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My mouth tightened in annoyance. “Or they’re a ghost from your past.”
19
Eye for A Bargain
Katrina
“Ihope this is important. I have a business meeting in 15 minutes.” Bastian spoke without looking back at us, but when Bellamy was silent at his response, he turned around only to appear unfazed by the gun pointed at him.
“Ah, you do seem familiar.” He grinned, lifting his ring-covered hands in a mocking manner of pretend surrender. Tattoos of every nature decorated him, but the black snake on his hand stood out to me the most. “Let me see...the Industrial Revolution? Wait, no... the Civil War? It all starts to blur together, you know.”
“Let me jog your memory, then,” Bellamy spat, still holding the gun. “Try a bit farther back. Isla de Juventud.”
“Oh, now I remember.” Bastian strode forward, moving toward the barrel of the pistol as though it was no more dangerous than a pool noodle. “The old glory days on the high seas. I made a bargain with you and your father...Oh for God’s sake just put the gun down already.” Bellamy complied with a lowered arm, to my surprise, but the weapon remained in his firm grip.
“Not with me. Just him. I never made a deal with you.” Bellamy’s words came out scathing and cold.
“Details, details. Yet here you are, a boy burdened with the sins of his father, still marked by the deal he never fulfilled. Though you certainly had no issue helping him bring the prize right to my doorstep.”
“Did you expect some show of morality from a pirate? I do what the sea demands of me. Nothing more. Nothing less.” Bellamy growled. “Besides, not like I had a choice.”
I wondered what exactly he meant by that as my gaze wandered to the jar on the desk with the heart inside. It had to be the siren heart he’d conned out of Valdez. The heart keeping him alive.
“Fair enough,” Bastian snickered, cocking his head to one side. He finally seemed to take notice of me at Bellamy’s side, but he didn’t address it. “I see you must’ve kept a siren heart for yourself for you to show up here after all these centuries. I suppose the temptation of immortality was a bit too much for you to resist.”
“It’s none of your concern how I’m still alive. All that matters is that you have something we want.”
“Of course, I do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here,” Bastian grinned a slimy smile, and he looked over Bellamy’s shoulder to make eye contact with me. Bellamy shifted to block his view. “And as your father well knew, I’m always in the mood for a good bargain.”
“Except you don’t uphold your end of them.” I listened intently as Bellamy’s voice tightened. Bastian stepped forward and I shuffled back without meaning to.
“Oh, dear boy, you’ve got it all wrong. I’m a man of my word. It was your father who breached the deal.” Bastian closed in around us, like a vulture circling its prey. Bellamy kept an arm between us, a barrier between Bastian and me, but something told me it wouldn’t do much good if this pirate lord-club boss really wanted to reach me. “You see...James misunderstood my conditions. He brought me the wrong thing. I asked for a siren heart...fully intact.”
“And that’s exactly what we brought you. Without it, you couldn’t still be alive.” Bellamy gestured toward the heart on the table. Our positions had shifted now, with Bellamy and I backed toward the desk in the center of the room and Bastian now blocking our exit. I glimpsed down at Bellamy’s hand, just to reassure myself that he was still holding the gun.
“No, lad.” Bastian’s eyes narrowed. “You brought me a heart cut from the siren. Well-preserved, yes. But worthless. You see, when I said ‘intact’ I meant exactly that—a heart untouched, still beating, within a siren. I didn’t get what was agreed to, so the deal was null and void, as was my right.”
I made note of the way he twisted words and seemed to love the taste of trickery on his tongue. I could see Bellamy’s jaw turning to stone, a vein tensing in his neck and forehead.
“You demanded a live siren? Something we never gave to anyone.” he growled. “That’s not what you said. You cheated.”
“I didn’t cheat. I simply chose my words very carefully. Something you should learn to do before you get that pretty lass with you into trouble.”
I shuddered at the mention of me, suddenly aware of his gaze stuck on me, as though I was an item to be traded.
“This is why I prefer to let my weapons do the talking.” Bellamy raised the gun, his finger over the trigger this time. “We came here for the Crown of the Sea. Where is it?”
Bastian released a cackle that echoed throughout the chamber. “If you kill me, you’ll never find it. Assuming you could.”
Bellamy put his finger on the trigger and began to pull. “Stop! Without him we can’t find the crown!” I screamed. He fired and my ears rang. I trembled from the deafening gunshot and yelled in anger.
Bellamy stared at me with hollow eyes, not giving an answer. But he didn’t have to. Because Bastian didn’t fall. He stayed standing with a hole in his chest that blossomed red across his mustard jacket, and then closed up as if it never happened. Even the bloodstain vanished, retracting back into the threads of his clothes to leave a perfectly clean suit behind. Months ago this might have terrified me, but by now it almost felt normal. But my head spun at what Bastian said about the heart. I thought siren magic could only work if channeled through a living siren. So how could Bastian’s dead siren heart actually keep him alive? The way mine kept Milo alive...
Bastian brushed off the arms of his jacket as if merely dusting away lint. “I can’t fault you for trying. But you must know if your own father couldn’t get it from me, what makes you think you could?”
“Because I’m not him. And that’s all you get.” Bellamy suddenly sucked in his words. “I won’t keep talking so you can use whatever I say against me.”
“Clever lad,” Bastian uttered, stepping toward us and clapping Bellamy on the shoulder. “I tell you what. There’s something I’m very much in need of and have yet to find someone who can accomplish it. You do the job, I give you the Crown.”
