Fifteen

Jack

Jack wiped water off his face. He tried to get up, to go to Bonn and take her in his arms and explain everything, but all he could manage to do was slide toward her on the slick and soapy floor.

"Darling," he said helplessly. "I was going to tell you, I swear."

She let the bucket drop from her hand and thunk noisily to the floor. "When were you going to tell me, Jack? It's not like you haven't had the opportunity." She scowled. "You asked me to marry you, for Pete's sake!"

"Who's Pete, and what does he have to do with this?" Jack asked. This was all so humiliating. He looked to Mary for help, but she, too, seemed to be stunned by what had just transpired.

"I suppose it's safe to assume that you're not Dutch." Anne's green eyes were near dancing with fury. "So you lied to me, Jack, bold as brass, straight to my face."

This was what she had a problem with? Him lying? Not him, you know, being half fish?

"I never lied about what's important," he said. "You're my person. I love you."

"I dunno," she said. "If you love someone, don't you tell them the truth?"

"That's not entirely fair," he protested. "You didn't tell me the truth, either." He knew this was a mistake, arguing, walking down this road with her (metaphorically speaking, because he still wasn't walking anywhere, obviously), but he couldn't seem to help himself. "You weren't going to tell me you were already married."

"Wait, she's already married?" Tobias's eyebrows lifted. "Perhaps we should leave you alone to talk this out."

But Mary clearly had no intention of leaving. She rounded on Bonn. "Look here, Bonny," she said, that scary captain tone creeping in her voice again. "I let you come aboard this ship as one of the crew, but I can just as easily toss you overboard. If you say a word about Jack's... condition... to anyone, I will have no problem with having you keelhauled."

This was a terrible time for Mary to go all protective on him.

"No, she won't, my love," Jack protested. He looked at Mary pleadingly. "No, you won't. I love her, and she's angry at me right now, as she has every right to be, for my deception, but she loves me, too. Don't you, darling?"

Bonn didn't answer.

Jack's heart gave a great squeeze. "Wait," he gasped. "This is just a misunderstanding."

"She needs to understand that she can't tell," Mary said.

Bonn lifted her chin. "I won't tell anyone! I would never! Gawl!" she cried, and barreled out of the room, banging the door open to reveal a very startled Mr. Quint, who'd been about to knock.

Tobias rushed to Mary's bed, grabbed the blanket, and threw it over Jack's lower half, for which Jack was quite grateful.

"What's all this?" Mr. Quint asked as Mary hurried to meet him in the doorway. "Captain? We've, uh, reached Ocracoke Island."

"Very good, Mr. Quint," Mary said quickly. "We're just going to need a moment here."

He nodded and stepped out again. Mary shut the door.

"I'm sorry," Jack said tremulously. "I thought—"

"No, I'm sorry, cousin," Mary said. "I should have seen this coming. She kept saying that she saw something when you went overboard during the storm."

"I'm sorry, too," piped up Tobias. "I kind of outed you before, at the Kettle. It's my... bad."

"It's fine," Jack said, struggling to not go flopping after Bonn. "I will talk to her. Later. In the meantime, we should see to the business at hand, should we not? I can swim down and look for the wreck." That would give him time to think of something to say that would make this right.

If there was anything that he could say to make this right. He knew that Bonn could hold a grudge with the best of them.

"Thank you, Jack," Mary said, and took Tobias by the arm and left the cabin, to give Jack a chance to dry off and collect himself, but he didn't know why she bothered, because he was only going to get wet again.

Ocracoke Island was lovely, really, with white-sand beaches and a herd of wild ponies running about free. He would like to vacation there someday, Jack thought. Only an hour ago he'd been able to picture him and Anne together, seeing sights such as these. Traveling the world. Living that human life.

But now—he didn't know what to think.

He'd work up the courage to talk to her later. To beg her to forgive him. To tell her everything he'd ever held back about himself, down to the most minute detail. He wanted her to know. Why hadn't he told her before this?

Oh, right. Because he'd been a coward.

But he couldn't think about that now because he had a job to do.

He removed his hat and handed it to Tobias. This felt like a lot of pressure, swimming down there alone, either discovering Blackbeard's treasure or coming back empty-handed. He peered over the side of the ship. "It looks dark down there. Maybe we should wait until tomorrow." (Reader, it was not especially dark down there. It was only midmorning, and the sun was shining bright overhead.)

"It will be fine, Jack," Mary said. "And anyway, I'm going with you."

He glanced up at her, surprised. "You're going? Below?"

"This is my quest," she said. "Tobias will watch the ship while we're gone."

"No, I won't," said Tobias quickly. "I'm coming as well. Mr. Quint will watch the ship."

"But neither of you can—I don't know— breathe down there?" Jack pointed out.

They were both staring at him like they knew something he didn't.

"What?" he asked.

Tobias scratched the back of his neck. "Mary told me about the mermaid's kiss thing, when a mermaid—or, excuse me, merman, is that what I should call you?—kisses a human and that temporarily gives them the ability to not drown underwater."

Oh. The mermaid's kiss. That.

"So you want me to kiss you? Both of you?" He glanced at Mary and Tobias, who were studying the deck now.

" Want is a strong word," Tobias said.

"If you must," Mary sighed. "It's preferable to drowning."

"Very well," Jack agreed. He didn't mind kissing them. And it didn't seem nearly as daunting if they were all going to go find the shipwreck together. He stepped up to the rail again.

"You should probably take off your pants," Mary said.

Right. He took off his boots, untucked his shirt, and shimmied out of his second-best striped trousers—his first-best striped trousers having been horribly ripped when Anne had doused him a moment ago. (He would have taken his shirt off, too, but then he would have been naked, and he was fairly certain that would be inappropriate.) Mary and Tobias set to removing their shoes and stripping down to their undershirts and breeches.

"Well, this is going to be awkward," Jack said, trying to sound cheerful. "Who's first?"

"Make it quick," grumbled Mary, coming to stand before him. Jack gave her a perfunctory peck on the lips that felt a bit like kissing his mother. Then Mary voluntarily walked the plank and jackknifed into the water.

Tobias stepped forward. Jack kissed him even more quickly, both pulling away from each other the moment after their mouths touched. It was a bit like kissing his brother, if he'd had a brother, that is. Tobias mumbled something about never mentioning this again and followed Mary into the water.

Jack sensed movement behind him, and he turned to see Bonn, her hands on her hips, staring at him, her mouth open a little. She'd obviously just seen him kiss Tobias.

"Bonn," he said quickly. "That wasn't what it looked like. I can explain."

"Oh, like you've explained everything so well, up to now," she said.

He couldn't think of what to say to her then. He was struck with the urge to kiss her, too, and bring her along with them. He wasn't even sure she'd have need of his kiss, at this point. Since the night they'd met he'd kissed Anne as often as he'd been able to find the time. It was his favorite human thing, in fact, kissing Anne Bonny. It was just so very human, pressing his lips to hers, sharing his breath, a little bit of his soul. She always kissed him with her whole self, making his heart thunder, such heat and salt and fury all in one. Like a beautiful storm.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I have to..."

"Well, go on, then," she said.

He nodded and stepped back on the edge of the rail and into the water, leaving her behind while he followed Mary and Tobias.

At least she was still speaking to him. That was something.

In the water his legs instantly fused back into his tail, and he could move so swiftly and easily down there, in the wavering coolness of the deep, that he felt a surge of euphoria. Sometimes he missed being Mer. (And sometimes—like ten minutes ago—it was a literal pain in the ass.) But things seemed so much simpler Below.

Mary and Tobias were waiting beneath the ship, making treading-water motions with their arms and legs. Mary was waiting patiently, breathing under the water with no trouble. The kiss seemed to have worked. Tobias, however, was thrashing, his body panicking at being under the water without taking any breaths. Jack took his hand, looked into his wide, frightened eyes, and made an in-and-out gesture with his chest. Tobias quieted and did the same.

"The Queen Anne's Revenge should be somewhere nearby," he told Mary in Mer.

"I feel like it's that way." She pointed to the south, and he didn't ask her how she knew such a thing. She was human now, but she was also, somewhere still deep inside her, Mer royalty, and sometimes that came with inexplicable powers over the things in the ocean. He'd always been a bit jealous that she had some remnants of magic in her, when that was so absent in him, the son of a witch. "There are sharks," she added. " They've been following the Ranger . But I told them to stay away."

He turned south. Mary swam over clumsily and grabbed Tobias's hand, and Jack grabbed Mary's, and all in a line he towed them, using the superior strength and control of his powerful tail and fins to propel them through the water.

Mary was right. Not even a league from where they'd parked the Ranger , resting against the sandy bottom, was a newly sunken ship. It was largely intact—Jack saw that at once—with a large hole blown out of one side. Jack pulled the humans down the hatch and into the cargo hold. It was murky and dark inside, too dark to see much, even with Jack's and Mary's superior Mer vision. But then, a moment later, a school of lantern fish swam into the hold, illuminating the scene.

"Did you do that?" Jack asked Mary.

She didn't answer. Instead, she was turning a slow circle around the space, her expression gloomy. And Tobias also seemed downtrodden.

Then Jack realized why.

He could practically see the bubble of their hopes all popping at roughly the same time.

There was nothing here. Not one jewel. Not one gold bar. Not one single piece of eight.

Only a few useless weapons scattered about the floor.

Cutlasses, cannonballs, and crabs.

No treasure.

And no real idea where to look next.

"What now?" he asked Mary in Merish.

"We're not far from home," she said.

And by home, she meant Underwhere.

"Not very far at all," he agreed. He was tempted to swim back to the little cottage he'd grown up in and see his mom. He really missed his mom. And she would be worried that he hadn't called her. He would have loved to ask her for relationship advice about now.

"Do you remember the necklace we found that one time?" Mary asked out of the blue.

"Necklace?" Jack thought back. "Oh, the pretty, sparkly one with the big blue heart-shaped jewel? The one some idiot just tossed overboard from a ship?"

She nodded. "That's got to be valuable."

"Right! A little treasure all by itself."

"We could get that. It's not Blackbeard's hoard, but it's something. And there might be other items there we could take back with us, now that we know what humans find precious."

"That sounds like a plan," he said.

They turned to Tobias, who was hovering in the water beside them, looking confused. Jack swam up to him and motioned that he was going to return them to the surface. He offered his hand, and, after a moment of hesitation, Tobias took it. Then Jack grabbed Mary and headed back Above.

"Well, that was a whole lot of nothing," sputtered Mary the moment her head breached the surface. "Except for this." She held up her fist and then opened it to reveal a rusted belt buckle. "This could have been silver," she reasoned. But it wasn't. It was iron. And it was rusted.

"What now?" Tobias asked. "I'm sorry, but I don't know where else he could have stashed it."

"We have somewhere we can search," Mary said.

"For my pa's treasure?" he asked.

"No," Jack said. "For my treasure." He met Mary's eyes, and for the first time since he'd come Above, he felt that old camaraderie between them, the excitement that had lit them both up every time they'd ever ventured out to find human artifacts. " Our treasure," he amended, because yes, it had been his idea, way back when, but Mary had been right there with him. "To the grotto?"

She returned his smile. "To the grotto."

"Wait, and where is this grotto, exactly?" Tobias wanted to know.

"It's where we come from," Mary said.

"Oh," said Tobias, wiping water out of his eyes. "Underwhere?"

"Under the water," Jack explained.

"Yes," said Tobias. "I know. Underwhere."

Underwhere! Jack didn't know whether to be excited or terrified. He went with excited. He swam quickly to Tobias and kissed the lad on his startled mouth (just to be extra safe about the time limit), and then Mary.

"Are you ready?" Mary asked him.

Jack's heart was pounding, and it was from more than just the inappropriate kissing.

He was going home.