Veronica rolled her eyes. ElsBeth poked her and whispered, “Don’t make fun. Lisa Lee likes science, you like fashion. What’s the difference?”
Veronica whispered back, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
ElsBeth laughed quietly, and Lisa Lee looked up, hurt.
“I’m sorry, Lisa Lee, but I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at her,” ElsBeth said, nodding at Veronica, who turned her head and rolled her eyes again so only ElsBeth could see.
Across the deck Frankie alternately practiced shadow boxing — he had ambitions of prizefighting like his Uncle Vittorio — and, between rounds, tucked into his whoopie pies. ElsBeth was glad Frankie was part of their crew. You could count on Frankie.
They were well underway in the stiffening breeze between the Cape and Martha’s Vineyard when Johnny said to Robert, “This sure is a beautiful ship.”
“Yeah, she’s just under forty feet and fitted for ocean travel. Custom modified for racing, of course.”
“But what happened to the navigation and communication equipment?” Johnny asked.
“Oh, you know Uncle Preston. He always has to have the newest and best. The old equipment was pulled out so new stuff can go in next week.”
“No problem. On a day like today only a blind man would need any help navigating.” Johnny chuckled at his own joke, while the friendly morning sun beamed down on his nut-brown face.
But ElsBeth shivered. The castle she saw yesterday, and the strange funnel wind, and the dream she had, they all nagged at her. Her radar was on high alert, and there was nothing she could do to turn it off.
Other things niggled at her, too. Like Grandmother teaching her about their responsibility as witches to care for the natural world — but that castle and that wind, they certainly weren’t natural, and she had no idea what to make of them.
Her thoughts continued to drift.
Her family ... she didn’t know much about her family. Except Grandmother, of course. And Sylvanas, he was family. Her parents ... well, that was a big, dark empty place. She didn’t know what happened to them since just after she was born. Grandmother wouldn’t tell her. Not yet anyway.
She really hoped she found out more soon, though. She was growing up, after all, and she could feel that her family history was important to her future.
These darkling thoughts rose up on her horizon, while Martha’s Vineyard rolled closer every minute, and she began to feel better as she listened to what the others wanted to do for fun on the island.
“I want to visit the Historical Museum,” Veronica said, “and find out more about Cape fashion in the old days. There might be some interesting styles I can update and bring back.”
Amy sat cross-legged, her dress almost dry. “I hope there’ll be some street music today. And maybe some mimes. I love mimes.”
Nelson’s eyes hung on Amy. He looked like he hoped he could just hang out with her for the day.
ElsBeth turned to Johnny Twofeathers. “I want to look for wild plants Grandmother can use in medicines.”
Johnny said he’d heard of some marshes that might be good for that and he was up for exploring them, too.
Robert had obviously heard enough of this chatter. “Look, I don’t care what you want to do. What we are going to do is search for treasure.”
“What?” Veronica cut him off. “That’s ridiculous. You said we were going to Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Not exactly. I said we were going to sail around the islands. We’re not going to Martha’s Vineyard.” Robert pushed back his Black Dog cap. “So, if you girls want to get off, you can take the dinghy. We have more important things to do than go sightseeing like a bunch of stupid tourists. We have work to do. Right, men?”
Frankie stopped eating his whoopie pie and agreed straight away, but Nelson and Johnny looked embarrassed. They’d clearly forgotten “the plan” when talk had turned to fun on the Vineyard. “Right,” they added weakly.
Veronica huffed and puffed. She looked like she was about to explode with some powerful arguments, and she could be a mighty arguer, when the wind picked up.
They all watched as hills ... then cliffs ... then mountains of dark grey clouds swelled on the horizon and marched toward them. Fast. Extremely fast.
The yacht felt smaller and smaller under the covering sky.
Onboard no one moved.
Then, “Life jackets, everyone. Now!” Johnny yelled. Johnny knew weather. He’d been out on the tribe’s fishing boats since before he could walk.
Lisa Lee looked into the black swirl ahead and called out precisely in her flat, unemotional way, “Force 7 winds.”
Johnny Twofeathers grabbed some rope and tied it to the mainmast. Nelson followed Johnny’s lead, Frankie helped, and ElsBeth and Veronica joined in. Competent fingers, working quickly, tied ropes to the mast, and to each other.
***
With the activity on deck, the silent black form in the cabin below yawned to life and stretched. “Well, well,” Sylvanas purred. “As I thought. Trouble. And I’m just the cat to get us out of it.”
Sylvanas hadn’t yet examined the situation in depth, but he wasn’t worried. He’d seen too much and been through too much to get worried too quickly.
Hillman-Jones had left a meatball sub on the shelf by the bed. Sylvanas pulled it over and started chomping, to give himself strength. But mid-bite he flopped down, and promptly fell back asleep.
***
Above, the ship twisted and crackled in the tossing sea. The wind snapped off the tops of white-capped waves and shot the spray into their bodies like bullets. ElsBeth braced herself and tried to slow down time, to make herself a quiet point in the middle of the wild.
Lisa Lee peered into the roiling water and shouted her grim calculations over the wind. “The yacht’s probable survival is about zero point five percent, based on projected wave size, wind velocity, and the overall likelihood of being bashed against some rocks.”
Lisa Lee could be alarmingly negative at times in her cool, logical way.
“I don’t understand it,” Robert yelled to Johnny. “The forecast was for clear skies. Perfect for treasure hunting.”
“Yeah,” Johnny yelled back. “Our shortwave radio at home said it was supposed to be an ideal sailing day.”
As a witch ElsBeth had her own particular sense about the weather, and this wasn’t at all natural.
She forced her way against the wind over to Johnny. Johnny’s grandfather was a Native American shaman (a word he said his tribe preferred to “medicine man”). In any case, sometimes there were things they both just “knew.”
She held the rail with one hand and grabbed him with the other. They shared a look, and she could tell Johnny felt it, too — there was something supernatural behind this storm.
They’d also both been taught the only way to handle a scary situation with anything supernatural was straight-ahead, dead-on. They held tight to the rail and bent into the wind.
The salt spray stung, but ElsBeth forced her eyes open, then wider when she recognized South Wind.
Sylvanas had joined her on deck to look around, and they both knew they had to find out from the Wind what was going on. But