We thanked her and she slipped away to tidy the bar, conjuring up a fresh stock of rum and making the broken bottles vanish.
As anxious as we were to get that ship, we couldn't seem to be in too much of a hurry to leave. So we hung around for a half-hour before slipping out. We headed down to the wharf, this time giving a wide berth to the triple-parked galleons at the main dock, and instead slinking through the empty huts lining the beach to the west. We cut through a stand of tropical forest. On the other side, we found the bay the barmaid had mentioned. In it was a boat, not much bigger than Kristof's houseboat. Didn't look much like a galleon. More like a yacht...with a Jolly Roger flag on the mast. I sharpened my sight and read the name on the side. The Trinity Bull.
The bay was a pretty place to dock your boat, if you didn't mind the security risk. As I scanned the deck, I bit back a laugh. There was indeed only a single guard, a slight red-haired man sitting on a chair on the deck, his feet propped on the rail, a bottle at his side.
"Easy pickings," I murmured to Kristof.
We advanced on the boat, sticking to the shadows. When we drew close enough to see the deck without Aspicio-boosted vision, we both stopped short. The guard was talking. I saw no sign of another person. Kristof motioned for me to listen.
"...weeks in this fucking town and I'm still guarding this fucking ship," the guard was saying. "'Sorry, Danny-boy, them's the rules.' Danny-boy." He let out a snarl.
"Next son-of-a-bitch who calls me that..."
The rant fell to a mutter. There was no one else on the ship, just one very bored, very angry, slightly drunk guard. So much for any hope of a sword fight.
Danny-boy leaned back in his chair, tipping the front legs off the deck, and closed his eyes. Kristof and I crept along the shore, keeping out of the guard's sight in case he opened his eyes. I considered blinding him, but if he did open his eyes, he'd panic and know something was wrong.
We reached the dock. The slap of the waves against the boat's hull covered our footsteps as we trod across the wooden boards. We made it all the way up the gangplank and the guard didn't so much as twitch.
"Asleep?" I mouthed to Kristof.
He waggled his hand, giving it fifty/fifty odds. Then he motioned for me to circle around and approach the guard from the rear. I had taken one step in that direction when the guard let out a soft sigh.
"Are you guys almost on deck?" he said, eyes still closed. "Take much longer and I really will fall asleep."
Kristof charged, sword raised. The guard sprang to his feet and feinted out of Kris's path. I swung behind the cabin before he saw me. As Kristof wheeled, the guard yanked his cutlass from his belt. He parried Kris's first thrust, but missed the second and danced out of the way seconds before being slashed.
The two men sparred for a minute. Kristof was obviously the better swordsman, but the smaller man had an easy agility that kept him out of sword's reach. Finally, when the guard's back was to me, I slid from my hiding place and pressed the tip of my cutlass between his shoulder blades.
"Take another step and I'll skewer you like a shish kebab," I said. "Won't hurt, but it could be damned uncomfortable."
He glanced over his shoulder, gave me a slow once-over, and smiled.
"Always was a sucker for a girl who can take care of herself," he said. "Let me guess, you two want this boat."
"Yes," Kristof said. "And either you let us or--"
"Take it."
When Kris hesitated, the man shrugged.
"What the fuck do I care? It's not mine. If you take the boat, I can take my leave of this dump, and believe me, I don't mind having the excuse. Don't mind seeing Pierre and his bunch lose this barge, either. Serves them right. Fucking pirates. Not nearly as much fun as you'd think."
"So you'll just leave...?" I said.
"Sure. But I will ask for one favor, though. Give me twenty minutes before you cut 'er loose. Once you set sail, someone in town will see, and I want a good head start before Pierre and his buccaneers come after me."
Kris looked at me. I shrugged. We set the guard loose. True to his word, he loped off down the shore and disappeared into a patch of jungle. While Kris checked out the boat, I stood watch, making sure Danny-boy didn't circle back to town to warn the pirates.
"We good?" I asked Kristof when he returned to the deck.
"Very good. It's a modified cabin cruiser. No motor, of course, but she'll run fine on wind and spell-power. Dad bought me one just like it when I went to Harvard."
"You took a yacht to college? Most kids get a car, Kris."
"Oh, I got a car, too. Two, actually. The Lotus wasn't made for Northern winters."
I shook my head. "Can we shove off, then?"
"Just let me check a few things, then we'll--" He stopped and squinted into the darkness. "What's that?"
At first glance, all I saw was what he did--a flash of something running from the woods. I concentrated, invoking my night and distance vision, and saw that the "something" was a ginger-red dog running full out along the shore.
"Some kind of dog," I said, frowning. "Big one, too. More like a wolf. That couldn't be...Oh, shit! It's the guard!"
"He's a werewolf?" Kris squinted at the fast-approaching canine.
"Cut the ropes!" I yelled, running for the front of the ship.
"What?"
"The ropes, the lines, whatever. Cut them!"
Kristof hesitated only a second, then he lunged forward and sliced through the rope at the rear of the boat. I cut the one at the front. The boat didn't budge.
"It's anchored," Kris yelled, leaning over the side.
He grabbed hold of the anchor chain. I sailed across the deck and grabbed it from him. "I got this. You get the sails up and shove off, or whatever you need to do to get this baby moving."
As Kris raced around the cabin, the wolf reached the dock. The gangplank was still down. I dove for the ropes, seized them, and heaved. The wolf's forepaws landed on the edge of the gangplank, jerking the line from my grasp. I grabbed the rope, heaved again, and yanked the gangplank out from under him. He stumbled back, snarling.
"Double-crossing son of a bitch!" I shouted down at him.
Don't know whether he understood me, but it made me feel better.
The wolf gave a soft chuff of a sigh, and headed back down the dock.
"Yeah, you'd better run," I muttered.
I walked back to the anchor chain. I'd just gotten a good hold on it when a blur of motion caught my attention. I looked up to see the wolf tearing back down the dock, running hell-bent for the boat. Oh, shit. He was taking a run at it.
"Eve!" Kris shouted.
"I got it! You just get us moving!"
I wrapped the chain around my hands and pulled. The anchor barely budged. Where the hell was the windlass on these things? The wolf was almost at the end of the dock now, running full out, tongue hanging, green eyes fixed on the rail. I threw myself backward and felt the anchor lift just as the wolf launched himself. He shot toward the rail. I dropped to the deck, dragging the anchor higher.
A strong wind whipped around from the south--a magical wind. The sails billowed, the boat lurched from the dock, and the wolf's leap fell short. His front paws hooked the railing, but only for a second before the weight of his falling body sent him plummeting into the dark water below. I hauled the anchor over the side, then looked into the swirling dark water below.
"Hope you can swim, ya scurvy cur!" I shouted down at him.
Kristof laughed behind me. I waved at the wolf as he surfaced.
"Do you believe that?" I said. "He double-crossed us."
"Shocking. Absolutely shocking. Pretty clever, though."
"Damned clever...for a werewolf." I eased back against the railing. "So do you need to navigate this thing or what?"
"I've set her on a course for Roatan. My wind spell won't last long, but we'll get there."
"No rush. We can't visit Luther Ross until morning. We should probably keep watch for a
few minutes, though, make sure we aren't followed."
"I'll cover that, if you don't mind covering us with a fog spell."
I cast the sorcerer spell. Fog billowed up around the boat, and we sailed out to sea.
Edinburgh / 1962
THE NIX SAT ON A BARSTOOL, STARING AT THE BOTTLE of Scotch. Close enough to touch--to drink. In the old days, she'd never have considered such a thing. But now she was reduced to this, staring at a bottle of alcohol, imagining the burn of it down her throat, the pleasant numbing amnesia that followed.
She'd been inside plenty of partners with memories they'd wanted to forget, and most had indulged in alcohol to do it. She'd always despised them for such weakness. She'd suffered through the effects, with gritted teeth, hating every moment that her thoughts were dulled. And now she could think of nothing better than to partake of that same temporary oblivion.
She concentrated and reached for the bottle. Her fingers passed through the glass, through the amber liquid, leaving not so much as a drop of it on her skin. Once she'd have roared in frustration, cursed every demon she could name for not freeing her from this spirit prison. Now she only moaned and sank into her seat.
She hadn't fed properly since Dachev had left her. Oh, she'd taken partners, dined on her share of chaos, but it hadn't been the same. She'd come halfway around the world in search of something better, and hadn't found it. Every new partner was but a wretched substitute for him.
There would never be another like Andrei Dachev. A true partner of the soul. Though only a supernatural shade--and from an inferior race, at that--he'd understood the power of death and chaos the way only a demon usually could. More than that, he'd appreciated the craft of chaos more than most demons, and he'd opened her mind to possibilities she'd never considered, to the true beauty of physical and mental suffering.
He'd been content to watch, but they'd always talked of finding a way, not only to bring him inside her partners, but to impose their will on those partners, to force them to carry out Dachev's visionary ideas. Had they accomplished that, the Nix knew she would have felt an emotion she'd never experienced: happiness. The happiness of complete satisfaction.
If only she hadn't betrayed him.
She betrayed all her partners eventually, for that final satisfaction of seeing them fall. She'd told herself that was the reason she'd turned on Dachev, because she was so accustomed to doing so that she had acted without thinking. The truth was far more unforgivable. She had betrayed Dachev because she'd tasted another emotion she'd never encountered before: fear.
While she'd been inside a partner, an angel had come for Dachev--the same one who'd taken her soul from the Marquise's body and transported her to hell. She'd recognized him, but when Dachev saw the angel, dressed in contemporary clothing, acting human, he'd mistaken him for a corporeal being. She could have warned him. All she had to do was jump out of her partner. But to do so would have meant exposing herself. Fear had paralyzed her, and she'd left Dachev to his fate.
She'd had time to repent her cowardice. Fifteen years of finding only serviceable partners, nothing like Agnes or Jolynn or Lizzie, and certainly nothing like Andrei Dachev.
The pub door opened, and a boy crept in. As he slipped over to a table to deliver a message to his father, his gaze darted about, taking in everything about this forbidden place. A young blond woman across the room watched the boy. Nothing strange in that--everyone had turned to look at the child, the normal curiosity of the bored. It was the way this woman looked at him that caught the Nix's attention. There was a glint in her eye, not the hunger of a perverse human who lusts after children, but the truer lust of the predator.
The woman said something to her table-mate, a lank-haired young man. His gaze slid to the boy, and he smiled, his eyes lighting with a dimmer spark. Another predator, but a follower, a willing disciple. The woman was the leader. Interesting.
The Nix slid from her seat and moved closer. She hesitated, dreading the rush of disappointment that would come if she was mistaken. Finally, she met the young woman's gaze. And after only the briefest dip into her thoughts, the Nix knew her luck had changed.
23
ONCE BELOW DECK, WE DID THE SAME THINGS WE'D done almost every night for the past year--sat and talked. One would think that we'd have run out of topics months ago, but there always seemed to be something new to discuss, some subject, some opinion, some turn of mind left unexplored.
That night, a comment about the werewolf guard launched the discussion, which quickly led to an exchange of "werewolves I have known" war stories. Soon Kristof was telling me the long, convoluted tale of his encounter with a werewolf pack in Russia.
As I listened, my legs tucked under me and my head resting on my arm, the gentle rock of the boat and the familiar cadence of his voice conspired to tug me off to dreamland. Yet I resisted. Yes, my brain was in dire need of a sleep recharge. Yes, I could hear this story another time. And yes, it wasn't even all that interesting, but I could have listened for hours, curled up, comfortable, and sleepy, watching Kristof, his hands and eyes moving animatedly, voice rising and falling as the story slowed and restarted.
There'd been a time when I'd have given anything to be right here, listening to one of Kristof's stories. How many nights had I lain awake, just thinking of how good it would be to hear his voice? How many times had I considered picking up the phone and telling him about Savannah? Come morning, I was always horrified by the impulse, that I'd use my daughter as an excuse to get something I wanted. Now I could indulge myself without guilt or shame. So I stayed awake until the last bit of the tale was done, then let myself drift off to sleep.
When I awoke just past dawn, Kris was already on deck, navigating the boat to shore. We dropped anchor in a quiet cove and disembarked. We probably wouldn't need to use the boat again--our travel incantations would get us off the island--but it never hurt to have a backup plan. My guess was that all the pirates were back in La Ceiba. I never did figure out why they were guarding Roatan at all. A pretty enough island, but no different from a thousand other pretty islands in the ghost world. Maybe there was a hidden cache of treasure here somewhere...although I couldn't imagine what treasure ghosts would need to hoard. Or maybe it was simply a hideaway to protect, because that's what pirates did.
Following my directions, we found a vine-choked path heading into the jungle. From the hills, we could see a gorgeous white-sand beach hugging an aquamarine Caribbean sea, pink coral reefs visible beneath the crystal clear water...but of course, our path didn't take us anywhere near there. After about a quarter-mile of fighting through thick jungle, we came to an open stretch. I stopped and shaded my eyes to look south. There, on the other side of the clearing, was the next landmark, a huge slab boulder. An easier path wound past the boulder and through a semicleared gully.
A half-mile later, a simple white clapboard house came into view. Kristof waved for me to move in for a better look while he lurked in a coconut grove.
I circled the house and peered at the rear windows, invoking my built-in zoom. Once I was certain no one was watching from a window, I cast a blur spell and hurried onto the rear wraparound porch. With a combination of blur and cover spells, I was able to sneak a look in each window. It wasn't until I hit the last one that I found Luther Ross.
I had no physical description to work with, but I didn't need it. There were five people in the living room. Four of them were twentyish, female, and varying shades of blond. The fifth was a tall, dark-haired man in his early forties, with a Vandyke beard, mischievous gray eyes, and a hand planted on the ass of one of the blondes as he leaned over her shoulder and pointed at a vase. The girl's face screwed up in concentration as she tried to displace the vase. When it didn't so much as wiggle, he patted her rear and waved her to a chair.
Unbelievable. Give a guy the power to move objects across cosmic dimensions and what does he use it for? Screwing cute coeds. No wonder Ross hid out on Roatan--it wasn't so much about evading the Sea
rchers as limiting his classes to a select type of clientele, those he could handpick and give the transportation code. He probably took on the occasional legitimate student, to maintain his reputation, but if this was an example of his average class, then I understood why he hadn't been more successful in passing along his skills. From the looks of these girls, they'd be lucky if they could pronounce telekinesis. Nymphs probably. If you'd asked me in life what a nymph's powers were, I couldn't have told you. And now that I'd met some in the ghost world, I still wasn't sure.
Whatever special abilities nymphs once possessed had vanished generations ago, and they'd fully assimilated into the human race, where they could be found filling the ranks of cheerleader squads everywhere. Almost no one in the living supernatural world even knew they existed. Hell, they didn't know they existed until they popped up here after they died and went, "Wow, we're, like, magical."
The supernatural dimensions of the ghost world were filled with extinct races like elves and dryads, beings who'd lost their powers centuries ago but came to our realms after death. I suppose it wasn't easy, arriving here and finding yourself surrounded by people who could cast spells, change into wolves, manipulate the elements, and more. Not surprising, then, that these extinct races kept the ghost-world black market in business as they desperately tried to find some power, any power, to call their own.
I went back to Kristof and told him what I'd seen.
"Looks like a job for you," he said. "I'll stand guard out here."
I changed into the short black dress I'd worn with the haunters, and left my hair straight. Maybe not Ross's style, but at least he wouldn't mistake me for one of his nymphs.
I walked to the front door, opened it, and strode inside. As I entered the living room, every nymph jumped. Ross looked over at me. Then he looked at me some more.
"Well, well," he said. "A new student, I presume?"
I made a show of looking at each nymph, then cocked a "not likely" brow-arch at Ross.
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