Chapter 71 #14
She took care of personal necessaries, then checked her soft-sided weekender bag to make sure she had everything she would need if she was going into the unknown for a few days.
After a quick debate with herself, she stuffed a roll of toilet paper into her bag, since she didn’t know how rough roughing it might be during this search.
Mia Skov escorted Beth to the area where the vehicles were kept before the Arcana woman continued on to the section of the park that she was tending that day. Jack was already there, with a map spread out over the hood of their vehicle.
“Store your gear in the back seat,” he said. “Then come and look at this.”
The back seat held a couple of coolers and Jack’s duffel. Puzzled, Beth set her weekender on the seat next to his duffel, then looked at the cargo space.
“Why are you carrying so many gas cans?” She looked at the map of Wyrd he had spread over the hood.
The outline matched what she’d seen at the 13th precinct.
The areas that would be Destiny Park, the Teeth, and the land around Destiny Bay were shaded in dark gray.
Some areas around the outer ring of the island were shaded in light gray.
Probably the static neighborhoods? Everything else was blank.
No, not blank. Even as she watched, faint boundary lines moved on the map, redefining the interior neighborhoods.
“Where we end up might not have gas stations, and running low on fuel would be a very bad idea.” Jack gave her a long look. “We found two of the missing people yesterday, and frankly, that’s two more than I thought we would find.”
“There are three more who are missing.” Including Yaron Kali.
Jack nodded. “And now you have to choose. You have to focus on one of them if we’re going to have any chance of finding that person. The interior of Wyrd…Where we’re going, the roads can change with intentions. If you try to find all three…”
Jack lifted the map and pulled out a sheet of drawing paper. He laid it over the map.
The sketch was of a journey that began with intention and turned into chaos, branching out in so many directions it looked like someone chasing dandelion seeds blown in the wind until it ended with…
Beth wasn’t sure if the image of their vehicle going over a cliff was meant to be literal or symbolic, but in the sketch, Jack was badly wounded and she wasn’t much better off.
“That’s what Lysandra saw happening to us?”
“If the focus is scattered, it’s highly unlikely that we will return, even if we survive,” Jack replied.
Beth pointed to the detailed sketch of what looked like a diner. It was separate from the chaos. “What is that?”
“Our destination. If we can find that place, we should find someone there who needs our help getting home, although not necessarily the person you intended to find.”
“You don’t recognize the diner?”
Jack shook his head. “I recognize the type of place, but not that specific place.”
Five people had come ashore in five different parts of Wyrd.
Finding two of them yesterday had beaten the odds and then some.
Beth looked at the sketch and thought about what Lucas had said about Jack being responsible for her survival.
Someone had laid that burden on the Frost brothers, and she didn’t want to think about who might be powerful enough to demand that of Lucas.
Beth rummaged through her weekender and pulled out a missing person flyer from the file she’d made of the missing people. She stuffed the rest of the file under everything else. Then she pulled it out and set it on the hood.
“Could someone take that file to Lucas and ask him to hold on to it until we get back?” she asked. “Having it with me might be a distraction.”
Jack opened the file, flipped through the notes about the other people, and nodded. “Yeah. Better to leave this here.”
Beth laid the chosen flyer on the map. “We’re going after Yaron Kali.”
Jack folded the map and the sketch. Placing the flyer on top of the other papers, he put everything in a large manila envelope. “If you’re ready, let’s go.”
“Why are we going to Destiny Bay?” Beth asked when she spotted the water and the boats. “If Yaron Kali was there, couldn’t he get transportation to the park or even pay someone to take him across the river?”
“Maybe,” Jack replied.
A hesitation in his voice made Beth think there was something else going on. “But…”
“I am the trainer,” Jack said. “And you are…?”
“The trainee.”
“That’s correct. So while I see to some business the fishermen want carried back to Lucas, you’re going to show the picture of Yaron Kali around the docks and find out if anyone has seen him.”
“Yes, sir. Aye, aye, captain.”
Jack grinned. “Smart-ass.”
It took her less than five minutes to understand that she wasn’t there to show Yaron Kali’s picture to the groups of men who were working around the docks or the men and women who ran the shops near the water. She was there so that they could get a good look at her.
She came in with Jack Frost?
Yes, she did. She was going to be working as a Destiny Park security officer. This was her first assignment. Jack was her trainer.
Not full human, then?
No, she was one-quarter Arcana.
They eyed the gun she carried. One of Ethan Sharpe’s weapons?
Yes, he’d selected this one for her to carry.
When they finally looked at the flyer with Yaron Kali’s picture, it wasn’t quickly dismissed.
They looked, they thought, they called to other men and women working in the shops.
No one had seen Kali, but the other side of the bay, near the Teeth, was where full humans lived. He might have taken refuge there.
One man returned with a map of Wyrd that ignored the interior and focused on the shoreline, noting docks, small marinas that belonged to the Arcana, and other places to anchor.
Beth pointed to two places that looked like dimples in a skull. Coves? One had a simple X and might still be considered part of the bay; the other had a skull and crossbones. “What are those?”
The man pointed to the X. “That’s where the Last Breath anchors—when it does drop anchor. It’s a fishing trawler that hauls up more than fish.” He hesitated. “A ghost ship.”
Beth shivered. “And the other?”
“That’s where the Bonnie Lass drops anchor when the pirate queen and her first mate come ashore for supplies—or to release any of the crew who have fulfilled the bargain that was made.”
“Another ghost ship?”
All the men nodded. The man with the map said, “It’s said that the Bonnie Lass takes her rest at the bottom of Susurration Sound and then rises again to hunt.”
“It doesn’t sound like a place we would find Yaron Kali.”
“If he made a bargain to sail on the Bonnie Lass, he won’t be leaving until he completes the bargain—or until Captain Sheridan Gray decides to let him go.”
“Is there any way to contact the captain and ask?”
The man shook his head. “She’s water Arcana from a major branch. You don’t want to be messing with her. She talks to the Sorcerer King and the Ferryman and few others.”
In other words, if Yaron Kali—or either of the other two missing people—boarded that ship, they were gone for good.
“Tell her about the boat,” a woman said.
All the men murmured and finally agreed on the exact spot where a motorboat—not one owned by Arcana—had been spotted near a place where a person would find an interior road.
The human saw the two Arcana who were out fishing but didn’t raise a friendly hand, despite being anchored on the wrong side of the river, and looked uneasy, almost afraid.
When the Arcana were returning a couple of hours later, they saw that boat, with the same human at the wheel, heading for the town directly across the river. They didn’t see anyone with him.
The spot where the Arcana had seen the motorboat was almost directly across the river from the town of Jackson, where Yaron Kali lived and worked.
It seemed likely that Kali would want to go ashore as quickly as possible—before his colleague had time to change his mind and regret taking him to Wyrd.
Beth wasn’t sure what the men meant by an interior road, but she was certain Jack would know—and wouldn’t be pleased.
When Jack joined her, the Arcana fishermen showed him the map and the spot where the motorboat had been seen. She was right. He did not look pleased.
At the invitation of the woman who ran one of the shops, Beth made use of the washroom. Then she bought two bottles of juice.
“Are you water, land, or air?” the woman asked.
For a moment, Beth didn’t know what she was talking about. Then she understood. “It took special circumstances to see them, but…” She touched the sides of her forehead. “Antlers.”
“Ah. A forest branch. Most of us around the bay are connected to a water branch, as you might expect.”
Lessons. A show of trust to provide information that wouldn’t be shared with anyone across the river.
Beth joined Jack, set the bottles of juice in the cup holders between the front seats. “We are going to the place where the boat owned by Kali’s colleague was seen?”
“We are,” Jack replied. “And there is no telling where we will go from there.”
They traveled inland. Beth scanned her side of the road for a flash of color or some debris that might have been left by a careless human.
The dirt road was fairly straight, but she wasn’t sure that, if they turned around, they would end up back where they started.
And if that was true for someone traveling with one of the Arcana…
Jack hit the brakes, jolting Beth out of her thoughts.
In front of them, where it hadn’t existed a moment ago, was a fork in the road.
He shut off the engine, took a long drink from one of the bottles of juice—and said nothing.
“Jack? What’s going on?”
“You lost your focus. You began thinking of many instead of the one you want to find.”
“Are you saying I created that road?”