Melda looked around. “It must be this place. The number of enchantments might be affecting it somehow.”
Tor turned to walk back down the alley and froze.
The Swordscale traitor stood there, next to the Calavera captain. His floating hat was now coated in flames, just like the man from the street. Tor’s stomach dropped. He watched as the Calavera captain pulled a matchstick from his pocket, lit it with the blaze on his head, then whispered a word into the flame. It glowed purple for the briefest moment.
Then, it extinguished, along with every streetlight.
In the near darkness, Tor could barely make out a figure who appeared in a flash of mauve.
“Spectral,” Vesper hissed.
The Calavera captain and the Swordscale traitor were gone. Vanished.
Another flash, and a different spectral appeared. And another. They blocked the alley completely.
None had a mouth, the skin pulled taut where one should have been. Still, Tor felt them as they stepped closer, reaching into his mind, prying it open like a stubborn oyster.
We’re here to collect you, a slithering voice said right into his brain.
Melda tensed next to him. Engle gasped.
Vesper let out a sob. He wondered what they had said to her.
They backed into the wall, nowhere to go. And the spectrals inched closer, their dark robes dragging behind them.
Vesper raised her hand as if to make them small, but her fingers shook. She groaned with effort, but seemed frozen in place.
Are you ready to watch your friends die, Tor Luna?
The spectral was standing in front of him now, the skin of his face stretching up like he was smiling.
Tor cried out, cradling his hand. His lifeline—it was shrinking right before his eyes. Vesper had said that lifelines weren’t reliable at sea anymore, which was why theirs hadn’t changed at all during their journey, even moments from death…
But they were on land now. The rainbow line shrunk smaller and smaller still, until it was barely there. Engle and Melda’s were practically gone. The spectral took a step forward.
And crumbled to ash as an arrow hit it.
Another arrow whizzed right past Tor’s nose, finding its next target. The third remaining spectral sent a cloud of smoke up as a shield, then threw a mighty beam of purple fire through the air, aiming for where the arrow had come from.
But another pierced it, from the opposite direction.
And the spectral fell to pieces.
Tor’s lifeline grew again, back to what it had been before, an agonizing process, the rainbow lines stitching themselves back into his skin. There was a clatter at the mouth of the alley.
The man from Galaway Lane who had spoken to them appeared. He lit a match on his hat and neared the three piles of ash as if to reignite them. But a voice from above said, “I wouldn’t,” and the man ran away.
Tor recognized that voice.
A moment later, a figure dropped down from the roof, holding a rope.
Captain Forecastle. He wore a shirt without sleeves, revealing a long arrow emblem that ran the length of the inside of his forearm.
There was commotion on the roof of the opposite building, and Forecastle quickly lifted his arm wrist-side up, pulled back with the other, and released—the arrow emblem shot out down his palm, then became real as soon as it left his skin, only to be replaced by another.
Engle’s mouth hung open.
Melda didn’t look as impressed. “How did you find us here?”
The pirate scratched at the back of his head. “No thank ye for saving yer lives? Suppose we deserve that.” He sighed. “Had terrible luck in Tortuga Bay… Lost every gamble we made, every fight we started, every dobble we stole…” He looked pensive. “Began to realize double-crossing ye after ye freed us did something terrible to our karma.” The pirate shrugged. “So we’re here to make amends.”
Melda raised an eyebrow at him. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Started asking around for the pearl, heard some chatter about dealings in Perla. We figured it was here, and that the compass would lead ye to the City of Seekers. So we waited. And followed ye from the harbor. In case ye needed us.”
Engle had mentioned feeling like someone was following them. The pirate must have been well hidden for Engle not to have spotted him.
Captain Forecastle nodded toward the three piles of ash. “Dangerous enemies ye’ve made.”
Vesper shook her head. “So they have it, don’t they? The compass led us here. Right where they were.”
Tor blinked against a sudden flash of nausea. If the traitor, the captain, and the spectrals had the pearl, then Estrelle’s fate was already sealed. They could destroy the town in minutes with its power.
His family—
“Not necessarily,” Captain Forecastle said. “According to chatter, the Calavera captain, that silver-faired fellow, and spectrals have been all over the city, searching. They’ve been gathering information from merchants, pirates…even assassins. Don’t think they’ve found it yet.”
Vesper shook her head. “But the compass—”
“The compass is a fickle thing that will double-cross ye in an attempt to get wherever it wants to go…” he said. “Trust us, we know. If ye lose yer focus on what ye’ve lost for even a moment, it will pull ye in its own direction…”
Melda shot a scathing look at Vesper, but didn’t say anything, and Tor was grateful for that.
Still, Vesper’s mistake had almost cost them everything. The spectrals had appeared in moments, though none of them had been the one he had seen on the Calavera ship. No, that one was larger than the others, more powerful…
Why wasn’t the larger spectral with them? What deal had the Calavera captain and traitor made with it?
If the Swordscale traitor and Calavera captain were in Perla, it could be close by. Tor remembered mention of the spectrals in the Book of Seas. If the more powerful of them could do half of the things the story described—
“We need to leave. Now,” Tor said.
Captain Forecastle nodded, eyes darting to the surrounding rooftops. “Good idea.”
They hurried out of the alley, Captain Forecastle at the front, his arm long in
