Fantastical Island (Old School Book 2)

by Jenny Schwartz

Naomi flapped a hand, indicating don’t worry, and sucked in a couple of breaths, leaning against the tree. “I need something from my room.” She hurried inside and up the stairs, and unlocked the door to her room. Fortunately, the amulet was around her neck and she’d returned the containment box it came in to Cait. Her laptop and research—obsessive scientist that she was—she’d brought with her to Bunyip House. Even if Roy or Janelle had been in her room, they wouldn’t find any hint that she knew about magic.

  Her heaving breaths caught in a shuddering sob as she saw the silver hobbles lying on her pillow. Beyond the bed, the window stood open a crack. No guessing how Roy or Janelle had entered.

  Staring at the hobbles as if they were a snake, she walked to the window and slammed it shut. Without a lock on the window, it was an empty gesture, and besides, it was too late.

  The hobbles were in her room as Janelle had said. That meant that every last element of this nightmare morning was true. To save Corey, they had to capture a legendary creature, bind its powers, and give it over to evil people.

  She picked up the hobbles. They resembled a child’s bracelets. Touching them gave her nothing. With her lack of magic, they were simply beautiful silver objects. However, they did look old, worn in places, and inscribed with arcane symbols. A wizard, long ago, had enchanted them.

  How had Janelle and Roy gotten hold of them? Was it just Janelle and Roy involved in Corey’s kidnapping or were there other hunters?

  Naomi walked, rather than ran, down the stairs. She had so much thinking to do and no time to do it in. Once she returned to Bunyip House, Otis’s worry would press down on her.

  Like her guilt currently did.

  This was her fault. She had underestimated Roy and Janelle: firstly, by doubting her own preliminary survey and instincts that the population of fantastical creatures on Catalina Island had been raided; and secondly, by assuming that the anonymous hunters were ordinary hunters even if they were after fantastical creatures. But ordinary hunters didn’t kidnap people. She should have raised an alert with the Old School network and requested that someone like Olga send in trained, government-authorized wizards. She and Corey were in over their heads, and he was paying the price.

  Please, God. Don’t let them kill him.

  But the easiest way for kidnappers to elude the authorities was to kill their hostages.

  “There’s going to be a storm,” her landlady said conversationally as Naomi stepped onto the porch. “Plays havoc with the nerves.” She’d evidently decided to blame Naomi’s behavior on the weather.

  “A storm?”

  “Coming in from the south.” The landlady indicated with her mug of coffee. “And judging by my aching knee, it’ll be a big storm. The weather forecasters didn’t predict it. All their technology and my arthritis is smarter than them.”

  Naomi looked to the north. She couldn’t see the harbor for the houses in between, but she could see the clouds massing in the sky. They were the dark purple-blue of a bruise. “How long before it arrives?”

  “Three hours.”

  Midday.

  Naomi didn’t bother with good-bye. Didn’t even think of it. She ran for Bunyip House.

  Chapter 7

  Corey watched Janelle end the ransom demand phone call and smile wickedly.

  “They’ll bring the baku,” she said to Roy, her long crimson nails tapping the back of the phone.

  Her partner, and partner in crime, grunted. “They’d better hurry.”

  “They will.” She tucked the phone in the back pocket of her jeans and ascended the ladder.

  “Don’t bother helping,” Roy muttered after her. He gripped the edge of a crate and dragged it with an ear-splitting grinding noise across the floor of the hold.

  Cliff added a protesting squeal, and so did a bunch of jackalopes caged in a corner.

  Corey sagged and slid slowly down the bulkhead till he sat on the floor. It seemed to be rocking more, and that wasn’t just his concussion distorting his senses. He could glimpse the sky through the hatch. “Storm’s coming.” One of those sudden spring storms that were forecast as rain and some wind, but could unexpectedly develop into a whole lot more. He could see the line where blue sky met vengeful clouds. The rocking of the boat would get massively worse.

  Roy knew it, too. He was going over the contents of the hold, rearranging a couple of crates and re-securing others.

  “This isn’t your boat,” Corey said. It was too big to be the Buccaneer. Yet Janelle had stipulated exchanging him for the baku aboard the Buccaneer.

  She’d lied.

  “Monk’s boat,” Roy said briefly.

  Corey blinked. Even his eyelids ached. He had to fight to stay conscious. If he slept, he’d be dead. He needed to escape, and for that, the more information he had, the better.

  Roy wasn’t the chatty kind, but how they’d commandeered Monk’s boat amused him. “You wouldn’t believe it, but Monk used to be a drug lord’s right hand man. Rival gang killed the guy, and Monk ran. New name, new life.”

  It explained why Monk had kept to himself. Like Roy, he had a habit of anchoring just outside the harbor.

  Roy leaned a hand on the far end of the aquarium, ignoring the way the water inside it sloshed and the sea serpents hissed their bubbles. He picked up a role of duct tape from a hook beside the tank and began taping the upper edges of a crate that had air holes in the side. Three rolls of tape remained on the hook. “Janelle phoned the gang leader who’d taken out Monk’s old boss. He was very happy to learn of Monk’s whereabouts. Twenty grand worth of happiness.” He laughed under his breath as he cut the tape.

  And when Monk vanished, probably to be tortured and murdered by the rival gang, Janelle and Roy had taken over his boat. The islanders were so accustomed to not seeing Monk for days on end, that this could have happened a week or more ago.

  Corey groaned.

  This was far from a spur of the moment operation. Roy and Janelle had planned everything carefully; right from the time Roy had first anchored near Monk’s boat.

  From their commandeered boat they could observe Otis’s arrival at the Buccaneer, but Corey didn’t believe they’d then swap him for the baku. Why would they? They needed to escape and once Otis had Corey safe, Janelle and Roy had to guess the Madrigal men would immediately raise the issue of his kidnapping with the police. Corey’s jaw tightened beneath the rough cloth of the dislodged gag. From Janelle and Roy’s perspective, the only safe conclusion to their activities was to kill him—and Otis.

  But that would leave Naomi and Cait still knowing about his kidnapping and Otis’s attempt to ransom him. The two women could report Janelle and Roy’s activities. So maybe attempting to hide their activities wouldn’t be worth murdering him? Janelle had mentioned putting the hobbles for the baku on Naomi’s bed in the boarding house, so they knew Naomi was involved.

  As a special effects artist, a major part of his job was problem solving. He’d always been able to think through any situation and create a solution. But this time there were so many variables and he had so few options—the damn ropes had no slack at all—that all he could do was wait for an opportunity; for some hiccup in Roy and Janelle’s slick scheme.

  As he observed Roy moving easily around the hold, despite the increasing swell, he realized that the storm was one variable they hadn’t counted on. They were evidently preparing to leave and trade the caged fantastical creatures they’d caught, but a storm off Catalina Island could be unpredictable. They would either have to risk the open water, a dangerous prospect, or enter the harbor.

  The sky above the hatch was now uniformly gray, a shade so dark and ominous that no sailor would ignore it. Very soon, whether the creatures’ crates and cages were secured or not, Roy would have to go above deck. Remembering Janelle’s perfect fingernails, Corey knew she wouldn’t be readying their commandeered boat to ride out the storm

  His trick at the lighthouse with the “mothman” had prompted them to act. Perhaps before
they were ready.

  He swallowed a couple of times, trying to get his dry mouth and thick tongue in a state to talk. “Bakus are powerful magic. The hobbles mightn’t be enough for Otis to bring the baku to you. Janelle maybe overestimated her abilities.”

  Roy wedged a final crate into the space beside Cliff’s cage. “The hobbles are mine. Been in the family since the 1800s. Came over from England with us. Janelle thinks she’s smart, but I’m the hunter. She negotiates. I deliver.” He paused with one foot on the ladder and finally grinned. “We both kill.”

  The hatch slammed shut behind him, enclosing Corey in darkness.

  It might have been dark, but Corey was no longer working blind. He had a mental map of the hold’s arrangement, and he had a tool he could use even with his hands bound. He began edging away from the bulkhead toward it.

  The enchanted hobbles worked their way up and out of Naomi’s jeans pocket as she ran. She plucked them out and held them in one hand. Whether Janelle was right and a baku would appear at Bunyip House or not, they needed to be ready to act—which meant that she had to convince Otis and Cait to let her take his place in delivering the baku to Janelle and Roy.

  Or pretending to.

  Janelle and Roy weren’t people to trust. It was conceivable that with the baku in their hands they’d simply murder Corey, and whoever attempted to ransom him, in the interests of making a clean—or should that be bloody?—getaway.

  “We have to be smarter than them. We are smarter than them.” But were any of them as ruthless?

  She jogged up the steps of Bunyip House and around to the side veranda. Voices guided her around to the backyard.

  “Unwarded?” Cait sounded as if she was trying to control her exasperation. “Fantastical creatures wandering in and out and you didn’t ward against evil?”

  Corey would have been safe if they had. Neither Roy nor Janelle could have entered to kidnap him.

  But the necessity of warding Bunyip House was an issue that could have waited. Cait, an experienced emergency response manager, had to know that.

  Then Naomi glimpsed the baku cuddling against Otis on the back lawn and emotion punched her in the gut. She felt the reason for Cait’s impulsive comment.

  The baku was impossibly cute and generated an overwhelming impulse to protect it. The mishmash of an elephant’s head on a horse’s body with a cow’s tail and skinny legs ending in tiger’s paws ought to have been grotesque, but miniaturized to housecat size and colored a shifting marmalade and sand color, the baku was adorable.

  Its tiny trunk petted Otis’s face.

  The man looked at the hobbles in Naomi’s hand and groaned. “Oh God, forgive me.”

  She approached slowly and dropped to her knees beside him. The hobbles fell to the ground. She extended a shaking hand and the baku gently sniffed her fingers and learned her scent with its trunk.

  “This is Poppy.” Otis stopped to blow his nose, then stuffed his handkerchief in a pocket. “Mom named her for her color and for her habit of rolling in the poppy garden.” He had to mean the garden bed in the back corner, filled with golden Californian poppies.

  The small, seemingly fragile creature pressed against Naomi’s hand and she stroked its head between its waving, marmalade-colored elephant ears. Tears burned in her eyes and choked her throat. This magic of encountering a rare fantastical creature was why she’d chosen to work on Catalina Island. Not that she could have guessed the island held anything as unique as a baku.

  The secret of Poppy was why Corey had so vehemently vetoed the idea of faking a baku’s presence. He’d been protecting Poppy.

  And now, to save him, Janelle demanded they put Poppy in danger.

  Naomi reluctantly withdrew her hand. She couldn’t keep petting the baku, not while she contemplated treachery. She picked up the silver hobbles.

  Cait gasped, just the faintest, instinctive protest.

  The hobbles were cold, freezing, against Naomi’s skin, but she curled her fingers tight around them and stared at Cait. “You see Poppy. How? You don’t have the amulet to see through glamour.”

  “Poppy dropped her glamour for Cait to see her,” Otis said. His old hands stroked the gentle creature. “She trusts us.” His voice broke.

  Naomi bit her lip. She would have to be the hard-hearted practical one of the trio. With midday and the storm approaching swiftly, they didn’t have time for their emotions. “Poppy’s presence means Janelle was right. The baku is here because her family—you and Corey, Otis—is in danger. Janelle really, really wants a baku and she has plotted this carefully. So carefully that I suspect that the hostage exchange being held on a boat is crucial to her plan.”

  She took a deep breath and shook out the hobbles, readying them for use. “Otis, you’re upset, but Corey is in deadly danger. If Poppy could go to him, she would. So water, or sea water, must prevent however it is she travels.” Bakus were as mysterious as they were magical. “The hobbles are meant to contain Poppy’s magic, and the ocean will reinforce her captivity.”

  The baku’s trunk investigated the hobbles.

  Naomi expected Poppy to flinch away. Instead, the baku looked Naomi in the eye and raised her front left paw.

  Clouds abruptly covered the sun. They were the storm riders, the warning before the storm hit.

  “How much do you understand?” Naomi whispered to the baku. The creature’s trust was a heavy burden. Unwillingly, knowing she had to, Naomi fitted the hobbles.

  Otis leaned forward to gather up Poppy, but Naomi halted him with a hand on his arm. “No. I’ll make the exchange. Janelle and Roy know I’m involved in this. You need to stay here.”

  “I’m not that old, and Corey is my nephew.”

  Naomi shook her head. “It’s not about that. It’s about where each of us can be most use. Janelle and Roy have planned this carefully, but there are a couple of things they can’t have calculated for. The first is Cait with her water magic. Cait, I need you at the lighthouse. Otis must have binoculars. Watch what is happening and if the sea needs calming or stirring up—”

  “I’ll intervene,” Cait concluded calmly. “I can do more than still a narrow passage among the storm waters, although that may be useful in itself when you’ve retrieved Corey.”

  The vote of confidence steadied Naomi. “Otis, the other factor Janelle and Roy can’t have factored for is Iovanius.”

  Otis protested, even as Poppy wriggled free of his hands and shuffled to lean against Naomi, clearly showing her support.

  Naomi petted the baku gently. “The ghost is exhausted after last night’s performance. From what Corey explained, Iovanius’s etheric body reforms as his energy renews itself. He won’t be around for hours, if not days. Unless you channel energy to him.”

  Naomi met the old man’s angry, worried gaze steadily. “Corey told me your life’s work is paranormal energy. He also said you’re angry with ghosts, and I’m no expert, but that suggests to me that you and the ghosts compete for the same resource. Paranormal energy. This time you need to channel it to Iovanius, then ask him to help me. Us. Corey and I are going to need back-up.”

  Otis stood stiffly and rubbed his knees. “What is your plan?”

  “I’m not sure if Janelle can sense when the hobbles are being used, so they had to go onto Poppy, but I’m not going to bring Poppy to the Buccaneer.”

  “But Corey—” Otis bit back his protest.

  “Whatever we do, it’s a risk.” Naomi felt Poppy’s trusting weight leaning against her. The baku’s tiny cow tail flicked her ankle. “There’s always risk when dealing with people like Janelle and Roy. But Cait will take Poppy with her to the lighthouse, if I wave my right hand then she can show the baku to Roy and Janelle as proof we can do the trade. I’ll make them produce Corey before the trade happens.”

  “Will the trade happen?” Cait asked.

  Naomi looked down at Poppy, then across at Otis. “It’s the last resort. But we need Iovanius. He’s our wild card. As a poltergeis
t he can disarm Roy and Janelle.”

  “I’ve never channeled energy to a ghost,” Otis objected. “I’ve never even heard of it being done.”

  “We’re all going to do the impossible, today,” Cait said bracingly. Then she looked at the sky with its dark storm clouds. “And we’re going to hurry.”

  Naomi drove Otis’s golf cart to the harbor, leaving Otis and Cait to drive Corey’s vintage pickup to the lighthouse. With the storm bearing down on them, a light golf cart risked being blown off the exposed headland the lighthouse stood on. Naomi abandoned the golf cart on a side street near the pier. Waterfront cafes and shops were closed. All but a couple had shuttered their windows. Tourists wandered around looking uncertain and excited. Harbor personnel were busy, mostly out on the water checking moorings.

  Naomi took a deep breath for courage, reached into the back of the golf cart and extracted the large travel bag Otis had found for her. They’d stuffed it with a brick and a couple of cushions to approximate Poppy’s size and weight. Looking neither left nor right, desperate that no well-meaning person tried to stop her taking Otis’s dinghy out, she found it tied to the pier where he’d promised it would be.

  Years of sailing in Sydney Harbor gave her the skills to start the engine and guide the little boat through the maze of moored vessels. It also gave her the experience to know that venturing out of the harbor in such a small boat with the massive storm approaching was foolhardy. She checked that her lifejacket was securely fastened and hoped that Cait could, indeed, calm the waves from her position at the lighthouse, if it became necessary.

  She also turned a deaf ear to an impatient, exasperated hail that she suspected was directed at her. She gave the dinghy more gas and it bounced over the waves, heading for the open water beyond the harbor. The bag meant to contain a baku rested between her feet.

  On the headland, the lighthouse seemed whiter than ever, stark against the stormy sky. She squinted and thought she glimpsed the green roof of Corey’s pickup parked beside the lighthouse. Otis and Cait were in place.