Page 2 of The Curse Breaker

Now did not seem like the time to bring that up.

Kimble reached out and ripped Aggy’s note from my hands. She had given it to me only moments before she ran onto the island.

“‘Find Everly Benedict, age twelve, June twenty twenty-five,’” Kimble read aloud, the water soaking the page and making Aggy’s handwriting smear. “‘She is the key to saving us all.’” He looked at me again. “What does that mean? Who wrote this? Who is Everly Benedict?”

I stood up fast then. “My friend Aggy wrote it. She has a gift. She can see things that will happen in the future.” He laughed again. I snatched the letter back. “Fine. Don’t believe me, but it’s true. And this letter is mine.”

Kimble’s face came dangerously close to my own, the blond stubble on his chin visible up close. “And that treasure you stole, kid, was mine!” He faltered. “Well, not mine exactly, but I was finally going to return it all and be done with this blasted treasure, and now—” He growled like a rabid dog and spun away from me. “Don’t you see what you did? You’ve trapped me here! For another two hundred years of this!” He motioned to his own body. “And your friends too!”

“No.” I shook my head vigorously. “I saved them!”

“How?” Kimble questioned, spitting his words. “Who is going to rescue them from that island? Not me in two hundred years. And certainly not Grace. If she finds her way back on that island, we’re all doomed.”

“Who is Grace?” I asked, my heart starting to pound with fear. “Where did the island go?”

“How the hell should I know? When it’s gone, it’s gone.” He stared up at the orange eclipsed moon as a flash of lightning lit up the sky. “You think I understand the place? I barely remember how I got on it in sixteen twenty-five, and now... You think I’m going to remember anything by the time we get to…get to... What year did that letter say, twenty twenty-five?” Kimble pulled his hat off his head and threw it on the ground. The wind started to carry it away, and he ran after it, not willing to part with it after all. “This is bad. Real bad.” He looked around suspiciously. “When Grace finds out you know about the treasure…”

“Who is Grace?” I asked again.

He rubbed his chin, the frown on his face deepening. He didn’t answer my question. “I haven’t seen her, but she wouldn’t miss this moon. And when she learns the island disappeared with the treasure again, she won’t be as calm as I am.”

“This is calm?” I asked.

He threw his hands up, his wet shirt billowing in the wind. “You know what? I don’t care! I’m getting as far away from this blasted place as I can. I have options you know. Some options. The island doesn’t let me go far, but it will take me far enough. I bet I could make it to New York City if I wanted to.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but it seemed best to just let him rant.

Kimble shook his head. “This is all your fault! The treasure is gone! You’ve cursed your friends to two hundred years on that blasted island! And you”—he pointed a shaky finger at me—“won’t live long enough to help them.”

I hate to admit this, but when he put it that way, I burst into tears. Thunder crashed, lightning flashed, and then moments later, the sky began to brighten. It was still raining, but the eclipse had ended. And if Kimble was to be believed, any chance I had of saving my friends and the island was gone.

“Cry all you want.” Kimble looked up at the sky. “It won’t change what you’ve done. And one thing I know, kid, is the years may feel short, but the days are long. Good luck.” He turned to go.

“Wait!” I jumped up and grabbed his coattails. “You can’t leave! You’re the only one who knows about the island! You have to help me bring it back!”

Kimble kept walking, dragging me along with him till he finally grabbed my wrist and pulled it off his coat. In despair, I just stood there as he walked away. I’ll admit I was feeling pathetically sorry for myself. I’d lost the people most important to me. All I could do was sob.

Then I heard another voice, smooth like velvet, saying my name. I looked up in time to see a woman emerge through the trees just beyond the seagrass of the shore. She smiled kindly.

“Hello, Evelyn.”

One

Gil

Present Day

I’m dead.

Gilbert Monroe considered this grim possibility every day he’d been trapped on Evelyn’s Island. How else could he explain being stuck here? All he could see was sea and sky. No land in sight, as if they were adrift in the middle of the water, which made no sense because the island was right off the shore near Greenport.

It felt like only yesterday he and his friends had dashed across that sandbar to this island. Evelyn had said there was a treasure waiting—one that would save his life. Her letter had explained it all: they would walk onto the island holding coins she had stolen from the treasure chest, and boom! Their lives would be spared. It all sounded so simple.

Then Axel, the rat, screwed everything up.

And now, they were all trapped on Evelyn’s isle of (for)ever, and Gil didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Was this some sort of purgatory he was trapped in for stealing a piece of the treasure?

Aggy kept telling them all to be patient. “Evelyn has a plan,” she’d say, and then she’d smile in a way that told him she knew something the rest of them didn’t.