Secrets of the Deep (30 page)

Feeling awkward at her heartfelt admission, Jake struggled for how to respond. Then he remembered the kind things Dani always said when he was faced with some new disaster, especially those he caused himself. It always helped him find his shaken confidence again.

“Well, for what it’s worth,” Jake attempted, “I’ve seen what you can do, and I think you’ll make a fine sea queen in your day. So don’t be so hard on yourself. Your father’s main concern right now is probably your safety and Liliana’s. He’s got to be pleased that you rescued her.”

“I suppose. Thanks.” She studied him for a moment as though seeing him for the first time, then a smile curved her lips. “Thanks for everything, frog boy,” she teased. “I really do appreciate it, and I’m sorry I wasn’t more honest from the start.”

“It’s all right,” he said with a casual nod. “I understand now. You were shaken up from Davy Jones’s invasion, you’d just been run over by a submarine, and didn’t know if you could trust us. But you’ll see. We’ll keep you and your sister perfectly secure while you’re here. You have my word.”

“Hmm,” she said with a gleam in her deep blue eyes. Then, to Jake’s utter astonishment, she leaned closer and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Maybe there’s a prince in there somewhere, after all,” she whispered in his ear, and withdrew.

Jake’s heart jolted as she smiled at him and walked away. He stood there in shock, heart pounding, eyes wide.

She kissed
me!

Oh, come on, you idiot!
he told himself at once.
It’s just another game of hers. Sea magic again! She’s just flirting to make sure I’ll do all in my power to keep her safe…

Unfortunately, it worked.

Like a charm.

He was only thirteen, after all, and certainly, no beautiful mermaid princess-in-hiding had ever flirted with him before, let alone kissed him.

Breathless, Jake watched her walk away, the airy scarf she’d borrowed from Isabelle billowing in the balmy night breeze, and only one thought burst through his young male brain…

Bellissima!

CHAPTER 15

Revelations

“J
ake, Jake! Wake up! I’ve got it! Open your eyes, man! I’ve got a plan!”

“Arrrchie,” Jake grumbled the next morning, trying to turn over and ignore his cousin, who was bouncing him by his shoulder up and down on the mattress.

“Chop-chop, coz! We’ve got to get moving, now!”

Jake begrudgingly lifted his eyelids and scowled at his cousin.

Behind his spectacles, Archie’s eyes were a bit glassy, with dark circles under them.

“You’ve been up all night guzzling those little Italian coffees again, haven’t you?” Jake grumbled as he sat up with a groggy yawn.

“Ha, I had a whole mountain of reference books to get through. Didn’t see you volunteering! But guess what? I found someone—an expert—who can help us! And he’s just a day trip south of us, on Malta. Coturnix actually mentioned him at that lunch! He’s a leading researcher on Atlantis—Dr. Dmitri Giannopoulos! They had his book in the library,
The Lost Secrets of Atlantis
! I skimmed the whole thing last night, but what’s even better is that we can all go and talk to him. So, get up or we’ll never make the ferry to Malta! It leaves at eight A.M. If we hurry, we can reach his shop by noon and catch the ferry home again in time for supper.”

“Good job, doc.” Across the room, Maddox, hearing their exchange, leaned up on his elbows in his cot, his spiky black hair sticking out in all directions. “Only one problem. Her Ladyship will never let us go.”

“Guardian’s right,” Jake mumbled, tempted to roll over and go back to sleep. “Aunt Ramona’s paranoid about the Dark Druids finding us.”

“I’ll tell her I’m taking you all on an educational outing to see, you know, the Greek ruins!”

Jake let out a chuckle. “You? The world’s worst liar?”

“
You
can do the lying, then. Come on, coz, we’ve got to go! Chop-chop! I’ll go get the girls up.”

“Good luck with that,” Jake said wryly as his coffee-powered cousin sped off to go and pound on the door of the girls’ bedchamber.

Maddox snorted. “Hasn’t he noticed the girls take forever to get ready?”

“There’s no reasoning with him when he gets likes this. One can only obey.” Jake sighed and sat up with a stretch. “We’ll go without ’em if we have to. Never been to Greece.”

“Me neither. Should be interesting.”

Jake flashed a lazy grin. “Maybe we’ll meet some Nephilim.”

With that, Jake and Maddox heaved themselves out of their beds and started getting ready for the day’s mission.

It only took a few minutes for Jake to get cleaned up and dressed, but as he stood before the mirror, buttoning his sleeves, he was startled to notice the bright sun streaks in his hair. He didn’t usually think much about how he looked, but he wondered if Sapphira thought him handsome…and he felt a flutter in his heart when the memory of her playful little kiss rushed into his mind.

I’ll bet Maddox sure would be jealous,
he thought with a rascally smile in his friend’s direction.

But when he glanced over at the older boy, he recalled seeing Sapphira holding hands with Maddox in the sea yesterday, and his suspicion returned that the lovely mermaid’s sole intention was to mess with their minds. Manipulate both of them, all of them, to get what she wanted.

The question was, if she was like that, why the deuce could he not stay angry at her? It was weird how girls could make you feel…

Frowning a bit, Jake turned away from his reflection while, across the room, Maddox pulled on his black jacket. Jake did his best to dismiss all the nonsense from his mind and marched out of the boys’ chamber, checking in with Archie again before braving Aunt Ramona’s presence to ask permission to go. They’d need to get their story straight first, after all.

When he reached the pleasant rooftop patio, Jake discovered to his surprise that his cousin
had
somehow succeeded in getting the girls moving, too.

Dani, Nixie, and Isabelle were already dressed and sitting at the table enjoying the standard light Italian breakfast of frothy cappuccinos and slices of
fette biscottate
, dainty golden crispbreads with apricot jam.

Jake still preferred his prodigious English breakfasts, thank you very much, but there wouldn’t be time for all that today. He helped himself to a slice of crispbread as he greeted them with an easy smile. “So, Malta, eh? This should be fun.”

Dani and Isabelle just looked at him, chewing slowly. He assumed their slightly sullen expressions were due to their not quite being awake yet. But no matter. He glanced around furtively, looking for a different female face.

“Anyone seen Sapphira?”

# # #

Dani gritted her teeth at the question. Isabelle sipped her drink, stared straight ahead in icy serenity, and said, “Maddox just ran down to the beach to fetch her.”

“Ah,” said Jake. “Hey, there’s Arch! ’Scuse me, ladies.” He stole a swallow of Dani’s cappuccino, then dashed off to talk to his cousin.

She huffed and then sat there fuming. Isabelle gave her a knowing look.

“Oh, come on, you two!” Nixie scolded in a low tone, leaning across the table a bit. “Don’t start again, please. I had enough drama over this from the both of you last night.”

“Humph,” said Dani, and snapped off another bite of the crunchy crispbread.

Maybe Nixie wouldn’t be so nonchalant if it was Archie that Sapphira had decided to kiss.

Oh, how Dani wished she had not seen that last night.

She had been on her way back up to the patio simply to ask Her sneaky Highness if she preferred a soft pillow or a firm one, and she had seen
that
.

With a gasp, Dani had withdrawn into the shadows before Jake had realized she was there. She had ducked behind the stucco entranceway around the bottom of the outdoor steps leading up to the patio, and Sapphira had strutted right past her.

While Jake had remained there, looking stupefied, Dani had slipped back into the girls’ bedchamber, in a daze.

She had sat on the edge of her bed for several minutes, staring into space and feeling queasy.

Why? She knew it shouldn’t matter. Jake was not her beau, after all. He was just her friend.

Her friend who was apparently oblivious to the fact that she more or less worshiped the ground he walked on.

Maybe her special power was being invisible, she thought, for she certainly felt that way. The queasy feeling got stronger, but she swallowed it down and told herself she was too young to care about such things, anyway. She wouldn’t even turn twelve until the autumn.

And yet, thinking of Jake liking some other girl in
that
way frightened Dani to the marrow of her bones. She suddenly felt small and insignificant. What was she even doing here?

She had no magical powers, no aristocratic bloodlines. She was just the hired help. And one day, Jake would give speeches in the House of Lords in the ordinary world and go on missions as a Lightrider in the magical one, and so it was utterly foolish of her to imagine that she would marry him someday when they grew up.

As the shock of seeing Sapphira kiss him finally started to recede, Dani managed to collect herself.
Right. I’m not going to be that way,
she decided.
No boy, not even Jake Everton, will ever be the center of my world. We are
friends
. As for me, I am who I am, and that’s just going to have to be enough.

Such thoughts helped her clench her jaw, stiffen her spine, and return to the task of setting up the required hospitality for the girl she was so tempted to hate. Wishing with all her heart that they had never met either the orb or Sapphira, Dani saw to the pillows and the blankets, the lantern and the water pitcher, washbasin, and soap, along with two towels and some food for the mermaid sisters to eat if they got hungry down there.

She decided to concentrate on Lil. Sapphira was laughing on the beach with Maddox, anyway, tossing a ball back and forth by starlight, so at least Dani didn’t have to face her, other than forcing a smile and mumbling, “You’re welcome,” when the princess thanked her for her pains.

She made the tentlike pavilion cozy for the sake of the younger mermaid and gave her a book to read by the lantern light. Then she said goodnight. But on her way up the stone beach stairs, Dani paused and called down a made-up excuse, telling Maddox she believed Jake wanted to talk to him about something.

As Isabelle’s hired companion, she figured it was her duty. So Maddox tore himself away and said goodnight to Bellissima with a polite bow. Dani left the two boys to figure it out for themselves and retreated to her room.

The moment Isabelle came back from the library, she took one startled look at Dani and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Dani told her what she had seen, and Isabelle’s jaw dropped. “She kissed Jake?”

“Yep,” said Dani.

Then Izzy’s sky-blue eyes had narrowed to angry slashes. “Well, I saw her holding hands with Maddox on the way back from rescuing Liliana!”

Dani had gasped, and both girls whispered shocked, indignant choruses of
“Can you believe her?”

Then Nixie had walked in. “What’s wrong with you two?”

They filled her in and Nixie had heaved a sigh. “I wouldn’t make too much of it if I were you.”

“What?” they both had exclaimed.

“It doesn’t mean anything!” Nixie assured them. “Sea magic again. Like I said, it will wear off. It just hasn’t been long enough yet.”

“But how can she do this?” Isabelle shook her head. “First, she was willing to drown all humans, and now she’s using her looks and her sea magic to manipulate Jake and Maddox. What kind of awful girl does this?”

“She’s just scared,” Nixie said, waving them off. “Well, I would be too! Look at her situation. She’s in a hostile environment, a world she doesn’t know—literally a fish out of water. I imagine she’s just doing whatever she thinks she must to make sure she and her sister will be safe up here on dry land. If that means wrapping Jake and Maddox around her finger to protect her, then…” Nixie just shrugged. “Eventually she’ll realize they would’ve helped her anyway, out of honor, not because she made them get infatuated with her.”

“Ugh, I can’t believe you’re sticking up for her,” Isabelle had huffed, lip curled.

Nixie kicked off her shoes. “I’m just telling it like it is. Don’t worry about this. They’ll snap out of it soon.”

“Well, what about Archie?” Dani had demanded.

“Ah, he’s already back to his old self.”

“Because he truly cares for you,” Isabelle said wistfully.

Nixie had snorted. “No, it’s just this mystery about the orb has fascinated him more than she does, that’s all. Now, please, don’t go down that horrific girly gossip path again or I’ll turn you both into newts. Honestly, it makes me wonder what you say about
me
when I’m not in the room.”

“Nixie!” Dani had protested, though she’d marveled that now Nixie was even starting to sound like Archie, who was too gentlemanly to gossip.

“Oh come, we don’t talk about you,” Isabelle chided.

“Not anymore,” Nixie drawled. “You used to, I bet.”

Isabelle and Dani had exchanged a wry glance, unable to deny it.

This morning, however, they were united in their determination to scramble into their gowns for the day and join the boys on this jaunt to Malta to see the archeologist.

Neither girl dared leave Sapphira to go alone with the boys.

# # #

Jake consulted with Archie on exactly what he was to say before climbing the stairs to knock twice on the door to Aunt Ramona’s private suite.

“One moment!” the baroness called.