by Bella Falls
Casting grateful eyes up at me, she used her phone to call her husband. “Hey, can you make your way to Bellfort?”
A low growl of a voice boomed from the yard in front of the museum. “I’m already here.” With long strides, Odie closed the distance between him and his wife and swept her off her feet.
Mason leapt off the bench by the front entrance and sprinted to Charli, hugging her close and whispering into her ear.
Dad strolled towards me, the thin smile on his face the only hint at his worry. “Hey, butter bean. Did y’all get what you went after?”
The enormity of what we’d gone through and accomplished hit me all at once, and I threw myself into his arms. He patted my back and whispered comforting words until I calmed down.
“There’s a lot to tell you, but we shouldn’t do it out in the open,” I said, checking around to make sure no one was watching.
Auggie stepped out of the shadows and stomped her cigarette out on the walkway. “Good, because you never know who might be listening. Took you guys long enough, and you better have a good explanation as to why the video feed stopped,” she fussed.
My mouth gaped open at her abrupt greeting, and I glanced at the boys to figure out who’d brought her in the first place. “Shouldn’t you be back at the house resting and making sure you’re not suffering from a concussion?”
Odie stroked his beard. “She made me bring her,” he admitted.
“That’s right, no one is leaving me out of this again, you hear me?” she grumbled, pointing an accusing finger at us all. For the first time, she noticed the state of us girls, and her expression softened. “Besides, I come bearing gifts. Your granny gave me some food and sweet tea she put together because she said you might need it. I have to admit, I might need a slice of that pecan pie she sent.”
Rissa guided us to the side employee entrance of the museum. “The front doors should be bolted tight, plus there are sandbags sitting in front of them.” She punched some numbers on the security system keypad. With a frown, she repeated her actions. “Huh, that’s strange.”
“I noticed there’s no electricity at any of the places as we walked by,” Cate said from the back of our group. “Maybe the power’s out?”
Digging in the front pocket of her bag, Rissa pulled out a large set of keys. “We’ve got some big backup generators for occasions like this. Some of our material on display needs climate control to preserve it. Plus,” she pushed the heavy metal door open and the cooled air from inside hit us, “there may be other special measures taken to make sure we’re never without electricity.”
Auggie pushed her way to the front and walked inside. “So, I guess there might be some perks to being a witch after all. Hey, big guy,” she yelled out over her shoulder to Odie. “Can you fetch the food and the poster tube from the backseat of your vehicle? The rest of you, get your butt’s in gear and stop wasting time.”
Odie unpacked a basket full of food and spread it out over the conference table while Rissa rustled up some paper plates and cups. I encouraged Cate and Charli to choose what they wanted first since the two of them had expended the most energy during the trip. While they served themselves, I texted Luke and was surprised when he responded with short answers or a simple thumbs up.
Impatient to find out how the shell connected to the treasure hunt, I wolfed down a homemade pimento cheese sandwich and a buttermilk biscuit with country ham and jelly slathered inside it along with a heap of my dad’s tasty potato salad. Gulping my third small cup of sweet tea down so fast that I hardly tasted the sugar, I stood in line to wash my hands thoroughly before entering the small lab of the museum.
Raised voices of argument drifted out of one of the offices. “I’m telling you, someone’s been moving things around in here,” Rissa insisted, opening drawers and checking the contents. “I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s like everything’s been moved just a fraction away from normal.”
Auggie stood in the doorway. “And nothing’s missing from your exhibits?”
Rissa sighed, closing a binder with a snap and placing it back on the shelf. “I’ll have to do a more thorough check later than what I just did, but no, nothing seems to be obviously missing. It’s just…my gut is telling me something isn’t right.”
“Or maybe it’s telling you to eat a little food,” I suggested from behind the professor. “You can’t keep working on an empty tank.”
Rissa blew out a hard breath, straightening a few of the books on a nearby bookcase. “You might be right. But let’s examine the shell first so we know what steps to take next. Then I promise I’ll eat something.” Ushering Auggie out of her office, she closed the door behind her.
Inside the small lab, Rissa cleared off stacks of papers and books from the top of a strange white opaque table, moving with professional proficiency. The shell lay in the middle still wrapped up in the neutralizing cloth. Using nearby objects, Auggie anchored the corners of the unrolled map she’d brought from the house. Her former student took the parchment piece with the clue on it out of the tube and positioned it next to the edge of the map where a piece was torn off. With a click of a switch, a light flickered on and illuminated the entire surface.
“We may not need the light table, but I thought it might help us see anything strange or noteworthy,” Rissa explained as she stood next to her mentor surveying the objects.
Auggie reached out to pull the fabric off the shell, but my father cautioned her. “It’s there for a reason. Let me or Ruby Mae remove it.”
Dad pushed between the professor and her former student and turned the item over to reveal the folded edges of the neutralizing cloth. With careful fingers, I peeled them back until we glimpsed a portion of the shell.
His hand hovered just above the white and brown exterior with the peachy pink opening. “There’s no spell on the outer part that I can detect.” Dad unfolded more of the cloth covering away and held it out for me to make my own assessment.
All the training I’d had to examine items we’d picked for our business didn’t come close to my natural detection instincts. “My nose isn’t itching one bit,” I noted, passing my fingers over the surface as close as I could without actually touching it. “Although, there is a faint trace of magic. But Dad’s right, it’s not around the conch itself.”
“It must be the object Crystal thinks is stuck inside.” Rissa crowded my father to get a better view. “Charli, when you were tracking it, did you feel drawn to the shell itself or what it contained?”
Mason and Charli stopped their private chat in the corner to join the rest of us. “My connection to it was never all that strong,” she explained. “I don’t know why my magic isn’t going full tilt like it used to or why I couldn’t make a connection from any of you girls.”
“The link is usually stronger if she’s holding on to the person who’s trying to find the object,” her boyfriend explained to my dad to clear up his confusion.
“Then it should have been off the charts with all of us holding hands, right?” Crystal pointed out. “We all wanted to find what the clue led to.”
Charli glanced down at the objects on the table. “Yeah. Not sure what happened there. It’s like I felt something, but it didn’t pull me anywhere. Maybe it was the spelled trap that messed it all up?”
Mason ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up. “I’m going with you next time. I don’t like that you could have been stuck if Ruby Mae hadn’t gotten incredibly lucky with her guess.”
“Hey, I resemble that remark,” I teased, knowing his comment came from a place of concern. “But I figured it out, Cate here dug up that shell, and we’re all here safe, although with very little to show for our efforts. There’s no way we went through all of that for this conch to be the whole kit and caboodle.”
Dad unwrapped the shell, folding and pocketing the neutralizing fabric. “I say we run a quick test. Charli, can you still detect a bond if I put it here?” With care, he laid the impressive item on t
he table.
Charli stepped away from Mason and grabbed the edges of the table to steady herself. Bowing her head to focus, she drew in a deep breath. “It’s hard to explain, but it’s as if there’s static that keeps interrupting the thread of connection.” She pointed between her chest and the shell. “Yes, there is still a bond.”
My father picked up the conch and held it out. “If you touch it, does that change anything?”
As if it were made of glass, Charli accepted the shell with reluctance and cradled it as if she were afraid of causing harm. After a few silent moments, her fear vanished, and she twisted the conch around. “You know, I wouldn’t have noticed this before, but I think you’re right. The connection I feel is to whatever is inside.”
“Right!” Auggie shouted, clapping her hands together to get our attention. “I have no idea what just happened, but I think it’s time to break out whatever scopes you have lying around here and any retrieval tools you got.”
Instead of obeying her old mentor and leaping into action, Rissa asked for the shell to be passed back to her. “Before we spend too much time on this, let me see what I can do. I’ve coaxed things out of smaller spaces than this during my studies.” She wiggled her fingers at Auggie. “There are some skills that weren’t taught in your class.”
The professor snorted. “And here’s me thinking you didn’t use your powers to get ahead.”
“I didn’t,” Rissa defended. “Well, not a whole lot. Only when I wasn’t being watched and whatever I was working with needed a little special finessing.”
She bent over the shell, holding her hands on either side of it. With a flourish of her fingers, she summoned a little energy that danced on her fingertips. “It’s all about the combination. You have to get the recipe just right.”
“A recipe for what, Ris,” Auggie pressed. “I’m sorry if this old broad doesn’t quite understand.”
The conch shell vibrated and rocked a little, causing most of us to gasp. “Sorry,” Rissa said, furrowing her brow. “I learned that a dash of determination…mixed with the right amount of magic,” she stuck out her tongue, “combined with a dollop of patience and a serious amount of luck…There!”
“I don’t see anything,” I said, standing on my tiptoes to glance over her shoulder.
Rissa held out her hand, her attention still focused on the shell. “Can one of y’all hand me the long tweezers, please.” Holding onto the shell with one hand, she pinched whatever she’d found with the instrument. “Now to pull it out of the larger part of the aperture. And here it is.”
In between the pincers of the tweezers rested a smooth greenish blue stone about the size of a quarter nestled in a simple silver setting. Before anyone touched it, I handed Dad my smaller unused neutralizing cloth. Once Rissa placed the shiny jewel in it, he and I performed the same type of evaluation.
He shook his head. “Best I can tell, there is some magic involved with it, but it’s not so much that it concerns me.”
“Of course, whatever drives that energy could activate with a touch.” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I don’t suppose anybody feels like being a guinea pig?”
Rissa opened a drawer underneath the surface of the light table and pulled out gloves from a box, passing it around. “I think we better be safe than truly sorry. Anybody in here good at identifying stones?”
Crystal raised her hand. “I sell a lot of different ones as jewelry at the Boro Girl Boutique. I’m not an expert, but if you think about it, I’ll bet that’s a high-quality aquamarine based on its color and clarity.”
Auggie winked at my friend in appreciation. “I think you might be right. Sailors going back to the time of the Romans used to wear aquamarine as talismans to keep them safe while on the water.”
Breaking multiple rules of handling antiquities, Rissa encouraged everyone in the room to hold the item and take a closer look. When Dad passed it to me, I cradled it in my palm. Never in my wildest dreams did I figure I’d get to carry something with such history attached to it. A small part of my brain calculated its worth and how much it might fetch in the human world or if we held onto it for the special magical market once a month. But the child in me told my business side to hush and appreciate the piece with the amount of wonder it deserved.
Crystal spoke out when it came to her. “Aquamarine is also associated with water energy, which includes the gods of water like Poseidon.”
“Who is also known as Neptune to the Romans,” Odie added in a low voice as he cupped his hands together to receive the stone. “And wasn’t Ann’s ship Neptune’s Rose?”
“Before it had that name, it belonged to her partner, Gentleman Jack,” Rissa said, relying on the research she’d prepared for her presentation. “There are port records that mark the time where the name switched from Neptune’s Tide to the Rose. Those dates match the timeline I’ve estimated Ann came into Jack’s life.”
Auggie shook her head in amused approval and patted the big guy’s arm, letting him keep it for a little longer. “It would make sense that a woman who chose a life on the sea, married a man who’s known in the history books as one of the most successful pirates of his era, and sailed her ship all the way up here would have a charm of her own.”
Odie sighed when his turn ended. He reached out to give it back, but the phone in the room rang at a high volume, making us all jump. Startled, he let the object slip from his grip. It clattered to the table and rolled on its side until it wobbled and settled on the vellum of the map.
The ringing filled our ears while we stood in horror at what just happened. After the rings stopped, Odie stuck his hands deep in his pockets. “Blast and tarnation, I’m so sorry.”
While Crystal rushed to his side to comfort him, the rest of us crowded around the table to see if any damage had been done to the stone.
“Wait.” Rissa stopped our chattering with the one word, leaning her body over the map. “Look at this.”
Touching the sides of the silver, she kept the stone flush to the parchment and moved it around. In the middle of the sea of blue, something flashed into view and disappeared.
“Did everybody see that or am I hallucinating from too much sweet tea?” I asked, rubbing my eyes for good measure.
Mason’s hand raised in the air. “I saw it.”
“Me, too,” agreed Charli. “Can you make it do that again?”
Moving the aquamarine amulet again at a slow pace, she waited for the same thing to happen. “I’m not sure where I had it before,” Rissa said, before jerking her hand back. “Hold on, I think I found it.” With the tip of her finger, she pushed the stone little by little until the spark inside of it stayed.
“Okay, now I’m worried I’m hallucinating,” Auggie admitted, holding her former student around the waist and getting a closer look. “But tell me that doesn’t look like a huge X in that particular spot.”
Through the sea blue stone, a hidden mark rested on the map that we couldn’t see on our own. Once we all confirmed its existence, Rissa and Auggie jumped into action.
“I’ve got my eye right where it is. Don’t move your finger,” the professor instructed. “We need something to put on there that won’t damage the map but will still keep track of that location. And we need a seventeenth-century map to figure out exactly where that is. Don’t wiggle, don’t sneeze. In fact, try not to breathe on it.”
“I’m not gonna move it, Auggie,” Rissa complained. “But can somebody find something for me to mark this spot?”
I ran to the desk in the far corner. “I’ve got thumbtacks, but those will punch a hole in the map. What about a sticky note?”
“The glue might mess with the vellum and smudge it or something,” Auggie scolded. “This might get awkward, but can someone squeeze in between us and look in the drawers? There might be a cotton swab somewhere that we can cut the tip off to use.”
The phone rang again, jangling my nerves. Unable to do anything else helpful, I answered it. “Hello?”
The person on the other side cleared his throat and spoke in a posh British accent. “I’m sorry, but is this the Maritime Museum?”
Cate crawled out from under the table. “Got one! Now I need some scissors to cut off the bud of the swab.”
“Uh, yeah,” I replied after the guy politely repeated the question. “Yes, I mean. This is the Maritime Museum, but I’m afraid it’s closed right now due to the area being affected by a very recent hurricane.”
“Yes, I did see the news reports about it,” he said, his voice dripping with sympathy. “Very sudden and tragic. However, I was wondering if I could speak to a Nerissa Ward? I believe she acts as the museum’s director of education.”
I held my hand over the receiver. “Hey, Rissa. There’s some British guy who wants to speak to you.”
She shot daggers at Auggie to get her former mentor to let her handle switching the tip of the cotton swab with the stone. “Take a message.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but she’s occupied at the moment and asked for me to take a message.” Finding a use for the sticky notes, I grabbed a pen off the desk to take notes.
“I have to apologize again,” the man insisted, “but I’m afraid that she may be expecting to hear from me. Would you please inform her that Dr. Wilfred Simons is holding the line? I’m a professor from Queen’s College in London, and she and I have been corresponding as of late.”
“Hold on.” Covering the phone with my hand, I spun in the office chair. “Hey, sorry about this, but he says you might want to talk to him? His name is,” I read my scrawled writing, “a Dr. Wilfred Simons of Queen’s College.”
Rissa straightened to full height, almost knocking the makeshift marker off its place on the map. “Dr. Simons is on the phone?” She rushed over to the desk and practically did a jig beside me, her fingers opening and closing in anticipation of the receiver.
Switching places, I let her sit down to converse. The excitement in Rissa’s voice permeated the room. “This is Nerissa Ward. Oh, thank you for the compliment. No, I’m sorry, the museum is closed at the moment. What do you mean that you’re here? How far away from Bellfort?” She held her hand over the receiver and freaked out in a loud whisper, “He’s here in Bellfort.”
