Lost at Sea Bk. 02 Ch. 05

"I had no designs on Bella. You two had a good thing going as far as I was concerned. I didn't even want to be around her after I got back because she reminded me too much of you," Will said. He was starting to have a hard time staying calm. This was exactly where he didn't want to be in this situation. Why had he even started talking?

"No, not like that," Jack said. "I did it to save Bella."

"From what?! From me?" Will snarled. "What could you have thought I was going to do to Bella?"

"You aren't listening! Again!" Jack yelled. "Bella was dying!"

"What?" Will asked. His building anger suddenly emptied and he felt confused and hollow.

"Fuck," Jack scowled down at the pan she was still clenching in her fist.

"Fuck is right," Lace said with a half grin on her face, She had her hands on the sink, leaning back against it and unashamedly watching the drama unfold. "You two put on a hell of a show."

"Not the time," Will said with a small shake of his head toward the dusky skinned woman next to him. He turned back to Jack. "Explain."

Jack shook her head. "Bella was dying. I had to save her. That's why we went to that ruin."

"Explain more." Will didn't move. His head was spinning in too many directions.

"Do you remember the mural we found?" Jack asked.

"Sure. It was only partial. Something about giving up your heart, and something else about unimaginable wealth. Standard cultish sacrifice and reward nonsense, and a list of trials we had to get through. We figured it all out. It wasn't even that difficult aside from that bit with the ropes that had rotted away. Why?" Will asked.

"You were the sacrifice, Will. That was the last trial," Jack sighed. She dropped her pan and sat down.

Will's eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He shut his mouth again and thought for a bit. "You tried to sacrifice me?"

"I did sacrifice you," Jack said sadly.

"No you didn't. I survived," Will said, gesturing at himself to draw attention to the obvious.

"Sacrifices don't have to mean death, Will. They just have to mean loss. I sacrificed you. I know I did because it worked," Jack said, sounding as hollow as Will felt.

"Great. You know that explanation doesn't actually make anything better, right?" Will asked. "It kind makes things worse."

"The whole ruin was a trial to get the ring. The last trial was a sacrifice. A betrayal. That's why I brought you along in the first place." Jack sounded completely defeated.

"That's definitely worse," Will said.

"I had to sacrifice the thing dearest to me! That was... you. How I felt about you. I sacrificed us," Jack's stared at the floor at Will's feet, not willing to look up and meet his eyes.

Lace snorted. "I feel like I'm reading a penny dreadful. This is some melodramatic bullshit." Jacks eyes snapped up at her and glared. Will snickered, then started laughing. Lace started laughing with him. Jack glared at Will.

"You asshole!" she snapped "I finally tell you! I finally admit it all, and you.. You think you can just laugh at me?"

Will wiped his eyes and then swept his hair out of his face. "Well, she's right. This is pretty melodramatic. If we were watching someone else have this conversation, you'd be the first one to roll your eyes."

Jack stopped and rubbed her temples. "I would. This is such nonsense."

"Alright, so it was a trial and you had to sacrifice me for the ring so you could... what? Save Bella with it somehow?" Will asked.

"Exactly right," Jack nodded. "I knew you would be fine. You were alive, and still the most capable man I've ever known."

Lace looked at Will like she thought maybe Jack had him confused with someone else. She was about to open her mouth, but Will held up a finger. "Save it for later," he said. She sighed and shut her mouth again.

"I had to save her, Will," Jack said.

"How do you know she was dying?" Will asked.

"She told me. She'd done the divinations. She knew exactly how long she had left," Jack said with a small shake of her head.

"That's why you wouldn't let me take the time to do any research," Will said.

Jack nodded. "I'd already done enough on my own. There was no time, and I was afraid you'd figure it out if you started researching that ruin."

"So you knew what you were doing from the very beginning," Will said.

Jack gave a small nod.

"Before we'd even left, you'd already made the decision to... sacrifice me." Will continued.

Jack nodded again.

"Because that's what you had to do in order to save Bella's life." Will said.

Jack took a deep breath and nodded again.

"You could have told me. I'd have stayed there willingly, taken the curse and everything," Will said.

"That isn't a betrayal, Will." Jack said. "I had to betray you. That was the point of the trial."

"That's a messed up trial," Lace said.

"Yes it is," Jack agreed firmly.

"Why? What was so important about that kind of sacrifice?" Will asked.

"It's what the wards protecting the ring demanded," Jack shrugged. "It was like a lock, and that was the last part of the key."

"Who would design a key like that?" Will asked.

"Someone who didn't want any decent person to ever have that ring," Jack said.

"Why? You said you used it to save Bella's life, right? Why shouldn't a good person have that?" All the bitterness had unexpectedly drained out of Will, leaving him feeling strangely hollow. The kettle on the stove started whistling. Will picked it up and dumped it into the sink behind him. The mundanity of the chores suddenly made the whole conversation seem almost normal.

"Because it's a curse, Will. I can't tell you anymore than that. Just please believe me when I tell you that it isn't something that any decent person should have to experience," Jack said, sounding as hollow as Will did.

"You're saying you are a decent person?" Will asked.

"No. I'm saying I'm not. I deserve this, and I think that was the point of the trial," Jack took a deep breath and closed her eyes.Will said nothing. She'd finally told him. She'd been wanting and dreading this moment for years, and now he was just... quiet. She had no idea what wa going to to happen next and it was gnawing at her. "Say something," she said quietly.

"What happens now? Does the magic go away? Does Bella die now that you've broken the rules?" Will asked.

"No, that was just for the trial," Jack said.

"So you could have told me sooner?" Will asked, a bit of an edge to his tone. "Why didn't you?"

"Because now you're going to ask questions and eventually figure out what all of it means, and I... I don't want you to do that. Please don't ask me why," Jack said.

"First you tell me to talk, then you tell me to shut up." Will let out a single laugh.

"Yes. I suppose so," Jack shrugged.

"Alright. It's going to take me awhile to process all this anyway." Will said, turning back around to keep washing. "I guess I can't say that I don't understand what could have driven you to do what you did anymore. I don't know what I would have done if it had been me in your shoes."

"I appreciate you saying that," Jack said.

Will didn't reply to her. Instead he looked to Lace, who was still leaning against the sink, watching the whole thing unfold like she was at a play. "What were you going to say earlier," Will asked.

Lace eyed him up and down, her eyebrow slowly raising. "That if she thinks you're so incredibly capable, she needs to meet more men. You don't even know how a fishing web works."

Will blinked. "What?"

_________________

Bella's vision swam in the mirror. She pushed herself along by her will. Her face in the mirror never wavered, but behind her reflection it was all churning fog and flickers of half formed shapes and light.

This was the dangerous part. The Ways Between had no maps, no paths, no stars to navigate by. The only guiding light was a distant point to focus on, a destination, and if she lost her focus for a moment she'd lose sight of where she was headed and the whole ritual and all the energy she'd spent preparing would be wasted. Worse yet, she might upset the Traveler, who was not known for patience or forgiveness. It was difficult to earn the attention of a higher power. The Traveler did not have to allow anyone to travel her Ways. Supplication was hard, and maintaining the Traveler's continued ambivalence to her presence meant upholding what she said she was going to do. The Traveler cared little for destinations or reasons, but cared a great deal about broken promises and unkept oaths. The Ways were full of people and... other things, which had set out with purpose and lost their way. Worse yet, the Ways Between were home to many things which had no set purpose beyond cruelty, capriciousness, or simple hunger.

She ignored the whispered voices and faint cries for help. She ignored the glitter of faintly seen treasures and the distant songs and chants. All that mattered was her destination. Finding what was hers. Connecting what was here and what was there.

She'd done this before, but never across these distances. She knew that distance was a strange thing in the Ways Between, but somehow the distance on the mortal plane still did matter, but exactly how much seemed to vary according to many factors, like time of day, or day of the year, and other esoteric phenomena that she'd never been taught. She'd been at it for more than an hour. She hadn't moved. Her muscles hurt from the effort of standing so still and compensating for the motion of the waves while she tried to keep her face lined up with the marks on the mirror. Her stomach was rumbling. She'd missed dinner.

Behind her reflection in the mirror the fog parted, revealing a handsome man's face with eyes full of the same fog that surrounded them both. He began to speak with her, she rushed past. Fingertips touched her shoulder in the mirror. She felt it, there on her body, in the Captain's bedroom. Not a reflection. There and real. A rich voice in her ear asked why she was running. In a moment of panic she nearly looked down at the hand she felt, but she forced herself to continue to face the mirror. She pushed with her mind. The churn of fog surged forward again and she felt the hand slip off of her.

The churn of fog broke from time to time, showing her places, reflections of the real world cast in black and white. Now, she was rushing past a small island rimmed with warding Akula totems, each with a bright, colorless fire burning at the base. All the hue had been leached free of her surroundings. She had color, and occasionally she thought she saw other things that did. They were distractions. She could still feel the tug of her destination. That was all that mattered. She felt lost, but she knew she wasn't. Not really. She wanted to look up at the sky. It was an instinct everyone had when trying to find their bearings. She had to remind herself that there was no sky. Above her was only the wooden ceiling of the Captain's chamber. The grey island with it's strange carvings was only a background in the mirror, and as soon as she passed by it in her periphery it was gone. Picturing it all as an illusion helped. The churn was a maze without walls. She had to maintain her focus and keep moving in the only direction which was correct.

Abruptly the fog thinned again. She was on a grey cobbled street. She couldn't see far, but she didn't need to. Her face broke into a grin. Finally! She knew this place. She was close now.

The streets rushed past her, the fog swirling. This was the hard part. In the mirror she could only see what she was passing in the Ways, never what was in front of her. The urge to turn her head for a better look was insistent, but foolish. She had to concentrate, to make the right turns at the right intersections. She could hear faint music, and the sounds of laughing, boisterous people. It sounded odd, like it was far away and underwater. She couldn't see anyone who would be making the sounds, but that wasn't a surprise. They didn't exist here, only their echoes did. She focused her will to turn herself a bit in the mirror. It wasn't really changing her destination. It was just changing the route she was taking to get there. A small loophole, one of the few she could exploit. The streets behind her reflection turned a bit giving her a better idea of where she was.

As she did, she caught sight of half of a hanging sign. A dancing girl with a tambourine. She'd made it! The rest was easy. She knew the route blindfolded.

A few more steps and her reflection would pass through where the door would have been, had she been there for real. Something stopped her. She pushed with her will, but her position in the mirror stayed where it was. Her surroundings didn't shift. She should have been able to walk right through the door like it wasn't there. She couldn't see it since it was in front of her reflection, but she knew exactly where it should have been. The rules of the Ways were clear. All doors in the mortal realm should be open to her while she walked Between. There were only a few ways to close a door in the Ways, and apparently one of them had been used on Merry Mary's.

"Why?!" she snapped at her own reflection. Who would do that? Why would anyone want to ritualistically block travel into Mary's via the Ways? Who even had that kind of power? Bella didn't, and as far as she knew she was one of only two or three decently skilled practitioners of Witchcraft who frequented Bastard's Bay. She couldn't think of any reason why the others would have any interest in Mary's at all, even if they had the power to do it, which she doubted they did.

The Magistrate were known to ward their libraries and archives against all kinds of divinations, including this one. Alexandra could have done it, but Bella couldn't imagine a reason she would. The Magistrate didn't work magic quickly. They would have had to carved their runes into the flagstones. It would have been a production. Someone would have noticed. Maybe the Warding was old? What was Mary's before it was a brothel? A bathhouse? Maybe someone was very concerned about their privacy? No, that was just... The idea of Mary's being warded this way at all was absurd.

The feeling of being lost that she'd been fighting the entire time the ritual had been going welled up. She couldn't turn around or stop facing her destination. That would break the ritual. She could move laterally, or back up, but she had to keep her reflection facing her goal. There was another door. The kitchens. She backed up a bit and willed herself along the wall, down the alleyway and around to the back of the building. She wasn't nearly as familiar with this side of the building, which made navigation difficult, but she had a pretty good idea of where the doorway should be.

She tried to move herself forward. Nothing happened. She re-positioned herself. Nothing. Again. Still nothing. The way was blocked. A sense of panic started to rise inside her. "Think. Think," she said to herself, looking at her own reflection like she was giving herself advice.

The chimney wouldn't do. It was too small. Sizes, like distances, were sometimes malleable in the Ways, but she didn't know a lot about how that worked. Trying some kind of theoretical size manipulation on her reflection in the Ways while maintaining the ritual she'd already started sounded far too dangerous to try. Her eyes narrowed. There was one other way. She just had to hope that whoever had Warded the building didn't know about it.

___________________

"What am I supposed to do while you're... working?" Janie asked. She was sitting with her hands in her lap, her back straight and her knees together, her posture more like a prim schoolmarm or governess than someone wearing her underclothes on the outside and presenting herself lewdly in a brothel.

"Whatever you want. Wander around. Enjoy the shows on stage. Sit at the bar. Wander around and talk to people," Tonya shrugged. She was setting up the space for customers. She put a deck of tarot cards on the table along with one of Bella's hokey crystal balls, then pulled a big book off the shelf and flipped through it until she found something that looked close enough to an arcane symbol. That went on the table too.

"But then the men will think I'm... working?!" Janie was having second thoughts about this entire plan.

"No doubt. New girls are always popular. Especially when they look like you," Tonya winked. "Just tell them you aren't working right now. They'll leave you be. If anyone gets pushy, Caine will sort them out."

"He wants me to stay close anyway," Janie sighed. "Couldn't I just stay in here with you?"

"Only if you want to watch me getting stuffed from both ends," Tonya smirked.

Janie's brows furrowed in confusion as she tried to puzzle out what Tonya meant, and then her eyes went wide. If she hadn't been wearing so much makeup her face would have burned bright red. As it was, only her ears flushed noticeably. Tonya laughed. Janie didn't know where to look. Unbidden thoughts of the apprentice witch having carnal relations with men rushed into her mind. She glanced around for something to focus on, anything but Tonya, her eyes finally just falling on her own feet. The strappy leather shoes she'd borrowed were ridiculous. They had a heel that made walking nothing but difficult. She had to admit they were elegant though.

"Yeah, that's what I figured," Tonya snickered, reading Janie's answer in her flustered behavior.

"Both... ends?" Janie whispered. "Wouldn't that take... two men?"

"If I'm lucky," Tonya shrugged. She gave herself a once over in the big mirror on the wall and turned around, one hand on her hip, a coy, mischievous grin on her pixie-like face. "How do I look?"

Janie looked up, still blushing. Suddenly she was picturing Tonya on the table like Bella had been back at the lighthouse. Only this time there were two Wills, and they were... "Youlookverynice," she stammered out.

"Get a handle on yourself," Tonya said gently. "What would Evangelina do?"

"I don't know," Janie said. "I've never... No, I have. I've thought about it many times. Evangelina is like Bella. Brazen, unabashed. And like Belita. Confident and bold."

"You have the costume, you have the character, now you just have to sell it to the audience," Tonya said encouragingly.

"I don't know if I can," Janie swallowed, her eyes still wide and wild.

"Just go out there and take a walk around. If you decide you can't handle it, you can just come back here," Tonya said. "If I don't need to pull the curtain, there's no reason you can't sit here and pretend to be my assistant."

Janie took a deep breath. That didn't sound so bad. "Alright." She stood up and smoothed her... normally it would be her blouse. She wasn't wearing a blouse. She'd just run her hands across her breasts and down her stomach, petting the soft lace of her bustier. She glanced down at herself seeing her own cleavage on full display. Again, apprehension welled up in her.

"Do that again," Tonya said.

"What?" Janie asked.

"That thing with your hands, where you just ran them down your body like that," Tonya said, trying to imitate what Janie had just done.

"Why?" Janie asked, not sure of what was going on. "It's just a habit."

"It's a sexy habit," Tonya smiled. "That will definitely get you some attention."

"That is not what I'm trying to do," Janie tried to remind the feisty little witch. "I'm in disguise, I do not want attention."

"Well, you're going to get it. Besides, It'll help you blend in," Tonya shrugged, a big grin still on her face. "Go. Take a walk. Go say hi to Caine. If you get overwhelmed you can come right back."

Janie nodded and swallowed, gathering her courage. Why was this so difficult? She'd faced down armed thugs. She'd been taken hostage yesterday, and it hadn't made her feel like this. Wasn't there a part of her that was excited about the idea of being looked at? Hadn't she just had that conversation with Bella not long ago? Why was she so nervous?