Secrets of the Deep (7 page)

Aunt Ramona smiled under the shade of her grand, flowered hat. “I daresay this will do for a young earl and his friends on holiday, yes?”

Even Miss Helena breathed a sigh of relief.

Jake felt an anchor’s weight lifting off his shoulders as he soaked in the soothing atmosphere of the place. Who could worry about evil wizards wanting to kill you when everywhere, beauty beckoned the eye and charmed the senses?

Maybe he was indeed getting culture, now that he’d started noticing such things. From the craggy mountains that hugged the cobalt Bay of Mazzaro before them to the brilliant flowers mounded in stone urns everywhere and winding up the stately columns on the terrace, every inch of it was lovely.

The villa even came with its own little twenty-foot sailboat for the holidaymakers to use as they liked.

“I don’t think I ever want to leave,” a sweaty-faced Archie declared, dropping his suitcase by his side.

“Me neither,” Jake agreed. “Looks like we’re staying.”

The two boys exchanged an eager glance.

“Sweet Euclid!” Archie suddenly burst out. “Does this mean I can finally have Nix conjure the
Turtle
here for me?”

Jake slung his arm around his best mate. “That’s what it means, coz. And Red can finally be delivered, too!”

Archie whooped and pointed at the beach. “I cannot wait to get out there and try her in the open sea!” he exclaimed—and he wasn’t talking about on the villa’s sailboat.

“Do you know how long I’ve waited for this, Jake? All the planning?”

“I know.” Jake nodded. Archie had been working on the
Mighty Turtle
nonstop ever since the last Invention Convention.

His dark, sparkly eyes shone as the boy genius stared at the sea. “Now that we’re here, I’ll finally get the chance to take her out on her maiden voyage…”

“Long as I get to be your first mate,” Jake declared, nudging him.

“Dashed right you will! You were my copilot for the
Mighty Pigeon
, so of course you’ll be my first mate, coz. Fact is, though, I need everyone on board as my crew to help power and steer her.”

Jake grinned. It was a fine thing having a genius for a cousin. “This is going to be fun.”

“Hey, you lot!” Dani turned then, holding Teddy in one arm and beckoning to them with the other. “Come and see this view!”

Enchanted, Jake walked to stand beside her at the stone balustrade on the villa’s main terrace overlooking the Ionian Sea. A set of chunky stone steps curved down to the beach, hugging the thirty-foot cliff atop which the house sat.

Jake could hardly wait to get down there and have a swim, but for now, the others joined him in staring at the glistening water.

It was magical. The unearthly blue-green waters mesmerized them, stretching out toward Greece for endless miles, ever-changing with the light and the currents and the silken, shifting winds.

“What do you suppose is out there?” Isabelle murmured.

“Well, that’s the Ionian Sea, and down there to the south is the Mediterranean proper. Malta’s also down that way, and Greece is about three hundred miles straight across,” Archie said, pointing.

“Thank you, Map Boy,” Dani muttered, shaking her head.

He did tend to be rather literal.

“Aw, leave him alone,” Jake said with a chuckle. “He’s just excited to take us all out in his submarine.”

“Think you can do it, Nixie? Get the
Turtle
here?” Isabelle asked.

The slight-figured, black-haired witch shrugged. “It’s pretty big. Dense. Lot of metal. Heavy. It won’t be easy. I may need your aunt’s help to work the spell with me…”

Nixie had been apprenticed to Aunt Ramona, who was to guide her advanced magical studies—which was fortunate, because Archie and she had become quite inseparable ever since they’d met at Merlin Hall.

“But I think Her Ladyship might be willing to assist, under the circumstances.” Nixie smiled at Archie.

“Well, I can’t wait!” he declared.

“What do you think we’ll see out there, down beneath the waves?” Jake prompted with a teasing look around at his fellow travelers.

“Fish. Coral,” Archie said at once.

“Clams!” Dani exclaimed.

“Uh, water?” Maddox mumbled.

“Dolphins!” Isabelle cried with a look of joy, ignoring him.

“How about the ruins of Atlantis?” Nixie slyly suggested.

“I should certainly hope not, Miss Valentine,” Aunt Ramona said, coming up behind them just then, having overheard.

They all turned to her.

“Why is that, Your Ladyship?” Dani asked.

“There is a
reason
Atlantis was wiped off the face of the Earth, my dear,” the old baroness said, pursing her lips. “It was a perfectly wicked place. You’d better hope it’s never found. Now that is quite enough dawdling, children. Choose your rooms and go unpack your things while I make us a staff of servitors.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they all said, then stampeded in to go and claim the best bedrooms.

It was time to start this holiday in earnest.

# # #

A week later, they had quite settled in. Trouble seemed to have forgotten about them altogether, thanks, no doubt, to Aunt Ramona’s efforts. The Elder witch had quite worn herself out casting protective spells over the villa, their private beach, and even the town itself.

This done, they could finally get down to the serious business of enjoying themselves.

Life was good.

That afternoon found them amusing themselves on the beach in their own particular ways.

Dani O’Dell, slightly sunburned despite the wide-brimmed straw hat meant to shield her Irish skin, stood before an easel, trying to paint a picture of Mount Etna in the distance.

“It’s Italy, and Italy means art,” she had informed them.

Three days ago, it had been cooking.

“It’s Italy, and Italy means food,” she had said then. But cooking hadn’t proved to be her forte either, alas.

Ever since they had left Merlin Hall, the barmy carrot-head had set out to discover her own personal talent, much to Jake’s amusement.

It might not be a magical or extraordinary gift like the rest of them were born with, she had said, but she was sure there must be
something
she could do especially well, and on this quiet, forced holiday, she was determined to find it.

Jake wished she’d leave off, for he liked her perfectly well the way she was. Not that he’d ever admit it.

Archie, meanwhile, puttered away happily, ankle-deep in the surf with his pant legs rolled up, wrench in hand, lucky bowtie askew as he put the finishing touches on the
Mighty Turtle
.

Nixie had been exhausted for two days after conjuring it from its dry dock at his home laboratory back at Bradford Park, but the little witch had succeeded in this impressive magical task.

At present, the twenty-foot submersible lolled in the shallows like an odd, metal beached whale. Archie was always cheerful, but with his latest invention ready for its maiden voyage, he was especially chipper.

Nixie assisted him in her own peculiar way. Pale as porcelain and dressed all in black, as usual, the young witch lounged on the sand beneath an umbrella nearby, eating a cherry-flavored Italian ice and helpfully providing shade for Archie’s work by conjuring a small cloud over both their heads.

Its shadow covered the length of the submarine, too, for in full sun, its shiny steel-and-copper hull could get very hot to the touch.

Farther down the beach, Isabelle was frolicking in waist-high water with some dolphins who had swum over to greet her. The empath could not talk to fish, but she had no trouble conversing with cetaceans, since they were mammals.

The smiley gray dolphins had utterly charmed her, bobbing upright in the waves around her, clicking away, maybe teasing the soon-to-be debutante about how fashionable she looked in her navy-striped bathing costume, complete with long swimming bloomers and black stockings.

Isabelle took care to avoid looking over at Maddox. The black-haired Guardian-in-training was messing around with the little sailboat that had come with the villa rental, working on practicing sailor’s knots that were almost as tightly wound as he was.

Maddox had one goal for this vacation—besides keeping his promise to Derek to make sure that nobody abducted, killed, maimed, or otherwise mangled Jake.

He had taken one look at Mount Etna and cracked a rare grin. “We’re climbing that,” he had said, glancing at Jake.

Who wasn’t sure that was the best idea.

“You do realize it’s a volcano?” Jake had replied, but Maddox had merely shrugged.

Yes, Mount Etna was
said
to be mostly dormant. But with his luck?

At night, dining on the terrace under the stars, they could see the orange glow atop Mount Etna. Showers of sparks sometimes flew out, but the little bits of fire and lava oozing casually from the mountain did not seem to alarm the locals.

Life in Sicily went on at its nice, andante pace.

Well
, Jake decided, if Maddox wasn’t afraid (and when was he ever, aside from whenever Isabelle actually tried to talk to him?) then
he
was hardly going to chicken out.

Unfortunately, he could not say the same for his Gryphon, who had been delivered, safe and sound, as promised, by the haughty wood elf Lightrider, Finnderool. Having that Waypoint on the property had proved most convenient, and he’d whooped at his joyous reunion with Red.

But as the lazy days passed, Jake had secretly started getting bored. He was determined to find something to do, so he’d decided it was time to do some training with his pet.

“Oh, stop being a baby!” Jake scolded his large, winged friend, who balked presently on the sand.

While the others pursued their own interests, Jake’s beach activity for the day had been to try to help his fierce mythical beast overcome his one phobia: flying over the sea.

“Caw!” Red protested, planting his lion claws stubbornly in the sand as Jake tried to pull him toward the waterline.

“Come on, Red, you can do this! Are you forgetting your own Welsh name—Claw the Courageous? Red, you’ve fought dragons! This is no different than flying over a lake!”

“Caw?” the Gryphon bleated, begging to be excused.

“Yes, I know you’re half lion and lions can’t swim, but don’t worry! I won’t let you drown, I promise. We’ll just fly out to one of those rock formations sticking up from the water, take it little by little. See those sea rocks there? That’s not too far. We’ll just go to that point, then we’ll come right back. What do you say?”

The Gryphon snorted through his golden beak and shook his head angrily.

“Hmm. All right…you drive a hard bargain, Gryphon. Very well, what if I promised you a whole tuna, all to yourself?”

Red paused and cocked his head. “Tucaw?”

“Oh, you never tried tuna? Well, let me tell you, they’re excellent. We had grilled tuna steaks for supper just last night. Magnifico!” He kissed his fingertips. “You might even like it better than salmon.”

Red seemed to scowl at him for the bribe. He eyed the dolphins around Isabelle rather hungrily, but Jake laid hold of his beak and pulled his pet’s attention back to him. “Don’t even think about it, mate. Look out to sea! There’s all kinds of fish out there, and you could catch them easily if you’d overcome your fear. Come on, Red. You’re no coward. You’re half eagle, too, and eagles catch fish out of the ocean all the time.

“This is just a silly phobia, and I am going to help you overcome it. I owe you that, after all the ways that you’ve helped me. So, what do you say? Let’s give it a go. I’ll be with you all the way. There’s a big, juicy tuna in it for you, if you’ll just try…”

With a harrumph, the Gryphon finally grumbled a low “becaw,” which Jake interpreted as a reluctant,
Oh, all right, since you refuse to leave me alone about it.

Jake grinned and patted his crimson-feathered head. “Atta boy!” Without waiting for Red to change his mind, he jumped on his back and gripped the beast’s sturdy leather collar. “Let’s go!”

“Look!” Dani said to the others, pointing with her paintbrush. “He’s gonna try it!”

“Good boy, Red! You can do it!” Isabelle called, waving from the water amid her ring of squeaky dolphins.

Maddox looked up from his nautical puttering, while Nixie and Archie cheered on their feathered friend. “Go, Red!”

“You can do it!”

With a few beats of his scarlet-feathered wings, the Gryphon climbed nervously above the waves, with Jake on his back murmuring encouragement. “You’re doing great…”

The wind ran riot through Jake’s hair.
Brilliant
. He tossed his head with a roguish smile, whipping his dark blond forelock out of his eyes as he held on tight, leaning forward like a jockey.

“See? This isn’t so bad…”

He continued murmuring encouragement to Red, but kept him from flying too high for fear they would be seen by beachcombers, fishermen, and sailboat cruisers below, who would probably think they’d had too much sun if they saw a lad go flying by overhead on a gryphon.

A very anxious gryphon.

“You’re doing fine, boy.” Jake patted Red’s withers.

Red banked and soared, but quivered at the tall spray of sea foam that speckled them when they whooshed past the huge columnlike boulder sitting in a random spot in the middle of the shallows, as if it had been hurled there by a Cyclops.

Everywhere beneath them, the colors of the Mediterranean waters were outrageous, shades of turquoise, jade, and cobalt blue beneath the azure sky.

“What a view,” Jake murmured to his pet. “You have to admit it’s pretty nice up here. Hey! What’s that down there?”

“Becaw?”

“In the water! Over there.” Jake squinted, then pointed to his right. “You see that? There’s a huge shape underneath the water. There. It looks like…a building down there!”