3

Teeth

“Enough playing around,” Chub growls. Sadistic little troll is never any fun. “Magda expects us back on board before nightfall. We’re sailing up the Atlantic, and she wants to be north before the hurricane blows through. There’s no time for fortune tellers when hunting your fortunes on the high seas.”

“Come on, Chub,” I yell at me hearty. I thought my best friend’s transition from Blackbeard’s quartermaster to our friends’ quartermaster would make him less of a stick in the mud. My mistake. “Aren’t you curious? Or are you scared your lady love is a grouchy troll like you?”

“This troll wants to live long enough to meet his lady troll,” Chub quips. “What happens when you’re late again? Blackbeard sliced off your fingers. What Magda cuts off, you will miss more than your marriage finger.”

“I’d face the she-devil a thousand times to gaze at the face of my lady love once,” I say. Chub’s eyebrows disappear into his cloud of red hair at my conviction. “Honest as the sun promises to rise tomorrow. If the wrinkly prune inside that tent can give me a glimpse of my lady fair within a crystal ball, I’ll swear off brothels. I won’t need to search them because I’ll know her face anywhere.”

“Seems to me,” Chub says with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, “if you spent more time looking above the girls’ skirts instead of under them, you’d found your lady at a brothel already.”

“Nah, she’s not a penny brasser. I can feel she’s more —”

“Be careful, me hearty,” Chub scolds, wagging a stout finger under my nose. “The Caribbean has a different definition of more—one you can’t handle.”

“In the time we’ve spent arguing, her line’s cleared.”

“I hate you sometimes,” Chub grouses but steps off the dusty island path.

We weave through the crowded street fair to the tent decorated in stamped moons and stars. The throng of people parts as I swagger against the tide of traffic. Chub pulls back the tent flap and disappears into the darkness. I flick my hands to shake off the fear and bad juju wafting from the mystic’s dwelling.

Inside, the energy is just as uncomfortable, like the matting of my chest hair from the humidity onto my sunburn with no relief in sight. A round table carved from a purple rock dominates the space. I’m compelled to hold my tongue or at least keep my voice respectfully quiet. The rock setup is too close to an altar for my liking.

Just as I predicted, the fortune teller has more wrinkles than a furled sail. She remains seated at the table with her hands perched over a crystal ball as we enter—ol’bat doesn’t even open her eyes. We could slit her throat, haul her crystal table to the boat, break it down into bags of gems, and weigh anchor before anyone was the wiser. As someone who can supposedly tell the future, shouldn’t she foresee the menace of two of Patricia Wish’s top sailors in her tent? I don’t know whether to be annoyed or upset at her easy demeanor.

“I like you,” she croaks in a ghostly voice. Her hoop earrings sway as she looks over us. A musical clinking under her fluttering sleeves accompanies her movements. “You’ve come looking for love and not riches.”

“Love is riches—more so than all the gold in the Caribbean,” Chub murmurs. He lays his sheathed machete on the table as a sign of peace. I follow his lead and plop into the remaining empty chair. It groans in protest as my lanky frame sprawls out in the remaining space. My sheathed longsword and small satchel of doubloons thump onto the table.

“We’re willing to pay for a glimpse of our lady loves,” I whisper, not breaking eye contact with the creepy gray orbs boring into my skull. “What’s your price?”

“You won’t pay the price for love, but your friend will—”

“What do you mean? Will I lose a finger, my life, my face—” Chub sits up in alarm as his fears blast from his gob like cannon fire.

“No, you won’t pay the price for love either,” the fortune teller says with a chuckle. “The one who loves the night will pay in sweet trade to be with her soulmate in the darkness.”

“She means Captain Branko and Magda the Vampiress,” I console Chub, who probably already figured out the riddle. Branko wants to retire as a farmer with Magda, so giving up the sweet trade—piracy—to live in darkness is exactly what he wants.

“Aye, but what about us? Will we have to pay a price?”

“A Doubloon per card,” she croaks, but her voice has changed. Her eyes weren’t brown a minute ago…weren’t they gray? She fusses with the billowing, black sleeves of her gown to reveal her gnarled hands and vein-crossed wrists. If she’s not we aring bracelets, where’s the clinking coming from? “Each card will reveal a secret about your lady love. The more you want to know…the more you pay—”

“Pay in doubloons, aye? I’m not signing up to servitude,” Chub growls. His fear raises the hair on my arms. Chub’s job as a quartermaster is to think ahead and scout for danger. If he’s worried, I better run for the docks.

“This doesn’t harm our spirits or souls, right?” Not that I believe she would give me an honest answer, but my question gives Chub time to assess the trouble we’ve invited and decide whether to proceed. My heart pounds in my throat harder than when I squared off with Blackbeard without flinching —and lost a few fingers for my trouble.

“For information? No, karmic servitude or spiritual repercussions. I promise. Those are for trying to change someone or the future. You want to see your ladies, not lure them to you, so your souls are safe,” she says in the same voice. I watch her eyes for a color change as they dart between us. I’m disappointed when they stay violet…wait, they were brown, right?

“What island holds my lady love?” Desperation pulls the questions from my lips.

The crystal ball glows with swirling smoke. The fortune teller leans closer. Chub and I lean so close, we make four nostril clouds on the glass. “I should see the landscape, but all I see are empty waves,” I say with a hollow chuckle.

“She’s not on an island. In fact, she’s not on land,” the fortune teller says to the beat of clinking bracelets. The constant noise must annoy her after a long day. “You’d be better searching for her on the high seas, but that doesn’t give you the information you seek.”

“I want to see her,” I murmur. Honesty leaks from my mouth like a breach in the hull. Brown-eyed Crone must have bewitched me.

While my mind struggles with eye colors and phantom bracelets, the fortune teller lifts her crystal ball from the table. I swear it hovers in midair before slowly drifting to the floor on its own. My face remains blank while my guts churn like stormy seas. This prune is the real deal.

The black cards slap and scrape as she shuffles them. Her fingers shouldn’t be able to move so fast. I didn’t think she could straighten them. Cards fly from one hand to another. Each time the deck stops to be sorted, the design changes from stars, to fish, to hearts, to demons with glowing red eyes. I’m a heartbeat from grabbing me hearty by the britches and hauling him out of the tent when she fans the plain, green cards in front of him .

“Of all the hornswoggle,” he grouses. He reaches for the top card when the prune gasps.

“Don’t pull too quickly,” she says, grabbing his wrist. Chub rears back in his seat but can’t dislodge his beefy hand from her curled fingers. “Run your hand over them. Feel the energy of her heart calling to you. Select the card that wants to speak to you.”

“Cards can’t talk, ye pudding-headed buzzard,” he gripes, yanking his hand away. She holds steady while his blue eyes blaze with icy rage. She guides his hand back and forth, an inch over the fan of cards. “Maybe two of them buzz like rope burn.”

“There you go,” she says with a grin minus her top teeth. “Pick up the two cards and toss me two doubloons from your bag.”

I toss her the coins while Chub flips over two cards from the fan. The first card is near the top, with ten tentacles waving from the edges to the center. The second card is right in the middle of the deck. Chub growls at the giant spider staring back at him from an intricate web. I turn the spider card to face me and break the tension between Chub and the drawing. Sure enough, the spider is smiling. Huh? Chub’s lady love is a happy spider?

“Before you allow your rage to destroy my tent, please listen to their meaning. The tentacles signify riches—true diamonds—your lady love is quite wealthy. Do you know any wealthy ladies from the Pintarro, Brown, or LeFaire families? Those are the only families in the Caribbean with enough riches to inspire ten tentacles.”

“That no good Pintarro has been a thorn in our sides for years,” Chub says with a chuckle. “There’s no way he’d surrender the bonnie Catalina Pintarro to a pirate. What’s the spider?”

“Her,” the fortune teller snaps.

Chub’s smile falls from his face. “In one breath, you say my lady love is a wealthy lady—the most bonnie of prizes, and in the next, you call her a blimey bug?!”

“I don’t call her anything. It’s the spirits.”

“Smite your spirits and curse their descendants,” Chub says, rising from his chair. “Let’s cast aboard, Teeth. It’s nearly sundown and time to weigh anchor. I want to nap off this experience before I’m to steer us from port.”

“But that’s only one lady,” the fortune teller whispers in a sultry, feminine voice. Long lashes flutter over the bright, sea-green eyes sunken into the old hag’s face. “Don’t you want a peek?”

“I’m not afraid,” flies out of my mouth. Chub pauses by my side and clasps my shoulder. The silent command for me to stay and draw my cards is heard as loud as if he shouted it. “Just one glimpse. Not two cards that will argue with themselves or three to break a tie; I want one card with one message. That’s all my simple mind can handle—”

“Not your mind, but your heart is what can handle the lady who burns for you.” Avast ye! The fortune teller’s eyes are gorgeous. I could get lost in them. And to hear my lady burns for me without knowing me? My shaft stands to half-mast, ready to extinguish the inferno in my britches that has nothing to do with the fireship who infected me last night.

“Where are you?” I whisper as I run my hand over the cards in the same manner she taught Chub. The corner of a card catches on the stump of my former marriage finger. It flips out of the array and bounces into my lap. With trembling fingers, I pluck it from the gap between my erection and my belt. “Little lady has an appetite in the sheets to match mine!”

“Blimey, man, that’s your future wife! Have some respect!” Chub scolds me with a slap to the back of my head.

The momentum sends me forward, and the card tumbles from my hand. It settles into my view as if presenting itself like a dinner plate. A bright red octopus stares at me with squinting eyes and menacing teeth. Blooming beasty looks ready to jump from the paper to rip my face off. I don’t know whether to be excited or terrified. My lady love could be as monstrous as Magda with twice the arms to dodge.

“Right,” Chub says, flipping a doubloon at the black-eyed witch who conned us into a card reading. “If ten tentacles mean a wealthy lady, me hearty will marry the fecking Queen of England! We’re done here.”

“He knows his lady love—”

“I’ve never met the Queen of England.”

“King George the First rules England,” the fortune teller says, rubbing her eyes with exasperation.

“I haven’t met him either!”

“Time to board, matey,” Chub announces, squeezing my shoulder. “You won’t find her in this tent. Best keep to the seas and build a fortune to house her…especially if your queen requires a castle.”

“She doesn’t require a castle—she’s not royalty. That’s not what the cards are trying to tell you. You’ve met your lady love before—”

“Great,” I snap, rising from my seat. “We had our chance and blew it? Story of my life.”