Read Online Other Oceans: Book Two of the Hook & Jill Saga by Andrea Jones - Free Book Online

Smee’s hand.
    “Come along now, Miss Liza.” She preceded him from the room. Smee turned at the door and tipped his head to the lady. “Madam.” Liza heard a smile in his voice.
    As she picked her way down the steps, Liza was happy in a way. She’d get her ring back, her link to her mother. But at what price? Liza looked around her at the sailors on the deck, so big and rough and wild. Servitude, among all these strange people and their raucous voices, their demands. Her demands. The pirate queen.
    And Liza had yet to meet the king. She shuddered to think of him. He must be horrible! Probably scarred and leering, bellowing orders, maybe missing an eye or a leg. Liza still couldn’t remember her mother’s smile, but she knew the mistress was like her, and yet not like her. She felt Mr. Smee’s hand steering her shoulder. Soon it would be her father’s again, the manicured hand for which she had longed while imprisoned, and yet from which she felt oddly free for a time, there in her cage.
    The mistress was like her mother. Could the master be worse than her father?
§ § §
    “I can’t figure her out, Nibs. She’s nothing like Jill or the Indian ladies.” Tom reclined on his hammock, just under his brother’s, at the end of a long line of hammocks and sea chests below decks. Dusty daylight filtered through a porthole behind him. Having swabbed the deck beneath them, the newest sailors aboard the Jolly Roger kept their voices low to avoid disturbing the others at rest, those who guided the ship through the night.
    “Well, that’s it, isn’t it? They’re ladies. She’s just a girl.” Nibs the Knife had chosen the upper bunk, as his wiry frame was most at home high up in a tree, or nowadays, in the rigging. But Tom preferred to plant his ample feet on the ground— with one unusual exception. These young men were new to professional piracy, yet they commanded a talent most people, pirates included, would envy. The men of the Roger knew their secret, but the captain had instructed the ship’s company to keep it quiet.
    These youths could fly. Just a pleasant thought and a twist of the shoulders, and up they’d go, thanks to the magic of fairy dust and a childhood spent on the island of the Neverland with the wonderful boy as their chief. Ironically, it was that boy— Hook’s enemy— whose training made them fit for piracy in the first place. By the time Hook got his claw into Nibs and Tom, they were eager to sign on. The more so upon discovering his ship’s figurehead to be carved in the likeness of their mother, Wendy, now called by her pirate name, Red-Handed Jill. And only her captain and her sons knew for certain that she still took to the air as well. Hook was a wily man. They all trusted his judgment in the matter, and kept mum.
    Tom locked his fingers together behind his head and listened to the creaking of the ship as she flew over the water. He liked her constant chatter. He was beginning to understand it. The ship and her men had a natural connection, but getting to know the girl would be more challenging. “Maybe I don’t need to understand her. Maybe I just want to kiss her again.”
    Nibs sat up and goggled between his dangling feet. “Again? You never! Already?”
    Tom smiled up crookedly, pleased with himself. “Well, I did.”
    “She’s a proper girl! And just kidnapped by pirates.” He smiled. “She slap you?” Nibs tightened the knot of the orange kerchief round his head, always his habit when concentrating. His swarthy countenance lit up as he beamed on his brother.
    “Funny thing, she didn’t! I fully expected her to.”
    Nibs leaned precariously farther, or it would have been precarious, had he not used his secret talent to balance on his perch. “Well?”
    “She just stood there. I got the feeling she expected worse.”
    “Sure, but Jill’s got her pegged for service. Better keep hands off until Jill says go.” Nibs’ smile contorted itself and his real objection