Paradise Cursed – Snippet 17
Excusing myself from a bawdy cluster of passengers as gracefully as possible, I made my way along the deck seeking out Erin Kohl so that I might put the question to her. Tomorrow would be a full day in port. While many passengers would go ashore, others would not, and free tarot readings could keep them occupied and happy—a constant aim on cruise ships.
As usual, nearly all of our after-dinner crowd had migrated to the bar on the upper deck. I spied the Kohl sisters, however, just past the cabins on the main level. Drawing closer, I noted a tension between them.
They were not talking but staring at something I couldn’t see. Dayna held tight to her sister’s arm, fear written in the rigidity of her body language. Yet as I advanced along the rail, puzzled, I saw no one threatening them.
Then Erin stepped away from Dayna. An instant later, at my approach, Dayna threw her arms around her sister.
“Are you all right?” A gold charm dangled from a thick chain Erin was holding.
“That thing—” Dayna gestured in the direction they’d been staring, “it nearly—”
“We’re fine,” Erin said, before Dayna could finish her sentence. She drew the gold charm against her breast.
Erin did indeed look fine, but Dayna’s young face was etched with the harsh lines of confusion and fear. Fear of what? I saw nothing amiss, no one skulking away.
“Ladies, if someone is hassling you, I need to know.”
A look passed between the sisters. Dayna wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as if wakened from a nightmare, Erin calm and thin-lipped. A quick shake of her head.
“Honestly, we’re fine,” she said.
The chilly silence said otherwise, but I decided to drop it. For now.
“Dayna, will you be ready for another duty tour,” I asked. “This time earlier than first bell?”
“Absolutely! I mean, aye, captain.” She snapped a quick salute.
The resilience of youth never failed to amaze me. “Four a.m. Report to Cookie to help prepare breakfast, then to First Mate Ayanna to usher our guests to the launches for shore day.”
“I’m on it!” She darted away.
In Dayna’s absence, I felt captured once again by her sister’s allure.
“Did you know…” With two fingers, I gently touched Erin’s hand, which was still tightly clutching the amulet. “…it was one of Solomon’s wives who first suggested the Seal?. Originally, it symbolized unity and family, but some hold it as the first recorded charm of magic.”
With obvious reluctance, Erin relaxed her grasp and lifted the engraved gold disk to glitter between us in the moonlight. “It’s just a pendant. Probably someone’s family heirloom.”
“May I?”
When she nodded, I took it from her hand—and drew a breath at the frisson of pleasure that went through me when my fingers touched hers.
I had recognized the amulet instantly as the one Ayanna was wearing earlier. Replicas are fairly common in the island shops, but this was no cheap souvenir. It was gold, probably eighteen karat, and quite delicately engraved. Examining the Seal as I never had before, I saw that one side depicted the entire symbol, two interlocking triangles, while the reverse featured the sixth pentacle of Mars. Writing around the eight points of the radii was in the mystical alphabet of Malachim. I couldn’t read Malichim, but I recognized it.
On a hunch, I asked, “What does it say?”
“Elohim qeber.” Erin’s eyes widened after she spoke. Then, slowly, as if reciting a long ago memory, “Elohim hath protected.”
“The words are Hebrew?”
“An extract…” Her expression slipped from mild surprise to intense concentration, her forehead compressing into tight lines. “… extraction… from traditional Hebrew, I believe. We’re not of Jewish faith, I mean the family who owned it. I mean… my family never embraced any religion… and… I’m rambling. Like I said, an old necklace. I don’t know why your first mate gave it to me.”
“It’s quite beautiful, and a protection against evil.” A quite powerful charm, judging by the way it communicated meaning to its new owner.
But then, why hadn’t it protected Ayanna against the Bokor’s curse? Evil will in, I supposed.
Taking the chain in both hands, I leaned forward to place it around Erin’s neck. “Even more beautiful against your skin.”
“Thanks.” She touched the Seal. The tip of her pink tongue caressed her lower lip.
With the moonlight behind her and prisms of light from establishments along the port sparkling in her dark eyes, Erin Kohl’s attraction… so like my long-ago Remy… was irresistible. I raised my hand—
I stopped just short of cupping her chin, lifting it, pressing my mouth to those incredibly sensuous lips. Instead, I brushed a strand of hair from her face with my thumb.
“Four a.m.,” she said. “An even tighter schedule than yesterday.”
“The breakfast bell won’t ring until six. You’re safe to sleep until nine.”
“Missing the cinnamon rolls.” A raindrop struck her cheek, and she flinched as if from a blade. She swiped at it. “What’s this? Our nightly ten-minute shower?”
“Like clockwork.” I glanced at the sky. Wispy clouds, no thunderheads.
Erin’s expressive face looked much too troubled for a discussion of raindrops and cinnamon rolls.
“Perhaps it’s time to get you to your quarters,” I said.
More drops splashed us.
She hesitated. “Maybe the dining room. It’s too early for sleep, but Dayna will be trying to rest for tomorrow.”
And even the largest of Sarah Jane‘s bunk rooms didn’t allow much space for lounging. “By the time we reach the dining room you’ll be soaked. Let me show you a secret dry spot.”
When she nodded, I took her hand and hastened to a giant hulk of a table as ancient as my old bones. On the upper deck, it stood snug against the outer back wall of the bar. In a half dozen strides, we were there.
“In you go.” She tossed me a glance that said, you’re serious? But then she smiled, ducked under the big table and sat. I folded my taller frame alongside.
Once snuggled into the dry, close space, with rain creating a silvery moonlit veil that cloaked us from the sounds of passengers scurrying to their quarters or to other dry areas, I wondered at my lack of wisdom in sequestering us in such an intimate atmosphere. Too many days I’d been without a woman to warm my bunk, and Erin Kohl, exquisitely female, possessed a delicate, beauty that would tempt a monk. My animal urges were suddenly on high alert. Setting aside the male-female conventions that exist in this century and seducing the girl on the spot was at once shamelessly tempting and morally forbidden.
To batten down my desire, I squinted through the rain trying to make out the deck’s rail and the black sea beyond.
“That bit you did—” I cleared my throat. “with the tarot cards tonight, Ola appeared—”
“Oh! I only did a reading because she begged me to, and I don’t take money—”
“Whoa. I wasn’t about to chastise you, Ms. Kohl. Quite the opposite. I was hoping I might employ you.”
“Employ? You mean, hire me? For what?”
“Ola seemed rather passionately taken with your interpretation of the cards. I assume that’s something you’ve studied?”
“It’s just for fun.”
“Fun is precisely what brings passengers to sail with us. I was hoping—”
“I don’t do it anymore, I mean, except that Ola wouldn’t take no.”
She seemed truly distressed by the prospect of what I was asking, and now I recalled the argument those cards had fostered between Erin and her sister.
“I’m confused,” I said, honestly. “If it’s just for fun, as you say, then what is it that troubles you about engaging your talent to give our other passengers a spot of pleasure? I’m willing to offer free passage for you and your sister for as long as you’d like to sail with us.”
Even in the limited light, her scowl was fierce enough to set me back a peg.
“I’m glad Dayna isn’t listening to this conversation. She wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace, pleading that I throw every caution to the wind and stay here all summer.”
Despite her scowl, my heart leapt at the idea of having more than a passing acquaintance with this woman. “Your sister has the makings of a fine sailor.”
“Sailing is a lark, not a sensible career choice.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “One summer spent among the people of these islands is an education not available at any school. The healthy fresh air, sunshine and exercise come as a bonus— think of the money you’ll save on spa visits.”
Reining it in, I added in a more businesslike tone, “The offer is open for the full season, of course, but I realize you must have commitments.”
She looked away from me, taking a sudden interest in studying her hands as she clasped them together. What had seemed an entertaining idea from my side was giving her more stress than I could have imagined. There appeared to be a much deeper worry beneath the surface, bearing out my hunch that she was burdened by a problem akin to Ayanna’s.
Donning my role of the broad-shouldered cleric who takes on all manner of knotty issues and helps sort them out, I laid a gentle hand on her clenched fingers.
“Tell me,” I said.
She hesitated, not meeting my eyes.
I waited silently, and after a moment the story poured out. Two years earlier, her parents had celebrated their anniversary with a driving trip through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Erin consulted their astrology charts, all in good fun, but something she read in the planetary aspects suggested the trip would end badly.
All this she delivered while staring at my hand resting lightly on her clenched fingers. Then she turned to me, and her voice took on a note of anxious confusion.
“Astrology is not meant for predictions. It’s like getting a weather report before setting out, so you’ll know what sort of clothes to pack. But the danger I saw was so clear to me. Without causing alarm, I tried to steer my parents toward a quiet week at their lake cabin, which they always enjoy, but they were looking forward to seeing a part of the country they’d visited before getting tied down by family responsibilities. The day they drove away was the last time I saw my parents alive.”
I gave her fingers a mild squeeze and uttered the expected lie. “Surely that was coincidence. As you said, the stars don’t predict with such exactness.”
“Yes. That’s what I told myself. Then…”
The rest of the story unfolded as if the words had been stuffed back and would not be stifled any longer. She’d traded astrology for tarot, and her readings were simply a way of entertaining friends.
“It’s fun, and I was good at it. People enjoy feeling a little bit of control in knowing what the future might hold.”
But then the cards revealed that her fiancé was cheating, which turned out to be true. At approximately the same time, a friend’s reading turned dark, and even though taking heed of Erin’s cautions, the friend was horribly injured in an escalator accident.
“That’s when I tossed the cards in the trash. But Dayna found them and brought them along on this trip. And now I’m seeing things…things that are…impossible.”
On the Sarah Jane, “impossible” loses its meaning. But Erin Kohl wasn’t quite ready to hear that.
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