16. Chapter 16
My hands trembled but not with the cold. I could see how that would put his mind at ease, but we couldn’t leave people behind in the hands of the pirates. Especially not after the welcome we had received.
“You can’t expect me to agree to that,” I said. “You haven’t exactly wowed us with your hospitality so far.”
“Putting it lightly,” Kira muttered with a sniff.
“Whoever you leave here will have a free run of the ship, within reason,” the Captain said.
“And they won’t be harassed? They’ll be safe?” I asked.
“No man here will touch a hair on their heads.”
Disgruntled snorts rippled through the gathering of pirates, and I chewed my tongue. Whatever ideas these men had, would they stay quashed even when their captain wasn’t around?
“Is this even a question? I’ll stay with dickhead here,” Kira said, nodding at Adrian, “and you three sort all this out.”
“Hey.” Adrian mumbled his distaste for his new nickname in a tone I could almost have mistaken for hurt, if I didn’t know him better.
“No, Kira, you go.” Bronwyn clasped her hands together, her knuckles white. “You’re more useful out there than I am.”
I exchanged concerned looks with Kira. Nobody could question Bronwyn’s bravery even before volunteering, but did she have it in her to survive confinement on a ship with these pirates?
“Are you sure?” Kira asked.
Bronwyn nodded.
“I’ll take care of her,” Adrian said, earning himself a smile from Kira.
“Of course you will, dickhead,” she said.
“Shut up.”
I tried to ignore them bickering with each other and levered myself up a little further to catch proper sight of the Captain over his meal.
“So we’re agreed, then,” I said.
“I do not recall finishing my terms.” The Captain uncorked a bottle of what I suspected was rum with his teeth and spat the cork onto the floor.
Oh great, there was more?
“You will bring me back a love potion,” he said after a generous swig from the bottle.
A love potion? Was this guy high? No, I reminded myself. He was human. Of course he thought love potions were a thing. Whenever humans learned about magic, they immediately thought anything was possible with a certain potion or spell. But neither factories nor cauldrons could manufacture love. The closest thing that existed was a lust potion. But given that this guy had expected conquering Dusk to win him favour with the woman he loved, it was possible he didn’t really know the difference.
“Done,” I said. “Anything else?”
“That wasn’t the wisest question to ask,” Ben muttered out of the side of his mouth. “He could think up anything, now.”
“He’s got two things he wants. We’ve got some negotiating power here,” I whispered back.
“There is one more thing.” The Captain stood and dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin in an oddly sophisticated manner. “You will never come before me as a mermaid ever again.”
Venom laced his words so thickly that I wanted to recoil. If I’d had the choice, I would have transformed back long before. But a part of me wondered if his disdain for seeing me as a mermaid had him accessing dark memories from his past.
I met his gaze and didn’t blink. “Fine. Do we have an agreement?”
The Captain strode his way around the table, nearly stepping on Bronwyn’s fingers before she snatched them out of the way, and held a hand down to me. I reached up, never breaking eye contact, and shook it.
***
Preparations to leave didn’t take long. With everything already packed, the only thing we really needed to do was select a portal to go through. After a brief tour with Eyepatch, we soon learned that not all the portholes had access to other times. The portholes that did could see out into those times, but when Ben and Adrian held me up to look through them, all I could see was forest. There were no indicators at all which time lay beyond.
I asked Bronwyn half a million times if she was sure she wanted to stay, but she wouldn’t budge on her position. I couldn’t even promise her if we would return quickly or not. If time didn’t pass on the ship, would we take any time at all to come back through the portal?
Leaving her here didn’t feel comfortable, even if Adrian was with her. Although, he wouldn’t fare any better if the pirates got rough with him. All I had was the Captain’s word, but with the entire island on the line, it would have to do.
We selected a random portal to try first. With no way of knowing what time awaited us, we would have to try each portal until we found the one we wanted.
Janeira had said that the portals each led to a significant time in Dusk’s history, and I could only hope that one of them would lead to the day that Isadora and Freddie had cast their spell.
The Captain and his crew surrounded us as Ben, Kira, and I organised ourselves in front of the porthole we had chosen. Bronwyn had given me her amulet to allow us access in and out of the ship. Despite the Captain’s indifferent manner toward us, his presence there spoke volumes. He didn’t just want out of this place; he wanted to know how it worked. Even if we were collaborating, I wanted to keep as much from him as possible. With so much on the line, I couldn’t let anything stop us.
“Are we ready?” I asked Ben and Kira as I looped the amulet from around my neck.
“When you are.” Ben picked me up by my front half while Kira grabbed my tail.
They both leaned in so I could press the amulet to the porthole, and in a flash of light, we were no longer on the ship but in dense forest.
“Whoa!” Kira lost her balance and dropped my tail, whisking herself up into the air with a flick of her wings.
“Hey!” Ben staggered and toppled over, still holding me.
We rolled in a heap onto a floor littered with stabbing twigs and scratchy leaves. Ben dug his knees into the ground, straddling me as my tail popped back into two legs.
“Oh, thank goodness.” I sighed and flopped onto the ground, wiggling my toes.
“Better?” Ben asked, planting his hands on either side of my shoulders to lean over me.
“I’ll say.” I reached up and curled a hand around his neck to pull me down for a kiss.
But our lips barely touched before Kira made a vomiting noise.
“Okay, can you two not? And Maeve, will you put some pants on?”
“Oh, gods!” I pushed Ben off me, threw off my waterproof bag, and pulled the cardigan I wore across my lap. Ben really could distract me from just about anything.
As I shimmied into a work uniform from my bag, I caught sight of a small, swirling dot on the tree behind Ben.
“Is that the portal?” I asked. It looked tiny.
Kira strode up to it and gave it a poke. Her finger went through it as if it was only a projection. Maybe when I used the amulet on it, it would zap us back onto the ship.
“Looks like it,” she said. “Not exactly easy to spot, is it?”
“We’ll just have to remember where it is.” I took Ben’s offered hand and stood up, slipping on a pair of hardy sandals I had brought.
“Does anyone know where we are?” Ben asked as we walked through the forest.
“Nothing looks familiar.” Kira flitted a little way ahead of us.
“Maybe it will. Let’s give ourselves a minute to readjust,” I said.
Spending what equated to a night in the brig of an old ship at the behest of angry pirates was sure to make anyone disoriented.
I slipped my hand into Ben’s as we walked, finding a little peace in his touch.
“You’ve reminded me.” Ben brought my hand up to his lips and kissed my knuckles before pressing his thumb to the back of my hand. “You’re overdue some good luck.”
The gold tendrils of Ben’s good luck charm inked onto my skin.
“You shouldn’t be so quick to waste that on me,” I warned him. “Someone else might need it.”
Ben kissed the mark before letting our hands drop between us, our fingers entwined. “You needed it when those pirates took you. I just wish I had given you some sooner.”
“Aw.” I rested my chin on his shoulder and curled my arm around his. “Were you worried?”
“So worried. I guess the captain has a real problem with mermaids.”
“Well, then I should probably stay on my feet for the time being.”
“Please do.” Ben planted a kiss on my forehead and I squeezed him.
“Um. Guys. I think...” Kira landed and stared out between two thick bushes.
“What?” I asked, as we jogged to catch up with her.
She turned around, her face a shade paler. “I think we’ve gone too far.”
Ben and I scrambled to look through the gap in the bushes, and my jaw dropped.
On the cobbled street ahead of us, a horse and carriage trotted by, ridden by a man in a brown pinstripe suit who tipped his bowler hat to a passing lady. Dressed to the nines in frills, the lady curtsied and twirled her parasol over her shoulder.
I swore. We really had come too far.