I pulled the twine loops apart and peeled back the paper. Inside was a broken piece of weathered wood and several yellowed pages from a ledger. I frowned, exchanging a glance with Teag, who shrugged.
I laid my hand on the broken wood. Immediately the comfortable surroundings of my kitchen disappeared, and I found myself onboard a wooden sailing ship in the midst of a terrifying storm at sea.
The deck was drenched, and waves pounded the clipper as winds tore at its sails. Rough seas made the ship rise sharply and then fall out from under the feet of the men who scrambled to keep her under control against all the forces of nature.
“Captain Harrison!” one of the sailors shouted. “We’re taking on water.”
Captain Harrison turned from throwing a pouch into the water. He knew he wasn’t going to come home from this one. The captain was a man in his late fifties, and I recognized his face from family pictures I had seen at Gardenia Landing. The man who built Gardenia Landing, the sea captain whose fortunes waned when he did business with Jeremiah Abernathy.
“Put all the men we can spare on the bilges,” Harrison ordered. “Get the rest in place to man the sails.
With luck, we’ll make it through this.”
Harrison eyed the sky, and I followed his gaze. Their ship, the Lady Jane, was fighting for her life, and her captain knew it. But as I followed his worried gaze skyward, what I saw troubled me far worse than even the violence of nature.
The horizon had a greenish glow, like foxfire. Lightning streaked down from black clouds, striking the heaving surface of the sea, and some of those streaks were green as well. A miasma hung over the sea, a foul haze that stank of dark magic. Harrison saw it too, and I could see he was afraid.
Harrison fingered an amulet that hung on a chain around his neck, and I saw that it was a medal of St.
Nicholas of Greece, the patron saint of sailors. Harrison knew the dangers of the sea, and he looked like a man to hedge his bets.
“Looks like the storm that took down the Cristobal,” one of the sailors said to another.
“Not natural. Mark my words: it’s a hexed storm. We won’t see shore again,” the other replied.
Harrison looked as if he wanted to reprove the man, but I could see he feared the sailor’s words were true.
“I don’t like the look of the storm, sir.” It was Norris, one of his officers, a man who had served aboard one ship or another since he was just a boy. “It’s not natural.”
Harrison shook his head. “No, it’s not.”
Norris met Harrison’s eyes. “The cargo we picked up from the Cristobal, the pieces you delivered to Mr.
Abernathy – d’ya think they were cursed?”
Cursed, I thought, but not in the way Norris expected. Magic had taken the Cristobal to the bottom of the ocean, along with artifacts Jeremiah Abernathy desperately needed to control his demon. If Harrison had picked up some of that cargo and delivered it, Abernathy might have decided not to leave any loose ends, people who might have noticed what was in those waterlogged crates.
“Aye,” Harrison replied. “Or maybe it’s divine justice for my being fool enough to do business with the likes of Abernathy. I should have known better.”
Harrison’s position as a ship’s captain was the legitimate side to his family’s shipping business.
Smuggling was the underside of that trade, and what kept a difficult industry profitable. Rum, tobacco, stowaways, and other illegal cargo paid the bills and the enormous cost of upkeep. That meant trading with an unsavory set of partners, the type a gentleman would commonly deny. From that standpoint, bringing back some flotsam for Jeremiah Abernathy must have looked like a bonus, free money for scooping up some pieces from the Cristobal’s wreckage.
Then Abernathy decided to eliminate witnesses.
The sea churned beneath the ship, with waves rising high into the air, then crashing down onto the deck with force enough to splinter masts. Each wave that pounded the Lady Jane’s deck swept sailors overboard. Desperate men lashed themselves to the rail. Even then, the sea cheated, sending wave after wave of suffocating, freezing seawater to nearly drown those that were not swept away, or break their bodies when their lifeline kept them rigid against its force.
Harrison made his way back to the bridge. Another wave swept across the Lady Jane’s deck, and Harrison nearly lost his grip on the railing. He was soaked to the skin, teeth chattering against the wind.
The green mist shrouded them from seeing anything, isolating them on the vast, roiling sea.
The water picked Harrison up like an empty bottle and flung him down the deck, smashing him against the base of one of the masts. He struggled to his feet, dragging himself up against the wind, and held on as another wave rose high over the deck and slammed into them once more. Men, rope, tools and anything not nailed to the boards stood a good chance of being thrown into the churning sea.
Resolute, Captain Harrison dragged himself along the railing. His right leg sent blinding pain through his body whenever he put weight on it. He was certain it had broken when he smashed against the mast.
Staggering and limping, using his arms to haul himself down the rail, Harrison again made it to the steps, staying on his feet as the ship pitched.
Just as Harrison reached the top of the steps, an ear-splitting crack of lighting sizzled through the driving rain, striking the top of the Lady Jane’s tallest mast, splitting it like a dry twig. The mast exploded, sending a deadly rain of wood chunks and knife-sharp splinters flying through the air. A dozen men fell, struck in the head or chest with the heavy wooden debris. More men staggered as long splinters pierced their bodies, driven through their skin like nails.
The huge mast creaked and groaned a death cry as it toppled, bringing its sails with it, crushing men beneath the massive post, sweeping them overboard with its yardarm or tangling them in the heavy, soaked canvas of its sails.
The wind keened through the remaining masts, and the air buzzed with the charge of the nearby lighting strikes. Harrison staggered into the bridge, facing his terrified officers.
“We’re taking on water,” his first mate said. “You can feel it in the way she handles.”