“Morgan.” Sirius acknowledged the captain.

  “Sirius James,” she replied in equal greeting. Then her eyes shifted to Amanda and with the raise of her eyebrows she asked, “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Amanda.”

  Morgan took her time unabashedly assessing Amanda in full, the way one might judge a racehorse. When she’d finally finished her assessment and turned back toward Sirius, Amanda thought she almost looked a little disappointed. Amanda wasn’t sure if she should be insulted by that or not.

  “Well, why don’t we step into my quarters. We have some things to discuss.”

  Sirius gave a subtle bow of the head and made a move to follow Morgan.

  But Morgan paused after half a turn and sent her gaze questioningly in Amanda’s direction.

  Sirius glanced behind him. “She can join us. I don’t mind.”

  Morgan gave a slight ‘harrumph’ that sounded almost like a laugh and Amanda caught a look of amusement before she turned to lead them toward her quarters.

  Morgan’s room was far more fitting for a captain than Sirius’s. She’d obviously had no quarrels with taking the largest one for herself or with decorating it with lavish looking but mismatched furniture. Velvet chairs and luxurious looking curtains adorned the room. On several wooden dressers and desks lay gold necklaces, diamond encrusted knives, and other jewels. A double four-poster bed stood off to the side in one corner. A large table occupied the centre of the room. Several maps lay scattered across it. Just past it, at the end of the room, situated in front of a large window that looked out over the rear of the ship, was a desk.

  Morgan grabbed two different-looking chairs and set them down in front of the desk, then she placed herself in the chair on the other side, leaned back comfortably and swung her boots up so she could rest her feet temporarily on the desk. From there, she watched them take their own seats. Once they were seated she swung her feet back down and leaned forward over the desk with a smile.

  “So, I hear you’ve been kicked off your own ship?” She grinned.

  Amanda glanced at Sirius and noticed his eyebrows pull together and his lips curve down slightly. He sighed and then he started, “Shiv-”

  Morgan interrupted. “Shiv was the one who contacted me.”

  Amanda watched Sirius relax and sit up slightly but the knot between his eyes didn’t disappear.

  She looked to Morgan. The woman looked to be taking great satisfaction in the situation. Morgan continued. “He sent a message that said he’d dropped you and some wench”—She paused briefly to look at Amanda before continuing—“off at smugglers cove while he completed a delivery. Said if I picked you up and took you to meet them at Scarlett then you’d help me out with whatever I needed.”

  Sirius’s eyes narrowed. “Did he?”

  “Shiv can’t make deals on behalf of Sirius,” Amanda butted in.

  Morgan studied her curiously and then to Sirius she asked, “Where did you pick her up?”

  Sirius grunted. “Little Rock.”

  Morgan’s whole expression suddenly took on a whole different look of surprise. Turning and speaking directly to Amanda she said, “From Little Rock? Really? What’s your last name?”

  “Amanda Byrns,” Sirius answered for her.

  Morgan frowned in thought. “Like the poker player? Is he a relative?” She asked a moment later, directing her question at Amanda again.

  Amanda was glad she didn’t say ‘the drunk.’

  “Morgan’s from Little Rock too,” Sirius explained.

  “Small world,” Amanda murmured as she studied Morgan in more detail. A little louder she replied, “He’s my dad. What’s your last name?”

  Morgan gave a secretive smile. “Just Morgan. Do you play? Are you as good as I hear he is?”

  “She’s fleeced half my crew,” Sirius told her.

  “Really?” Morgan sat back, looking almost impressed. “I suppose I’ll have to warn my boys. Or perhaps I won’t. That could be fun to watch.” She gave a devious smile. “So,” she said, turning back to Sirius, "the plan is to drop you off at Scarlett, where Shiv has promised full control back of your crew and ship-”

  “That depends on what the men want,” Sirius asserted.

  Morgan rolled her eyes and gave a sigh as if she couldn’t understand Sirius’s point of view at all. “Whatever happens once I get you to Scarlett is not my problem.” She waved a hand at him. “That’s between you an your crew. The deal is, I get you, and your pretty little side piece to Scarlett and in return you help me dive a wreck we’re currently on our way to.”

  Sirius shook his head. “I need to get to back the The Black Dog as soon as possible. This ship is fast enough that if we go directly there right now, we might just make it in time. You get me to my ship as fast as we can and then I’ll help you with scavenging the wreck afterward.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Morgan also shook her head. Her wavy brown strands of hair bounced almost like stretched out curls. “No can do. That wreck is fresh news and carrying good treasure. Only a few people know about it at the moment but it won’t stay like that for long. We need to get to her and extract her contents before we get too much competition. I’d like to avoid a bloodbath this time if possible.”

  Sirius considered her words for a moment. Then, looking back up he asked, “How did Shiv contact you?”

  Silence fell between them. Amanda could feel a sudden tenseness in the room. Morgan appeared to be licking her teeth behind closed jaws.

  “Morgan,” Sirius pressed. “Do you have some kind of arrangement with him?”

  Still she didn’t seem inclined to tell him. In fact she looked like she’d just been caught in a lie.

  Sirius sighed and glanced down to his boots and then back up at Morgan. “Morgan, I don’t care. I just need to know if you have a way to contact him. I have a message to send and it’s important that it gets to him as soon as possible.”

  She furrowed her brows together and then she sighed. “Sometimes if he gets information that you’re not using, say the location of a wreck or a particularly pricey shipment that you’ve turned down, he gives me the heads up. If it pans out into something good, he gets a cut.”

  She stood and walked over to a nearby dresser. She pulled open the second highest drawer. It was filled with papers rather than clothes. She pulled a particularly thick and ancient looking piece of parchment out and brought it back to the main desk. She laid it down between them. “It only works one way. He has a similar sheet, a book actually, on his end. Whatever he writes appears on this sheet exactly as it was written on the other. The message lasts up to 24 hours and after that the ink fades leaving room for new messages.”

  “Only one way?” Sirius confirmed with a soft sigh.

  Morgan nodded. “What’s so important that you need to contact him this quickly?”

  It was Sirius’s turn to fall silent.

  Amanda studied him. It was for the dragons wasn’t it? He wanted to tell Shiv what they needed to survive. Evidently, he didn’t want to alert Morgan to the fact that they had been carrying dragon eggs. Either that or, there was something else she didn’t know about.

  Instead of answering Sirius asked his own question. “Do you have a shapeshifter on board?”

  Morgan gave him a puzzled look.

  “Preferably a good one. One who could fly across the ocean and deliver a message.”

  She considered it. “Scarlett’s a few days away.”

  “No more than two if he flies fast. You’ve got more shapeshifters than most ships.”

  Morgan’s lips curled up slightly. “And most of them werewolves. Werewolves don’t fly.”

  “What about Leo?”

  “Mmm, maybe.” she sucked in a breath and rotated her neck a few times to stretch it. Then she sighed. “That might be pushing it even for him. Wait here.” She got up form the desk and went to the door. She stuck her head out and to someone outside the door she barked, “Grab Leo for me will you?”

  While they waited for Leo, Morgan eyed Amanda. “What else are you good at other than poker? Can you cook? Can you fight?”

  “She’s a firestarter,” Sirius answered. “A good one.”

  Amanda’s head snapped to look at him. Should he really be revealing that piece of information? Especially given how they got kicked of the last ship. But then, if what Morgan had said was true then Sirius had been right about Shiv just wanting to complete the sale of the pegasus without them, or Amanda specifically, getting in the way. Right?

  She eyed Morgan. At first the woman was frowning but a moment later a wry smile split across her face and she asked, “How good?”

  “Good enough that she could burn your clothes off you without burning your skin,” Sirius said with confidence, cleanly and clearly. It wasn’t a boast, just a statement.

  Morgan looked surprised. She studied Sirius. Then she chuckled. “I don’t believe you but fine whatever. You better hope that’s not useful though. You know I hate magic fights.”

  “Morgan’s a werewolf,” Sirius said with a glance at Amanda.

  “Hmm.” Morgan pursed her lips. She didn’t appear overwhelmingly happy that he’d shared that bit of information.

  “From one of the packs in Little Rock?”

  Morgan narrowed her eyes but she answered. “From one north of Little Rock.”

  “Do you know Wolf… uh… Wilfred I mean. He’s a werewolf but he calls himself Wolf as a name…” she trailed off, worried she was somehow being very offensive.

  Morgan narrowed her eyes even more, this time in curiosity. “You mean the one who thinks he’s a witch?”

  Amanda nodded. “He is very interested in magic, yes. So you do know him.”

  “Hmm.” Morgan frowned. “I’ve heard of him. I don’t know him. He’s kind of unusual in our society. Not a normal werewolf.”

  “It’s not normal for a werewolf to sail on a ship either, is it?” Amanda replied evenly.

  Morgan smirked and snorted. “It’s not. But I do what I want.”

  The pair eyed each other up, neither wanting to be the first to look away. They were only interrupted by the opening of the door.

  Leo, the younger man from the beach, entered the room. “You called for me boss?” His tone was casual, laid back.

  Morgan’s gaze traced him from feet to head, taking her time. Amanda wasn’t sure if she was admiring him or judging him or just trying to intimidate him. The woman did seem to like causing discomfort and she seemed almost to appreciate those who held their ground against her, at least up to a point. She obviously enjoyed holding power over people. Amanda couldn’t decide if she liked Morgan or not yet but she did get the impression that talking to the woman was a bit like walking through a mine field. Still, she seemed unbothered by Leo’s relaxed attitude.

  “I have a task for you,” she told him. “I need you to deliver a message to The Black Dog. To the quartermaster, Shiv specifically. They’re headed for Scarlett. They might even be there by the time you catch up to them. Think you can do that?”

  Leo looked momentarily taken aback. He glanced toward the maps on the table in the centre of the room. “That’s a long way.”

  “If you do an albatross you can probably glide most of the way,” Sirius told him.

  Amanda studied Leo. She had no idea how good a shapeshifter he was but she knew that any shift for more than a few hours usually took a lot of skill. There were some shapeshifters who could go months, and even years, in the body of an animal, but they weren’t the majority. And to keep one’s own mind for all that time was a separate skill of its own. Days wasn’t uncommon but nor was it the norm.

  Leo shook his head. “Oh, I wouldn’t fly. I’d swim. A sailfish is a lot faster. Sure, you get less of a view of what’s happening but fish have their own forms of communication and once you’ve cracked that getting information out of them’s not so bad.”

  Sirius nodded. “Of course. I didn’t even think of swimming.”

  The others had initially turned their chairs to face Leo but soon they were all gathered around the map table as he pointed to certain areas.

  “Two days is pushing it but a sailfish should be able to get there faster than that, assuming you have a pretty reasonable estimate of where they are, and with the right ocean currents”—he swept one finger across a specific section of the map—“I might even be able to break sub eight hours. Yeah, alright, I’m your man.”

  Morgan smiled. In a voice that was almost a purr, she said, “If you do sub eight hours I’ll make sure you’re well rewarded for your efforts.”

  Amanda studied them. Was she flirting with him? Were they lovers? There was definitely some heavy implication in her tone and wording but Amanda wasn’t sure if she was just imagining it.

  Leo smiled and bowed his head slightly. “As always, Captain. So, what’s the message?”