A Trail of Echoes(11)

“What are you suggesting exactly?” I asked.

“You’ve never visited New Zealand, have you?”

My pulse quickened in excitement just at the thought. “No.”

“Then how about we go on a little tour, stopping by some of the most remote islands in the Pacific Ocean, and make our destination New Zealand?” His brown eyes warmed as he watched my reaction. “This boat is something that I’ve been working on. Ibrahim would help me to equip it with an exceptionally powerful engine. If it all comes out right, we could stay in the boat by day and at night explore the land.”

I couldn’t nod more enthusiastically, but there were some things that bothered me about the plan.

He seemed to read my mind and answered my first objection before I even asked it. “Yes, we could just take a submarine, and that way we’d be hidden away from the sun… But we will be spending all the daylight hours on the boat, and we will likely be gone for weeks—there’s only so long you can feel comfortable trapped within the hull of a submarine. We’d both be craving the open sea air.”

My stomach churned a little. “But what about the hunters?”

“We’ll ask Corrine to place a spell over the boat.”

“That’s while we are at sea, but what about night time, when we reach land?”

“Rose, the places I have in mind to take you to… I doubt we will meet any hunters there. We’ll stick to the remote areas and avoid people.”

I paused, still uncertain. But the confidence in his expression soon convinced me.

“So”—he moved the plan of the boat aside and leaned in closer to me, his mouth a few inches away from mine—“what do you say, Mrs. Achilles?”

He placed his hands on either side of my hips, brushing gently against me with his thumbs.

A smile spread across my face. Caleb knew how to melt me.

“Sail away with me, Captain.”





Chapter 8: Rose





When I broke the news to my parents about our plan for a honeymoon, they both voiced worries similar to mine about Caleb being a vampire and the threat of the hunters. I let Caleb reassure them in the same way that he had done with me. My father was especially concerned about the hunters because he had been keeping watch on them near the shore. Caleb’s words seemed to satisfy my parents for the most part, although my father still seemed tense. I didn’t like him to be worried, but I couldn’t help but feel warmed on witnessing how genuinely he cared about Caleb’s safety. Not so long ago, my father had believed him to be a traitor and tried to kill him.

Now that Caleb and I had made this plan, we didn’t want to delay. Caleb finished the boat quickly with the help of Ibrahim, while I took on the task of packing everything I could think of that we might need. Caleb wasn’t sure how long it might take us to get to New Zealand, and of course it depended on so many things—how long we decided to spend on each island we stopped at, how rough the weather was, whether we just got lost in each other’s eyes in the middle of the ocean for a few days…

The night of our planned departure soon arrived. My parents came early that evening to the cabin, and helped us carry all our baggage to the boat.

When I arrived at the end of the jetty, it was the first time that I had seen the boat completed. It was gorgeous. The covering over the wide deck Caleb had created to give shelter from the sun was made of a dark teak wood, and there was a long sofa in the center with a walnut coffee table, directly in front of the small control room. Beneath the deck were all the amenities we might need—a bedroom with a large window of tinted glass that gave a stunning view of the ocean, an en suite bathroom, a small living room and a storage room equipped with enough supplies to last a month in case of an emergency.

Corrine, Ibrahim, my grandfather, Vivienne and Xavier were waiting for us on the deck. I hugged them each one by one.

“The invisibility and protective spells we’ve placed over the boat will come into play as soon as you leave The Shade’s boundary,” Ibrahim said.

“You two be careful,” Vivienne murmured, worry in her eyes.

“We will,” Caleb said, making his way with a large suitcase toward the staircase leading down to the lower deck.

My parents and I followed him, carrying all the luggage downstairs before returning to say one final goodbye. My mother pulled me close and kissed my cheek.

“Enjoy yourself, sweetheart,” she said, squeezing me tight. “And please… try to stay out of trouble.”

“We won’t be going anywhere where there’s trouble.” I chuckled, kissing her back.

I drew away from my mother and wrapped my arms around my father. His hug lifted my feet off the ground.