Paradise Cursed – Snippet 21
You go, girl! Dayna wanted to cheer right out loud as she watched Erin exit the dining room with Captain Gorgeous. Wipe that cheating jerk off your shoes, sister mine, and step into a summer romance. It hurt to see Erin so miserable, especially when Dayna felt so wild-ass happy.
“Your sister and the captain sure look cozy together.” Jase Graham fleeked his eyebrows suggestively. “Wonder where they’re going.”
Dayna wondered, too. She wanted to follow and see if the captain was taking Erin to his cabin. Where else would they be headed below decks?
And why was Acting First Mate Graham so interested? And where was the real first mate?
“Is Ayanna sick…?” Dayna swallowed the last word: again.
“I warned the captain about hiring her.” Leaning against the brass gunwale Dayna had just polished and chewing a plastic straw, he continued staring at the companionway where Erin and the captain had gone below.
“Warned?” Dayna’s back stiffened. Graham might be sexy but Ayanna was a role model. “How do you know Ayanna?”
“Sailed with her brother. Bad news, both of them. Into animal sacrifice, secret meetings where people go in clean and come out bloody. Having her on a ship like this is asking for trouble.”
Dayna frowned, her mind skipping to last night’s weirdness, which she’d desperately been trying to forget. “What do you mean, a ship like this?”
He took the straw from his mouth and looked at her for the first time.
“Cursed. Didn’t you know?” His smile was wickedly smarmy. Then he pointed to a launch that had pulled up to the gangway. “Chit-chat’s over, grunt. Go down and bring up those boxes of crabs.”
Dayna didn’t see any boxes, but there were several coolers. “Where do I take them?”
“Ask Cookie.”
“Yes, sir.” Jerk. After a few steps, Dayna looked back. Graham was headed down the companionway where Erin and Captain Cord had vanished.
*
“Ayanna, I’ve brought someone with me,” I called after knocking.
My change in tactic had come at the moment I realized how much Erin Kohl cared about other people. It should have occurred to me the night before, when she told of reading the cards because Ola begged her and then of her friend’s escalator accident.
When Erin so quickly was willing to return Ayanna’s amulet, even though she obviously wanted to keep it, I decided to take her to the person who needed our help. Her own heart would nudge her in the right direction.
Occasionally, I realize that I have actually learned a thing or two over the centuries.
The door opened. Ayanna wore shorts and a baggy shirt, typical barefoot cruise clothing, They revealed her changed appearance. While her beautiful face remained unmarred, the transformed skin on her legs now came above the knee. Her arms were scaly green from the wrist up to where her short sleeves covered them.
Beside me, I sensed Erin stiffen and take a breath. Her hand closed around the amulet.
Ayanna gave me a quizzical glance before she smiled at Erin.
“There is not space for three, but please come in.”
Being on a lower deck, the cabin had no outside visibility. Only an overhead bulb lighted the room.
Erin’s eyes remained fixed on my first mate’s mottled arms.
“I see what you mean,” she murmured, “about it being no ordinary illness. Ayanna, shouldn’t you be in bed? Sit down, at least. Is it painful?”
“Both of you,” I said, “please sit.”
Ayanna indicated for Erin to take the only chair, then she sat on the bed. “It does not hurt. Only in here, sickness.” She touched first her stomach, then her head.
I leaned against the wall beside the door while the women talked. Ayanna unfolded the story of the Bokor she saw in her dreams, which I had not yet heard in its entirety. Clearly, the curse was gaining hold on her as each day passed, but more so since she boarded the ship.
As I stood listening, another part of my mind became aware that footsteps had sounded in the passageway coming from the direction of the upper decks. The steps approached, growing slower and softer, and I did not hear them continue past Ayanna’s cabin. My fingers itched to yank open the door and see who had their ear against it, but I didn’t want to break the camaraderie developing between the two women.
“Today we are having another ceremony,” Ayanna was saying. “Here on the Sarah Jane, where perhaps Shaman Demarae and the orichas will have more success in overcoming the Bokor’s bad magic.”
“Your dreams,” Erin said, “can they be strong enough to become… I don’t know… not real but perceived by others?”
“Like the vision you encountered last evening?” Ayanna reached as if to touch Erin’s hand then stopped short and pulled back.
Erin took Ayanna’s hand in her own.
“I saw… something.” She looked at the mottles on Ayanna’s wrist and arm. “Was that you? I mean, was it a manifestation of your dream?”
“You used the Key of Solomon. How did you know what to do?”
Erin shook her head. “I didn’t know anything, just reacted.”
“Captain,” Ayanna said, “the angel, I think, that rides the Sarah Jane has taken an interest in what is happening and is very protective of this dove, who has brought her own magic aboard.”
What could I say to that? “My thoughts have been leaning in that direction. I believe having Erin at the ceremony would improve our chances of success this time.”
“I don’t have any magic!”
“And yet you were the only person aboard who saw the vision manifested by Ayanna’s dream.”
“How do you know?” she protested. “Maybe someone else—”
“I was there. I saw you and your sister, I heard you utter the words that apparently caused the vision to vanish, but I didn’t see what you saw.”
Erin closed her eyes. Her hand trembled as she withdrew it from Ayanna’s.
“Maybe I have more than my share of natural intuition.” Her eyes were again trained on the snaky arms, as if drawing her words from what she saw. “But that’s all I have. And I’m my sister’s only parent now. I can’t risk anything happening…”
Great. Although I felt as low as a bottom feeder for trying to bring her into this, my ship had attracted her aboard for a reason. Ayanna needed the Sarah Jane’s power. And Erin needed the Sarah Jane, that much I could count on. Would Demarae’s orichas prove helpful to both women? Or would helping Ayanna cause Erin to suffer in some way I couldn’t conceive of at the moment?
“Dayna will be ashore,” I said. “At any hint of harm coming to you, I’ll pull you from the room.”
Erin glared at me. “Are you so perceptive that you’d know what’s happening inside me? Not all harm is evident to an onlooker.”
“No,” I said. Taking two quick steps, I grabbed Erin’s hand and forced her to touch the scaly skin on Ayanna’s arm. “But it’s clearly evident that Ayanna needs all the help she can get to stop this unspeakable thing from continuing. This is reality, and it has progressed this far in less than two days. What does your intuition tell you, Erin Kohl? Will this woman still be human tomorrow, or will this horror overtake her completely, mind and body?”
Ayanna gaped at me, no doubt shocked by my outburst. But Erin’s eyes glistened with tears. I should back off. This was my responsibility, not hers. Instead, I sank even lower.
“What would Dayna want you to do?” I demanded.
“Captain, it is not for her to do this,” Ayanna said. “We have a powerful shaman, we have the ship—”
“And if that’s not enough?”
“Then we go to Roatan.” But the fright in Ayanna’s eyes belied her confidence.
“What will you become,” I asked quietly, “by the time another day’s sailing has passed?”
Staring again at the mottling, Erin tenderly ran her fingers over it.
“It’s cold,” she said. “Not actually rough, but the touch of it turns my stomach and causes a hissing pain in my head. I can only imagine how much worse it must be for you.”
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