Haunted (Otherworld 5)

"Something like that." I looked at his board. "So where do you conjure up your surf?"

"Over by Tela, near the National Park."

"Is that anywhere near Roatan? That's where we're heading...or trying to."

"Roatan?" His gaze flicked over Kristof and me, then he shrugged. "Whatever floats your boat. Easiest way would be to stick to the coastal route. Eventually you'll come to La Ceiba. That's the gateway to Roatan. Got quite a ways to go. Nice hike, though."

"Great. Thanks."

"No problem. You folks enjoy yourselves over there." He started to leave, then stopped and gave us another once-over. "Just, uh, make sure you change before you get to La Ceiba. They like to keep the place, you know, pure."

After he left, I turned to Kristof.

"Pure?"

He shrugged. "Guess we'll find out."

I certainly wasn't about to catch up to the half-demon surfer and ask, no matter how friendly he'd seemed. I'd landed myself into trouble doing that before. In the ghost world, it's one thing to admit you don't quite know where you're going, but it's another to admit you don't know what to expect when you get there. Opens you up to a whole world of grief.

In my first year, I'd been given the name of a potential contact in Stanton, Texas, and so I'd asked the referrer what to expect there--what the period was. The guy told me Stanton was set in the Old West, and my contact lived in a brothel. Naturally, I showed up in a costume appropriate for the period and the setting, and found myself in a nineteenth-century Carmelite monastery dressed as a whore. Lucky to get my ass out of there without a nice coating of tar and feathers. Oh, but the guy who sent me there had himself a good laugh. In a long and often monotonous afterlife, sometimes that's really all that counts.

I'm sure the scenery was lovely, but it had been ten miles since we'd seen any of it, trudging along in the darkness, under the glow of my light-ball spell. Finally, we saw another glow lighting the night sky.

"That's gotta be La Ceiba, but I think it's too late to get a boat to Roatan."

"Legally, yes. But there are bound to be plenty lying around."

"Good plan." I sniffed the air. "Do you smell that?"

"Wood burning. Campfires, I think."

"A Boy Scout town?"

"I wouldn't bet against it. They have everything else here. Just name your fetish."

I knocked his arm. "It's called an alternate afterlife-style choice, remember? Or did you sleep through that part of orientation?"

Kris snorted. "When you choose to spend your afterlife living in a Southern manor, that's a lifestyle choice. When you spend it playing Confederate soldier or Billy the Kid, it's a fetish."

"Hmmm. I seem to recall a certain someone playing Billy the Kid sixteen years ago."

"It was Pat Garrett," he said. "And one night is not a 'life'-style choice."

"No, it's a fetish."

He slapped me on the rear and growled, "Watch it."

"Hey, I said it was a fetish." I grinned over at him. "Didn't say I objected."

We crested a small rise. Just below, in the glow of moonlight, lay the town of La Ceiba, a ramshackle collection of houses that were little more than huts--and decrepit huts at that. From the town came the raucous laughs, whoops, and catcalls of men trying very hard to have a good time, and downing massive quantities of alcohol to help them find it. The waver of candlelight blazed from the windows of a few of the larger buildings. Wood-fire smoke hung in a blue-gray haze over the town.

"Nineteenth-century frat party?"

Kris shook his head and guided my gaze to the water-front. There, crammed into the small harbor so tight they were double-and triple-parked, were a dozen or more boats. Not just boats, but spectacular wooden galleons, each with a dozen or more sails, and decks that were a veritable jungle of ropes. High atop the masts, flags fluttered in the breeze. From here, they looked like little more than brightly colored scraps of fabric. When I sharpened my sight, I could make out markings and designs--an arm bearing a scabbard, a skeleton raising a toast, several national flags, and on more than half, the ubiquitous skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger.

Pirates.

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