Chapter 7 #2
Mason pulled the paper from his pocket and read aloud. “Where only pirates rest beneath hallowed ground, and the dead keep watch over what was found. May good luck and fortune be in your cards. For only the worthy will get past the guards.”
The words Mason spoke echoed through the cemetery...
and it was like a switch had been flipped.
The rum-drinking pirates stopped drinking and laughing, and the card players all looked up.
The flirting women stopped strolling. Every ghost in the cemetery turned toward them, and the fog thickened until Tempi could barely see the gate behind her.
“Uh-oh,” Emory said. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
The large bearded ghost pirate stood, his expression no longer friendly. “Ye read from the Captain’s letter.”
He didn’t say it like a question, but a statement. Tempi took a step forward and nodded. “We did.”
“We promised Captain DuBois to protect what he treasured.” The pirate’s spectral form blazed brighter. “Ye will come no closer. Turn back now or walk the plank!”
A second pirate stood and raised a ghostly flintlock. “I say it’s too late for that!” He took aim and fired. The ghostly bullet streaked through the air with a crack of blue light.
Tempi heard Emory scream as she grabbed Ronin’s arm and dove behind the nearest tombstone, pulling him down with her.
It wasn’t until Tempi sat up that she realized the tombstone was see-through.
They were now crouched behind a translucent gravestone, completely visible to everyone.
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“You realize this is a terrible hiding spot, right?” he mused.
She swatted his arm. “It was instinct!”
“Look out!” Adeline cried.
Tempi swiveled her head in time to see a ghostly bearded pirate slashing his sword menacingly through the air.
Mason whipped out his own fake sword and engaged in swordplay with the bearded pirate.
Only they weren’t getting anywhere because every time Mason swung his sword, it went right through the pirate.
It didn’t seem to stop the ghost from attacking him, though.
“I’m sword-fighting a dead pirate!” Mason shouted as the fog grew thicker around him. “This is insane!”
Emory screamed as she ducked to escape a blast of ghostly energy from one of the corseted women. “Adeline, a little help?”
Adeline threw her hands up and a wave of magic rolled through the fog. The magic smacked against the ghostly woman and she instantly recoiled, looking confused. “What is that? It smells like...rotten eggs?”
“My signature kitchen witch move,” Adeline said.
“This is ridiculous,” Tempi said. “I feel like I need popcorn to watch this spectacle.”
A loud hissing screech echoed through the cemetery, and Tempi watched in amazement as the spectral cat launched itself at Princess Muffin Top with a yowl.
“Bring it, you transparent fleabag!” Princess Muffin Top yelled as she met the ghost cat mid-air, claws out.
Tempi laughed out loud when Princess Muffin Top sailed right through the cat and landed a few feet away.
“Yeah,” Tempi said. “I didn’t think that was going to work.”
“I had to try,” Princess Muffin Top said as she sheathed her claws. “That fleabag had it coming.”
“Oh, crap!” Tempi scrambled to her feet as best she could, considering she was cocooned in a confining mermaid dress, and sent a blast of compressed air at a pirate charging toward Emory.
The ghost scattered like smoke, then reappeared ten feet away looking deeply offended. “Ye dare fool with me, Air Witch?”
“I dare!” she yelled. “I dare big time! That’s my friend you’re messing with.” She held up her hands for him to see the magic crackling at her fingertips. “Ye might want to think again, Pirate!”
Ronin jumped up next to her, and spreading out his hands, he began pulling water from the fog.
He reshaped it, and then hurled a wave at three pirates advancing from the left.
The water passed through them, but dispersed their forms long enough for Emory to sprint past them and hide behind a nearby tree.
“Thanks,” Emory hollered, bending over to catch her breath.
“You said treasure hunting would be fun, Seawald!” Tempi shouted as she dodged another spectral bullet from a random gun-waving pirate.
“I’m having fun!” Ronin shouted back. “Aren’t you?”
“I hate you!”
He winked at her. “That’s my girl.”
She was about to tell him to bite her, but another ghost pirate was swinging a sword at her head. On instinct, she ducked and ran. Or tried to. The mermaid dress caught around her knees and she stumbled, nearly going down in the fog.
“I can’t run in this damn dress!” she yelled.
Ronin was beside her in two strides. He looked at the dress, looked at her face, then dropped to one knee.
Before she could ask him what the heck he thought he was doing, he grabbed the tulle that flared from her knees and ripped the bottom half of her dress away.
Unfortunately, the enchanted crepe material, freed from its lower half, immediately retracted upward like a slingshot...
and the hem shot from her knees to mid-thigh!
Tempi gasped and looked down at her bare legs on display, then scowled at Ronin still holding the bottom half of her mermaid dress.
“Oops. I didn’t realize it would do that,” he said. “Sorry.”
“You ripped the bottom half of my dress clean off me! I’m practically naked now!”
“I ripped the bottom of your dress so you could run.” He scrambled to his feet. “Which we need to do.” He grabbed her hand. “Right now. The others have already retreated.”
Another shot whizzed past them, and they both flinched.
“We’re discussing this later!” she snapped as he dragged her behind him.
“I have no doubt,” he said.
They ran deeper into the cemetery, dodging ghosts and spectral bullets, until they rounded a large stone marker and nearly collided with Mason, Adeline, and Emory, who were all pressed against the back wall of the cemetery.
“Did I just see Princess Muffin Top sitting on top of a ghost cat?” Tempi asked. “Or is my mind playing tricks on me?”
“You saw it,” Adeline said. “Not sure how she managed to get the ghost cat to become somewhat corporeal.”
“This is a dead end,” Mason said. “We’ll need to fight our way out if we want to continue searching the cemetery for the next clue.”
Tempi looked past the others and froze. Half hidden by thick fog and moss was a stone marker...
and carved into its surface was the same symbol from nearly every clue—the wave overlapping the gust of wind.
“There!” She pushed past the others and pressed her hand against the symbol.
The stone shifted and fell to the ground.
She peered inside and saw another iron box, smaller than the first. She quickly grabbed the box and pressed it to her chest.
A booming voice shook the cemetery, and the bearded pirate suddenly appeared directly in front of them, towering above them in the air. “Ye found it.”
Tempi’s heart hammered as she gripped the iron box even tighter to her chest. “We did.”
The cemetery fell silent as the other ghosts watched the exchange.
The bearded pirate studied them, his steely gaze moving over them slowly.
Then he grinned. A big, rum-soaked, gap-toothed grin.
“The Captain said only the worthy would make it this far.” He tipped his hat.
“Congratulations, ye scurvy lot. Ye’ve earned the next clue! ”
The heavy fog lifted, and the ghost pirates all went back to drinking and laughing and playing cards as if nothing had happened.
“That ghost cat is going to need kitty therapy,” Princess Muffin Top said as she sashayed over to them. “I showed him who was boss.”
“We’ve got the next clue,” Emory said. “Can we go?”
“We can go,” Tempi said, grinning like a fool as she wrapped her arms around the box and hurried out of the cemetery.
The minute they passed through the cemetery gate they were thrust back onto the sunny bluffs overlooking the water.
The warmth hit Tempi’s face, and she sighed with relief.
Behind them, the cemetery shimmered once and vanished.
The gate was gone...the fog was gone. And they were now once again surrounded by grass and rocks and the ocean.
They stood in silence for a moment, and then Emory started laughing. Soon, they were all joining her. Except for Princess Muffin Top, she was too busy flinging some sort of ghostly ooze from her fur.
Tempi met Ronin’s eyes as the laughter died down.
He was grinning at her, and she realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had this much fun with anyone.
Let alone a man she was supposed to despise.
She looked away first. Because if she didn’t, she was going to have to ask herself some tough questions she wasn’t ready to answer about Ronin Seawald.
She forced a smile and patted the iron box in her hands. “Let’s go back to the bakery and see what’s inside.”