Staked by Kim Catanzarite

Author:Kim Catanzarite [Catanzarite, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-02T16:00:00+00:00

A few minutes in, the rain came down in buckets. Gentille stayed the course. “Too late to go back,” she said. “We have the boat now. We can’t risk returning it. We’ll have to hide it in one of the coves and spend the night in the bus.”

Gregorie did not want to postpone their trip to the mainland. He did not want to spend the night with Paul and Liam, who would now have ample time to talk Gentille out of their plan to leave. Even if leaving was what she wanted, they were her friends and he was new to them. They would be protective.

To top it off, a sudden strong dislike for boats came over him and fear of the water, as if he’d just remembered that he couldn’t swim—but he could swim, and this was a good boat, so that didn’t make sense.

Gentille lowered their speed as growing waves began to lift and drop them, lift and drop them. Gregorie’s knuckles became white from gripping the edges of the seat that held him. Something familiar grew out of this feeling: a memory. His stomach became queasy, and soon the fear of drowning submerged him.

The wind swooped down from the sky, and the waves grew in size. Gregorie worried for his life even though he no longer breathed and no longer ate and might even have been half dead at that point. He needed to get back to Maman, and he couldn’t do that if he became lost at sea.

What happened to me? he wondered. How have I ended up on this strange island?

He was supposed to travel to the West Indies. He needed to retrieve the plant that would cure Maman. He had booked passage, he knew that much. Something must have occurred on that voyage. Something bad.

Was it a storm like this one? A storm on the high seas?

He felt the answer in his gut, and a horrible, sick wave of terror threatened to break upon his heart.

There was a storm. He was a passenger on Le Chanceux, a tall ship headed to the West Indies.

As the rain came down and Gentille struggled to stay the course, Gregorie stared out at the roiling, foaming waves . . . and remembered.

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