Guild of Tokens, Chapter 32

Strange tidings

Interlude: Gilbert discovers the aftermath of Beatrice’s kiss with Doug.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Interlude

Illustration: Tom Parker

The cold water splashed up from the river as the boat crested a wave, and I staggered backward into the helm to avoid its path. 

“Hey!” said Beatrice, who was driving said boat. “Just sit down in the back and stay out of the way, OK?”

“Sorry,” I said, walking gingerly down the stairs to a small couch at the stern. “Was just trying to see how far away we were.”

It was not yet 5 on a Sunday morning in March and the East River was quiet, no other boats in sight.

“Another 20 minutes. I'm trying to go slow enough to not attract attention but fast enough that we don't look like a bunch of idiots who rented a boat and don't know what they're doing. Also I'd like to get back before Garrett realized I never came home last night.”

“Got it. But, umm, do we know what we're doing?”

“I do,” said Beatrice. “The one benefit of being married to a jackass whose parents summered in Newport. Everything revolved around boats. Although I've never driven a pure motorboat before, but the principles seem to be the same.”

“How comforting,” I mumbled.

“What?” shouted Beatrice as she gradually increased the speed of the boat.

“Nothing, just wondering if she’ll still be there.”

“She will. The Guild had no use for her alive so why would they have use for her now?”

“I guess,” I said, trying not to think about Frankie and her tattoo.

That tattoo, which on its surface was just a series of digits, ended up holding so many secrets and causing so much suffering.

It had led me to a door in Long Island City, a bust of Alexander Hamilton, the remains of the Polo Grounds, a Dutch millstone, the Met, and finally, back to that door, which was really a gateway to the lighthouse where we were now headed.

“Still,” I continued. “The lighthouse did burn down. They’re not just going to forget about it.” 

“Stop stressing about it,” said Beatrice. “Besides, I did some digging. The North Shore towns have been squabbling for weeks now. Everyone loved that stupid building when it was the historic Minneford Lighthouse, but now that it’s a pile of rubble, suddenly no one wants to take responsibility for cleaning up the debris.”

“Oh, that makes me feel a little better,” I said. “But the sooner we get Frankie somewhere safe, the sooner we can find a cure.”

Her disappearance had been all over the local news and blogs for weeks, and her friends had plastered social media with “Have you seen this woman?” posts. Of course, there was nothing linking the two of us to Frankie, so I was confident that the police weren’t going to show up at my door one night. But it was only a matter of time before someone did actually come to the tiny island and clear out the remains. And when they did, they would find an incredibly lifelike statue of Francesca “Frankie” Lewis and everything would hit the fan.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Beatrice.

“OK fine,” I said, with a tinge of annoyance in my voice. As the days had passed, the old Beatrice was beginning to reassert herself, the role reversal that occurred after I had saved her life slowly fading. I wanted to think of us as equals now, but I was beginning to suspect that Beatrice resented the fact that she was now in my debt.

The first rays of the morning sun crept up over the horizon as our goal finally came into view: Minneford Island and the ruins of its eponymous lighthouse. 

Beatrice slowed the boat to a crawl as we approached before cutting the engine altogether and walking to the bow, where I soon joined her.

“Hmm,” said Beatrice. “There’s no dock.”

“Should there be?” I asked. “It’s not like the lighthouse was being used.”

“No, but there must have been one at some point. Very strange. Anyway, we’ll just need to be careful disembarking. Don’t want to fall on those slippery rocks, now do we?”

Her comment sounded like a veiled threat, and I considered whether her plan all along was to pretend to be grateful for me saving her life and then lure me out here so she could chuck me overboard. But I pushed those thoughts aside as the product of a night spent sleeping on a boat moored in the East River.

Beatrice walked back to the helm and started the boat up again and I grabbed onto the lines to avoid falling into the water, as if confirming my suspicions.

“Sorry!” she called. “Still getting the hang of the boat.”

I shimmied my way back from the front and retook my seat in the stern as Beatrice inched us up alongside the island before finally stopping the boat a few feet from the rocky shore. The entire atoll was no larger than a tennis court and where the once proud lighthouse had once stood now only a pile of burnt debris remained. And somewhere, underneath it all, was Frankie.

The gangplank barely bridged the gap between the boat and the moss-covered rocks that lined the outer edge of the island, and I scrambled up to the edge of the former lighthouse on my hands. 

The aftermath of our last visit here was evident. Blackened beams lay scattered about and pieces of glass from what must have been the lantern room made sifting through the debris treacherous. But there was work to be done, so I reached into my pocket to pull out a strength buff. I set my watch and choked down the wretched taste and waited for that familiar surge of power. 

The first beam I hurled into the water like a javelin. The second one I broke in two and then in two again. I felt shards of glass scrape against my hands and arms as I worked, but I didn’t care. Until the buff wore off, I was a demigoddess, and the cuts and bruises of mortal women were far below my concern. Whether Beatrice ended up helping me at all, I wasn’t sure, but when the seconds finally ticked down to zero, there was only one small pile of refuse left. 

I felt the strength leave my body and I collapsed onto the ground. Blood covered my shirt, hands, and fingers, and it took all of my will to reach my hand into my pocket to pull out a different buff, this one maroon. I closed my eyes, even that small task taking most of my remaining strength, and began fumbling with the plastic wrapping.

“Let me help you with that at least,” said Beatrice. I opened my eyes and she was crouched down next to me, no worse for wear, and I unclenched my fist to offer her the vitality buff. She freed the buff from the plastic and put it back in my hand, which she lifted up to my mouth.

A strange sense of nostalgia flared up within me, as if I was a 10-year old sick in bed with the flu and my mother was next to me feeding me chicken soup. I suddenly became very aware of her locket around my neck. It had been a birthday present on my 11th birthday and I had stuffed the thing away in my closet in a teenage rage, angry that my mother hadn’t bought me the little purse I had wanted. There it had stayed until the day after her funeral, when I had tearfully retrieved it and put it around my neck. I had rarely taken it off since, the most notable time being when I used it as bait to kill that stupid rat in the alley.

My reminiscing must have gone on too long, because the next thing I knew, Beatrice grabbed my hand again and forced the buff into my mouth.

“Next time maybe wait for me to help?” she said as I felt the energy return to my body. “You didn’t even give me time to eat the strength buff. It was like you were some sort of possessed madwoman. But why didn’t you finish?”

I slowly pushed myself up from the ground and looked over at the one undisturbed pile.

“Because,” I said, “because I can't face her yet.”

Beatrice looked at me quizzically.

“Then don't. You've done enough. Go back to the boat and I'll take it from here.”

I awoke to the sound of a foghorn, and the faint rays of the morning sun reflecting off the water made me quickly close my eyes again. Shielding my face, I slowly opened them again. A large wake trailed behind our boat and an immense yacht a hundred yards off our stern was slowly making its way toward the horizon. We were otherwise the only craft on the wide expanse of water, the closest shore barely visible.

I slowly got to my feet and walked to the helm, where Beatrice stood, her hands gripping the wheel so tightly they were almost white.

“Wh-where are we? How long was I out?”

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” said Beatrice. “Not sure. Took me longer than expected to finish up at the lighthouse.” She motioned to a large black tarp that was laid out over something on the bow of the boat. 

“Is that-”

“Yep. Do you want to go look?” she asked.

“I … no.” 

“OK, suit yourself, but I’ll need your help getting her off the boat, so you’ll have to do it at some point.”

“Fine. But where are we? This doesn’t look like the East River.”

Beatrice chuckled.

“It’s not. Did you think we were taking her back to Manhattan? I mean, we probably wouldn’t get a second glance carrying Frankie down Houston, but I am not lugging her up five flights of stairs.”

“Oh. Then where are we going?”

“There,” said Beatrice, pointing out to a spot nowhere in particular ahead of us.

“I don’t see anything. Please tell me you’re not planning on dumping her over the side of the boat.”

“No, but not gonna lie, I did think about it for a minute. We’ve been too distracted trying to find a cure that we haven’t made any progress on the Guild front.”

“I'm not giving up,” I said.

“I know you're not. It’s adorable, in an incredibly annoying way. But let me concentrate. We’ll be coming up on our destination soon.”

The coastline came into full view and I saw a string of small barrier islands off of the south shore of Long Island on the electronic map next to the wheel. The little triangle on the screen that was our boat inched toward them and I wondered if we really were just going to dump Frankie on a beach somewhere and hope no one found her. 

We sailed around a wooded island and Beatrice cut the engine speed down to a crawl as I spotted a half-moon sea wall made of rocks that was conspicuously absent from the boat’s map. Just beyond the wall was a dock leading up to a small house on stilts. 

“What is that?” I asked.

“That,” said Beatrice with a smile, “is our new headquarters.”

Next: Jen explores both aspects of the new headquarters. Read it below.

Guild of Tokens, Chapter 33