Page 24 of Captured in Love
It’s the confession I’ve been wanting to hear from her for so long, I froze, especially since it came on the tail of an argument with Raphaël. And as much as I wanted to say it back to her, I didn’t know whether to include Raphaël in my statement as well. I mean… Am I in love with him? I’m definitely attracted to him, even though I’ve never wanted a guy before. But love is such a huge concept, I’m not sure—
A dark hole yawns beneath me, a chasm almost twenty feet across.
I stop and stare down at it, then check my wrist computer for the coordinates. Yep, we’re here. For a split second, I close my eyes, wishing I could pretend I didn’t see this place. Nothing good can come from going down there.
But we’ve come so far already. And Nora would never give up searching.
I open my eyes, flick on the flashlight attached to my lower arm, and wave it in Nora and Raphaël’s direction to catch their attention. When they point their beams at me, I motion down with my other hand.
Here it is. This is the way.
They swim closer, and we stop several feet from the edge of the hole, floating and studying it.
Then Nora turns to face us. Her face is half obscured by her mouthpiece, but her brown eyes are wide and bright behind her mask. She gives us the thumbs-up then indicates the hole.
Her meaning is clear.Let’s go!
Raphaël shakes his head vehemently. He takes her wrist, pulls her farther away from the edge, then tugs a small white tablet with a wax pencil attached from the side of his back harness.
TOO DANGEROUS DON’T KNOW WHERE IT LEADS
He scrawls the words fast and shoves them first in Nora’s face, then mine. And I agree with him completely. But there’s also the thrill of a new adventure. Even though Egypt was scary as fuck, there’s nothing to say that this task will be as difficult. Everyone knows the ancient Egyptian witches were batshit crazy, so we have likely already completed the most dangerous of our tasks.
I reach forward to take the tablet, but Nora gets there first.
I UNDERSTAND, she writes. THIS IS NOT YOUR QUEST – WAIT FOR US IN THE BOAT?
I look over her shoulder as she writes.Oof. That won’t go over well with Raphaël. He reads the message, and his eyes darken behind his mask. They don’t go vampire-black, but he’s definitely pissed.
I shake my head at Nora, and she throws her hands up in an annoyed gesture. Underwater communication is hard, and I don’t think she meant to be as harsh as her message seemed.
Raphaël grabs the tablet. I AM NOT LEAVING YOU TO GO DOWN THERE ALONE
He points first at her, then at me, and I’m strangely gratified to be included in that statement.
Nora takes his hand, then gently wraps her other arm around him and touches the top of her full-face mask to his. It’s as close to an underwater kiss as she can get without taking her mask off.
Raphaël closes his eyes, seeming to wrestle with a decision. Then he releases Nora, looks at me, and points to himself, then at the hole.
He wants to go first?
I shake my head vehemently and move over the chasm. There’s no argument here: me going first is the only reasonable solution. I can sense hostile magic, something neither of them can do.
They both join me, and we stare at the black pit beneath us. Some primal instinct in my lizard brain is screaming at me to run, to get as far away from this place as possible, but I stamp down on it. Panic won’t help. I need a clear head and total focus if we’re going to make it out of here alive. We’ll dive in, see what booby traps the Scots have set up for us, and get out.
We can be on a plane to Greece as early as tomorrow morning if all goes well.
I tap the screen of my breathing monitor and glance at Nora. We’re each carrying enough oxygen to last us maybe an hour and a half at the average depth of the area we’ll be diving in, and Raphaël has another cylinder. No use stalling when our air supply is dwindling by the minute.
I take a deep breath, call up my magic, and turn headfirst into the hole. Nora and Raphaël follow close behind, their flashlight beams crossing with mine. At first, it seems like we’re swimming into a natural cave, the walls grown over with corals and sea sponges and anemones. An octopus retracts its squirmy tentacles behind a rock, and fish glimmer silver in the light.
But the deeper we get, the more I’m sure things are not as they seem. The tunnel we’re swimming through is perfectly circular, and there’s no end in sight—it curves slightly, so I can never see past the bend. Soon, the light from the opening behind us disappears completely. The creatures that live down here scuttle away from us, strange, spiky fish and pale crabs that don’t look remotely appetizing.
Something tugs at my fin, and I jerk, swiveling around with raised hands to ward off an attack. But it’s just Raphaël, his face pale and washed out in the LED light beam.
He points behind his back. Nora is lagging behind, swimming more slowly than I’d been going.
Shit. I hadn’t even checked on her since we dove into the tunnel. I’ve been too focused on what’s ahead, on checking for any hidden curses, but we might have a problem that has nothing to do with Scottish witches and hexes.
