Then the ground opened up, and we plummeted under the water.
Chapter Thirty-Five
JACKSON
We crashed in a pile on the ocean floor.
Cooper cursed. “Tegan?”
She shook her head, and her eyes closed halfway. “Wasn’t me.”
I frowned. “It was rainbow-colored, like yours.”
“Well, you know, it’s Pride Week, right?” She grinned and made peace signs with both hands.
Bettina scowled. “Pride Week is in June, T. We’re not even to December yet.”
I raised my eyebrows and gestured around us. “So, you didn’t bring us back into the ocean?”
“We’re back in the water?” She scrunched her face up and looked around. “Huh. How’d we get here?”
“Tegan,” Cooper growled.
Tegan flinched. “Oh shit, right. Air bubbles, right, comin’ up—”
“We have air bubbles, T,” Bettina said in a rush. “Are you all right?”
Cooper narrowed his eyes. “Are you drunk or something?”
“I don’t know. What does drunk feel like?” Then she shook her head. “No, wait, I choose or something. That sounds more mysterious.”
I sighed. Something was definitely not right with her. But she’d still managed to make sure we all had air bubbles, so she was still in there. For me, the bigger question was what had just happened? And why were we back on the ocean floor?
Cooper hoisted his sister off the sand and helped her stand. “I’ll hang on to her. You just figure out our next step.”
I put my hands on my hips and looked around. There was nothing. Just like up on the surface. We were alone down here.
Bettina grimaced. “I don’t see anything, and I don’t think I’m going to. Whatever brought us here, we have to assume it’s part of the quest.”
She has to be right. Otherwise, what was the point?
I scanned everything in front of me, from the sand floor to the sunlight shining through the surface far above us. It was still surreal to be under the water and be able to breathe. And before we’d gone in the Strait, I’d been excited about it. After we’d all almost drowned, I wanted to get the hell out of the water as fast as possible.
I turned to scan the next area when my gaze landed on something that sparkled. My pulse quickened.
I tried to walk, but the water was too thick, like I’d been glued in place. “Tegan?”
“Who’s there?”
“It’s Jackson…?” I frowned and glanced over my shoulder. “Is she all right?”
Tegan was leaning against her brother, and her eyes were half closed. She smirked. “Chillin’ like a villain, bruh.”
Cooper shook her a little. “Tegan, we need to be able to walk down here.”
“You got it.” She made her hands into guns then pretended to fire while making clicking noises. “Run, Forrest, run.”
Cooper looked up to me with wide eyes. “Nothing to see here, folks. Carry on.”
I chuckled and turned to face in front of me. That sparkling I’d seen a moment ago was brighter now. I took a step forward, and this time the water didn’t hold me back. The others followed in silence behind me. Well, mostly silence. Tegan was mumbling something about… Well, I had no idea what she was saying.
When we finally reached the sparkling light, I sighed with relief. It was the outline of a lotus flower. I pointed to it then looked up to tell the others. I gasped. Three more appeared in the sand ahead of us. They were lined up in a row, like they were leading me in a direction. I hurried ahead to the next one, and then a few more popped up. This time the line curved to the left and disappeared into foggy water.
“What are you seeing, man?”
“A stone archway and pieces of walls,” Tegan slurred. She smiled all wobbly and pointed ahead. “It’s ruins, I think.”
I frowned and glanced back in front of me, except I saw nothing she’d described.
“Tegan, there’s nothing there,” Bettina said softly. She leaned down and pulled Tegan’s other arm over her shoulder so she and Cooper were basically carrying Tegan.
Tegan scowled. “I see it,” she said, and the blue truth rune shimmered from her chin.
“Whatever she sees, she’s seeing it.” I sighed and started walking toward the next lotus.
We walked for a while, following the line of glowing lotus flowers that only I could see. The path led us across the ocean floor, around massive coral reefs and schools of large fish. With every step we took, I grew antsier and antsier. We were not the top of the food chain down here, and even though the surface rolled over our heads, there was still an unnerving amount of water between us and oxygen.
We stopped at the last lotus flower. My pulse quickened. Another one hadn’t popped up yet…but there was nothing around us. Just more ocean. In front of us, the water was murky and gray, and after the Strait, I was terrified of going in.
“Guys, I think we have to go through this.”
Bettina sighed. “Of course we do.”
I took a step then stopped. We needed to hang on to each other just in case, but they were both holding Tegan upright. Which meant I either tortured myself by taking Bettina’s hand, or made things really weird and awkward by taking Cooper’s.
It took me far too long to give up and take Bettina’s hand.
Her fingers wrapped around mine immediately, and her cheeks flushed. She looked down, and her blonde hair fell in front of her face, like she was trying to shield her reaction from Cooper.
She licked her lips and peeked up at me. “Don’t let go.”
I nodded and pulled them into the foggy water with me. The ground disappeared even though it was still firm under my feet. The water was so dense and murky it was almost gray. I could just barely see my friends through it. The water was colder than the rest of the ocean but nothing like the ice of the Strait. I squeezed Bettina’s hand, and she squeezed back.
“Jackson, can you see anything?”
I looked over my shoulder to Cooper. “I can see you guys, but that’s it.”
Bettina closed her eyes and shuddered. “A wise fish once said ‘just keep swimming.’”
At that, I smiled and looked ahead of me. A wise fish. I chuckled and shook my head. I wasn’t going to get that out of my head now. We walked more, and I just prayed we were still going in the right direction.
“Da dum,” Tegan mumbled. “Da…dum.”
“Tegan,” Cooper growled.
“Da…dum. Da dum. Da dum.”
“Tegan, that is not funny,” Bettina snapped.
“Dadadadada—”
“TEGAN!” Bettina screamed.
I jumped and spun toward them. Bettina glared at her best friend. Cooper shook his head.
“Shark bait, oh ha-ha.” Tegan chuckled. Her shit-eating grin stretched ear to ear. “This here is shark water, y’all. Haven’t y’all ever watched Shark Week on Discovery Channel? This is where the limbs get severed. Double whammy time.”
Bettina huffed. “That is seriously not helping right now.”
“Double whammy?” I frowned and shook my head. “What does that mean?”
“Probably nothing right now,” Cooper said under his breath.
Tegan rolled her eyes. “Murky water and sunken ships. Sharks love both. Not my problem y’all ain’t educated.”
A cold chill slid down my spine. “What sunken ship?”
Bettina shook her head, her eyes falling closed. “There’s no sunken ship, Tegan.”
“Not on the back of your eyelids.” Tegan laughed at her own joke. Then she pointed over Cooper’s shoulder. “But right there, there’s one.”
Cooper looked up and gasped.
I spun so fast I wobbled and stumbled back, but Bettina’s ninja grip on my hand kept me upright.
Then I saw it. I didn’t know how I’d missed it, but then again, the water around us had cleared almost all the way up in the flash of a second. Sitting about fifteen feet in front of us
was a sunken ship that looked like it belonged to pirates in the eighteenth century. The masts all stood tall and undamaged by time or the ocean. The sails were of course gone, and the bottom half of the ship was either destroyed on impact or beneath the sand. The ship itself was tilted at an angle.
The water around it was a little foggy, but after what we’d just walked through, it was nothing. Up above us, waves rolled along the surface, and my stomach turned. We were a lot farther down than we’d been a few minutes ago. It was darker, the water a deep blue—like Bettina’s eyes. The sun’s rays shone through the water but stopped a good fifty feet above us.
Goose bumps broke out across my skin. Bettina tightened her grip on my hand. My pulse hammered in my chest. I didn’t want to be here. My magic was tingling in panic, the way it did right before a fight. Except I was useless down here. The scene before me was terrifying, the kind of image that’d haunt my dreams for years.
Then I saw the worst part.
The outline of a lotus flower glowing from the side of the ship.
“Looks like something Jack Sparrow would’ve commandeered,” Bettina said with a forced laugh.
“I think there’s a captain missing in there.”
We all turned to Tegan and frowned.
Cooper shook his head. “It’s a sunken, abandoned ship, Tegan—"
“Captain.” She wagged her pointer finger at us. “Captain Jack Sparrow.”
I turned away to try and hide my chuckle…and failed. “I think I like drunk Tegan.”
“Or something Tegan. Get it right, Lancelot.” Bettina laughed.
Tegan jumped away from her best friend and brother and skipped toward the ship. “Let’s go smell the roses.”
“Wait. No, I don’t want to go in there,” Bettina cried,
I shuddered. “Sorry, guys. That’s our destination.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
JACKSON
“AHOY!” Tegan leapt in front of us and threw one hand up, then shouted, “TO THE SHIP!”
Warm water rushed over me. Everything blurred and then we were on the ship. I blinked and looked around.
How in the— Tegan. Our High Priestess was strolling across the deck of the ship, running her fingers along the barnacle-covered wooden rails.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”
“Yo, drunk sister, you forget something?”
I spun around to see what Bettina and Cooper were yelling about, and my feet were swept out from under me. My pulse skipped. I threw my hands out to catch me falling...and floated up. Bettina and Cooper were floating above me. Warm water rolled over me, and I went with it. I cursed and kicked my legs.
“Huh. Interesting.”
“Interesting? Tegan, help us out here,” Cooper growled as he swam toward me.
Bettina frowned and kicked her legs. “Is the water heavier down here? Swimming isn’t usually so difficult.”
“Well, we are a few hundred feet down… Wait, why aren’t you floating?” I flipped over and looked to Tegan, who was standing at the steering wheel.
She shrugged. “Water is my element?” She wiggled her fingers, and a chilly current carried us down to where she stood, like she was on land.
“You didn’t do anything, did you?” I asked as I grabbed onto the wheel base to stop myself from floating away. Instinctively, I threw my hand out and caught Bettina’s wrist.
Her cheeks flushed. She grabbed onto my arm and pulled herself down. But she didn’t let go of me. “Our air bubbles are still here.”
Tegan grimaced. “There’s a magical force on the ship, so you’ll have to swim.”
Cooper arched one eyebrow as he treaded water. “And you can’t overpower it? You’re the strongest thing on the planet, but you can’t do this?”
“Cooper, let’s not bait the drunken witch providing us with oxygen.” I glanced to him and pointed to the air bubble. “Please? We’ve already almost drowned today.”
Tegan nodded and spun the wheel. “I’m the strongest Avenger.”
“She’s not drunk, either. Those spirits did something to her,” Bettina said softly.
“Right. Let’s finish this task so we can move on.” Without letting go of the steering wheel base, I craned my neck to look around us. “There’s a clue here somewhere.”
Whatever I was supposed to find, it was on this ship. That glowing lotus I’d seen told me so. Problem was, that was the last hint we got. There were no more lotus flowers. This was just on us now. No, not us. ME. This is on me.
Okay, me, what do we see?
Nothing. I saw nothing. But I suspected it wasn’t going to be easy. It wasn’t going to jump out at me. And I highly doubted Henry would’ve left the clue sitting on the top deck for the ocean to wreak havoc on. Behind Tegan was the stern of the ship, but on either side of us were staircases that led down to the deck. Going by my thin knowledge of ships, which mostly came from Pirates of the Caribbean movies, the captain’s cabin should be right beneath us. Then below the main deck would be the crew’s quarters and the canons. There was probably once a level beneath all of that, but it didn’t appear to have survived the crash landing on the ocean floor.
“All right, well, let’s go check out the captain’s cabin,” Cooper grumbled.
“Yeah, that’s probably the best place to start.” I nodded and turned to look over the rail. “If I were trying to hide something important, I’d probably put it in there.”
“I said it ‘cause it’s less creepy.” Cooper shuddered.
The ocean was getting darker by the minute. I didn’t know what that was about, but Cooper wasn’t wrong. I was hoping it was in the upper level, too. I let go of the beam for the wheel and pushed to the rail behind me. Then with both hands, I gripped the wooden rail and pulled myself along. Cooper mirrored my moves over on the side rail, while Bettina clung to the back of my shirt.
The water in front of us swirled, and then a massive cluster of bubbles popped up. Tegan appeared at the base of the stairs. Her long black hair floated around her, swaying with the currents. She flicked her wrists, and all three of us shot like rockets through the water. We floated right behind her as she casually walked up to a set of French doors. She pushed them open and led us through.
Inside, the captain’s cabin was dark and dingy. The water was a little murky, and visibility was growing thin. Windows lined the three walls of the room and some of them still had the little wooden beams, but most were just open cavities. Straight ahead, at the far end, was a massive wooden desk that had to be eight feet long and probably weighed as much as I did. Lanterns hung from the ceiling, and to my surprise, there were still candles inside.
Tegan skipped over to the bookshelf that ran along the left side. It was full of books, and the look on her face was like a kid in a candy shop. Cooper cursed and crashed into a cabinet of some kind. A dozen fish popped out from the crevices and scurried away.
“Right. So…I have no bloody idea what we’re looking for.” I let myself float up to the low ceiling and held on to one of the beams. “Except that it’ll have two roses on it, according to the line Find the hidden rose marked twice.”
“Needle in a haystack. Got it.” Cooper pushed off the floor and glided across the room. “Divide and conquer, then, shall we?”
Bettina’s eyes widened. “Yeah. Split up. Totally.” But she turned and swam to the right wall and began pulling things off shelves.
I smiled. That girl was braver than even she realized.
Focus, Jackson. I sighed and glanced around. It was light enough to see where I was going and where the others were, but too dark to actually search for hidden things. My phone had a flashlight, but it wasn’t going to work on the ocean floor, assuming it wasn’t completely destroyed already. That was the only thing I had on me that lit up. It wasn’t like we could light a match for the candles.
Then an image popped into my mind…of Tennessee and Tegan glowing. Their whole bodies lit up like the full moon.
I narrowed my eyes
on her. “Tegan?”
She looked up at me with a lazy, drunken smile. “Yeah?”
I knew she wasn’t drunk, but there was no other way to describe her current behavior. “Hey, can you do that thing where your body glows? We could use some light.”
Cooper’s head snapped up from behind an old globe. “Oh, shit. Right. Do that.”
Tegan nodded and rolled her shoulders…and lit up like a supernova. She stretched her body like she’d just gotten out of bed then smiled. “Better?”
Better? I chuckled. There was so much light coming off of her I could’ve forgotten we were under hundreds of feet of water and not in broad daylight. “Perfect. Thanks, T.”
Now that I could see the whole room clearly, I spotted a bunch of treasure chests—the kind you’d find in a movie about pirates. I frowned and counted them…fourteen. There were fourteen treasure chests in one captain’s cabin. That was a bit excessive. And odd. Several of them were open, and gold coins and jewelry spilled over the tops and piled up on the ground. Why would the captain of a ship hoard fourteen chests filled with gold coins? My heart fluttered with excitement. It might’ve been a hint.
I swam over to the first one then gripped the edge to keep myself from floating up. With my free hand, I popped open the lid, and hundreds of gold coins poured onto my lap. My eyes widened. They looked a lot like the one Michael had given me. I picked one up and inspected it. They weren’t identical to mine, but rather similar. The notches on the sides were different. I pushed off the chest and glided to the next.
Chests number two through seven didn’t match mine.
Number eight had silver coins.
Nine had copper coins and a ton of jewelry.
I turned for the next chest and then spotted the number 12 carved into the side. With a frown, I looked back at the ones I’d already inspected and found were numbered, too. And they weren’t in order. The next three chests were 2, 13, 8. I licked my lips. This was part of the clue somehow. I didn’t know how I knew this, but my gut instinct was telling me it was. I turned to the right, and my gaze landed on a ratty-looking chest with holes in the sides and black spots in the wood. On the side it had a number, but this one was a Roman numeral. VI.
The Wild Witch (The Coven: Academy Magic Book 3) Page 17
