“I don’t know. I didn’t get past the ATzxes. Take care, they will take you over and use you most horribly.”
“Are you threatening me?” Wall growled.
“No, warning you. Right now, they can be exterminated. Once they take over you and your ships full of lost souls, they will become a terror. That life you live in the GSD will end.”
“You’re just trying to get my treasure for yourself. You’re a woman. Women can’t be trusted,” he pronounced.
“I find your statement puzzling because Rachel, your wife, kept your secrets to the grave. She died with the secret of your daughter tucked deep in her heart.”
“Rebecca?”
“Yes. You see, she was secreted away with a cousin who took her west. She married and kept the family’s secrets. These she passed down to her children, and they kept them. Rachel’s heirs were honorable people. Are you not honorable enough to listen to me?”
“Show me these ATzxes,” George Wall demanded.
“Follow me. Be careful, and do not touch a shadow. They hide in shadows,” Mia told them.
“First, how do I know you’re not taking me down to kill me as you did Crocker?”
“I didn’t kill Crocker,” Mia said. “We had a deal. Why would I kill him?” she asked.
“The deal is everything,” Wall said. “Go on, I shall follow you.”
“I have an associate in the cave. Let me ask him to step aside first.”
George Wall looked at the woman. Her face showed no lie, but no truth either. He turned to Waite. “Can she be trusted?”
“As long as you don’t let her seduce you. She’s a demon from the house of Abigor after all.”
“Fair enough,” Wall said.
“Angelo!” Mia called. “Stand down, I’m bringing friends.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered.
As they walked, Mia described her first encounter with the things and how hard it was to rid the land of them. Wall was interested. “Funny that someone from the house of Abigor would spend so much time with humans.”
“I wasn’t always associated with the house of Abigor,” Mia said honestly. “It was only recently I found out that he held me as a babe.”
Wall stopped. He turned her face to see it better. “You’re the assassin.”
“Yes. If I dispatched Ruax, then it would be no trouble ridding this cave of you. But I’m an honorable being. I know that if there is a treasure, it belongs to you.”
“Honor amongst thieves, eh?” Wall said and patted her on the back. “I shall teach you about parleying with pirates. Not the movie version, the real way you parley.”
“I’d like that.”
They entered the spot where the DTDs twisted themselves in supplication to the light Angelo held over them.
Wall nodded. “I see you do not lie. Where is my treasure?”
“We don’t know what your treasure is. There were rumors of jewels that Rosa de Familiare wore, but we could not find mention of anything else.”
“So, she wore the jewels…”
“That is what the gossips claimed,” Mia said.
“There were bolts of cloth.”
“The years would have stripped them of their beauty,” Mia said. “In this environment, they would have rotted.”
“Six trunks of gold and silver plates.”
“Now that’s a treasure,” Mia said. “I just find it amazing that she would have moved it from New Orleans to Montreal to here.”
“Why are you here looking then?” he asked.
“There are records that said she was about to buy the land over this place when the Americans took over the island.”
“So, you’re thinking…”
“Not me, Patrick, my coworker,” Mia said quickly. “Personally, I think that the treasure was put into storage somewhere and forgotten. But I want to be proven wrong.”
Angelo watched how Mia controlled the conversation. He’d heard what a good negotiator she had become. He was now seeing her in action and was pleased how she influenced the pirate.
“Let’s exterminate these critters,” Wall said.
“It would take a lot of fire,” Mia said. “What if it burns the treasure?”
“The thing about gold and silver is that it can be melted down and remade,” Wall said. “That’s what we did with a lot of our plunder.”
“Smart.”
“We will have to do it at night so the smoke isn’t detected by the parks department,” Angelo told Mia.
She turned and looked at Wall. “I know you have to rejoin your ship and move back in the GSD to regain power. Do you trust me to do this for you?”
“No.”
“At least you’re honest,” Mia said. “I’ll leave it to you. But if you ignore my warning and let these things attach themselves to you and your crew, then I’ll have to destroy your ship.”
“You would do that?”
“I would enjoy it very much. I don’t abide slavers, of any sort,” she said, narrowing her eyes.
Angelo detected a brief shudder as if the pirate felt a chill.
“Did you smite The Risen?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“The ship The Risen. It was found in pieces in the south Atlantic.”
“Sorry, but I know nothing about it,” Mia lied.
Wall looked into her eyes and knew she was lying and shuddered again. “Why don’t you take care of the wiggly things, and we’ll stand by to search the cave afterwards.”
“Come back tonight after dark,” she instructed. “But leave Captain Waite as insurance that you’re not going to attack us when our backs are turned.”
“But…” Waite started but held his tongue as Wall’s crewman poked him in the back.
“He’s yours.”
Captain Waite was pushed into the cave. Angelo caught him before he fell on the mass of undulating DTDs.
Mia waited for Captain Wall to descend the cliff and get into the waiting boat before speaking. “What happened to The Risen?” she asked.
“It was blown apart, apparently, by a waterspout.”
“I didn’t know they could be that strong.”
“It happens. The captains of the other
