the torch in for them.

  Kie caught it agilely, angling the slant of artificial light around the tomb. It didn't do much for clarity. More vines snaked from clefts in stone here, and cobwebs collected with black flies and filth in tall corners. Iris couldn't make anything out—nothing of note, anyway. The crunch of leaves underfoot was all she could really hear, apart from Kiara's gentle breaths and the boys rustling outside.

  "This is so fucked," Iris whispered.

  Finally, John B called out to them both, "You two alive? You got, like—heartbeats and everything?"

  "So far," derided Kie.

  "How's Iris? Pissing her pants yet?" taunted JJ crassly.

  "Bite me!"

  "Not before the cottonmouths do, sunshine. Woof, woof."

  "Idiot," slighted Kie, rolling her eyes. "We're gonna need more light in here!"

  "Yep. I gotcha." John B's hand wormed through the crack, extending out the gas-lamp until the new burst of white swelled through the vault. "Better? D'you—did that—"

  Kie suddenly pinched Iris's wrist, and she yelped at the sting. "Shit, sorry—"

  "That hurt, Kie."

  "I know, sorry—but look."

  "Did you find something?" JJ demanded excitedly. "Gold?"

  "Holy shit," said Iris, voice trembling in awe.

  There was a second crack in the tomb laid inside, not as girl-sized, but enough to fit a parcel. And that was exactly the outline caught by Kie's flickering torchlight. The girls exchanged a collusive look, ignoring the demands and questions coming from their friends outside. Kiara nodded her head for Iris to go for it, and she was honestly too amazed to care about the threat of snakebites or the gnarled hand of a ghost. She sunk her hand into the cavity, elbow-deep, and her fingers grazed the sharp corner of an envelope. Adrenaline spiked at her heart like a needle-prick or a fever, and she snatched it, tearing it out like an organ extraction.

  Kie crowded into her space again, their feet and shoulders knocking as she craned the torch over the FedEx parcel. Scrawled on the label in black Sharpie were the words, "For Bird." Unmistakably, as Iris had came to learn in the last few days—from the brutal penmanship smothered all over the office and the carving in the compass—in Big John's handwriting.

  "Bee," said Iris timidly, "you're gonna wanna see this."

  She tucked the parcel through the opening. John B seized it all too readily.

  "That's not gold," Pope observed disgruntledly.

  John B had the same thing to say as Iris—only, more marvelling and sentimental. "Holy shit."

  Kie absconded the crypt first. Pope was right there to help Iris through next, both of his hands grasping at hers. He crouched the slightest bit, his fingers ghosting around the sensitive grazes on her kneecaps. Gingerly dusting off the residue of grit and smeared blood with the heedful pad of his fingertips, he tutted at her for being so careless and not telling them about the tiny cuts.

  "It's fine, Pope," swore Iris, touched by his concern, "it barely hurts."

  "You sure? It looks like it stings, man." He's still doubled, tender as he used his nails to tweeze away parings of stone. "What if it gets infected?"

  Iris lifted her shoulder, grinning at him lopsidedly. "Then, you'll take care of me."

  "Or," said JJ, butting in, "he'll have to amputate."

  "Dude," Pope reprimanded softly, shaking his head.

  "Just saying, bro." Haughty, JJ took a lofty hit from his Juul, and was about to drone something similarly patronising and doltish when a violent stroke of light almost blinded him. "Fuck. Code red, code red—square groupers."

  Pope straightened back up, almost butting Iris right in the head in his jolt. "Shit, where?"

  "There! Quick, shit."

  Iris barely got a glance at the headlights splitting through the trees in twin distorts before Pope and JJ were hauling her away with enough brutishness to tear her bones from the sockets. The five of them hastened the keen corner of Olivia Redfield's headstone, madly switching off torchlights and shushing each other.

  Swearing under his breath, John B tucked his gas-lamp under his shirt, mimicking the look of a pregnant belly, alive with some kind of weird, firefly-mutant-baby.. Iris stared at him outrageously, and he raised his shoulders in return, helpless and mouthing indignantly, "Well, what else do you want me to do?"

  "D'you think it's them?" hissed Pope.

  JJ peered around the corner. "Yup—homie's gotta gun."

  "Fuck this," gritted out Kie, fracturing off from them in a quick sprint.

  "Kie, don't leave me!" Iris yelped, scurrying after her friend.

  With that, they were all on the move.

  It was one of those singularly exhilarating and terrifying moments where your heart is in your throat and lungs are in a knot somewhere in the basement of your turned-belly, so there's nothing left in your ribs at all but the stabbing thrill of summery youth. Nettles scraped at Iris's calves as she ran, and she definitely, inadvertently defiled a handful of graves in her pursuit of Kiara, but she'd have to be bull-headed to say that she didn't find it fun, sometimes. The was a deer-hearted language that only kids like them could ever really translate, after all. The blood's in her mouth, on her tongue, loud against her ear-drums. It would be wasted on anybody else

  And JJ's hands were on her waist, helping her up the iron-wrought gate of the graveyard, then Kie's on the other side of it, ready to catch her. Iris's senses were overwhelmed in madness, but Kiara's hands were cradling her cheeks sweetly, shrill peals of laughter bubbling from her as the boys all struggled their way over the gate next.

  "Guys, wait, wait—" Pope's panicky voice halted Iris from chasing after John B to the Twinkie. She looked up, hiccoughing in a thrilled startle to see the hemline of his shorts caught on one of the sawtooth stakes. "I'm stuck!"

  Iris barked out an ugly, snort-sounding laugh, hands slapping over her mouth.

  "Iris, it's not funny!"

  "Pope," Kie giggled, yanking at the khaki material, "c'mon!"

  "Hold still, Pope, I got you," said JJ impulsively. Iris was still laughing when she turned back to him, expecting enough but a gun in his hands. The laughter got trapped in her throat, and JJ eyeballed Pope with his tongue jabbed into the inside of his cheek for precision. "Pope," he petitioned, "don't move, okay?"

  "JJ, the fuck?" Iris demanded.

  "Are you insane?" John B squawked, launching over to yank JJ's arms down to his sides.

  A faint ripping sound and the blur of a fleeing boy brushing past her shoulders was Iris's only clue that Kie had somehow managed to wrench Pope free from his predicament. Amazed, she looked owlishly at him as he scarpered into the back of the Twinkie, his lower-half covered in nothing but a greying pair of Calvin Klein's and his sheepish hands.

  She swayed a little. "Erm..."

  "Iris, get in!" John B yelled at her, somehow already in the driver's seat—everyone waiting on her to hop in.

  "Shit. Yeah. Erm, my bad." She tumbled headfirst into the Twinkie, and John B took off before JJ could even slam the door shut behind her. Tyres screeching, gravel crunching, and the headlights of the square-groupers fading into dust. Disorientated, Iris looked around at them all and trembled with maddening laughter. "What the fuck just happened?"

  "What did I say?" hollered John B in raptures. "I told you—none of you believed me, but I said—my dad's trying to talk to me! And he did it! He fucking did it!"

  Kie, a sobering presence at his side, settled a warm hand on his arm. "I'm happy for you, John B."

  "Nice Klein's, Pope," JJ grinned crookedly.

  Pope groaned, his head rolling until it hit the back of John B's seat. "Leave me alone, man."

  "No, I mean it," he said, wolfish, "they're lovely! Iris thinks so. Ain't that right, sunshine?"

  He sunk his elbow meanly into Iris's ribcage.

  "Fucking...—go away, JJ!"

  He shook with boyish giggles. "See? Loves 'em, Pope."

  Iris's eyes darkened in a childlike scowl, arms furling over her chest in tantrum. Pope met her gaze, humiliated and remorseful as he slanted a quick, apologetic smile at her; a weak grin of a thing, briefly granting her a look at his pearly teeth and endearing, wounded pride. Iris melts at the sight. Because, of course she did. Her arms slackened until they fell loosely in her splayed lap, a smile tugging determinedly at her lips until she felt her own teeth bare. A disbelieving laugh rolled easily from his tongue as Pope tore his eyes from off her, raking them to the fleeting darkness and bleeding trees outside the rain-spotted windows.

  Then, the quiet intimacy of her moment with Pope unravelled like ribbons, and JJ's breath fanned against the side of her neck—sinews bared to him in an alarmed pull as she tried to escape the warmth of him, the touch of his lips frightening against the cartilage of her ear. He's grinning and Iris could feel it.

  "I can see right through you, sunshine," he told her gently.

  "Whatever." She shuddered, blindly reaching a hand back to prod his jaw. "You're imagining things."

  "Am I? See, I think I saw it pretty loud and clear—"

  Iris insolently plugged her ears with two fingers. "La, la, la."

  Even through the muffle of her sulking, she could hear JJ's belly-deep laughter behind her. Worse, she could feel it. The warmth of him, flush against her back. He's always so infectious, in that manner.

  All Iris could think about when they got back to the Chateau was the unfathomable hunger in her stomach. JJ seemed to be likeminded, ploughing his way through bare cupboards and the broken fridge until he snatched a stale loaf of bread from the countertop. Iris's stomach turned as she spied a colony of mould growing right on the crust, cancerously reaching even the middle of the slice.

  She's pretty sure that killed her appetite right away, but JJ was obstinate. He took out a butter knife and started to lather a coating of blighted marmalade onto the rotten bread unflinchingly.

  "J, you can't," Iris objected, nauseous.

  "Seriously, JJ," Pope supplied, "that bread had mould on it three days ago."

  JJ glazed over their concern indifferently. "I'll just pull off the bad parts. Plus, mould's good for you—it's just a natural organism. Iris, want a round? You're hungry, ain't you?"

  She pulled a face. "I'm good. Thanks, though."

  "Suit yourself."

  "Good call," Pope told her with a solemn pat on the head.

  She smiled mournfully, the emptiness still greedy, and slunk over to John B. He was bracing himself at the tiny dining table, golden and bare and entirely vulnerable in the sputtering light provided by the vanilla candlestick Kie had just jammed into an empty bottle of Pinot Grigio. He raked his trepidatious gaze right over his friends' eager faces, then tore the bandaid clean off—rather, the seal of the envelope.

  "Bleugh!" JJ spat the mouthful of decomposing bread into his hand, tossing it into the pedal bin.

  Iris bristled. "You're going to give yourself food poisoning."

  "I'm gonna keel over from malnourishment."

  "Big word," Pope praised.

  "That's not as funny as you think it is, Pope."

  "Mm. Neither are you."

  "Can you guys just—" Kiara glared at them strictly, "please? For once? Before I get Iris to put you on timeout."

  JJ scoffed in insult. "The fuck? Timeout. Iris ain't—"

  "Drop it, man," said Pope, irked.

  "Holy shit." John B flattened his palms along the expanse of a nautical map, ironing out all the creases as he traced the fine lines of scribbled arrows and coordinates.

  Pope lightly tapped a marked spot just off the irregular coast at the Point. "X marks the spot."

  "There's something else in here," Routledge mumbled, skirting his hand's way through the package. He emptied it into his palm: a small, black device.

  JJ leaned in, curious. "What is that?"

  "It's a tape recorder," snarked Kie drolly, "dumbass."

  Sneering, JJ mimicked her with a pitchy voice until Iris cut him with a sharp look.

  "Dear Bird."

  The scratchy recording breathed life back into an invisible force of a man, and it's like Big John Routledge had returned home. As if he shouldered his burly way through the old, careworn door to his home, kicked off his dirty, heavy boots at the welcome-mat, and skulked his way into the kitchen. He always had the kind of presence that filled an entire room—formidable, fatherly, and fallen. But, he's here now, almost. Gruff-sounding and loving; in his own way.

  Iris could diagnose the torture in John B's chest by name, like calls to like. He's trying to translate it himself, she could tell—the inward pinch of his brows, hurt and fragile in a way only a son or daughter could be. His tail tucked between his legs as his father's words exact against the sore-spot in his chest that had been punctured and raw ever since he left. Even now, Big John's grubby hands managed to find it: prying, unstitching, making his son a blunt little instrument through nothing but frequencies from a tape-recorder and a map.

  "I hate to say, "I told you so," but...I told you so... And you doubted your old man. I suspect at this moment, you're filled with guilt and self-loathing over our last fight, but don't kill yourself just yet, kid. I didn't expect to find the Merchant either."

  A clatter travelled along the passage of the recording. Some rustling, some wordless ministration.

  Buried in Iris's gritted teeth was only spite.

  "You were probably right to call me out—I wasn't exactly Father of the Decade." Big John snorted mirthlessly, "What can I say, kid? I could smell the barn. And, hopefully, we're listening to this in our brand new sugar-shack down in Costa Rica, living off passive investments and pulling on permits. If not, and you find this for less than optimal reasons, well—that's what the map is for. There she is," he murmured devotedly, and they could all so vividly see his thumb moving over that marked 'X,' "the wreck of the Merchant. If something happens to me, finish what I started. Go for the gold, kid. I love you, Bird, even if I didn't always act like it...I'll see you on the other side."

  And, with a bitter lament and a static crackle, the tape cut off.

  Big John's dead again.

  Swaying almost drunkenly, John B stood up from his chair. Whimpering, he swept away Iris's reluctant hand with a pained look and staggered over to a beam for support. He slumped against it, boneless and drowning in the far-away stupor of a lost boy, all alone in the world.

  "Holy shit," muttered JJ, "he did it...—Big John, he actually freaking did it—"

  "Can you...Please—" Kie beseeched, hands in prayer.

  JJ's tongue tangled on a fast apology, but Kiara sidestepped him.

  She enveloped herself around John B like a warm blanket, cradling his trembling shoulder and perching her chin to the crook of his neck. It's the sort of moment where: of course love exists, because their friends do—because John B was weak with grief and legless under the weight of his father's altar-hand, but Kie was holding him like a fragile bird and Iris was tender with pity. That's love, right?

  "Let's..." Iris puffed out a breath of stagnant air, flicking a lock of hair out her eyes, "...We should go outside—get some fresh air."

  "She's right, John B," Kie spoke with the tender-heartedness of a mother comforting her unhappy child. Her hand fondly stroked over the tense tendons in his back, easing out knots and trying to emulate some warmth back into the cold shell of him. "C'mon, let's go."

  Chewing on her lip, Kie led John B outside. Mournful and uncharacteristically silent, Pope and JJ flanked them, shoulders touching like soldiers as they ambled through the screen-door and out to the porch. Life kissed Iris's lungs again, and only once they were all gone did she traipse her way to the spare bedroom, snatching her Vogues from where she left them on the nightstand. Her hand moved to the mass of JJ's Zippo in the pocket of her shorts in the same reflex of a tongue returning to a zone of rot—ceremonious and doleful, just making sure it was still there.

  Her friends were out on the dock. Kie's plucking the untuned strings of a hand-me-down ukulele, and it should've been a dissonant sound, but there wasn't anything unpleasant about it at all. It had the same pacifying effect on Iris's warm-blood as the cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth as she heaved herself up onto the parapet of the marina. Ash dwindled from the dog-end onto her bare lap, charring the wispy sun-bleached hairs that she never bothered shaving. They're kind of in this in-between moment in time where it's hard to believe that anything else exists other than them—the infallibility and arrogance of youth, maybe. Or the selfish agony you feel in grief, that nobody else could possibly understand the feelings that you're experiencing. They're singular and yours, and John B felt like he might pitch off into the black water of his loneliness, in the marshy outskirts of a home that's now only his in name—but, at least he had friends that would follow right in after him.

  "I thought you said that we needed fresh air," teased Pope, stretching his leg out from where he was perched on the adjoining beam—a wise, old bird in his eyrie—until the scuffed toes of his trainers knocked familiarly against Iris's.

  "Pope, my heart, this is the freshest bit of air I've had all day." A testament, Iris blew out a wisp of menthol, baring her teeth impishly around it.

  His eyes rolled up to the twinkling stars, the solar-polar lightbulbs strung along the balustrades of the Chateau's dock softening out the contours of his jaw; try as he might to act reproving of Iris's smoking habits, but Pope was grinning through the tongue in his cheek. Thoughtful, she stole a glance at JJ, wondering if he could see right through Pope with the transparency he did with her. It's fascinating how constant love is—how pursuing, and holy, and irreverent. It fell over Iris right now like the mulish cascade of a broken faucet.

  It's a shame that she sometimes felt like this rough-tongued, soulless girl who was not worth loving back.

  "How much was it again?" JJ asked; the question of the hour.

  An emerald-plumaged loon, beached in the flowering rush of the morasses, called into the night.

  "400 hundred mil," said Pope measuredly.

  Iris whistled, taking a sobering drag. "G Game, baby."

  "All right, before Sunshine over here gets a hold of herself—'cause we all know where her genes come from—let's talk the split," said JJ diplomatically.

  "Kie, push him into the water."

  Kiara sighed dreamily. "If only."

  "Now, before we say "evenly,"" he interjected, "may I remind you that I am the only one that can properly defend us from those groupers who were after us." On cue, he demonstrated his favourite toy of the week—the gun that had, thus far, caused them nothing but trouble and defended them from nobody but Topper Thornton. "Protection, it's not cheap, okay? So, before Iris goes hiring Ward Cameron's best lawyers to leach off my good, samaritan service—"

  "You haven't trained," Pope deadpanned, "you've done zero training. I mean, at all."

  "YouTube, bro! That's at least a five percent bump right there."

  "You haven't—"

  "Any objections?" JJ clicked his tongue. "Didn't think so."

  "I mean," weighed in Iris, "I have a few."

  "Bet you do, princess."

  Her eyes narrowed sullenly. "I think it should be equal. I'm a socialist."

  "OK. Commie."

  "That's—wow."

  "Don't think I didn't hear you and Pope's nerdy little conversation early about Russian spies. I see you for what you are, Iris Mariano."

  "A socialist."

  "A KGB insider."

  Radiantly, Kie cut a blade through the bickering to beam at the boy rolling his eyes on the sidelines. "Okay. What are you gonna do with your 80 mil, Pope?"

  "Pay for college in advance," he answered off the bat. Their attentive, clever, beautiful-boy Pope. So conscientious, so good. "And, also—textbooks. Those are expensive."

  "God, Pope," said Iris, feigning a shivery swoon, "you sure know how to get a girl going."

  "What about you, Kie?" JJ switched hastily.

  Pope, a little rattled from Iris's tease, clung to the topic change gladly. "Yeah, what does a socialist do when she's rich?"

  Her laugh was honeyed and decisive. She had already thought about this. More money in the bank than the other four put together, but it's right there on her tongue—this unaffordable dream of a sweet-natured girl who's lived with her head in clouds of marijuana smoke ever since she got a taste for a life that's not as suffocating as the tartan, pleated skirts kook girls wear back at the Academy. Iris couldn't begrudge her for it. She couldn't, because it's Kie and she loved her. It left this rotten film on her teeth, to think about the rich having wily dreams like pogues do, but it's a visceral discomfort put there by her own maladjusted wounds. That's not on Kie, she decided years ago. There's a whole other world of imbalances inside of Iris Mariano that had nothing to do with the sugared fantasies of lost rich girls.

  "I just wanna make a double album," her friend expressed whimsically. "About OBX, the pogues—you know, the way Catch a Fire is about Kingston. Record it at Marley Studio, Peter Tosh producing."

  Shaking his head fondly, Pope weighed in with the incredibly sagacious observation of, "But, Peter Tosh is—"

  "Peter Tosh is dead, Pope, yeah. I know. The spirit of Peter Tosh will never die!" Kie eulogised, lifting her beer in toast.

  "Actually, I know what I'll do." JJ got their attentions. He's got that sharp-tongued mischief that could unsettle the most levelheaded of people, and the sparkle in his eyes put the fear of God into Iris in a way that turned her stomach. "I'm gonna get a big ass house on Figure Eight and go full kook."

  "You're gonna go full kook?" challenged Pope, incredulous.

  "Yup," he asserted. "Gonna get a marble statue of myself, and then I'm gonna get a koi pond—put a bunch of those fish just right...—" Smirking, he looked up then, at Iris. To Iris. And it's not really about marble statues anymore or ornamental carp. It's as if she opened suns in his heart, the way JJ's expression cracked down and rays split through it—like golden-lacquered kintsugi. "Iris is there, too."

  That punctured a dimple into her left cheek, deflating and ballooning, all at once.

  "Oh, am I now?"

  "Yeah," JJ said confidently. "We get a place right across from the Tannyhill—like fucking Gatsby. We'll have the best parties this island has ever seen, and Ward'll look at the green light every day. He won't ever sleep peacefully, 'cause we'll be keeping him up—with music, and drinking, and—fucking pogue life in kook world, sunshine. He'll hate us. But we'll be so damn rich, he wouldn't be able to do a thing."

  "Sounds like a dream, J," Iris lied smoothly.

  With 80 mil, she wasn't sticking around here. Kildare would see the back of her and then nothing of Iris Mariano ever again. She'd salt the marshy earth behind her, never turning her eyes unto to Tannyhill. Nothing in her, not even her rage, cared enough to haunt Ward Cameron for the rest of his troubled life—her mother had that job fairly locked and nailed. Carmen's love can breed contempt. Iris wanted out.

  Still, it's nice to think about. A life twined so dependently with JJ Maybank's that their twin-sized marble statues would glare over the sprawling, bloodstained estate of her father until the debaucheries caught up with her. She'd be all black-tar and bird-bones by then, and JJ might have to bury a doll-like, twenty-something corpse in the overbristling thorn-brushes of their excessive backyard ten years or so from now. But it would be a premature-death-worth-suffering if it meant that her skin and bones dirtied the same earth that her father was so proud of owning. He'd never be rid of her, that way. She'd fertilise the same soil where Rose planted the exotic flowers imported from tropical islands; her roots would intermingle with the trees Rafe would climb in his boyhood—and maybe, just maybe, Sarah would look out the tall windows of her palace, and the very architecture of all she had ever known would be forever ruined by the memory of her half-sister.

  OK.

  Maybe a bit of Iris cared to haunt.

  But, isn't that in the nature of every girl? In each of their skeletons—wholly beautiful, sacredly young—to want to be a ghost?

  "What are you gonna do, JB?" Pope brought John B off the threads and back into the fold.

  Their grieving friend was nursing the wistful, catatonic of a son who might've rather been left alone to his thoughts right now, but the twitchy smirk of a pogue who knew exactly what he wanted.

  "To going full kook."

  And they're all on their feet, raising aluminium cans in a toast. Iris joined in by stubbing out the butt of her dead cigarette on the condensation beading down the side of JJ's beer, and her heart felt the tiniest bit lighter. Millionaires, she thought—it was a nice enough thought.

  A ghost in the realm her father had made for his better children, with the holy blood and his name. An even better thought.

  The rest of the world. Her friends there with her. Bingo.

  But none of that's real. Not yet. In real life, in the existence of a rough-tongued, soulless girl, undeserving of love, it's the living who really haunt. Iris would have to settle on that, for now.