Chapter Thirty-Nine

Hunter stared down at the sketchy-looking wooden ladder in the dark hole in the ground. “You’ve lived here for how long and you didn’t realize you had a trapdoor in the basement?”

Alice shrugged. “Like I told you before, I’ve avoided the basement. It was dirty and full of clutter, and there were weird noises.” She glared at the pirate. “Of course, now we know why there were weird noises.”

Hunter turned to the ghost. “And you’re sure about this?”

“I’ve been haunting the same spot for two hundred years. What do you think?”

“Okay. What do we have to lose?”

Alice groaned. “Haven’t you ever seen a horror movie? You never, ever ask that question just before you go into the dark hole in the ground.”

The pirate drew his sword and bowed to Alice. “You will have me to protect you, fair lady.” With that, he gracefully dropped through the trapdoor to the ground below, not bothering with the ladder, although why the hell Hunter thought a ghost would need a ladder, he didn’t know.

“You’re not afraid of dark, closed spaces, are you?”

Alice shook her head. “No. I’m more afraid of brightly lit closed spaces. Charlie? Do you want to go with us, or do you want to stay here?”

It was a fair question, after the ghost had tried to eviscerate the little guy with his phantom sword. Apparently, pirates were not fans of talking dogs. Charlie had been scared, so he’d transformed into his dragon shape, and then all hell had broken loose. Only Alice screaming that the pirate had better stay away from her dragon or he was never going to see his gold had calmed things down.

Now they were getting ready to climb down into a dark hole in the ground. This evening was getting better and better. And he was worried that Edge’s overly inflated view of his own skills was going to make everybody relax their guard at the worst possible time.

He sighed and climbed down the ladder, then waited at the bottom to help Alice. When she was partway down, he plucked her off the ladder into his arms and kissed her, then kissed her again. “Well, there’s one advantage to this adventure. You in my arms again.”

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him back. “Definitely an advantage.”

“Really? Now? Here?” The pirate tapped his ghostly foot with impatience, and Hunter wanted to punch him in the head. Wasn’t really sure what punching a ghost in the head would do, except make Hunter feel better, but still. The urge was there.

They turned on the flashlights they’d brought and started down the tunnel—because of course it was a tunnel—after the pirate. The place smelled like mold, damp, and rat shit, and was absolutely not where Hunter wanted to be spending his evening.

“Where does this end?” he said.

“It ends with us having my gold, of course.”

“I wasn’t speaking metaphorically,” Hunter gritted out. “I was asking where the tunnel ends.”

“Oh! It ends at a crypt.”

Alice stopped walking so abruptly that Hunter ran into her.

“We’re going to a crypt?”

The pirate nodded.

“We’re going to a crypt, through a tunnel, at night.”

“Yes, as I said.”

Alice clenched her jaw so tightly Hunter was afraid her teeth might shatter.

“If we’re going to a crypt,” she said, “and you know which one it is, why didn’t we just walk through the cemetery and get to it that way?”

“Because then everyone would see what we were doing and try to steal the gold, of course,” the ghost said, speaking with exaggerated patience.

Alice clenched her hands into fists. “I’m going to punch you in the head. I swear, before this is over, I’m going to punch you in the head.”

The ghost pretended not to hear her, but Hunter grinned. “I was just thinking that same thing. Clearly, we were made for each other.”

They walked for what felt like half a mile but was probably considerably less—walking through the pitch black with only flashlights made it seem farther than it was—and encountered a lot of cobwebs, broken pieces of wood, and several rats. Hunter was not a particular fan of rats, plus he had to stop Alice from trying to rescue them.

“They’re rats, Alice. They like it down here. It’s like rat Disneyland.”

“Isn’t Disneyland rat Disneyland?”

“No, it’s mouse Disneyland.”

The pirate made an impatient growling sound. “This is one of the stupidest conversations I’ve ever heard, and I’ve been around for two hundred years.”

Alice pointed a finger at the ghost. “No smack talk out of you, mister. We’re doing you a favor here.”

The pirate rolled his ghostly eyes. “Yes. A favor that will make you rich. Perhaps we can move along?”

Hunter was a fan of that. But he also liked the idea of giving up on the whole idea and going back to the house, because kissing Alice and getting her naked suddenly seemed infinitely more interesting than walking through this underground tunnel, treasure or not.

“Who dug the tunnel?” Alice asked.

The pirate shrugged. “I don’t know. It was used for smuggling.”

“Bane might know. He used to be a smuggler,” Hunter told Alice.

Merveuille stopped and shouted, “Look! There’s the door.” He pointed at another rickety-looking ladder.

Hunter aimed his flashlight at the top of the ladder, and, sure enough, there was another trapdoor.

“I’ll go first this time,” Hunter said. “Unless you want to do the honors?”

The pirate sneered at him. “As you know, I cannot open physical doors.” With that, he floated up to the top of the ladder and through the trapdoor.

The closed trapdoor.

Hunter had to work a little harder.

“What the hell is on top of this trapdoor? A freaking marble sarcophagus?” He really had to strain to get the door open, and that was with vampire strength. But, finally, he heard something screech across the floor above him, and the trapdoor flew open.

“Finally!” The pirate stuck his head in the opening and looked down at them. “What took you so long?”

Hunter and Alice looked at each other. “I really am going to punch him in the head,” Hunter told her.

“I’m not sure it would work, him being a ghost and all. But we could just leave him here and let him suffer.”

The ghost caught on and offered his abject apologies, so they climbed the ladder and entered the dark crypt.

“Would you call this a crypt or a mausoleum?” Alice looked around. “I’m not really sure. Maybe we should look it up—”

“Not now,” the ghost shouted. “We’re finally here!” He pointed at a marble bench on one side of the crypt. “That’s it!”

Hunter looked at the bench and then back at the pirate. “Your treasure is a marble bench? We went through all this for a marble bench?”

The ghost was hopping back and forth with impatience now, the feather in his hat quivering. Hunter was kind of enjoying winding him up, but he noticed that Alice was biting her lip, so he let it go. “Okay, okay. Is there any special way to open this, or do I just rip the lid off or, I guess in this case, rip the seat off?”

“You’re smarter than you look,” the pirate said.

Hunter bared his teeth.

The pirate’s tone was suddenly contrite. “Sorry. If you pull the bench away from the wall, there’s a door in the back.”

Alice shone her flashlight along the bench, then walked to the wall and tried to look at the back of it. “And how did nobody ever find this all this time?”

“You tell me,” said the ghost. “You lived right next door to the cemetery for more than a year, and it never occurred to you to come over and search all the crypts for benches that might secretly contain treasure, right?”

Alice looked thoughtful, but then she nodded. “Okay, I’ll give you that. I guess you’re smarter than you look, too.”

Hunter walked over to the bench and shoved it away from the wall. It weighed a damn ton. Sure enough, though, there was a door in the back. Hunter looked at the ghost—after all, it was his treasure—and the ghost nodded, apparently speechless with excitement.

So Hunter wrenched the door off and then stood back when a gleaming pile of gold and jewels came pouring out onto the concrete floor.

Alice gasped. “Oh my God. It’s an actual pirate’s treasure. Oh wow oh wow oh wow.”

“I know. I have to admit, though, I didn’t really believe him,” Hunter said.

Charlie, who’d been following along quite timidly, suddenly got very excited. His golden eyes gleamed with avarice, and he stretched his wings to their full wingspan.

“Hunter? Do you think all the stories about dragons and their hordes are true?” Alice asked nervously, moving to block Charlie’s path to the treasure.

“He’s a demon,” the ghost pointed out.

“He’s also a dragon,” Alice said.

Hunter looked from the little dragon to the gold and back again. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

“Keep that beast away from my treasure!” Merveuille put his hand on the hilt of his sword, but Alice glared at him, and he backed down. And then a squeaking noise sounded from the open trapdoor.

Alice whirled around. “Oh, no.”

“What is it?”

“It’s Ferret Bueller. He must have unlocked the door from the rescue to my house again and followed us over here.”

The ferret jumped on the dragon’s back and started petting Charlie’s ear. For a minute, Hunter was afraid the little guy was going to become crispy fried ferret, but then he noticed that the dragon enjoyed the attention.

“You are very odd people,” the pirate said.

“Maybe you should be nice to the people who found your treasure for you,” Hunter drawled.

“You didn’t find it, exactly.” The pirate saw the look on Hunter’s face and changed his tune. “I must thank you with all my heart for revealing my treasure at last. Now we need to take it all back to your house and divide it up. I will be in charge of that.”

“Wait just a minute,” Hunter said, but Alice put a hand on his arm.

“No, I think he’s right. It was his treasure, so he knows what is more valuable and what is less. And he’s a gentleman and won’t try to cheat us.”

The ghost might’ve been planning to cheat them right up until that moment, because an expression of pride mixed with dismay was written all over his face. “No, of course I will not cheat,” he mumbled.

“Let’s go get a rolling cart or something to carry this out of here,” Alice suggested, picking up a gold coin. “Wow, I’m looking at it and can still hardly believe it. No matter what, we should get a historian to look at it, too.”

“No!” the pirate shouted.

“You’d be famous,” she said.

“Really?”

Hunter rolled his eyes. Even ghosts wanted their fifteen minutes of fame. “Okay. Let’s go get that cart and do this. I need to reach out to Bane and find out what’s going on.”

“But we can’t just leave it,” the ghost protested. “What if someone steals it, now that it’s out of the bench?”

“Captain. It’s been safe for two hundred years. I think it will be safe for another twenty minutes. And by the way, whose crypt is this?”

The pirate looked at her in surprise. “Mine, of course.”

Alice sighed. “Of course it is. And that’s not creepy at all.”

Just then, the ferret jumped off Charlie’s back, grabbed something in each tiny paw, and raced back to the trapdoor and then fled down the ladder. Charlie started toward the treasure again, but Alice stopped him.

“Charlie, I promise we will give you some treasure. You can guard my share for me until we figure out what to do with it, okay? But for right now, let’s go back and get a cart or bags or something.”

“I will stay and watch over the treasure,” Captain Merveuille said.

“Probably want some time alone with your fond thoughts about all that raiding and pillaging, huh?” Hunter picked up an emerald necklace that had fallen out of the bench and lay askew on top of some gold coins. “You know, I’d be happy to take just this one piece for my share.” He turned to Alice and held it against the creamy skin of her neck. “It’s the exact shade of your eyes.”

She smiled at him, and for a moment he forgot where they were. What they were doing.

Maybe even his name.

“You have the most beautiful smile in the world,” he murmured, touching her cheek. He looked back at the pirate. “You okay if I take this?”

For once, the pirate was gallant. “As you say, it will be beautiful with the lady’s eyes. Please take it as my gift.”

“Thank you both,” Alice said, still smiling. “But I’d look pretty silly cleaning out kennels wearing an emerald necklace. How about we go get that cart and come back and load up the captain’s treasure? And then we need to call two restaurant owners who are going to be very surprised.”

With one last, longing glance at the treasure, Charlie turned back toward the trapdoor, and everyone but the ghost trooped back through the tunnel to the house. Hunter boosted Alice up, letting her go first, and he heard a little squeaking sound when she climbed out.

Hunter laughed. “Did you step on Ferret Bueller?”

When he climbed out of the trapdoor and turned around, two men were pointing guns at him, and one of them had his hand wrapped around Alice’s throat.