The shore was bustling with activity.

  It was going to take hours to get any sort of shelter built and I doubted that there would be enough for everyone by nightfall, but the guards, with the help of the children, had collected enough sticks to start a few fires around our ‘camp’ that would serve to ward off the cool night air as well as help the guards see if there was any nighttime threats.

  As a Touched, I had a sort of night-vision. Once it became poorly lit, my vision would overlay objects in shades of purple, allowing me to see just as well in the dark as I did during the day, just with the absence of color. Fyga had told me that she did the same thing, but in blue, while Eve was able to see normally regardless of the lighting.

  “What happened back there?” Val had directed the four of us over to the far edge of the camp away from the rest of the people.

  AHHH!!!

  Fyga chuckled, then covered her mouth as Theo tried to grab a fish in a nearby pool and fell in. We couldn’t trust him to be off on his own, so we needed him close, but not so close that he could listen in on our conversation.

  “There were too many of them.” I looked at the two older women. “The mayor held the line as long as he could, then we held them back, but…” I searched their faces for any indication that I was right. “Everyone would have died if you hadn’t got everyone on the ice bridge and those dogs hadn’t shown up.”

  “Dogs?” The Bokor wrinkled her brow.

  “Big enough for Ziggy to ride as a horse and they breathed fire.” Eve was about to burst with excitement. “They melted Zombies.” She squealed. “MEL-TED.”

  “I’ve never heard of something like that before.” Fyga looked concerned. “And new things are usually a bad sign.”

  “Did either of you make the ice bridge?” I knew the answer by the look on their faces before they shook their heads.

  “Then, I think it’s safe to assume that the magic as well as the dogs—.“

  “Doggans.” Eve smirked.

  “What?” Fyga raised an eyebrow.

  “Doggans. Like dragons since they breathed fire, but they’re dogs. So Doggans.” The blonde puffed out her chest.

  “You’re precious.” Val squeezed the other woman.

  I sighed. “Okay, fine. The ice bridge…” I waited to see if she was going to rename that too. “And Doggans…”

  Eve giggled. She was acting like she’d had way too much sugar. Probably the comedown from adrenaline from the fight we’d just been in. While the Bokor were more composed, I’d seen humans do a lot of weird things after a fight. Not that there had been much for them to do with Master Bran around. My old Master was a force of death when it came to Zombies and Touched. I’d never seen him struggle even once the whole time I’d been with him. But while Eve might be Touched, she had been Human less than a month ago, so she would still have a lot of her Human quirks, if they ever went away. Without the conditioning, there was a good chance that she’d remain the way she had been as long as she didn’t go insane from the presence of the dead Zombie minds.

  “Were because of the pointy-eared man that gave me Eve’s sword.” I could see the disbelief in Val and Eve’s eyes. Honestly, I wouldn’t have believed it either, but there was someone around who had magic on the scale of an Elder Bokor and he was the only one who I’d seen that it could be.

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  “Almost golden skin, but it’s not tanned? Eyes completely black and wearing strange clothes?” Fyga began describing our benefactor.

  “That’s him! You know who he is?” I turned to the blue-eyed woman.

  “He said his name is Stilas. He works for the Master. He was the one who gave me most of my orders.” The Touched assassin bit her lip as she thought. “He had kind of a broody, everyone-hates-me vibe. But I wouldn’t doubt that he could’ve made that bridge. The whole reason that the Master uses him is because his magic is so strong he can do spatial magic.”

  I had a feeling he worked for the Master. He had probably been at ***The town*** during our fight to make sure we killed the other Touched. I wasn’t sure exactly what the allegiance between the Master and the Touched were, but it was clear that their goals weren’t the same; otherwise she would have never turned Eve into something that was so lethal to Zombies.

  “So he’s watching over us.” There was no explanation that I could see why he would have intervened only once we were about to die. It was like he needed us alive for something. I wasn’t sure what that was, but it made me feel both uneasy and secure.

  “I guess.” Fyga shrugged. “He told me that if I ever said anything about him to anyone that he’d incinerate me in my sleep.” She shuddered. “But if he’s showing himself to you all, then he must not care if you know.”

  “That’s the problem.” I thought about the way the wall had exploded. “If he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s here, over a dozen people saw the Doggans even if we convince them that the two of you made the bridge.” I swallowed as I thought about the Touched that had overwhelmed me. “The Touched that took over Port Reggo also knows about them. I know people won’t believe that there is some pointy-eared magician with black eyes popping around, but…” I shook my head. “The Bokor and the Touched can’t have someone that strong running around. Especially if he’s not aligned with either of them.”

  “We can talk about what we’re going to do about him later.” Val cleared her throat. “What we need to do right now is figure out if this island is safe for the refugees and find a way off it and back to the mainland.”

  “Should we?” I held up my hands when all three women glared at me. “I mean take them off the island if it’s safe. The only Zombies I can feel are that way.” I pointed to the west where Port Reggo burned. “If there aren’t any Zombies here and they can survive, then wouldn’t they be safer here, than back on the mainland?” I thought about my first partner, Max. He had been from an island community until it had been destroyed. He’d never told me what had happened, before he died. I found myself wishing that I would have talked to him more and learned about his past instead of ignoring him and treating him like a burden. I still felt responsible for his death.

  “Island communities never last.” Fyga shook her head. “No one knows why, but the moment one starts to take off… POOF!” She made an exploding gesture with her hands.

  That was definitely something to look into. Zombies couldn’t swim, so logically, islands should be the safest place, but I wasn’t going to argue because I was missing a lot of information.

  “Which means it’s even more important that we figure out why this island is considered cursed. Captain Snallygast swore that there was more to this island than it seemed and Fyga, you said there was a base on the other side of the island?’ I recounted what I’d heard since we got to Port Reggo.

  “A storehouse with emergency supplies.” The black-haired woman nodded. “There are caches all over the place, since Touched still need to eat and drink, even though the Zombies don’t. Since it can be hard to find food and clean water with all that undeath, having supply caches can save you from having risk exposure going into a city.”

  “You know where it is?” Eve began to bounce on the rock she was sitting on.

  Fyga blushed. “I only know that they exist. They’re apparently a secret that only the humans who maintain them and the leadership know about. When you get sent into an area, you’ll get told where to find stuff, but I was never a part of that scene. I was always contracted to work with the person they gave that information to.”

  “But there is one here.”

  Fyga nodded.

  “Then we need to try to find it. Especially if the Touched knows where it’s at.” That was a dark thought. If the Touched that had just chased us out of the city knew that there was a cache of resources on this island, then it was only a matter of time before they followed us.

  Val seemed to pick up on that line of thinking as well. “Why don’t the two of you…” She nodded at Fyga and myself. “Take him.” She motioned at Theo. “And go look for the supplies while Eve and I stay here and secure the camp.”

  “Why do I have to take him?” Fyga and I would be able to cover a lot more ground without the complaining deadweight that we’d have to drag around.

  “Because…” Val smirked. “You’re the one who agreed not to kill him.”

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