Page 8 of High Seas

The sound of a metallic click filled the air, somehow louder than all the boisterous music and laughing from inside, louder than the wind blowing over the land. Abram stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes widening as he slowly turned his head to his left. The click came from a pistol; a pistol whose long barrel was being pressed against Abram’s temple.

Edward’s hand was steady, his finger perched on the trigger. If Abram made an abrupt move, Edward wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him. And while that might have made my life easier in many, many ways, I couldn’t stand the thought of any of the three of us dying.

Abram took in the dark beard of the pirate, his tricorn hat, and all the weapons attached to his person, then slowly raised his hands up in front of him. “I’m unarmed.”

“Your mistake,” Edward replied nonchalantly. “Unarmed fools shouldn’t go around picking fights.”

“We weren’t fighting.”

“She drew her weapon. I’d say you were bothering her. Again… your mistake,” Edward tutted.

“Just let him go back inside,” I suggested. “He’ll leave me alone now. Right, Abram?”

Abram nodded. “Right. Yes. Absolutely, I will leave her alone.”

“And if you don’t?” Edward led, rolling the barrel of the gun in a lazy circle at his temple.

“If I don’t, you’ll shoot me?” Abram asked, as if he wasn’t sure he was giving the right answer.

“No, actually,” Edward answered, lowering his pistol. “If you so much as look in her direction again, I will have stones chained to your ankles and I’ll drop you into the deepest part of the sea, where the fish will nibble at your corpse until there’s nothing left of you. Until the pieces of your bones become brittle like shells and wash up on the shore for people to trample upon. Do you understand?”

Abram blinked. “I understand. Beg your pardon, Miss,” he apologized politely.

“There’s a good lad. Now, turn around and crawl back into the tavern you spilled out of.”

Edward, like the ocean herself, was a force of nature – from his beard, to the intensity of his stare, to the pistols strapped to his chest and the cutlass at his side. Not to mention the fact that his raspy voice promised that any death sentence he dealt would be a thousand times worse than he’d so eloquently described.

Abram slowly inched toward the tavern, palms up, his eyes nervously darting between me and the pirate as he pulled the door open. Inside, the rum was still flowing and the fiddler was still fiddling. Abram disappeared into the uproarious crowd, but I knew he wouldn’t stick around.

I turned to Edward. “I thought you couldn’t leave your boat unattended.”

“I didn’t,” he replied simply, holstering the pistol at his waist and smirking when my eyes followed.

I crossed my arms. “And you followed me, why?”

“I got to thinking,” he began. “Maybe it would be better for me to take you to Enoch.”

I quirked a brow. “Because you don’t trust me to give you credit, or because you think it’ll help persuade him to release you from your debt?”

He grinned. “Both. And by the way, you think like a pirate.”

I wasn’t sure I should take that as a compliment.

Chapter Four

Eve

No wound was visible, but the only explanation for Abram’s bizarre behavior was that he must have hit his head when he landed. I ducked into an alley and let the shadows swallow me. Edward rushed to keep up. “Where’s the fire, love?”

“First, I’m not your love. Second, if I know Abram, after that little altercation, he’ll make tracks. But he wouldn’t take a chance leaving out the front door in case we’re still outside.”

“Why is this Abram fellow important to you? I thought you were looking for Enoch?”

I crouched behind a few barrels, keeping an eye on the tavern’s back entrance. “I am, but I know that guy, and he’s acting strange. Something’s wrong with him.”

Edward stood over me, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Would you please duck down and at least try to hide? If he sees you he’ll run, and I need to see where he’s going.”

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