Perilous Waters (7 page)

She felt Julia drawing out a portion of her magic. Kaitlyn’s instinct was always to try and stop her, but she eased up and let a small amount of magic flow from her body.

“I need more than that,” Julia said.

“It doesn’t take you much to freeze time,” Kaitlyn said.

“Not much, but I’d rather not pass out from using all of my own magic. That’s why there are three of us.”

Kaitlyn’s jaw tightened but she allowed more magic to release into Julia’s body. “There. Are you happy now?”

A small burst of satisfaction filtered through Julia’s emotions. Kaitlyn nearly yanked her hand back, but acting out would only give Julia more reason to mock her.
Anytime now
,
she said, sending her an aggravated stab of magic.

Julia’s satisfaction only grew. “There,” she said, her eyes blinking open.

Kaitlyn glanced around the dim basement. Each of the candle flames remained utterly still. She remembered the first time the three of them had trained down here. With time frozen, Kaitlyn had reached out to a flame, curious about whether it still burned. It didn’t. The sliver of red and yellow had felt like nothing… no substance whatsoever. Like the rest of the world when time was frozen, there was no warmth or coolness, no real scent to the air. It was a paper world; a stage with props and frozen actors.

Julia began withdrawing her hands, but Angie stopped her. “We need to look through the threads of time, remember? I had a vision about where we’re going next.”

Kaitlyn took a deep breath. “All right,” she murmured, drawing in magic from the other two… mainly from Angie, since she poured her magic into Kaitlyn as if she would never run out.

The additional magic seeped into Kaitlyn’s body, soaking her essence and filling her with heat and power. The threads of time took a lot of energy to sustain, so she waited until she was sure she would have enough magic to let them look through the threads without having to stop.

“Anytime now,” Julia mocked.

“Shut up,” Kaitlyn hissed. “This is hard enough without you being yourself.”

Julia’s mouth opened, about to say something, but Kaitlyn shut her up with a blanket of threads. The long, endlessly entwined strands formed a pale rainbow. Shifting iridescence lit up their faces as the threads moved and breathed in front of them.

All of Kaitlyn’s focus centered on the threads. Soon she couldn’t see the other girls or the room, or even her own hands.

“Look for the brightest threads,” Angie said, her voice a silvery echo.

Kaitlyn searched through the shifting colors. The future spread infinitely across the world in a chaos of possibilities. And yet, some futures shone brighter than others. Kaitlyn reached for one, following it into a vision of the future.

An island. A lush forest… a waterfall… an endless beach with white-crested waves rolling onto the sand. It looked like the Bahamas, and for a moment Kaitlyn half expected to see the resort she and her family stayed at when they vacationed.

The vision angled back. She and the others emerged from the dark line of trees. They seemed out of breath, and they wore big dresses—not as poofy and frilly as the ones they had worn in France, but definitely something from the past.

Why were they so scared? She watched as Julia looked behind her and seemed to scream. Angie took her hand and tugged her forward. The three of them argued over something… then a group of men stormed out of the jungle.

Beside her, the real-world Julia said something. Kaitlyn tried to ignore whatever Julia was talking about. They weren’t in the same vision, and she needed to find out what was going on in hers.

“No, no, no,” Julia mumbled. “He can’t be… I don’t understand.”

“Shut. Up,” Kaitlyn ground out, nearly losing her hold on the vision.

“I can’t help it,” Julia said. “It’s Brian. Something terrible might happen to him.”

Kaitlyn focused on her own thread. The men attacking them had swords. Jewels covered their filthy bodies. Most of them wore hats and mismatched clothes.

“Pirates,” she whispered, nearly losing the threads of time again as the realization hit her.

“That’s what I’ve been seeing,” Angie said. “But pirates like this roved the world for centuries. Try to look for something that identifies a date or a place.”

Kaitlyn watched in macabre fascination as the pirates bore down on the three of them. If only she could hear, but the threads of time filtered through images of the future, not sounds. She watched the three of them blast the pirates back, but there were so many of them. Even just watching, she could see that their magic would give out before they were able to defeat them.

“A little help, guys?” Julia asked. “I think this sign is in Spanish… what does
cantina
mean? Singer?”

“I don’t know Spanish,” Angie said.

“
Cantina
means tavern. Like a bar,” Kaitlyn said, hearing the contempt in her voice as she added, “Do you even
try
to know your own language, Julia?”

“Hey, let’s not start arguing again,” Angie said, her soft voice cutting off whatever Julia’s reply might have been, but Kaitlyn felt the waves of anger pouring out from Julia. It was obvious that not knowing how to speak Spanish was a huge sore spot for her… Kaitlyn didn’t know why, but it made her feel better that she could speak Spanish and Julia couldn’t.

A fierce cord of bitterness coiled around her heart. She
did
know why it made her feel better. It was because she was a jerk, just like Julia had accused her of being. She had known for a long time that she didn’t care about anyone except herself. A hard place inside of her stung, bringing sharp heat to her eyes. She would always be this way. She wasn’t like Angie… she wasn’t nice. She was naturally mean and jealous and full of boiling rage, and she liked feeling better than other people. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t.

Suddenly Kaitlyn wanted to let go of their hands. She wanted space. She wanted to be alone.

“Can you tell which time period it is?” Angie asked, sounding more faraway than ever. “Maybe there’s a year on one of the signs.”

“I’ve got nothin’,” Julia said, “but wherever it is, we sure go to a lot of bars.”

Kaitlyn should be doing her part. She should leave this vision of the three of them fighting on the beach. It told nothing about the location or the year, and that was what they needed to know… but she watched as Angie was tied up by pirates. Julia lay face down in a pool of her own blood. A man knotted her hair in his fist and pulled back her head. Still, she watched.

What was she going to see?

Her heart rose to form a lump in her throat at the sight of the struggling girls. She didn’t want to help anymore. She didn’t want to be in this basement. She wanted to go home and forget the world, listening to music until she fell dead asleep.

“Are we done here?” she finally asked, releasing the vision with a shove of her palms as her own throat was about to be slashed.

Angie blinked rapidly, her enormous blue eyes looking childlike and lost for a moment. “Please try not to pull us from visions so abruptly.”

“My power wasn’t going to hold out forever,” she said, forcing the image of them all being killed from her mind. “And as much
fun
as you guys both are—” and she didn’t bother hiding the fact that they were anything but— “I have a life of my own I’d like to get back to.”

“We barely started,” Julia said. “This is our second mission. We’re not just practicing for funsies, you know.”

“Good thing, because this is boring as hell.”

“What’s your problem?”

Before she could reply, Angie placed a gentle hand on Kaitlyn’s arm. Kaitlyn looked down at it, swallowing hard as she looked back into Angie’s eyes.

“That’s okay. We can take a break from the magic,” Angie said, her eyes filled with so much compassion that Kaitlyn had to lower her gaze. She could see why Angie was so well-liked at school. Looking into her eyes, it was nearly impossible not to want to please her.

“Can you stay for a bit to help us research?” Angie added.

Kaitlyn nodded, not trusting her voice yet.

“Great,” Angie beamed. “Julia, let’s start with you. What did you see?”

Julia frowned, her forehead puckering. “Nothing about us. Just…” she trailed off, waving her hand as she looked away.

Angie sat next to her and took her hand. “Are you okay?”

Kaitlyn’s jaw tightened a little and she looked away. Dawn used to sit beside her just like that.
Are you doing okay?
she would ask, tilting her head and making Kaitlyn feel as though she really cared.

“It’s Brian and Ethan stuff,” Julia said. “Nothing to do with the mission. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right,” Angie said, giving Julia a sideways hug. She glanced up at Kaitlyn. “Okay, then. What did you see?”

“A gorgeous beach,” Kaitlyn murmured, her voice devoid of its hard edge as she forced memories of Dawn from her mind. “But if we end up in that future, this will be our last mission.”

Julia’s brows knit together.

“What do you mean?” Angie asked.

“We die. Killed by pirates.”

The other girls became stiffly silent. Even without their connection, Kaitlyn could feel the tension running through them like a taut violin string.

Kaitlyn shifted on her cushion, tucking her feet beneath her as she went through the vision with them. Running on the sand, the pirates, the way they were killed… but what she had seen was only a single future, one of many that might not happen. There were hundreds of threads, each one a possibility. They had no way to know which of the paths they would follow until they were already on it.

“We’ll need to be careful,” Angie said, getting up and heading for a bookcase.

Kaitlyn watched Angie a moment. “Watching that possible future sucked, but I don’t think we need to worry. With our powers, there’s no way that will happen.”

“I guess,” Julia said, finally releasing the lower lip she had been gnawing on. “What did you see, Angie? More ways we might die?”

“No. I saw the Jolly Roger flying,” Angie said, coming back with several books. “I picked these up at the library after my vision showed me pirates.”

“It’s cute that you still use books, I guess,” Kaitlyn said, taking her tablet from her purse.

“I thought it would be good to have the books in front of us. Besides, I love the feel of pages between my fingers,” Angie said with a mousey little grin. “And this way it will be easier to look at multiple things at once. See? We can spread the books out in front of us.”

Kaitlyn shrugged and went back to her tablet. “Last semester I did a research paper on pirates. The books I bought for it should still be here.”

She slid her finger across the screen before glancing over at Julia, who lay sprawled out on the floor beside Angie. The two of them looked slightly adorable side by side, glancing through the pages of a giant book called
The Golden Age of Piracy.

What next, matching outfits?

Sickening.

She waved her tablet, causing both of their heads to bob up. “Where’s yours, Julia?”

“An iPad? I don’t have one,” she said, returning her attention to the book.

“Laptop then?” she asked. When Julia shook her head Kaitlyn’s brows shot up. “How do you do your homework?”

“I share my mom’s laptop.” Julia blinked up at Kaitlyn. “Wait. You actually do homework? I didn’t think you were into school.”

“I’m in honors classes, dumb ass. Didn’t you ever wonder why Angie and I have the same classes, and you and I don’t?”

“But, Angie is always studying. You never do.”

“I’m fast at homework,” Kaitlyn said. “I remember things. I don’t need to study.”

A small sigh escaped from Angie’s throat. “Julia doesn’t need to work out to stay thin, and you don’t need to study to get good grades. It’s like you guys have superpowers.”

Kaitlyn couldn’t help smiling a little. “You do realize we all have superpowers.”

This made Julia laugh. Kaitlyn felt a bubble of pleasure at the sound. Her own smile broadened, and she quickly returned her attention to her tablet.

“Okay, the ships we saw were definitely pirate ships,” Angie murmured, toying with the end of her ponytail. “We need to narrow down an era and hopefully, a place.”

“Once we get there we’ll kick demon ass, either way,” Kaitlyn said, sliding her finger across her screen. A wood-carved etching of a ship appeared on the next page. Massive sails billowed out, and at the head a mermaid graced the prow. “Did the ship look like that?”

Angie glanced at the screen, studying it a moment. “Similar,” she murmured, reaching out to trace the black flag with a skull and crossed daggers beneath it. “It definitely had a Jolly Roger…” Her lips parted as her wide eyes glanced up. “Jolly Roger.” She flipped open one of the books. “Calico Jack.” She beamed up at them. “Calico Jack!”

Kaitlyn gave her a slow nod. The girl was strange sometimes, especially when it came to researching history or magic.

“What the heck are you talking about?” Julia blurted out.

“The Jolly Roger—that black flag with a skull and crossed daggers—Calico Jack was the first to use it. He’s the guy I saw in my vision, the clothes are the same. He got his name because of the brightly colored calico fabric he loved to wear.”

Kaitlyn performed a search, quickly finding Calico Jack on her screen. “It says the Jolly Roger first flew on Jack Rackham’s ship… The Revenge.”

Angie nodded, flipping through pages of a thick book. “Jack Rackham was Calico Jack’s real name. He was alive during the Golden Age of Piracy. He was most active around 1718… that narrows it down for us. It says, he was born in Cuba but was half-English, maybe that’s why you saw that Spanish sign, Julia—”

“There’s no way I’m remembering any of this,” Julia groaned. “Why does magic have to be about learning?”

Kaitlyn couldn’t help thinking that Julia could use a little extra learning, and was about to tell her exactly that, but as she kept reading the passage her heart skipped a beat. “He sailed with Anne Bonny.” She bit back the gush of information that sprung to her lips, thinking back to junior high and the way she used to go overboard nerding out over the things she liked. “I did a report on her… I used to be obsessed with her.” She swallowed, almost biting her lip like a little kid. “Anyway, Anne Bonny was best friends with another girl-pirate, Mary Read.”