It’s A Plunderful Life Page 18

  “You know who,” she said.

  “Maybe. But clearly I’m a little slow here, Vivian, so why don’t you explain it to me?”

  “Christopher Durus,” she said. “He’s been talking to me.”

  The coin, I thought, brushing my hand over it. We’d both touched it. I remembered what my mother had said about balance. Had Durus appeared to her, and Ichabod to me? “So Durus’s ghost showed up and asked you to get the astrolabe for him?”

  She laughed, and I glanced back, hoping she had dropped her guard. But, no, she still had the gun trained on Toni, her body as stock-still as ever. Great.

  “His ghost?” She laughed again, a dry sound. “I don’t think so.”

  I let myself grin. A ghost pirate? I could see him now, with a peg leg and a giant feather in his hat and a parrot on his shoulder that said things like, “Cass, not now. Focus.”

  Good advice, even if it was from an imaginary parrot.

  “Then how—”

  “That board you brought me. It’s a communication device, one he used to speak with someone long ago. When he was alive.”

  None of that made sense, but at least she was talking. “Okay, so he could tell you what he wanted. But what do you care? I mean, what’s in it for you?”

  Ahead of me was the rock where I’d hidden the small chest in which we’d first found the astrolabe. When I closed my eyes, it almost felt like I could float out of my body entirely and hover over the chest, looking down to confirm what I already knew.

  The astrolabe wasn’t in there.

  But Viv didn’t know that.

  “Everything.” She breathed in on another sob. “He’s going to help me get back at that bastard for leaving me. He’s going to help me make that little whore he left me for regret she was ever born.”

  Oh, perfect. Long-dead pirate promises angry ex-wife they will wreak havoc on her unfaithful ex and his new girlfriend. How many times had I heard that scenario?

  Textbook, really.

  Maybe if he wound up sticking around, Durus could set up a lucrative business selling vengeance. I wondered how much something like that would go for on Etsy.

  That thought had me on the verge of hysterical giggles, so I bit down on the soft flesh of my inner cheek to hold it all together.

  Focus.

  I knelt down, my body partially hidden behind the rock, the little chest in front of me. “I understand,” I said as I pried the lid open. “So you had to find the astrolabe.”

  I surveyed the contents of the chest in dismay. There was nothing even remotely threatening in there. Nothing I could use as a weapon.

  Half hidden by the rock, I set my purse down and rummaged through it. Maybe I could get Viv to put on the Chapstick and then I could distract her by telling her it was the wrong color for her?

  Oh, wow. Good one. Maybe when they made the movie, they could get Jennifer Garner to play me.

  I heard a rock shift and popped my head up. Viv looked aggrieved. “Do you know how big the park is? And how many people are here all the time?” she asked. “He said you couldn’t find out, that no one from the park could find out. Do you know how hard it is to move around the park unnoticed?”

  “That’s why you had to get the park closed down.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt anyone! If you had just closed down when I broke the water system, no one would have gotten hurt.”

  I thrust my hand deeper into my purse. Surely I had stashed a key or something in there at some point. I must have—

  My fingers touched something long and hard. The twig I’d used to fix the water. My magic wand.

  Which, according to my mother, was useless.

  But I had done magic with it before. And surely if there was ever a time to use magic it was to save the world from this…weapon…falling into Vivian’s hands.

  A plan came together in my addled brain. Now, I’m not saying it was a great plan, or even a good one, but it was at least a couple rungs above, “Ha, you look stupid in that color lip gloss.”

  At least, I hoped it was.

  Moving a couple things from my purse to the chest, I stood, cradling the little box in my arms, and headed back toward Vivian and Toni.

  “You poisoned Diana,” I reminded Viv. “She’s still not out of the woods.”

  I expected some tears, a little regret, something. But Viv just gave me a cold smile. “She was sleeping with another woman’s husband. Did you know that?”

  I stared at her. “But it wasn’t your husband.”

  “No, but we have to stick together. Right, Cass? If someone had to pay a price so I could get that astrolabe, it might as well be someone who deserved it.”

  Poor Diana. I glanced from Vivian to Toni, who remained very still.

  She had a couple unicorns dancing behind her, but other than that, nothing was moving.

  I closed my eyes and took a breath. The unicorns were still there when I opened my eyes, but I was pretty sure they were just from the pot.

  Like, eighty percent sure.

  “So if I give you this astrolabe, you’ll let us go?” I asked, trying to keep an eye on both Vivian and my feet. I’d already fallen in this cave once. I really, really didn’t want to repeat the experience.

  “Of course.” But Vivian had always been a poor liar, and I noticed the left corner of her mouth tick down.

  Did she really plan to kill us? I had a hard time picturing my old friend as a murderer, but then, she’d already risked Diana’s life just to get the park closed down.

  And she was in league with a murderous pirate ghost, or at least an entity that could communicate with that board. That astrolabe had been all that stopped him when he was alive. I had no idea what it did or how it worked, but the last thing I wanted to do was let him get ahold of it from beyond.

  But I didn’t want to tip Viv off that I knew she was lying, so I just shrugged. “Cool.” I moved closer.

  “Stop right there,” she said. “Open up that chest and show me the astrolabe.”

  “Sure.” I was still a good ten feet away, way too far to be able to reach the gun before she shot Toni. I flipped open the chest and pretended to rummage through it one-handed. “Hold on,” I said, slowly lowering myself into a crouch on the ground, the chest in front of me. Now I could get both hands into the chest. “I hid it here under all this stuff.”

  It was now or never. She had her attention trained on me, the gun in her hand wavering ever so slightly. “Here it is,” I said.

  And then she moved so the gun was pointed right at me.

  Before she could get a shot off, I brought my hands out of the chest. My left hand was full of the remaining pot gummies, which I tossed Viv’s way. She squeaked, flinching and jerking her head away from my admittedly sad projectiles.

  The unicorns behind Toni laughed and high-fived each other.

  I ignored them, whipping my right hand up, the wand clutched in my fingers. I thought about Ichabod’s pain on the deck of his ship, of his horror at the sight of the coin around my neck, of Diana lying pale and cold in the hospital, and the park still and empty. I thought about Toni and how terrified she looked, of my mother and Wilder and all the park employees who didn’t deserve what Viv had done to us.

  And the world, which probably didn’t deserve whatever Christopher Durus had in store for it.

  And my wand quivered as a pulse of purple light raced along its length, shooting out in a spray of sparks and hitting Vivian’s outstretched hand.

  Dammit. I’d been aiming for the gun.

  The gun flew away from her, and she yelped, her eyes widening. “No,” she whispered as the gun slipped into the water lapping at the rocks. “No, no, no.”

  Her face wild, she lunged at me, her fingers curled into claws. She raked one hand across my cheek. Luckily, the effects of all those magical unicorn gummies kept me from feeling much.

  “You’ve ruined everything,” she wailed, her hand tangling in the chain around my neck. For just a moment, she
had it tightened, choking me, and I thought I’d made a terrible error in judgement. And then, as if by magic, the chain snapped, the coin sliding off and bouncing across the cave floor until it plopped into the water, following the gun to the murky depths of the cave.

  “How could you, how could you, how could you,” she sobbed, her struggles growing more desperate. Just as she was on the verge of pushing me into the water, Toni grabbed her arms. Between the two of us, we managed to wrestle her to the ground.

  “Nice,” Toni said, brushing her bangs away from her face. “Now why don’t you sit on her to keep her immobile until help can get here?”

  “Why don’t you sit on her?” I asked.

  “You’re heavier.”

  The unicorns behind Toni’s head thought that was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. I took a woozy step forward. “Am not.”

  And then my knees gave out, and I slid forward onto the rocks. Darkness enveloped me.

  27

  I awoke in my bed, the sun slanting in through the window. There was a large plastic bowl perched on the edge of the bed beside me, and I wondered briefly what it was for.

  Then I tried to sit up and found out—that was my puke bowl.

  After I’d made good use of the bowl and set it down on the floor, as far from me as I could reach, I lowered myself back down to the bed and tried to figure out how I had gotten there. The last thing I remembered was Viv crying, and Toni…

  Oh, that’s right. Toni called me fat.

  “Ah. You’re awake. Finally.” My mother stood in the doorway of my room, a tray in her hands. Moving closer, she set the tray down on the bed, and my stomach rolled.

  A tall glass filled with gumdrops in a layered rainbow. A puff of cotton candy on a china plate. A candy apple coated in peanuts and drizzled with white chocolate. A cup of hot cocoa with whipped cream.

  “I know you don’t believe me, but you’ll feel better if you eat.” My mother sank down onto Toni’s bed and crossed her legs neatly. She was wearing stockings, which annoyed me for some reason.

  Then I remembered. “You do pot,” I said.

  She laughed. “I enjoy edibles sometimes, yes. I’m sorry you had to find out that way.” She looked at the puke bowl on the floor. “Very sorry.”

  Hesitantly, I lifted the cup of cocoa to my lips and took a sip. I’d expected it to send me into another round of puking, but instead it settled my stomach just a little. I took another sip.

  “Diana?” I asked.

  “She’ll be fine,” my mother said. “Thanks to you. Vivian told us what poison she’d used. It wasn’t anything the doctors had ever heard of, but a friend of mine was able to recommend an antidote. Diana is going to have a rough few days, and I imagine the next few weeks won’t be pleasant for her from a personal standpoint. I don’t think her social life will be quite so active.”

  Meaning both her boyfriend and lover had dumped her. Not surprising. I thought about the light bobbing around in the dark that one night. That had been Vivian.

  “Vivian wanted something,” I told my mother. “An astrolabe.”

  She nodded. “Ichabod told me.” Her top foot moved a little, swinging back and forth. “From what he told me, I believe it was a powerful magical object. Looks like some type of sympathetic magic. If the former owner cast a spell on whoever held it, the spell would rebound.”

  I chewed on a gumdrop. “Wait—it used to belong to Durus?”

  “That’s what Ichabod seemed to think.”

  “Who was the woman who gave it to him? Eugenia, he said.”

  “Judging from what he said, I believe Eugenia was the Sea Witch of Gallows Bay.”

  “But…” I sipped at my cocoa, trying to put the pieces together. “But the Sea Witch was Christopher Durus’s lover, wasn’t she?”

  My mother smiled. “We have to be careful not to mix legend with fact. Although it does seem that she knew Durus well enough to have several things that belonged to him. The astrolabe, and of course that coin.” She sighed. “You should have told me about it.”

  I reached up absently before I remembered the coin was no longer around my neck. “I had no idea it was tied to Durus. Is that how he ended up connected to Vivian?”

  She frowned. “I’m still not sure exactly what happened. But both you and Vivian handled that coin, and somehow the two of you called these two very different men to you. I think the fact that you had the coin on you, or maybe the magic of the Enchanted Forest, allowed Ichabod to take a corporeal form. Vivian and Durus had to rely on more limited communication.”

  My queasiness returned as I thought about Ichabod. The coin was gone and so too was any need for him to be around. My mother had said the universe loved balance. With the threat of Durus gone, Ichabod would disappear too.

  Which was exactly what we’d wanted. He needed to be at peace. He’d earned it.

  But the thought of not seeing him again made me feel sicker than all the pot gummies I’d consumed. I pushed the tray away, giving my mother a weak smile. “Thanks, Mom. I think I just need a little more sleep.”

  “Sure thing, baby girl.” She rose, moving the tray from the bed to the nightstand beside me. “This will be here when you’re ready for it, okay?”

  I nodded and watched her slip out of the room. I didn’t have the heart to ask her if Ichabod had already passed over.

  It felt like a death. It felt like I was losing Brad all over again.

  I laid down and pulled the blankets up over my head, and slept.

  Later, much later, I awoke to the sound of someone muttering in my room. “My word, madame, have you no fear for your mortal soul? Have you not heard that sloth is one of the deadly sins?”

  A ray of hope sparked in my chest. Tugging the covers down, I found myself looking up at Ichabod, who, for all his ranting, was smiling, a hint of humor in his eyes. He was, much to my relief, back in his regular clothes, his hair tied back simply in a leather thong. “You’re still here,” I said, suddenly feeling lighter than I had in weeks.

  “So it would appear.”

  “I thought maybe…once we saved the astrolabe…” I trailed off, unable to voice my fears.

  “Yes, I thought perhaps my services would no longer be needed once we had secured it.” He crouched down beside my bed. “But, Mistress Cass, if I am here to help defeat Durus once again, and I have not been recalled to…wherever I came from…then it must mean that I am not done. And that means the world is still in danger.”

  Well, that was grim. Couldn’t he just let me be happy he was still here?

  I closed my eyes. “Then I guess I should rest up some more.”

  “Sloth, madame,” he said, but I heard the teasing note in his voice.

  “I guess I’ll get up.” I opened my eyes again. “But, Ichabod, I have to warn you—I’m wearing shorts.” I wasn’t, but it was fun to see his eyes bug out of his head.

  “I don’t even want to know what such a garment might look like,” he said. “Shorts,” he repeated with a shiver. And then he was out the door, disappearing with a haste that would have been insulting had he not been three hundred years old.

  Okay, it was still a little insulting.

  The package showed up two days later. It was just a plain brown box, my name and address written out in small, neat handwriting that I didn’t recognize.

  There was no return address, nor any postage.

  Someone had just left it at the front door of the house.

  Dread pooled in my stomach as I carried it to the kitchen table, although I told myself I was being silly. It could be anything.

  But as I pulled the box open, I realized I’d been right to be concerned.

  It was that weird board that Viv and I had found in the box from the attic.

  I jerked my hands back as if it might burst into flames at any minute. That wasn’t Viv’s handwriting on the outside of the package. More importantly, Viv was in jail.

  So who had brought this to the house?

&n
bsp; As if in answer, the little ring tied to the board twitched. I stared down at where it sat over one letter, the S. As I watched, the ring slowly slid across the board until it encircled the letter O. It slid away and then back, once again resting over the O. And then it slid to the N. I held my breath, but it did not move again.

  S-O-O-N

  Soon.

  Well, that wasn’t terrifying at all.

  I looked out the window, where people were returning to the Enchanted Forest, walking up the path to the castle. My mother was here, and Toni, and Wilder, and the rest of the employees. And there was gentle Kurt, and Ichabod to help us. We had the power of magic on our side, and an astrolabe, possibly enspelled by the Sea Witch herself. I had gone down to Pirate’s Cove alone the day before, climbed the gangplank of the replica pirate ship, and gone down to the galley. There, gleaming dully inside an empty tankard, was the weird little device that had caused so much trouble. I’d given it to my mother to hide in a secure location.

  Christopher Durus might try to come back again, but without poor, sad Vivian, he wasn’t going to be able to do very much.

  We were a family. We had beaten him before, and we would beat him again.

  28

  “Hey, Cass.”

  I looked up from the sink, where I was elbow deep in breakfast dishes, to find Wilder leaning against the counter nearby. No hat today. Today he was wearing a sweatband, and it was definitely the first time since middle school that I’d found a sweatband kinda sexy.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said.

  I knew he was going to keep talking and ruin it, and I wished so badly that I could freeze him in time and just pretend that what he was about to say was something along the lines of, “Where have you been all my life, Cass?”

  But of course he didn’t. Instead he said, “I’ve got a little plumbing issue over in the restrooms by Jack’s Beanstalk and I was hoping you could take a look.”

  I lost my grip on the pan in my hands, and it dropped into the soapy water in the sink, sending up a sudsy splash. I blinked. “I’m sorry?”