“No!” Betty cried, horrified. “You can’t take the bag!” After what they had lost, she wasn’t about to lose this, too. She darted forward and snatched it from a crate where Charlie had left it. Curiously, Jarrod didn’t seem bothered.
“Of course I can.” Jarrod cast a wolfish look at Fliss. “I can do anything I want now.” He gave Charlie a little shake, like there might be money rattling inside her. “Pumpkin here can take me anywhere.”
“She can’t.” Fliss’s voice was low, terrified. “We can’t leave Crowstone. If we do . . .”
“It’s true,” Betty added, struggling to speak above a whisper as the danger of Jarrod’s intentions set in. She had thought things couldn’t get any worse—another mistake. “If we leave, we die. We’re—”
“Cursed,” Jarrod cut in, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I heard.” He smirked. “It’s amazing, the things you can learn just by keeping quiet.”
Jarrod had been busy, thought Betty. Not just wriggling free of his bonds, but listening, too.
“If it even exists, did you really believe this fool could help you break it? He lured you here with lies,” Jarrod said cruelly. “And you fell for them. Luckily for me, he’s too much of a coward to use the bag—but I’m not.”
“You’re not having it,” Betty said in as fierce a voice as she could manage. But instead of sounding like a tiger, she sounded like a feeble kitten. “Take the boat and take your chances on the water.”
Jarrod grinned down at Charlie. “I’d say my chances are very, very good.”
He’s got no intention of letting us go, Betty thought. Hopelessness seeped through her. Jarrod knew his freedom would cost lives, and it was a price he was happy to pay.
“Did you hear anything we just said?” Colton’s voice rose. “She’ll die!”
Jarrod tilted his head to one side, considering. “How soon would she die?”
“By sunset,” Fliss said hoarsely.
He nodded. “Good. That gives me a whole day to get as far away as possible. Plenty of snappy little journeys, so I’ll get my use out of you.”
“But she’s just a child!” Fliss gasped. “How could you?”
Charlie stopped struggling and glanced at Betty, then Fliss. “Will it . . . will it hurt?” she asked, trembling.
This can’t be happening, Betty screamed silently. It can’t . . . but it is. And all because of me.
Tears streamed down Fliss’s face. She reached out to comfort Charlie, but Jarrod snatched her away.
“You’re despicable.” Colton took a step toward Jarrod, his eyes blazing. “And you’re not leaving this island with her. I won’t let you.”
“Nor will I.” Betty stepped closer to Colton, feeling something that was almost gratitude. He might be a lying swine, but she could see from his own horror that he wasn’t evil. Jarrod towered over them both, but perhaps if they fought hard enough, together, Charlie might be able to scramble free.
“Brave talk.” Jarrod’s voice hardened. “But in the time it’d take for you to reach me, an arm can easily be snapped.” The words stopped Betty and Colton in their tracks.
“Won’t do it!” Charlie snarled tearfully. Jarrod grabbed her collar and shook her as she went to bite him again.
Fury, red and blazing, seared through Betty’s fear at the sight of her little sister being handled like a rat and on hearing the threats being made. “Don’t you dare hurt her!”
Jarrod looked bored. “No one needs to get hurt as long as they do as I say.”
“I won’t take you anywhere!” Charlie cussed, using words she could only have heard from Granny. “And if you break my arm, I can’t work the bag, can I, stupid?”
“True,” Jarrod agreed. He glowered down at Charlie, who glowered back up at him equally fiercely. “But I never said it would be your arm.” His free hand shot out and seized Fliss, twisting her arm behind her back. She cried out, knees buckling.
Charlie stopped squirming and held still. “Let her go. Please!”
“That’s better.” Jarrod relaxed his hold on Fliss a little. “So, now that I know how to get this little savage to do as she’s told, we’ll have some extra company. Sweet cheeks here can keep the brat under control.” He paused, chuckling. “Although she’s mighty nice to look at, too.”
“Then take me as well!” Betty cried, for the thought of her two sisters being whisked away to their fate and leaving her alone was too terrible to take.
“I don’t think so.” Jarrod eyed Colton. “You keep the one with the smart mouth. If she’s as clever as she thinks she is, she’ll break the curse before sunset, won’t she?”
“No!” Charlie yelled, reaching for Betty. “No, no, no!”
“Now. Let’s try this the nice way, shall we?” Jarrod ruffled Charlie’s hair in an almost fatherly gesture. “When you’re ready, pumpkin. Take us to Windy Bottom.” He held out a hand to Betty, motioning for the bag.
Gritting her teeth, Betty handed it over.
His voice changed, becoming harsher. “Any mischief, taking us back to the prison, or somewhere else you’ve dreamed up . . . anywhere but where I’ve said, and it won’t be your pretty sister’s arm I snap. It’ll be her neck.”
Charlie’s bottom lip trembled. Strands of tangled hair stuck to the tears on her face. “Betty?”
Die now, or die later. Betty stared back at her sisters helplessly. We can’t win, she realized. If we leave Crowstone, we die. If we don’t obey Jarrod . . .
“Just . . . just do it.” Her voice broke. “Just . . . take him wherever he wants to go.”
“B-but . . . the curse,” Fliss began.
“Do as he says,” Betty whispered. “It will be all right.” As she said it, she felt hopeless, as though something inside her had broken beyond repair. Nothing was all right. If only she had never listened to Colton. Her sisters were going to die because of her. And . . . Granny. Her heart ached. How would she ever tell Granny what she had caused?
“It’s not all right.” Fliss was fighting tears, holding them back—just—for Charlie’s sake, Betty was sure.
“I’ll figure it out.” Betty was babbling now, grasping at the thinnest of hopes. “I’ll put all this right. I swear it.” She gave Fliss a meaningful look. If Fliss could keep her wits about her, then there was a chance she could use the mirror to tell Betty where they were. And then, somehow, Betty would have to find them, though she hadn’t the first clue how. All she knew was that she didn’t want Fliss and Charlie to give up, which meant she couldn’t, either. Betty took a deep breath and addressed Jarrod. “As for you, when I catch up with you—and don’t think I won’t—you’ll pay for this.”
Jarrod smiled, not threatened in the least. “Promises, promises.” He bent down to Charlie, who glared at him hatefully. “Now, listen, pumpkin,” he said softly. “When I hand you this bag, you’re going to take us to the place I just told you about. Do you remember what it’s called?”
“Windy Bottom,” Charlie growled.
“Very good.” He straightened up with a warning look at Betty. “Stand back.”
She refused to look at him, instead focusing on what might be her last look at her two sisters. Too late, she realized she had spent her life wishing for bigger things, for what could be bigger than family? Than love, and being loved? What use was adventure with no one to share in it? Along with Granny, her sisters were all she had. Her whole world, which was about to be torn away . . . and opened up to the curse, the very thing they’d been trying to undo. Now, with one command, Jarrod was about to set the terrible event into motion.
“I’ll find you,” she promised, stumbling back. Though she meant it with every fiber of her being, she knew—everyone knew—that finding them would not be enough. Even if she could save them from Jarrod, the curse would still kill them. “Wherever you go, I’ll find you.”
In a voice that suddenly sounded weary and much older than that of a six-year-old, Charlie spoke quietly: “Windy Bottom.”
In an eye blink the three figures were gone. The only proof that they had ever been there was their footprints in the sand.
Betty’s vision blurred. And no matter how hard she tried to stop crying, or to tell herself that tears wouldn’t bring her sisters back, she was helpless to do anything but sob. Her sisters were gone, and the curse had been triggered. Unless Betty found a way to break it, Charlie and Fliss would be dead by sunset.