Secrets of the Deep (59 page)

“Put that down, girlie!”

“Just listen!” she insisted, apparently regrouping. “You’ve got the wrong person there.”

Davy Jones stopped. “What do you mean?”

“Archie can’t help you. The orb’s not science, it’s magic,” she said with great authority, “and if you want it fixed, then it’s me you want, not him.”

“Nixie!” Archie cried, aghast.

Jake’s eyes widened.

“Trust me, I’m the only one here who can make that thing work properly. He already tried his methods and they failed. The experiment was a flop.”

“Nixie, shut up,” Maddox ordered through gritted teeth.

Davy Jones gave her a wary look. “I know you’re all a lot of stinkin’ little liars, but fine. Plenty of room in the Locker. I’ll take both of you, then. Bring her,” he ordered his men.

“No!” Archie cried, and was ignored.

“Hand over the wand first, lovey,” Jones ordered Nixie, putting out his hand. “Won’t have you makin’ mischief with that thing.”

“But I’ll need it for my work on the orb,” she said with a steely gaze.

“Just for now,” Jones said, his tone indulgent, his gaze skeptical. He seemed to conclude that such a wee slip of a girl could not have posed much threat to the Lord of the Locker.

“Let’s go.” He nodded to his men.

Jake looked on, helpless, while Archie and Nixie started arguing as the sailors marched them into the water.

“How could you do this?” the boy genius scolded in what he must’ve thought was a low tone, though Jake could hear him clearly. “Go back with the others!”

“It’s too late now,” she retorted. “Why didn’t you ride away like I told you?”

“Oh, you’re in no position to question me, after the daft thing you’ve just done!”

“All you had to do was leave!”

“I told you horses make me nervous! Maybe if you would’ve come with me like Jake said, you could’ve persuaded the stupid animal to—”

“Oh, shut
up
, both of you!” Jones yelled, turning around and clapping a strange breathing apparatus like a translucent starfish over both their faces.

As it suctioned onto their faces, they both let out disgusted, muffled exclamations that it smelled like fish, but Jones interrupted.

“Leave it, unless you want to drown!”

Isabelle turned to Jake in distress. “Cousin, do something,” she pleaded. “Don’t let him take my little brother.”

Jake looked at her and knew he had to try one last time. He could not let Jones take Archie and Nixie–and then force them to help him destroy the world.

Izzy was right. He was scared down to the marrow of his bones that one more attack with his telekinesis would result in the pirates returning to finish the job of chopping off his hands.

But he had to try.

Remembering Sapphira’s words about how Jones would die like a fish drowning on dry land if he lost contact with the sea, he suddenly had an idea. If he could lift him up out of the waves and drop him somewhere up in the garden without his buckets of seawater on his feet…

Drawing on what was left of his nearly spent energy, Jake hit the pirate captain hard in the back with one last burst of his telekinesis, determined to raise him out of the shallows.

But Davy Jones had already reached the sea. It was only up to his knees, but it must have given him unexpected strength. He jolted forward, then sank into a fighter’s crouch, and somehow planted himself, one foot a step ahead of the other to brace against the invisible force buffeting him.

Jake kept it up, but, blast it, the man was as immovable as Gibraltar!

When what was left of Jake’s telekinetic energy dissipated, Jones turned around and glowered at him. “My turn, laddie.”

With a wide motion of his arm like a swimming stroke, the Lord of the Locker summoned a huge wave some twenty feet high. It came racing up from somewhere past the boulders, roared into the cove and up onto their private beach. Curling high, it towered above them. The kids cowered and held their breath. Isabelle put her arms around Maddox to try and protect him as the wave slammed down on top of them.

It turned Sapphira instantly back into a mermaid, though she was still tied up. It left Maddox with tears of pain in his eyes, Isabelle gasping for air, and Jake half-drowned.

But when the rogue wave retreated, gurgling back down into the ocean, Jake squeezed the salt water out of his eyes and gaped at what he saw. The moon-silvered waves were calm, but there was no sign of Davy Jones, his crew…or his captives.

They were all gone.

PART V

CHAPTER 29

Riptide

T
he muffled sounds from the beach seemed to have stopped.

Up at the house, Dani listened intently at the door of Her Ladyship’s bedchamber, her stomach knotted with suspense over what was happening out there. She was fairly sure that Archie had been captured, but maybe Jake had managed to free him…

Meanwhile, inside the dark, quiet room, the baroness had not yet awakened. Teddy was still barking silently, and Lil was still scared. But after several moments of keeping her ear to the door while kneeling on the dresser blockading it, Dani was fairly certain they were the only ones left in the house.

She turned to Liliana. “I think they’re gone,” she whispered, “but I have to go check. You stay here with Teddy and Her Ladyship until I come back and tell you if it’s safe. All right?”

Liliana nodded, her light blue eyes wide in the darkness.

Dani opened the bedchamber door and slid down carefully off the other side of the dresser into the sitting room. She did not dare shut the door behind her because of the locking spell Nixie had put on it as their second layer of defense. If she closed it, she might not be able to get it open again.

Thankfully, the dresser blocked Teddy from following her. Crouching down behind it, Lil peeked out over the top to watch Dani tiptoe across the sitting room.

Arriving at the door that Jake had broken down and Nixie had disguised with her illusion, Dani silently pulled it open and found the upstairs hallway empty.

No sign of the pirates.

She poked her head out past the plane of the doorway to scan this way and that, wondering how odd it would’ve looked if anyone had spotted a girl’s head peeking sideways out of a wall.

But no one was there to witness it, and with an exhalation of relief, she stepped out through the magical barrier into the hallway. She glanced behind her and was intrigued to see that the doorway to the sitting room was totally hidden again, sealed up seamlessly behind her.

The house was silent, so she crept a few paces down the hallway, peering into a couple of the rooms, only to see that, just as she had suspected, the drawers were pulled out of the dressers, their contents scattered about the floor. Lamps and decorative vases were broken here and there, pictures on the walls knocked askew, a few pieces of furniture thrown about. Still, things could’ve been much worse.

Just when she started to breathe a sigh of relief, she heard running footsteps pounding through the house. Unsure if the pirates were still here or if it was one of her friends, she peeked carefully over the staircase banister and saw Jake bounding up the stairs, dripping wet and looking very shaken up.

“Is it over? Are you all right? Are they gone?” she whispered.

“Yes to all. Can’t talk. Need a gryphon feather.” He raced past her to go most likely to the boys’ shared chamber, where she assumed he kept them.

Dani hurried after him. “Who’s hurt?”

“Maddox.”

“Is it bad?”

Jake didn’t answer, just sent her a dire glance over his shoulder.

Oh, no.
Dani’s heart sank.

# # #

“Well, that didn’t go exactly as planned, did it?” Maddox joked through gritted teeth, his face a waxy shade of white.

“Not exactly.” Isabelle helped him over to sit on the bottom step of the beach stairs, trying to hide her horror at her little brother’s kidnapping on top of seeing their strongest fighter so badly injured.

She knew Maddox had borne the brunt of the battle. Her mind kept replaying the whole thing over and over again…

“Hey,” he said softly, drawing her back out of the spinning black vortex of her thoughts. Then the Guardian apprentice proved more of an empath than she was in that moment, reading the anguish in her face. “At least they’re together.”

Isabelle pressed her lips shut to hold back the threat of a small sob of sisterly dread, and nodded.

“I’m sure between the two of them, they’ll think of something,” he promised. “Your brother’s smarter than the rest of us combined, and that Nixie, she’s just devious. In a good way.”

“And brave,” Isabelle said, her voice little more than a whisper.

Maddox nodded as they exchanged a glance of mutual awe at the little witch’s tenacity.

“When we get Archie back safely,” she added in a somewhat steadier tone, “I’ll have to see that she is suitably rewarded.”

“Psst! Maddox! Isabelle!” Sapphira called from the shallows as loudly as she dared.

They looked toward the waves, where the mermaid was treading water.

After Davy Jones’s well-targeted little tsunami had flattened them all and turned Sapphira back into her true form, Jake had quickly untied the princess and carried her back into the sea before running up to get a gryphon feather to heal Maddox.

“What is it?” Isabelle said, leaving Maddox where he sat and taking a few steps toward her.

“Jones and his crew have almost reached their ship,” the mermaid reported. “I’m going to follow them and find out where they’re headed.”

Maddox frowned. “Sapphira, that sounds very dangerous—”

“It’s the only way we’re going to be able to save Nixie and Archie! I have to go now. We can’t afford to let them get away.”

“Thank you,” Isabelle called uncertainly, relieved that they had at least this hope. “Be careful out there.”

“Don’t worry, Isabelle,” Sapphira said. “If we rescued my little sister from him, we’ll get your brother back, and Nixie, too. Tell Jake I’ll return as soon as I have information.”

“Good luck!” Maddox called, but Sapphira had already arced over the next wave. She dove out of sight with barely a splash.

“I’ll bet she’s glad to be back in her element.” Isabelle stood for a moment gazing out to sea, hoping Archie was safe. Nixie, too, of course.

It was good of Sapphira to do this, she reflected. The sea was so vast it would be easy to lose her brother forever somewhere out there. She thought of the earlier enmity between Sapphira and her—all over Maddox. How juvenile it seemed now.

As did the ugly fight between her and Maddox yesterday.

She shook her head. Though still jittery with anxiety over her brother and Nixie, now that the battle had passed, she was suddenly exhausted. Her body felt like lead.

Wearily, she turned around to go and sit down beside Maddox on the bottom step and saw him trying once again to pop his shoulders back into their joints, to no avail.

She winced and hurried over, but didn’t dare offer to try putting the bones back in place for him. She was no healer, and she certainly didn’t want to hurt him worse. “Just try to be patient. Jake should be back any minute.”

“Right,” he rasped.

Scanning his face, she noticed that his dark eyes glittered with pain; they looked coal-black against the ashen color of his face.

She lifted her head, frowning toward the villa. “How are you holding up?”

“Oh, I’ve been better,” he said in a low tone.

“I promise you, the gryphon feathers work every time.” Still, she winced at the slumped angle of his shoulders. “I’m so sorry for this. I know it was my fault. I let myself be distracted when I sensed Archie being captured, and I–”

“Don’t worry about it,” he interrupted. “That’s what happens in a battle. People get hurt.” He paused. “You fought well.”

“I did?” She glanced at him in surprise.

He nodded.

“Well, you were brilliant,” she said. “You’re very good at what you do.”

“Not good enough, though, eh?” he said with another slight wince. “But thanks anyway.”

“You can’t blame yourself! It’s only because of me that they did this to you. You rushed to my defense,” she said, “and this is what it got you.”

He looked at her and said, “It was worth it.”

Isabelle returned his gaze, at a loss.

“What?” Maddox prompted, almost smiling at her confusion.

“The quarrel we had before…” She would’ve thought
she
was the last person he would ever want to rescue after that angry exchange.

Maddox searched her face. “You really don’t know how I feel about you, do you?”

Taken aback by the question, she did not know what to say.

He let out a long, judicious sigh. “I can’t move my arms, but if you reach into the breast pocket of my coat, I have something for you there.”

“For me?”

He nodded. “Go ahead. It’s all right. The inside pocket of my jacket. Please.”

Gingerly, Isabelle pulled back the front of his beloved black jacket and, rather embarrassed by this close contact, tucked her hand into his breast pocket, as directed.

The pocket was deep, so she had to lean closer and reach down farther, until she could feel the warmth of him. Their nearness gave her a small flutter inside. But then, her searching fingers came to the bottom of the pocket and discovered a small metallic oval.

“Careful,” he warned as something sharp almost pricked her finger.

Furrowing her brow, she pulled the object out of his coat and looked at it.

In her hand was a carefully worked piece of silver jewelry in the shape of a unicorn. The sharp thing that had poked her fingertip was the pin for the clasp.

She looked at it and then at him uncertainly, half delighted, half baffled. “You got this for me?”

“I made it for you,” he admitted.

“You did?” Her heart skipped a beat and a small gasp escaped her.

She knew he enjoyed metalworking, but usually he created weapons. The blush that rose instantly in her cheeks felt as hot as any blacksmith’s forge. “It’s lovely. I-I didn’t think you’d had the chance to take up the anvil while we’ve been here,” she stammered with a bashful smile, not knowing what to say. “Wh-when did you do this?”