I laughed in her face.

I laughed long and loud, not caring about her suddenly panicked shushing of me or threatening body language as she once again pointed her gun at my head. I paused for breath, looked at her terrified and angry face—and laughed all the harder.

“Quiet! Fils de pute, shut your fucking mouth!” She hissed at me.

But I couldn’t. I laughed helplessly. I took another big breath and was about to laugh some more when her hand slapped over my mouth. I laughed into her hand. I laughed and laughed, the situation was just so fucking funny.

...Until it wasn’t.

I found myself crying. I was still laughing, but water was flowing from my eyes. Water would probably be pouring from my eyes if I wasn’t so dehydrated. My laughter took on a… you ever laughed at a hopeless situation? And after a bit, couldn’t really tell if you were laughing or crying? That was me. I was laughing at the ludicrous situation I was in and crying because I was so unready to deal with it all. And then comes along this hard-ass lady who looks like she knows what the fuck she’s doing and she’s asking me for help? How can I not laugh?

How can I not despair?

I looked everywhere but her, as the laughter turned to sobs. I didn’t want to see what she thought of the madman she just asked for help. I didn’t want to see the pity, or disgust, or anger that might be there. I studied the display fridge as I worked to get my laughter/crying under control. It took several minutes.

She took her hand away from my mouth slowly, idly wiping it on her pants. She stood and went to the door, probably about to leave and go get—no she was listening at it. Yeah I did make a good amount of noise. I was taking deep breaths, trying to calm down with marginal success. I took a shaking sip of water. Then several more over the next few minutes.

I guess she thought the coast was clear because she came back over and squatted next to me again. I didn’t look at her. She waited… for something. Probably for me to explain myself. I sipped the last of my water and grabbed another bottle.

After what felt like a year of awkward silence she shifted and sat down next to me, leaning back against the shelf like I was. I felt the urge to warn her away as I smelled like a gym sock, but then caught a whiff of her and came to the surprising conclusion that we smelled equally bad. She holstered her pistol (an awkward affair sitting down) and held out her hand.

“Pass me a water,” she said.

I complied.

We sipped our water in silence.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Won’t… someone come check on you?” I asked.

“Non,” she said. “I slipped sleeping pills into Jasper's coffee.”

“Is Jasper your, uh, partner?” I asked.

“Fuck no,” she said with some vehemence. “Just someone I share watch with. I drug him regularly because he is always trying to fuck me.” Her left hand idly touched the hilt of a knife strapped to her vest. “The men of this crew—they do not take ‘no’ as an answer unless you give them very good reason.”

“Ah,” I said.

We sat in someone less torturous silence for a bit. My stomach grumbled in a familiar way and I reached behind me for a bag of chips and started munching on them. As soon as I got some down, the shaking that I hadn’t noticed slowed down in my hands. Huh.

“Why did you laugh?” She asked, shattering my newly acquired calm.

I took a deep, shaking breath before replying. “Because I am so, so, so incredibly out of my depth you cannot believe it. I am paralyzed by fear—the only reason I am here and not in my hidey hole is because I am pretty sure I was hours away from dying of dehydration. I—I… This was supposed to be my vacation, you know?” I was still not looking at her, but I could feel her watching me.

“For the past six years—it’s closer to eight, really, but I—“ I swallowed heavily. “Never mind. Lets just say that I’ve been under incredible stress since I left college and now here’s—“ I paused and almost started laughing again. “Here’s fuckin’ magical PIRATES of all things coming to get me and I’m—my fucking business partner tried to damn my fucking soul in order to save me, which I’m still smoldering over.”

I felt her shift. “I thought you are already damned? You are a warlock, non?”

I chanced a glance at her. Instead of the judgment I thought I’d find on her face, there was only mild curiosity. “I uh,” I began. “I found a loophole.”

Her expression hardened and I could feel her tense up. “You sacrifice—“

I flung up my hands, spilling water and Cheetos. “Not innocents!” I said.

“Pardon?” She said, her face incredulous. I noted her hand was on the butt of her pistol.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I don’t care if she’s a cop, if she pulls that gun within striking distance I’m going to lay her out. While I am woefully inexperienced at being shot at, I am a mean fighter thanks to my father. The water and chips have done a lot to restore equilibrium to my body I felt confident in my movement for the first time since the pirates arrived, and I was rather fucking tired of being threatened and scared.

To her, I said; “I don’t sacrifice innocents. I cheat. I find murderers who have fallen through the cracks in the justice system by listening to cold case podcasts and looking at old evidence and force murderers to pay for me.”

“You…” She looked at me, puzzled. “You kill murderers?”

I shook my head. “I don’t even kill them,” I said. “I just make them sign.”

“Sign? What—Sign what?” She was confused, but her body language was no longer threatening, so I consider that a step in the right direction.

“The contract,” I said. “All deals with a patron or other interdimensional being should be done with a contract.”

Her eyes widened, like I was saying crazy things. A suspicion rose in my mind and I squinted my eyes at her. “You think this warlock talk is just crazy Satan worshiper stuff and not real, don’t you?”

She sighed explosively. “Obviously there is something to it or I would not have been cut off from my contacts for two years. But, but interdimensional beings? Really?”

I shrugged. “You can call them demons if you prefer. Though many defy categorization or even labels.”

I drained the last of my water bottle and cracked open another bag of chips. I glanced around to see if there was anything else in the store more substantial than chips. Oo, sandwiches! In those little triangle packages I’ve seen on TV but have never actually eaten before. I stood up and grabbed one off the second to top shelf of the fridge before sitting down again.

It tasted kinda crap, but after my first bite my hunger roared to life and I quickly had the first half of the sandwich down my gullet. I paused before taking another bite to regard her.

“How much magic have you seen?” I asked.

She shrugged. “All I see is the drawings they put on things,” she said. “They close their eyes and then sometimes something happens. We are given necklaces with pendants that we are not to remove.”

“What happens when they are taken off?” I asked.

“You die,” she said bluntly. “Happened to recruit a few months back. He took off his shirt to fight Gregory, accidentally took off the necklace too…” She slowed down as her gaze went inward. “He suddenly bleeds from his nose, then eyes and ears. Then he vomits blood. He was dead in twenty seconds.”

I frowned in thought. “Sounds like a blood ward, or maybe resonance? Attuned to blood? Anyway, those necklaces are probably keyed to the wards on the ship, to prevent them from attacking you.”

Her eyes widened. “What about the passengers?”

I had taken a bit out of the sandwich. “Wha’ abou’ them?”

“The warlocks, Mr. Love and Ordon, they are drawing things on the ship. Will it not kill them?” She asked.

Okay, so, bit of a misstep here. While I was frozen in panic, my enemies hadn’t been standing around doing nothing. They were doing what I’d do, which is probably set up traps or an elaborate ward network to track me since whatever detection magic they had been using wasn’t working and I had avoided detection for two days.

I stood and began looking around the store for a bag I that I could stuff with supplies, but Ida’s flashlight only gave off so much light. I glanced at the—what do you call someone from Interpol? Officer? Agent? I glanced at Ida as I lifted my hand and arranged a spellform in my mind.

“Ljós,” I said. A small flame appeared above my hand, about two inches tall. It looked like a candle flame but gave off better light.

Her eyes widened and she shot to her feet, her hand flinching toward her gun. “First things first,” I said, gesturing at the flame that was now hovering over my right shoulder. “Magic is real. So when I say crazy shit that sounds magical, I’m probably being legit.”

“Probably?” She asked.

“Secondly,” I said as I moved about the small shop. Ah, I found a few knapsacks. Probably for people to carry home an excess for souvenirs. I grabbed one and started shoving as many water bottles and snacks as could fit. “Aside from being prisoners to pirates, I’m pretty sure the passengers are safe… ish. I think the things you saw being drawn are meant to either flush me out or pinpoint my position.”

“...Probably,” I said after a beat.

“Probably,” Ida repeated, deadpan.

“I’ll need to look at them to be sure,” I said as I forced the zipper shut on the bag.

“Wait,” she said, holding her hand up as I went to the door. “I still need your help.”

Oh, we’re back to that, are we? This time, the request didn’t seem so ludicrous. “What kind?”

She had been watching my face, waiting for me to go into another meltdown, probably. She took a relieved breath at my calm response. “They have done something to me, or to any communication equipment I use—I cannot call home. My superiors probably think I’m dead like my partners.”

“What have you tried?” I asked, curious.

“I try to leave!” She said in a hiss. “Multiple times! But I cannot. I try to use radio equipment at night, but no one answers and I hear nothing. Burner mobile phones I have been given only call the numbers programmed into them. Payphones do not work—“

“Payphones?” I asked, bewildered. “At sea?”

“We are not always at sea,” she said. “This is a recent thing. I joined the crew while they were working out of Nantes. Our job was to find out how they were moving from country to country without being detected—if I survive this I will have to tell my superiors magic exists.” She rubbed her face with the heels of her hands. “Merde.”

“Sounds like you’re under some sort of mental compulsion,” I said. “But!” I continued quickly before she could act on the sudden hope I saw in her eyes. “I’d need a safe space and some tools in order to check what kind and if I can counter it. I’m far from an expert at this shit. I’m all self-taught.

“From what you described, though,” I said, scratching my chin idly. “I doubt that whatever mojo they used on you was specific to you, otherwise it’d be tailored to alter your willingness too.”

“Willingness?” She asked.

I nodded, giving one final look to the store. I saw a package of markers and snatched them up. They were cheap Crayola markers but any port in a storm. “Yeah, you obviously want to leave or are trying to contact people who could extract you. If I were to tailor something specific to a reluctant crew member, I’d make it so they didn’t want to leave. Without more to go on, I’d say this has the feel of a generalized spell affecting the whole crew, to keep deserters or betrayal to a minimum.”

I turned to her and shrugged. “Seems like a piraty thing to do.”

Her expression was thoughtful. “But before I can help you,” I continued, stepping closer to her. “I need to make sure they aren’t going to track me down and sell me off to the highest bidder. Are one of these wards—the drawings they made, can you get me to one unseen?”

She made a disgusted face. “Probably. It will mean talking to the crew.”

“Will that be a problem?” I asked.

“Probably not,” she admitted. “They just take anything other that outright hostility as a plea for a hot fuck in the closet. This is the longest conversation I’ve had without someone making a pass at me in two years.”

Yikes.

She crossed to the door, turning off her flashlight. She turned back to me, giving the fire over my shoulder a significant look. I broke the spellform with a thought and it winked out.

She waited by the door for a good while, probably waiting for her night vision to come back. My own enhanced eyes had already adjusted to the near dark, and with nothing else to do I checked under my shirt at the spell I had pasted there.

I couldn’t see much, but what I could see didn’t look good. The skin around the vellum was inflamed, full of tiny sores that were breaking here and there and leaking a crusty plasma that coated the inside of my shirt. I needed a place to work to replace these spells with ones that weren’t killing my skin.

Finally, Ida cracked the door open, looked right and left, then motioned me forward.

Time to go look at some pirate magic.