Dark Life: Rip Tide (11 page)

Most of the outlaws disappeared through the hatchway as Pretty set to work yanking the two remaining eels off my neck. The pain was sharp and intense. But I gritted my teeth to hold in my shout. Pinning me down with a boot on my shoulder, he opened a bottle of alcohol and doused me with it, and I bit down harder. He may as well have set fire to my open wounds. Seeing Eel smirking at my efforts only increased the sting.

I looked around me at the chaos that was the
Specter’s
gear room. Equipment swung precariously from hooks overhead; weapons had been piled haphazardly on the rack, while a jumble of diveskins, helmets, and boots covered the bench and floor. Even worse than the mess, the air stank of old socks and sweat.

The
Specter
picked up speed, but hearing no hum of propellers, I guessed that she was a stealth sub, powered by artificial muscles embedded between the inner and outer hulls, which let her glide through the ocean, silent as a shark.

“Where’s Gemma?” I asked. Eel’s smirk vanished, and he nodded at the hatchway that led into the next room.

I pushed myself up, and my body winced. “Is she okay? “

“Getting there,” Eel replied. “Moved from scared stiff into shaky.”

“She’s fine,” Pretty said as if he were the resident medical expert.

Eel shoved open the hatch and I followed him into the sub’s common room, which had the feel and smell of a whale-hands’ bunkhouse. Weapons and taxidermied sea creatures adorned the walls, while a punching bag swung in one corner. The lights were embedded in the ceiling like vertebrae and set on dim so that no glowing viewports gave away the sub’s presence. As my eyes adjusted, I saw Gemma tucked into the corner of a padded bench.

Shade, still in his damp clothes, tossed me a towel. “Got your breath?”

I nodded, noting that the towel wasn’t exactly clean—but at least it was dry.

Now I could see the blur of ocean through the dark viewport opposite the table. Whatever our destination, we were heading there fast. Hardluck Ruins, I hoped.

“Okay,” Shade said as if getting down to business.

I looked over, but he was facing Gemma. “He’s here.” Shade hooked a thumb at me. “He’s alive. Now talk.”

Despite being wrapped in a blanket, she shivered. Her eyes met mine, and I read in them a silent plea for assistance.

“She gets nervous in the ocean,” I told Shade, heading for her. When I was close enough, I whispered, “It happened again?”

She nodded, looking miserable.

“Nervous?” Shade scoffed. “She stopped moving. Curled up in a ball and let herself sink.”

“Passive panic,” I told him. “That’s what it’s called. Happens to new divers all the time.”

“I’ve heard of that,” Eel put in from his perch on the wall ladder.

“Can I just lie down for a while?” Gemma asked. “Then I’ll be fine.”

“Not till you explain,” Shade said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“She doesn’t want to talk about it,” I snapped.

He was unfazed. “I don’t care.”

“You want to know what’s wrong with me?” Gemma burst out. “I’m not tough, that’s what. Not in the ocean. Everything about it scares me, and everything in it.”

“See,” Shade said calmly, “all I wanted to know.” He looked over at Pretty, who, with a shoulder propped against a wall, radiated boredom. “You can take care of that?”

Pretty nodded.

“Take care of it how?” I asked.

“Pretty can hypnotize people,” Eel answered. “And not just with his dazzling personality.”

Kale and Hatchet spilled in from the far corridor where they’d clearly been lurking while Trilo dropped out of a hatch in the ceiling, bypassing the wall ladder that Eel had claimed for a seat.

“Pretty can make you forget your own mother,” Trilo told me, and then shot a wary look at Gemma.

“Really?” She twisted on the bench to look at Pretty.

He remained impassive. “Fear is easy to take away.”

“Can you make a person not see something?” she asked.

“Like what?”

Exactly my question.

She cleared her throat. “Things that might not be there …”

“You’re seeing things?” Shade demanded.

“I see ghosts,” she admitted softly. “In the ocean.”

The room fell utterly silent until Shade repeated, “Ghosts?” in a tone that echoed the same disbelief I was feeling.

I wondered if she was making it up to get him off her back about being scared to swim.

“Yes.” Lifting her chin, Gemma met his look. “The ocean is filled with ghosts.”

Shoot. She wasn’t making it up. In fact, she believed
it with the conviction of a New Puritan. “Is that what freaked you out this morning?”

She nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to think I’m crazy. I know you don’t believe in ghosts.”

“What do they look like?” Eel threw himself onto the table to get near her. Clearly, he believed.

“They’re just movement. Shapes just at the edge of my vision.”

As she started to say more, Hatchet plowed forward, pushing me aside to listen.

Other than Shade, only Pretty hung back, his expression skeptical, which bugged me. Not because his skepticism wasn’t warranted. I just hated knowing that he and I felt the same way about something.

“They disappear when I try to look at them directly,” Gemma went on. “But it’s more than that. I feel them, too.”

“You mean, inside you?” Trilo’s acid green eyes were aglow. “Like you’re possessed?”

She shook her head. “At first I’m just aware of something around me. All around me. My skin prickles before I realize what’s happening. And then that feeling turns awful.”

“It hurts?” Kale asked.

“No. It’s not pain. It’s just … my whole body feels bad. Worse than bad. And that’s when I see them, moving,
blurry shapes, hovering next to me. But when I turn to get a better look, they vanish.”

Shade turned to Pretty. “Well?”

“Maybe” was all he would commit to.

Gemma threw off the blanket, revealing her wet, ruined sari. “You can hypnotize me into not seeing them?”

“Maybe,” he repeated. “I can definitely take away your fear.”

“Make her not see them,” Shade said firmly.

“Do both,” Gemma said. “How do we start?”

“Hold up,” I demanded, facing Pretty. “You’re going to mess around with her mind?”

“She can undo it,” Pretty said as if it were no big deal. “If she concentrates really hard on feeling and seeing what she did before.”

“But if I don’t do that,” Gemma pressed, “I’ll stay hypnotized, right? Never see them again or feel them or be afraid to swim in the ocean?”

“Can’t say.” Pretty pushed off from the wall and strolled closer. “I’ve never tried to stop someone from seeing ghosts before.” Irony soaked his words.

“Can I talk to you?” Nudging aside the outlaws, I offered Gemma a hand up. “Alone.”

Her gaze shifted to Shade, who swept his arm toward the gear room. “Go ahead. Let him tell you all the reasons why it’s a bad idea.”

“It’s only a bad idea if Pretty is mad at you,” Eel said,
punching Hatchet in the arm, “and you don’t want to spend the day thinking you’re a pig.”

As the other outlaws broke into oinks and jeers at Hatchet’s expense, Gemma and I retreated to the gear room.

The moment I closed the hatch, I asked, “Since when do you ask anyone for permission for anything?” At her look of confusion, I added, “Shade. You checked with him before you’d agree to come with me.” And it burned me up.

She waved my point aside. “It
is
his sub.”

Knowing that she wanted to live with him, it shouldn’t surprise me that she’d act like his gang and treat him with deference. I had to get to what was really important. “Listen, you can’t let Pretty hypnotize you.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s something wrong with him.”

She had that look she got whenever she didn’t want to be talked out of something. “He was locked up in a reformatory when he was young. We can’t all be lucky enough to have a family like yours.”

“That’s not the point. You read people faster than I can read a depth gauge. You know that Pretty has as much human feeling as an icefish. Probably has see-through blood and a bleached heart like one, too. And that’s who you’re going to let mess with your head?” When she didn’t reply, I said, “We’ll find another way to get you help.”

“What way?” she scoffed. “A doctor will say I’m brain-baked. And maybe I am, who knows?” Shivering, she sank onto the bench. “I don’t want to wait for some cure that might never come. Not when there’s a chance that Pretty can fix it now.”

“Because that’s what Shade wants?”

“What? No,” she sputtered. “I have my own reasons. Ghosts!”

“But you’re doing it his way because you want his approval, want to live on the
Specter.
It’s okay, I get it. He’s the only family you have left.”

She went very still. “I thought I was part of your family now. That’s what your parents said. What you said. No matter where I bunk.”

“You are.” I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “But wasn’t that your plan—to ask Shade if you could live with him?”

“I don’t have a plan. I told you I didn’t want to deal with my problem until we find your parents. Because I don’t care where I end up so long as your family is back together—the way a family should be, together—even if I’m not part of it anymore.”

“You
are
part of it,” I told her, ignoring the throb of pressure behind my eyes and tightening throat. “I didn’t realize….” I paused and took a breath. “You know I want you to live with us.”

She gave me a faint smile. “Because Zoe gets bored exploring shipwrecks with you. And I don’t.”

“And a million other reasons.”

“Which is why I’m going to let Pretty hypnotize me—so I can live subsea again. And because no matter where I go, I never want to see another ghost.”

What could I say? It was her decision, even if I didn’t trust Pretty to do right by a goldfish.

“Would you stay in the room while he does it?” she asked.

“You couldn’t keep me out.”

Her smile was sad. “Make sure he doesn’t put any extra crazy in my head, okay?”

“We’ll hit Hardluck Ruins at daybreak,” Shade said to the cluster of outlaws as we reentered the common room. “But we’re not going in till sunset.”

“Can Pretty hypnotize me now?” Gemma asked.

“Dry off first,” Shade told her, then looked over at Trilo. “Find her something of yours to wear.”

Frowning, Trilo fingered the charms around his neck.

“Don’t say it again,” Shade warned him.

I shot a questioning look at Eel, who now lounged on the bench, his feet propped on the table.

“He thinks having a girl on board is bad luck,” Eel explained with amusement.

Trilo’s frown deepened until Kale clamped a hand on the back of his neck and said pleasantly, “Or we can give her the clothes you’ve got on.”

Trilo thrashed out of Kale’s hold and glared. Though by the time he met Shade’s gaze, he’d dialed down his attitude by several clicks. “Okay, I will,” he said, without moving.

“And you give her your bunk,” Shade told Pretty.

If Pretty had had a tail, it would have swished. “Why mine?”

“You’re the cleanest. And while she’s on board, you’re going to look out for her. Anything happens to her, it’s your hide.”

“I can take care of myself,” Gemma said with annoyance.

Shade smiled. “You’re welcome to try.”

“She can have my bunk,” Eel offered.

“The one that stinks so bad even you won’t sleep in it?” Kale asked with disgust.

“If I get rid of the dirty clothes and sea urchin shells, it’ll freshen right up.”

“Let him look out for her,” Pretty said without so much as a glance in my direction, just a jerk of his head.

“If these chum-suckers get outta line, you think they’re going to listen to him when he says ‘stow it’?”

“Pretty doesn’t say ‘stow it,’” Trilo complained.“ He just throws a knife at your head and calls it a warning.”

“That way I don’t have to ask twice,” Pretty said coldly.

Once Gemma had returned to the common room after changing into Trilo’s shirt and pants, Shade kicked everyone else out except me, Pretty, and Eel. Gemma sat in a chair with her eyes closed, and Pretty stood a few feet behind her. Eel handed me two wax earplugs.

I shook my head. “I want to hear what he says.”

He started to protest, but Pretty cut him off. “It won’t work on him if he’s aware and resists it.”

“Did the guards in Seablite try to resist it?” I asked. At Pretty’s raised brows, I said, “That was how you escaped, right? You hypnotized them into falling asleep for twenty minutes.”

“It was a part of how we escaped,” he admitted.

“Can we get on with it?” Gemma asked. Suddenly she clamped her hands to her ears. “What was that?”

I hadn’t heard anything.

Pretty seemed taken off guard. “You can hear it?”

“That trembly sound? Yeah, you can’t?”

Eel pulled out his wax earplugs. “What are you guys talking about?”

Gemma clapped her hands over her ears again and twisted to look at Pretty. “Are you doing that?”

Again I’d heard nothing, but this time I was attuned enough to feel the vibration. So much harder to pick up in air than water but definitely there. Like the low notes of whale song. Too low for the human ear to register, but still, you can feel the sound roll over you if you’re paying attention. “Are you making some kind of low frequency sound?”

He nodded. “It’s what puts people in a trance. But no one I’ve tried it on has ever heard the sound. Even I can’t.”

Gemma shrugged. “I’ve got good hearing.”

“Better than good,” I said, remembering how she’d heard Zoe approaching in the Slicky even though we’d been above the water. “What if you go lower?” I asked Pretty.

“I can’t. And even if I could, frequencies that low mess with your guts, eardrums, eyeballs … then you puke.”

“Let’s not go that low,” Gemma said.

“You know, it shouldn’t matter that you can hear the noise,” Pretty said. “Like drumming or chanting. You hear them, but those sounds can still put you into a trance state.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Sounds can change your brain waves,” Eel said as if it were no big deal. “That’s what Doc said. Pretty
induces theta brain waves in the listener.
The kind you have right before you fall asleep.”

Pretty shot him an evil look at the mention of Doc. And I couldn’t blame him. If a doctor had cut into my brain trying to figure how my Dark Gift worked, I’d be bitter, too.

“Is that why people feel calmer after they swim with dolphins or listen to whale song?” I asked, knowing that I sure did. “Because of the low frequency sounds they make?”

Pretty considered it, actually looking interested in something for a change. “That makes sense.”

“So hypnotize me already,” Gemma said.

This time when Eel offered the wax earplugs, I took them. Though the second it looked like Gemma was in a trance state, I pulled them out. “You’re done making the sound?” I asked Pretty.

He nodded and started talking to Gemma in a totally normal voice. He told her that she wouldn’t see the ghosts anymore. Wouldn’t even know they were there. Wouldn’t feel them or sense them in any way. He went on like that for about ten minutes and made her repeat it back to him. Then he brought her out of the trance.

Of course she wanted to test the results immediately and rushed into the bridge to ask Shade to stop the
Specter.
He refused, wanting to put serious distance between us and any Seaguard skimmers that might be searching for him.

“You can swim in the morning,” he said. “Show her your bunk,” he told Pretty. “And keep the others away from her.”

“The diving will be better on the shelf anyway,” I told her as we left the bridge. “There’s nothing much to see in the open ocean.”

With a nod she headed off with Pretty.

“I never get the fun jobs.” Eel sighed. “Hey, if it came down to me or Pretty, who do you think she’d choose?”

Exactly the kind of conversation I did not want to have. Ever. “He’s human freezer burn, and you’re a slob.”

He grinned. “Giving me the edge, don’t you think?”

“I’m going to look around, unless that’s a problem.”

“She’s a beauty,” he said, sounding completely smitten.

“Gemma?”

“The Specter.”

I made a quick tour of the sub but didn’t climb the ladder to the second deck. Eel had told me the sleeping berths were up there but that I would be bunking on the padded bench in the common room. He’d also told me to take my pick of the diveskins in the gear room, so I set aside two that looked like the best fit for Gemma and me and were also the cleanest. When I finally settled onto the bench, I couldn’t sleep. Worry about my parents ate at me.

Now that I had nothing to occupy my mind, it really hit me that there was a chance that I would never find them. That they would never come back because the worst had occurred. I gave up trying to sleep and headed into the small galley. Dwelling on those possibilities would only cripple me with grief.

I’d just opened an apple barrel when a dot-dash pattern flashed in my peripheral view. I straightened to face a large viewport, which was entirely taken up by a dark gray background marked with pale yellow spots and vertical stripes: it had to be the flank of a passing whale
shark. I moved in for a better look at the largest fish in the ocean, only to walk smack into an invisible wall. No, not a wall.
Shade.
I stumbled back. The outlaw had claimed a place by the viewport and was nearly impossible to spot because his skin so perfectly matched the rippling pattern outside.

“Sorry,” I muttered, but he didn’t seem to care.

Shirtless, he watched the whale shark plow past and I wondered if he knew that his skin was mirroring the passing fish or if it was unconscious.

Without turning he asked, “What do you think she’s really seeing?”

“No idea.” I moved to his right and watched the whale shark disappear from view.

“Could be a Dark Gift.” He faced me as the spots and stripes on his skin faded.

“Maybe,” I agreed. “But she only lived with us three months.”

“Where’s she been living since?” he demanded. No surprise that his swirling tattoos reappeared with his temper.

“The Trade Station. But the Seaguard took it over, so she can’t bunk there anymore.”

Shade looked out the viewport again and his skin settled into the brown shade he seemed to favor, even though he was really as pale and freckled as Gemma. After a
moment he said, “Kale was in Seablite only three months before we broke out. He got a Gift.”

I decided to take advantage of his relaxed mood to ask a question that I’d wondered about. “Do you know who’s behind the missing townships?”

“Didn’t even know they’d gone missing till today.”

I figured that meant no.

“You want something to chew over?” he asked. “Try this: Word got out beforehand about your deal with Drift. Got all the way to people who make their living selling to the surfs on the black market.”

“Who?”

“Same people who buy from us. Our main source of income. Means I can’t afford to throw names around.” His voice turned bitter. “You saw firsthand just how many options we have for making money.”

“If you’re not going to give me names, then why bother telling me anything?”

“The boys and I were asked to bust up the deal with Drift. Steal the crop. We said no, it being settlers and all.”

He sent me a sidelong look, and I remembered that after I’d saved his life from the lynch mob, I’d asked him to promise not to steal from any more settlers. Guess he was keeping that promise.

“You might think about whether the surfs on Drift could,” he added.

“Could what?”

“Say no.”

I looked at him blankly, not understanding.

“People, situations,” he added, “aren’t always what they seem.”

Got it. Shade was implying that someone might have forced the Drift surfs to do it. Someone who went so far as to outfit them with a sophisticated sub. “This is just a theory, right? You don’t know anything for sure.”

“If I knew who took your parents”—his tone had turned icy—“I would’ve mentioned it on Rip Tide.”

I’d offended him. Great. When a laugh floated down from the upper deck—Gemma’s—followed by a guy’s, I was relieved that Shade had somewhere else to take his irritation. He swung onto a ladder and climbed the rungs two at a time. I followed at a slower pace, knowing that Gemma had the right to laugh with anyone she chose—even if hearing it squeezed the air out of my lungs.

The ladder ended beside a railing that looked out over the bridge. I spotted the empty pilot seat and hoped that the
Specter’
s computer was a reliable autopilot.

To my left, double-decker berths lined both sides of a passageway. Each compartment had its own privacy curtain, though now most were drawn back. Halfway down, Shade stopped short at Trilo, who was sprawled on the passageway floor, while other outlaws leaned out
of their berths, all silent and listening. Golden light spilled from one of the top compartments, along with Gemma’s voice. I couldn’t make out her words but recognized Hatchet’s guffaw.

“Need a hand down?” Shade growled at whomever was in the berth.

Sure enough, Hatchet tumbled out, landing on top of Trilo. Both scrambled to their feet.

“If I see you,” Shade warned all of them, “it means you’re awake and looking for something to do….”

En masse the outlaws retreated into their berths.

“It was my turn next,” Eel complained as he flopped into the compartment next to me.

“Turn for what?” I asked.

“Gemma was telling our fortunes with cards. She said Kale is going to be president of the Assembly one day.”

Now that the passage was clear, Shade paused in front of Gemma’s compartment long enough to say, “Simplify my life; shut the curtain.”

Then he spotted Pretty digging into a locker. “You call that keeping them away?”

Pretty shrugged. “Didn’t have my knife.”

Once Shade disappeared down the passageway, I paused by Gemma’s berth, figuring his edict didn’t apply to me. She was on her knees yet had plenty of headroom as she slid the curtain closed. Spotting me, she beckoned
me up—but I knew better than to push my luck with Shade, so I shook my head.

“Isn’t it perfect?” she whispered, leaning toward me with her hair spilling around her face.

I couldn’t help but smile. While roomy for a berth, it was half the size of the Surface Deck storage closet. Maybe the built-in drawers and cubbies appealed to her, who knew? At least Shade had been right about Pretty. His compartment was spotless.

“Perfect,” I agreed, and backed away from her. “Good night.”

She waved good-bye and slid the curtain shut.

As I headed down the passage, I saw that Pretty had been watching us, which turned up the voltage on my shine. Especially since he was looking at me with a slightly puzzled expression.

“What?” I demanded.

“Nothing.” He slammed his locker shut. “I just can’t tell if you’re indifferent or stupid.”

He headed off, leaving me to light up the passageway with my overheated face.

The subsea valley spread out below us, shimmering like a mirage where an icy current joined the warmer water. Surrounded by ocean, I felt like myself once more. Could move the way I liked—in all six directions, fluidly, easily. I glanced at Gemma. I didn’t want to seem like I was
hovering, but I had to know if the sweeping view had sent her into panic.

When she smiled at me, my whole body relaxed. She wasn’t afraid. She could dive again. Swim in the open ocean with me like she used to.

We had hours to kill before nightfall, but I didn’t want to test the limits of Pretty’s hypnosis. I gestured that we should head back to the
Specter,
but she shook her head and strung Hatchet’s borrowed crossbow with a barbed arrow of brass wire, ready to try hunting again like I’d taught her months ago.

I grinned and slipped Eel’s spear from a loop on my borrowed diveskin. With a twist, I extended the shaft until a five-foot spear gleamed in my hands. Lightweight, sturdy, with a razor-sharp triangular tip—a good spear. I couldn’t wait to give it a try. Unlike using a speargun, spearfishing required stealth and a deft hand, which was a far more exciting way to bag lunch. Plus, it gave the fish a sporting chance.