Chapter 8
Crescent Park was empty by the time they all made it back to the bakery. The birthday celebration was over, the fake treasure hunt was done, and the town had long gone home. But inside Crescent Moon Bakery, it was anything but quiet.
“I’m just saying,” Princess Muffin Top said from the center of the table, “if I’m grading your collective performance on a scale of one to ten, you’re looking at a generous four.”
“A four?” Emory set down her iced chai. “We survived a ghost pirate attack!”
“Surviving isn’t the same as excelling.” Princess Muffin Top licked her front paw, still getting goop from her fur. “Mason had a sword fight with a ghost. Adeline threw rotten eggs at a tavern wench, and Emory ran into a tombstone.”
“I tripped over a tombstone,” Emory corrected. “There’s a difference.”
“There really isn’t,” Princess Muffin Top said snippily.
“What about me?” Ronin asked. “I did good, right?”
Princess Muffin Top considered him. “You pulled water out of fog and threw it at beings who are already dead and therefore cannot drown. I give you one point for effort.”
“And me?” Tempi asked, immediately regretting it.
“You dove behind a see-through tombstone.” The cat paused for effect. “A see-through tombstone, Tempi.” She clucked her tongue in disappointment. “But I’ll give you a point as well for ripping off your clothes to distract the ghosts.”
Tempi gasped. “That’s not at all what I did!” She threw her arm out and gestured to Ronin. “I didn’t even rip the dress...Ronin did!”
Princess Muffin Top smirked. “So Ronin ripped the dress off your body. Noted.”
Tempi groaned and thunked her head down onto the table. “I give up.”
“What about your performance?” Adeline asked. “You fought a ghost cat.”
“And won,” Princess Muffin Top said. “Hence the generous four points.”
The bell above the bakery door chimed, and Cassie Casswell strolled inside.
She’d changed out of her uniform and into jeans and a T-shirt, her dark hair loose around her shoulders.
“I figured you guys would be here.” She stopped, and her mouth dropped open.
“Wow, what happened to you guys? You got mud caked all over you, and Tempi, you’re missing half your dress. ”
“We tangled with ghost pirates in a haunted cemetery,” Mason said casually.
“What?” Cassie pulled out a chair and sat down. “A haunted cemetery? Are you kidding me? Tell me everything.”
Emory grinned. “We found a hidden pirate cemetery on the bluffs. It was protected by an enchantment lock, and when we went inside, ghost pirates attacked us.”
Cassie huffed and sat back in her chair. “Why do I miss out on all the fun stuff? I was directing traffic on Tide Street while you guys were fighting ghost pirates?”
“You didn’t miss much,” Mason said.
“She missed everything,” Princess Muffin Top corrected.
“Start at the beginning from when you left to search for your first clue,” Cassie said. “And don’t leave out anything.”
So they told her everything. From finding the real first clue to fighting ghost pirates and finding their latest clue...and everything in between. Cassie especially liked the part where Tempi’s dress was ripped from her body.
Cassie took a sip of the cold brew Emory had made. “You didn’t think to decode the clue while you were at the cemetery?”
Tempi scoffed. “Did you not just hear us say we barely escaped with our lives?”
“Speak for yourself,” Princess Muffin Top said. “Had I lost one life, I still had eight others.”
Mason set down his coffee. “All right. It’s time to see what’s in the box.”
Tempi had placed the small iron box in the center of the table when they’d arrived, and no one had touched it since. She’d been dying to tear into it, but she knew her friends needed time to destress and talk everything through.
Mason reached for the box and popped the latch.
Inside, resting on a scrap of oilcloth, was a piece of folded parchment.
He lifted it carefully, unfolded it, and read aloud.
“Two elements bound by a captain’s design.
Where one is the water, the other the wind.
To see what is hidden here, the elements must join. Only then will the clue become clear.”
Mason turned the paper over. On the back, Tempi saw what looked like a faded drawing of half a map. The coastline was recognizable, but the interior details were missing. There were also blank spaces where landmarks and directions should have been.
“It’s incomplete,” Adeline said.
“I don’t think it’s incomplete.” Tempi took the paper from Mason and studied the blank spaces. “The clue said it’s hidden. The same way the cemetery was hidden to us.” She looked at Ronin. “Water and wind. Air and water. It’s requiring our magic again.”
“It seems to be a recurring theme,” Ronin said. “I wonder why that is?”
Mason crossed his arms. “DuBois was a vampire. Why would he build his clues around air and water magic?”
They all looked at each other and shrugged.
“So what do we do?” Emory asked. “How do air and water magic reveal a hidden map?”
Tempi studied the parchment, running her hands over the surface.
She could feel something in the paper—a faint hum of magic just beneath the surface.
She’d felt something similar at the bluff cave when she and Ronin had opened the sealed stone together.
“I think Ronin and I need to channel magic at the same time. Air and water together. DuBois wants us to do that a lot.”
Ronin nodded. “Same as the cave.”
She frowned as she turned the paper over in her hands. “But we can’t exactly blast a piece of three-hundred-year-old paper with wind and seawater. It’ll disintegrate.”
“The clue says the elements must join,” Ronin said. “It doesn’t say anything about blasting.” Ronin held out his hand. “If we join hands and both touch the paper and push our magic through it gently, the hidden layer might respond.”
Tempi looked at his outstretched hand. She knew it was a practical, reasonable suggestion.
And she also knew there was absolutely no reason for her pulse to speed up over a practical, reasonable suggestion.
Yet it was…the traitor! “Okay.” She set the parchment flat on the table. “Let’s try it your way.”
They stood and faced each other. Tempi slipped her right hand into his left, then she placed her left hand on the paper as he placed his right hand on top of hers. It was like they were a complete circle.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded. “Ready.”
They carefully pushed their magic into the paper at the same time.
Tempi felt her air magic flow through her fingertips and into the parchment...
and then she felt Ronin’s water magic move through the paper like a current.
Just when she was beginning to think they’d had it wrong, their magics collided and something sparked.
She gasped as her hand on the paper jerked.
The sensation that shot up her arm was warm and electric and completely unexpected.
She looked up at Ronin and found him looking at her, his green eyes wide. He’d obviously felt it as well.
They continued to stare at each other. The bakery, the table, the clue, their friends sitting around them. All of it fell away for a second as his eyes held hers, and she forgot to breathe…which was ironic for an air elemental.
Princess Muffin Top cleared her throat. “Am I interrupting something? Because it certainly looks like I’m interrupting something.” She waved her paw in the air. “And I want to make sure everyone at this table is aware that I’m interrupting something.”
Tempi and Ronin both yanked back their hands, neither of them looking at each other.
“Look!” Cassie gasped, pointing at the table.
The paper they’d just touched was glowing.
As they all watched, ink began spreading across the blank spaces, forming lines and words until the missing half of the map appeared, just as the clue had promised.
The completed map showed a section of coastline Tempi recognized—the southeast bluffs past Crystal Cove.
And at the center of the map was the lighthouse for Moonlight Bay.
Beneath the lighthouse was a cave in the cliff face.
And beneath the drawing was the rest of the clue.
“Where the tide breathes in and out, the truth waits below.”
“This is it!” Princess Muffin Top cried. “I’ll finally get my paws on that gorgeous stone.”
“The old lighthouse,” Tempi said. “The caves beneath it. Is it talking about the tide going in and out of the cave?”
Ronin nodded. “Sounds like it. I know those caves well. I’ve swum that coastline hundreds of times over the last three years, and every once in a while, I’ll go explore.”
Mason folded his arms. “When do you want to go?”
Tempi looked at the map, then at Ronin. She curled her hand into a fist beneath the table, the memory of the spark still buzzing in her fingertips. “Again, it’s talking about the tide, which is water, and breathing in and out, which is air. I think this one is just for us.”
“Agreed,” Ronin said. “We’ll go tonight at low tide.”
“And the rest of us?” Adeline asked.
“Go home,” Tempi said. “Grab some dinner and rest up. It’s been a long day. We’ll meet back here in the morning. Say around nine o’clock?”
Princess Muffin Top yawned and stretched across the table. “Fine. I’ll stay behind this time. I need to recover from my victory against the ghost cat.” She examined a paw. “War takes a toll on the body, even when you’re magnificent.”
They all gathered their things and headed for the front door. At the last minute, Cassie turned and grabbed her arm, urging her across the room. Whatever it was her friend wanted to say to her, Tempi wasn’t sure she had the mental capacity to hear it.
“For the record,” Cassie said, “whatever just happened with the hand thing? Everyone noticed.” She grinned. “Nobody is going to mention it. But everyone noticed.”
“Shut up and go away.” Tempi hugged her friend. “And I mean it...shut up.”
Cassie blew her a kiss. “Toodles. See you shortly.”
Tempi turned to Ronin. “Let’s go, Seawald.” She smirked as she turned back around. “And wipe that smile off your face.”
She heard him laughing as she strode out the door.