CHAPTER 26

BEL LED THE WAY BACK DOWN TO THE BEACH, SHOVING her hands in her pockets to keep them warm, hoping that if she kept moving fast enough, she wouldn’t have time to get scared. What she was about to do was definitely something worth being scared about, after all, but Nolie and Al were following her, neither saying anything, and she hoped that meant they had the same idea about what had to happen next.

Bel didn’t even pause until they got to the beach, right near the little cave where Al had been hiding and where the Selkie was still beached.

Turning, Bel faced her friends and put her hands on her hips.

“So it’s us,” she said. “Who have to light the light. The Selkie came to both of us.” Bel said it as fast as she could, but also tried to make it sound as firm as the rocks around them. That was a trick she’d learned from what her mum always said: Say things like you don’t expect an argument, and you won’t get one. Bel reckoned a woman with four kids, three of them boys, had learned that lesson well.

“The Selkie is such a little boat,” Nolie said, and Bel almost wanted to laugh. Of course it was the boat that scared Nolie, not the fog.

“You heard Maggie,” Bel said, tugging the sleeves of her jumper over her fingers. “It’s the only thing to do, and the only way we can save Dad and Jaime. And your dad, too.”

“Except we might not come back.”

“There is that part,” she said, “but think about it. No one has ever gone as a group before. Maybe that makes it different.”

She saw Nolie and Al exchange a look, and quickly added, “Not a group, a pair.” The Selkie had already come for Al once. Who knew what might happen if he went again? It seemed like too much to risk. “Al, you’ll have to stay here.”

“Not too likely,” Al fired back, drawing himself up to his full height. Over the past few weeks, his hair had gotten longer, shaggier, and now it hung over his brow until he pushed it back with an impatient hand. “If we do this, we should all go,” he said.

This time, it was Nolie who objected. “Except that the fog ate you before.”

“But I was able to light the light,” he said. Their words were loud and echoing in the cave, but Bel could still hear the pound of the surf outside. “Neither of you have ever done that before. When I went out, I already knew how.”

Nolie reached out with one toe, nudging some loose pebbles. “Right, but it’s not like it’s some brand-new lighthouse with technology. It’s just . . . lighting something the old-fashioned way, right?”

Al snorted, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “If ye think that’s all there is to it, all the more reason for me to come as well.”

He had a point, but Bel couldn’t let them descend into an argument. “Nolie, you don’t have to go. Maybe Al is right, and—”

“No.” Nolie shook her head fiercely, and Bel could see that once again her braid was coming unraveled. “I was there when we found the Selkie, too. It came to me just as much as it did to you. We’re a team.”

And when she said that, something in Bel’s chest seemed to bloom open like a flower. She’s never been on someone’s team before. There were so few kids in Journey’s End, and hardly any girls. From the moment Nolie had walked into the store, Bel had known they’d be friends, and sitting in that cave with her and Al, she suddenly felt like it was right that she and Nolie finish this together. Hadn’t it all started when Nolie showed up? That couldn’t just be a coincidence.

“What are you going to do?” Al asked, sitting down on one of the nearby rocks. “Do ye even have something to light it with?”

Bel’s fingers curled around the box of matches Maggie had given her before they’d left her house. She had waited until Nolie and Al were already out the door, and she hadn’t said a word, simply pressing the box into Bel’s hands. It was the closest thing to a seal of approval Bel was going to get.

“Okay,” she said. “All three of us. It makes sense. Al lit the lamp before, this is my village, and . . . well, we must need you, too, Nol.”

Nolie crossed her arms, the vinyl of her slicker squeaking. “Could be I’m just the friend who tragically bites it in the course of saving the day. I know y’all don’t get a lot of movies and TV out here, but there’s always one person on these kinds of quests that gets totally killed. And it would be me, because I’m the funny one. It’s always the funny one.”

“I don’t think I want to watch your movies and TV if funny people are getting killed,” Al commented, giving Nolie a smile. “I like the funny ones.”

Her cheeks turning pink, Nolie shrugged and looked away, and Bel hid her own smile as she looked down at the journal spread open in front of her. “No one is going to get killed on this trip, funny or not,” she said very firmly. “All of this happened for a reason. Al coming back, Nolie coming to Journey’s End, me . . . well, me always being here, I s’pose. We’re here to finally put this right.”

“Even though putting it right means putting our parents out of jobs,” Nolie said, and Bel frowned. She didn’t like to think of that part of it, but it couldn’t be helped now.

Then Nolie heaved a sigh, rubbing her hands together. “Okay, so just so y’all know, if I get killed on this, I’m going to haunt you both. Even Albert, who is technically part ghost himself anyway.”

Al frowned. “Am not.”

“Albert, please come to terms with your ghostiness,” Nolie said, making an exaggerated sad face as she patted him on the arm, and Bel rolled her eyes at both of them.

“All three of us are going to be ghosts if we don’t get going,” Bel reminded them. “You heard Maggie, once the fog starts moving in closer, there’s not much time left.”

The three of them turned then, looking back out at the water and at the Boundary. Somewhere inside all that roiling gray was her father’s boat, and a rocky island with an old lighthouse. A light she had to light.

And she had no idea how she was going to do it.