Taking that for a yes, I sloshed back down the passageway, ready to put some distance between me and the bull shark that was now ramming the cell door.
At the top of the stairwell, Shade paused and his skin turned pitch-black. His eyes, too, which was more than a little unsettling when he turned them on me and asked, “The Specter still circling?”
“I think so.”
“Get Gemma. Take the cable car back to the docks. We’ll pick you up from there.”
I said nothing, suddenly wondering if I could trust him to show. Once he was aboard the Specter, he might decide to head for the open ocean.
Footsteps clanged above us. Descending. Then Gemma’s voice rang out, “Come on, Ratter, let me sneak one peek at the outlaw. I didn’t get a good look at him in the ring.”
“Can’t do it, little girl,” Ratter replied. “Fife said not to let anyone down.”
“I’ll have you know that Mayor Fife is a friend of mine,” she announced.
“Fife don’t have friends,” Ratter said with an ugly laugh. “You either work for him or you’re nothing to him. That’s about it.”
In a crouch-run, Shade and I crossed the deck and slipped behind an empty deep-fried shrimp stall.
Shade had limped on his wounded leg as he’d run, and now he grimaced in pain. “Change of plan.”
As Gemma and Ratter appeared at the foot of the stairs, I saw her glance around and knew she was looking for us.
Shade nudged me. “No reason for you to hide.”
I rose from behind the shrimp stall and gave her a wave as Ratter disappeared down the stairs.
“Get her,” Shade ordered. “We’re going to dive for it.”
“Off Rip Tide? She’s not going to want to do that.” That was the understatement of the century. Still, I waved her over.
“Fine, we leave her.” He stood. “Safer here anyway. But if you want a ride, you dive. That guard will sound the alarm as soon as he spots my empty cell.”
We intercepted Gemma by the drill well, and Shade quickly relayed his plan.
“I’m coming,” she said firmly.
“I don’t have time to wait for you to take the cable car and climb down a cliff,” Shade said roughly.
“I’ll dive.”
I shot her a look, remembering what had happened the last time she was in the ocean.
“Ty taught me how to swim,” she added, as if that was the issue.
Shade tipped his head as if to say “whatever” and took off toward the far side of town.
“It’s closer this way,” I hissed, pointing at the half wall just past the stairwell.
He paused. “There, we’d hit the water near the jail. After we left, that shark probably headed back into the ocean.”
“Shark?” Gemma asked.
“Shark!” a voice screamed. A second later Ratter barreled out of the stairwell.
“Or maybe not,” Shade conceded.
At that moment, Ratter spotted us and gawked. “You!” he shouted.
Shade hooked Gemma by the elbow and took off.
“Stop there!” Ratter whipped his speargun off his back and aimed it at Shade, even though Gemma was running alongside him. “Stop or I’ll pin you to the deck!”
I dove for Ratter, tackling him to keep him from pulling the trigger. A good sight heavier than me, he tried to shove me off, but I grabbed ahold of his speargun. As I tried to yank it from his hand, he rolled, using his weight to loosen my grip.
Now he had me pinned, crushing me. But when he attempted to push himself up with one hand while holding on to his weapon with the other, he floundered. He had to release all the pressure on me to get himself to his knees. I shimmied out from under him and grabbed the butt of the gun. In trying to pull it out of his hand, I unintentionally helped him up. Then a tug of war began, each of us gripping the speargun.
But he had the wrong end.
I could easily pull the trigger and send a shaft into Ratter’s gut—but I wouldn’t. Not that he knew that about me. Most people would have let go the second they saw that they were gripping the barrel end of a gun. Not Ratter, though, who was clearly too stupid to understand the danger he was in.
Suddenly, he tried to swing me off, using his bulk to his advantage. I went with it, letting him heave me around in a circle, figuring that he’d get dizzy first or exhaust himself well before I was spent. I wasn’t that lightweight. It wasn’t like he could get me up in the air. He had to throw his whole body into each heave, while lurching haphazardly.
On his second tipsy rotation, I realized he’d circled us to the edge of the drill well—right where there was no railing. In that split second, I knew I had a choice: let go of the gun or get thrown into the eel pool. But one glance at Ratter’s dogged expression and I knew there was a third option. I went with the next lurch, tightening my grip on the speargun as I sailed off the edge of the deck. And sure enough, Ratter stubbornly refused to let go of his end of the gun, only to realize too late that by holding on, he’d be pulled into the pool with me. And so he was—splashing down one second after me.
As I sank, I released the speargun and felt it drop away. Ratter must have finally let go. All at once, a wriggling mass of eels enveloped me. Covering my face with my arms, I tried to kick away but there was nowhere to go. The lampreys were everywhere, winnowing through my clothes, seeking out bare flesh. Use it as a weapon, a voice in my head shouted.
I clicked rapidly but the eels only increased their writhing.
Amp it up.
This time I blasted out the lowest-pitched sound I could muster and instantly all movement around me ceased. I knocked aside the limp coils in front of my face and kicked for the surface. It worked! I’d stunned the eels like a dolphin stunned prey. Why hadn’t I tried it before?
I surfaced just long enough to fill my lungs with air. A few yards away, Ratter thrashed toward the pool’s edge. Without attracting his attention, I dove again and swam below the drifting eels.
Sending out clicks, I sensed where the net wrapped around the town’s legs. Not far at all. Above me, Ratter splashed and kicked as he attempted to heave himself out of the pool.
I drew out my dive knife and tore into the net. The blade strained for only a second before cutting into the woven metal. Luckily, not titanium. The cold gnawed at my skin as I slashed a hole big enough to wriggle through. Too bad I wasn’t wearing a diveskin.
I’d just made it past the net when the lampreys poured through the hole and swarmed around me. Alert once more and on the attack. Pain broke out along my neck and below my ear as eels bored into my skin. I tried blasting them with sonar again, but those that had already dug in didn’t loosen their bite. By now my lungs felt scorched from needing air. But I was trapped under Rip Tide.
I swam toward the edge of the town, head dizzy, extremities cramping with cold. Had Shade and Gemma made it to the sub?
I had to get clear of the town. Had to surface now. I pushed my speed. Didn’t even break my stroke to pull off the lampreys, though their bite burned and their heavy, soft bodies thumped against my chest.
My eardrums throbbed as I swam against the tide, yet I couldn’t make any headway. A powerful undercurrent was keeping me pinned beneath the town. I dove deeper to escape its drag, only to find that the undertow was even stronger closer to the seafloor. So strong I was nearly swimming in place, unable to reclimb the water column, and I was growing weaker by the second. Close to blacking out. Only terror kept me conscious.
Lampreys ripped from my skin and vanished in the current. Which was wrong, I realized with a start.
The undertow should be moving out to sea, not toward the coast. I turned to shoot sonar over my shoulder and lost ten feet as I was whipped backward. And that’s when I saw it in my mind’s eye—a hulking underwater turbine, which sucked in the tide to power the town. Its housing would keep me from getting mangled, but without air, I wouldn’t have the strength to pull myself away from its grille. Frenzied, I tried to swim faster, harder, anythin
g.
Water pressed down on me as something large descended. The bull shark! I gasped, sucking in seawater. Even while choking, I threw up my hands to defend myself … and cracked my knuckles against metal, not the flesh of a sea creature. For a second my brain couldn’t categorize the gray mass above me, then understanding hit. That was the Specter hovering over me.
Gagging, I began to scrabble along the underside, seeking entry, while fighting back the darkness that threatened to eclipse my thoughts. Registering that the hatch was still closed, I realized that had been Shade’s plan all along—to let me drown. A burst of light appeared and something brushed the back of my neck. Another lamprey, here for the feast. I tried to knock the eel away, but it tightened its bite and jerked me upward. Big lamprey was my last thought before I blacked out.
The impact of hitting a floor jarred me back into consciousness, and I rolled to my side to cough up half the ocean. When my eyes could finally focus, I looked up to see that once again the Seablite Gang had me surrounded.
Shade’s smile was wry. “Welcome aboard the Specter.”
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Most of the outlaws disappeared through the hatchway as Pretty set to work yanking the two remaining eels off my neck. The pain was sharp and intense. But I gritted my teeth to hold in my shout. Pinning me down with a boot on my shoulder, he opened a bottle of alcohol and doused me with it, and I bit down harder. He may as well have set fire to my open wounds. Seeing Eel smirking at my efforts only increased the sting.
I looked around me at the chaos that was the Specter’s gear room. Equipment swung precariously from hooks overhead; weapons had been piled haphazardly on the rack, while a jumble of diveskins, helmets, and boots covered the bench and floor. Even worse than the mess, the air stank of old socks and sweat.
The Specter picked up speed, but hearing no hum of propellers, I guessed that she was a stealth sub, powered by artificial muscles embedded between the inner and outer hulls, which let her glide through the ocean, silent as a shark.
“Where’s Gemma?” I asked. Eel’s smirk vanished, and he nodded at the hatchway that led into the next room.
I pushed myself up, and my body winced. “Is she okay? “
“Getting there,” Eel replied. “Moved from scared stiff into shaky.”
“She’s fine,” Pretty said as if he were the resident medical expert.
Eel shoved open the hatch and I followed him into the sub’s common room, which had the feel and smell of a whale-hands’ bunkhouse. Weapons and taxidermied sea creatures adorned the walls, while a punching bag swung in one corner. The lights were embedded in the ceiling like vertebrae and set on dim so that no glowing viewports gave away the sub’s presence. As my eyes adjusted, I saw Gemma tucked into the corner of a padded bench.
Shade, still in his damp clothes, tossed me a towel. “Got your breath?”
I nodded, noting that the towel wasn’t exactly clean—but at least it was dry.
Now I could see the blur of ocean through the dark viewport opposite the table. Whatever our destination, we were heading there fast. Hardluck Ruins, I hoped.
“Okay,” Shade said as if getting down to business.
I looked over, but he was facing Gemma. “He’s here.” Shade hooked a thumb at me. “He’s alive. Now talk.”
Despite being wrapped in a blanket, she shivered. Her eyes met mine, and I read in them a silent plea for assistance.
“She gets nervous in the ocean,” I told Shade, heading for her. When I was close enough, I whispered, “It happened again?”
She nodded, looking miserable.
“Nervous?” Shade scoffed. “She stopped moving. Curled up in a ball and let herself sink.”
“Passive panic,” I told him. “That’s what it’s called. Happens to new divers all the time.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Eel put in from his perch on the wall ladder.
“Can I just lie down for a while?” Gemma asked. “Then I’ll be fine.”
“Not till you explain,” Shade said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“She doesn’t want to talk about it,” I snapped.
He was unfazed. “I don’t care.”
“You want to know what’s wrong with me?” Gemma burst out. “I’m not tough, that’s what. Not in the ocean. Everything about it scares me, and everything in it.”
“See,” Shade said calmly, “all I wanted to know.” He looked over at Pretty, who, with a shoulder propped against a wall, radiated boredom. “You can take care of that?”
Pretty nodded.
“Take care of it how?” I asked.
“Pretty can hypnotize people,” Eel answered. “And not just with his dazzling personality.”
Kale and Hatchet spilled in from the far corridor where they’d clearly been lurking while Trilo dropped out of a hatch in the ceiling, bypassing the wall ladder that Eel had claimed for a seat.
“Pretty can make you forget your own mother,” Trilo told me, and then shot a wary look at Gemma.
“Really?” She twisted on the bench to look at Pretty.
He remained impassive. “Fear is easy to take away.”
“Can you make a person not see something?” she asked.
“Like what?”
Exactly my question.
She cleared her throat. “Things that might not be there …”
“You’re seeing things?” Shade demanded.
“I see ghosts,” she admitted softly. “In the ocean.”
The room fell utterly silent until Shade repeated, “Ghosts?” in a tone that echoed the same disbelief I was feeling.
I wondered if she was making it up to get him off her back about being scared to swim.
“Yes.” Lifting her chin, Gemma met his look. “The ocean is filled with ghosts.”
Shoot. She wasn’t making it up. In fact, she believed it with the conviction of a New Puritan. “Is that what freaked you out this morning?”
She nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to think I’m crazy. I know you don’t believe in ghosts.”
“What do they look like?” Eel threw himself onto the table to get near her. Clearly, he believed.
“They’re just movement. Shapes just at the edge of my vision.”
As she started to say more, Hatchet plowed forward, pushing me aside to listen.
Other than Shade, only Pretty hung back, his expression skeptical, which bugged me. Not because his skepticism wasn’t warranted. I just hated knowing that he and I felt the same way about something.
“They disappear when I try to look at them directly,” Gemma went on. “But it’s more than that. I feel them, too.”
“You mean, inside you?” Trilo’s acid green eyes were aglow. “Like you’re possessed?”
She shook her head. “At first I’m just aware of something around me. All around me. My skin prickles before I realize what’s happening. And then that feeling turns awful.”
“It hurts?” Kale asked.
“No. It’s not pain. It’s just … my whole body feels bad. Worse than bad. And that’s when I see them, moving, blurry shapes, hovering next to me. But when I turn to get a better look, they vanish.”
Shade turned to Pretty. “Well?”
“Maybe” was all he would commit to.
Gemma threw off the blanket, revealing her wet, ruined sari. “You can hypnotize me into not seeing them?”
“Maybe,” he repeated. “I can definitely take away your fear.”
“Make her not see them,” Shade said firmly.
“Do both,” Gemma said. “How do we start?”
“Hold up,” I demanded, facing Pretty. “You’re going to mess around with her mind?”
“She can undo it,” Pretty said as if it were no big deal. “If she concentrates really hard on feeling and seeing what she did before.”
“But if I don’t do that,” Gemma pressed, “I’ll stay hypnotized, rig
ht? Never see them again or feel them or be afraid to swim in the ocean?”
“Can’t say.” Pretty pushed off from the wall and strolled closer. “I’ve never tried to stop someone from seeing ghosts before.” Irony soaked his words.
“Can I talk to you?” Nudging aside the outlaws, I offered Gemma a hand up. “Alone.”
Her gaze shifted to Shade, who swept his arm toward the gear room. “Go ahead. Let him tell you all the reasons why it’s a bad idea.”
“It’s only a bad idea if Pretty is mad at you,” Eel said, punching Hatchet in the arm, “and you don’t want to spend the day thinking you’re a pig.”
As the other outlaws broke into oinks and jeers at Hatchet’s expense, Gemma and I retreated to the gear room.
The moment I closed the hatch, I asked, “Since when do you ask anyone for permission for anything?” At her look of confusion, I added, “Shade. You checked with him before you’d agree to come with me.” And it burned me up.
She waved my point aside. “It is his sub.”
Knowing that she wanted to live with him, it shouldn’t surprise me that she’d act like his gang and treat him with deference. I had to get to what was really important. “Listen, you can’t let Pretty hypnotize you.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s something wrong with him.”
She had that look she got whenever she didn’t want to be talked out of something. “He was locked up in a reformatory when he was young. We can’t all be lucky enough to have a family like yours.”
“That’s not the point. You read people faster than I can read a depth gauge. You know that Pretty has as much human feeling as an icefish. Probably has see-through blood and a bleached heart like one, too. And that’s who you’re going to let mess with your head?” When she didn’t reply, I said, “We’ll find another way to get you help.”
“What way?” she scoffed. “A doctor will say I’m brain-baked. And maybe I am, who knows?” Shivering, she sank onto the bench. “I don’t want to wait for some cure that might never come. Not when there’s a chance that Pretty can fix it now.”
“Because that’s what Shade wants?”
“What? No,” she sputtered. “I have my own reasons. Ghosts!”