Isle of the Lost by Melissa de La Cruz

Dragon’s Eye. It’s here.”
    “Mal, it’s not poss—”
    “We have to,” Mal said.
    “Eh,” Jay replied shrugging his shoulders and turning toward the window to go back inside. “We’ll see.”
    Mal took one last look out at the horizon to the bright, sparkling speck in the distance. She felt a pang in her gut, like longing. But what for, she couldn’t say.

“Miserable,
    darling, as
    usual, perfectly
    wretched.”
    —Cruella De Vil,
    101 Dalmatians

J ay left the Bargain Castle behind him. It was the very end of night, the time when it was just turning toward morning—when it was still dark, but you could already hear the mournful call of the vultures scavenging their way across the island. He shivered, retracing his steps through the grim backstreets and alleyways of the town, past the eerily bare trees and broken-shuttered buildings that looked as abandoned and hopeless as everyone who lived there.
    Jay quickened his pace. He wasn’t scared of the dark; he depended on it. Jay did some of his best work at night. He’d never get used to the way the island felt in the darkness, though. Jay picked up on it most when everyone else was asleep, and he could see the world around him clearly, for what it was. He could see that this town and this island and these bare trees and these broken shutters were his life, no matter what other life his father and his peers had known. There was no glory here. No magic and no power, either. This was it—all they would ever have or be or know.
    No matter what Mal thinks.
    Jay kicked a rock across the crumbling cobblestones, and an irritated cat howled back at him from the shadows.
    She’s so full of it.
    Mal wouldn’t admit it—their defeat—especially not when she was in a mood like tonight. Mal was so stubborn sometimes. Practically delusional. In moments like these, Jay had clearly seen the effects of a raised-by-a-maniacal-villain upbringing. He couldn’t blame Mal for not wanting to tell her mother no—nobody would—but really, there was no way that Maleficent’s scepter was somewhere on the Isle of the Lost, and even if it was, Jay and Mal would never find it.
    Jay shook his head.
    Eye of the Dragon? More like, Eye of Desperation.
    That raven is bonkers, probably from being frozen for twenty years.
    He shrugged and rounded the corner to his own street. He tried to forget about it, half-expecting (and half-hoping) Mal would probably do the same. She had her whims, but they never seemed to last. That was the good thing about Mal; she would get all worked up about something, but totally drop it the next day. They got along because Jay had learned to just ride out the storm.
    When he finally made his way through the last of the puzzle of stolen locks, chains, and deadbolts that guarded his own house (thieves being the most paranoid about burglary), he pushed the rotting wooden door open with a creak and crept inside.
    One foot at a time. Shift your body weight as you step. Stick close to the wall….
    “Jay? Is that you?”
    Crap.
    His father was still awake, cooking eggs, his faithful parrot, Iago, on his shoulder. Was Jafar worried about his only son being out so late? Was he worried about where he’d been, or who he’d been with, or why he hadn’t come home until now?
    Nah.
His father had only one thing on his mind, and Jay knew exactly what it was.
    “What’s tonight’s haul?” Jafar asked greedily, as he set his plate of food down on the kitchen table, next to a pile of rusty coins that passed for currency on the island. The table was where Jafar practiced his favorite hobby: counting his money. There was a good-sized pyramid of coins on the table, but Jay knew it wouldn’t satisfy Jafar’s greed.
    Nothing did.
    “Nice pajamas.” Jay smirked. The trick with his father was to keep moving, to stay on your toes, and above all else, to avoid answering the question, because none of the answers were ever right. When you couldn’t win, you shouldn’t