The Eclipsed Life of Luna Mischa novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: Midsummer

I read it twice, sitting in Jago's chair, while the still hummed through the floor.

Then I read everything else.

By two in the morning I'd sorted the desk into eleven piles.

By four I'd found the kettle, and his biscuit tin, and the reason the pack was broke.

At six the light came up grey over the harbour, and Jago came in with two mugs.

He stopped in the doorway.

"Where's my desk gone?"

"It's under there. It was always under there."

He looked at the piles.

Then at the biscuit tin, which was empty.

"Those were for the week."

"I'll buy you more. Sit down."

He sat on an upturned crate, because I had his chair, and handed me a mug.

I opened the cream folder on my knee.

"Who found you this loan?"

"Nobody found it. He found us." Jago rubbed his beard. "Six years back, after the boats went, the bank wouldn't touch us. A man turns up in a tweed jacket. Says he lends to packs the banks look down on. Says he admires a pack that makes something."

"That sounds like him."

"You know him?"

"I've met him."

He watched my face. He didn't push.

"Six percent," he said. "That's what he said. Six percent, steady, no rush."

"It is six percent." I turned the page. "And then there's this."

I put my finger on a line in small print.

"A quarterly arrangement fee. And this one, a management fee. And this, a fee for late filing, which he charges whether you file late or not."

"He said those were nothing."

"Add them up. You're paying thirty-eight percent."

Jago went very still.

"And here," I said.

I turned to the last but one page and read it aloud.

"The full balance falls due on the twenty-first of June. If it is not paid in full on that day, the lender takes title to the cellars, the quay and the harbour, as security."

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