Three Hybrid Brothers Locked Me in Their Tower, and the Man Who Sent Me There Is the Real Monster novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Tide Table

She tries the window and the signal lamp; Ansel is on the gallery first, and the only light that answers her signal is Cyrus's pie lantern on the dock.

I shut the door again without a word, and I locked it myself from the inside.

I did not sleep.

At five I heard boots on the stair, and a murmur that stopped outside my door and went away down the steps.

At six the outside lock turned and a tray was set on the floor.

Porridge, tea, a boiled egg.

A brass button lay beside the egg, a different one.

I picked it up.

I had been trained since I was eighteen to track what came in and what went out, and I assessed the Ledge the way I assessed the yard.

By the second day I knew what I had.

One window, set deep in a three-foot wall, with old thick glass and a drop of eighty feet to the rocks.

One door, with two locks, and one of them mine.

A bell on the wall that I never rang.

A staircase with three men on it.

And a signal lamp.

I found it on the gallery that ran around the tower under the lamp room, the third morning, when Magnus said I could walk the upper stair.

It was bolted to the rail, a big shuttered lamp with a brass hood and a lever.

I looked at the harbor across three miles of gray water.

I looked at the little white church steeple, and the dark line of the salvage yard on the harbor road.

I put my hand on the lever.

"It signals the ferry office," Ansel said, behind me.

I did not jump.

I'd heard the door.

"Three long means a boat is wanted.

"They answer from the dock."

I turned around.

He stood in the doorway to the gallery in a wool jumper with the tide tables under his arm.

"Why are you telling me?" I said.

"Because you'll try it anyway," he said.

"And I'd rather you knew what it does."

I looked at him.

He had hazel eyes, tired and gentle, and the glasses were pushed up into his hair.

I had expected a jailer, and I had gotten a clerk.

"What's a keeping for?" I asked.

He opened his mouth and closed it again.

"There's a high tide at four," Ansel said.

"It will cover the lower stair."

"That isn't an answer," I said.

"No," he said.

He came out onto the gallery.

He stood at the rail beside me, close enough that I felt the heat of him through the cold, and put the tide table down on the iron.

"It's what I'm allowed to give you," he said.

I looked at the column of figures.

I read it the way I read anything, from the top, and I could see at once that there was a mistake in it.

"This is wrong," I said.

"The four o'clock tide is listed as eleven feet."

"It's nine and a half."

"Is it?" he said, and he sounded delighted.

"How do you know?"

"The moon's a day past the quarter.

"I check the harbor every morning from the yard.

"I check everything."

He laughed, a short startled laugh, and picked up the pencil from his pocket.

"Show me."

I wrote the corrected figure in the margin.

His gloved hand closed around my wrist to steady the pencil against the wind.

It was the first time any of them had touched me.

I stood very still.

His thumb lay on the inside of my wrist, over the pulse.

I felt it go once, hard, against his skin.

"I'm sorry," he said.

He let go at once.

"I didn't ask."

"It's a wrist," I said.

"It's a wrist I wasn't entitled to."

He stepped back and held both hands where I could see them, and his face had gone pink to the ears.

I didn't know what to do with a man who apologized for that.

I turned to the lever and pulled it three times, long.

The shutters opened and shut.

A beam went out across the water, white and slow.

Three long.

I waited.

I could see the ferry office, a gray square at the end of the pier, with its lamp burning.

I could see the church.

I could see the Hemenway house on the hill with its lit porch, and the town dock below it, dark.

A light answered.

One light, from the town dock, flashing once.

A man's lantern, held up and swung in a slow arc.

I knew it.

Everyone in Port Ravensmere knew that lantern, which he carried out to the Ledge landing every Sunday with a pie tin.

Cyrus Hemenway had answered me himself.

I watched it swing, steady and kind.

I waited for the ferry.

I waited for any boat.

The lantern went out, and the dock went dark, and nothing came across the water.

"He won't send one," Ansel said quietly.

"No boat goes out from the harbor to the Ledge in the keeping, on his order.

"It's in the charter."

I took my hand off the lever.

I was cold to the bone and my wrist still felt the shape of his glove.

"You could have said that before I pulled it," I said.

"Yes," Ansel said.

"I should have."

He stood there, tall and miserable, in the wind.

"Come in," he said.

"There's tea."

I went in.

I'd learned something I could use, which was that the town would not help me.

I did not yet know what the light on the dock was for.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend