Treasure of the Jaguar Warrior - Mystery of the Mayan Calendar Read online

  “Close the cabinet,” he said weakly.

  She quickly shut the doors. The key fell to the floor as she did.

  His image became stronger immediately, but the expression on his face was one of torment. She recognized pain even with his eyes shut. She immediately felt remorse for her thoughtless deed. “I’m so sorry.” She looked back at the curio. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “I know,” he said softly.

  His ghostly color was slowly returning to his face. . . . Which was odd, she thought as she tried to assess his vitals. She pressed her hand into him and his eyes flew open. She jumped back. “Sorry.”

  They both stayed on the floor for a while; the only sound she could hear was her own heartbeat and uneven breathing. She put a shaking hand up to her forehead.

  “S’il te plaît, ne me quitte pas,” he whispered softly.

  Two years of forgotten French classes came back to her. “I won’t leave you,” she said softly, setting her hand over . . . through his. “I’m right here.” She sat there, staring up at the curio. What the hell had just happened? She looked over at the light coming through the amber liquid in the brandy snifter on the coffee table and then at the skeleton key on the floor beside her. The irony of that wasn’t lost on her as she looked back to her ghostly pirate. . . . He was gone.

  “Jacques?” She sat up, patting the floor where he used to be. “Jacques!” she yelled.

  She picked the key up and studied it. It was old. She looked back up at the cabinet, then stood and locked it back up. Whatever had done that to Jacques wasn’t going to pop out again if she could help it.

  Chapter 5

  “So much for a relaxing bubble bath,” she said as she wiped the steam from the shower off of the mirror. She heard a noise from the bedroom and ran from the bathroom to see. “Jacques?” Porky Pig’s time flashed across his belly, but other than that all was quiet.

  Jessie returned to the bathroom to try to run a comb through her hair. “Half a bottle of cream rinse and there are still snarls,” she grumbled. What had she been thinking? “One day,” she said to herself in the mirror. “You are going to have to stop letting people walk all over you! Even if they are nice, muffin baking, blue-haired, old ladies.”

  “Oui, but what of the little devil doggie?” Jacquess voice said from behind her.

  “There you are!” she shouted for joy and turned to embrace him. She stopped before she actually walked through him.

  “Ah, so you did miss me.” He gave her a rakish grin.

  She leveled her gaze on him in warning. “You’d better not have done that on purpose to manipulate me!” She took a deep breath. “That is the lousiest thing I’ve—”

  “Sh-shhh.” He came close, fingering a wet strand of hair. “I did not.”

  She stood before him. “I’m just so thankful that you’re all right.” She sighed. “I thought nothing could hurt you.”

  “Ah, well, no one is perfect.” He smiled. “Have I lost my super hero status?”

  “Either that or we’ve found Superman’s Kryptonite,” she replied and watched as he lost his smile. “That’s it, isn’t it?” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Ah,” she gasped. “There is something in that curio.”

  “Non.” He shook his head.

  She knew two things immediately: one, Jacques was a terrible liar, and two, there was definitely something in that cabinet. “That’s why you didn’t want me to have the key.” He looked slightly chagrined. “You should have warned me.”

  “So you could cast me to oblivion at will?” He lifted a brow questioningly.

  “How could you ask that?” she asked.

  “You are right.” He smiled. “I see now that you would not do so, but before you looked quite capable of it.”

  “Before?” Jessie sighed, sitting down on the toilet. “I don’t wish to argue anymore.” She chuckled to herself. “Your presence here threw me a curve ball. I was just so overwhelmed with everything.” She looked over at him. “I don’t argue. Really, I don’t. Not even with my ex. I think you may be the only person on the planet that can get under my skin.”

  “It’s a ghost thing,” he said, making her smile. “Ah, see. We can start anew, oui?”

  “Yes, we can.” She nodded happily.

  “I rather like the new pajamas.” He grinned wickedly at the pink towel she had wrapped around her and then laughed at her disgruntled expression. “Ah, well, you can’t win them all.”

  Jessie grabbed some loose sweat pants and an oversized T-shirt and donned them while still wearing the towel. She smiled triumphantly over the achievement.

  “You know how to rob a man of his entertainment.” He sighed.

  “And I was thinking that we are in need of some house rules,” Jessie stated with nod.

  “Rules,” he spat. “I’m a pirate.”

  “Pirate or not, this is now my official domain, and you will not enter unless I invite you.”

  “Did I not knock earlier when there was an intruder?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She nodded.

  “And earlier were you not calling my name?”

  “Yes.” She smiled.

  “So what is the problème?” He gestured with his hands.

  “I just need to know that when I am in the bathroom I will not be visited by you. A girl needs her privacy.”

  “Ah, I see.” He nodded sagely. “What of me? Am I allowed this privilège as well?”

  She lifted a brow and considered him. . . . He was up to something. She could smell it! “Perhaps.”

  “Non! This is not acceptable.” He walked out into the bedroom and dramatically turned. “I believe ghosts should have equal rights.”

  She giggled. “Agreed.”

  “Ah, that was easy.”

  Jessie shook her head. “And I think you watch too much television.” She walked into the bedroom. “So what is your ten yards?”

  “Qu’est-ce?” He looked truly baffled.

  “What is your personal space?” Jessie translated her earlier remark. “Your ten yards?”

  “Ah, I see,” he said, standing in such a way that it looked like he was prepared for a fight. “The curio.”

  She shrugged. “Okay.”

  “O-kay?” he said slowly. “That’s it?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Jessie answered as she threw back the coverlet on the bed.

  “You are not curious?”

  “Nope.” Jessie said as she fluffed a pillow. “Anything else?”

  “I—the key,” Jacques said. “The key is mine. Where is it?”

  “I hid it.” Jessie picked up the sack of books from the floor and placed them on the bed.

  “You hid it?” He narrowed his eyes. “I knew there was a catch.”

  “There is no catch.” She shook her head in wonder at his reaction.

  “Then where is it?” Jacques asked, looking quite concerned until she pulled it from the sack and held it out.

  “I couldn’t very well leave it in the living room, and putting it back seemed dangerous with Jonathan looking through the pantry as he was.” She looked up to see him grinning. “What?”

  “You believe me about him.” He smiled widely.

  “It seems unlikely that a man who looks like that wouldn’t have had a date all through high-school,” Jessie acknowledged his earlier remarks. “More likely he was the football hero . . . complete with trophies and a jacket.”

  “Oui, he was.” Jacques nodded. “And for your information I watch mostly sports. It is your aunt who loves the cartoons.”

  “Cartoons, huh?” Jessie grinned. “So where do you want this?” she asked him. It wasn’t as if he could tuck it into his pocket, but that is what happened . . . until he stepped away, leaving the key on the floor where he had been standing.

  “Would you like me to put this someplace?” Jessie asked, picking it up.

  He actually checked his pocket before sighing. Walking toward the nightstand, he pointed at the alarm clock.

>   “You want Porky Pig to stand guard over your cherished key?” Jessie asked, looking at the clock.

  “There is a compartment in the back where the cord is kept when not in use.”

  Jessie picked it up and examined it. “Sweet!” she said as she opened the plastic cover on the bottom, revealing a space large enough to hold the key. Placing the key inside, she set it back on the dresser and stood back to look at it. “How’s that?”

  “It’s good, oui?”

  “No one would ever guess what the innocent looking porker is hiding,” Jessie said, using her best Bullwinkle’s nemesis, Natasha’s voice.

  “You did that well, my little liebchen,” Jacques said, trying for Boris. At her look he said, “no?”

  “No.” Jessie laughed.

  “Fraulein?”

  “Definitely not.” Jessie shook her head in scorn.

  “Ma chère it is then.” He grinned wickedly at her.

  She supposed there were worse things than having a drop dead, emphasis on the dead, fantasy pirate call you, his love. She watched as he settled himself on her bed. “Jacques?” she said, unable to quell her curiosity.

  “Hmm?” He looked at her as she sat on the end of the bed.

  “What is in that curio?”

  “Other than the brandy?” he teased her, “I’m not sure. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure it is the cabinet that does it.”

  “Pulls you away?”

  He nodded then sighed. “There is something beyond it.” His eyes looked distant as he spoke. “A place that is void of anything.” He looked back at her, his eyes filled with both fear and something akin to what she’d seen in the eyes of someone who has accepted their fate. Like someone with a fatal illness, although it wasn’t their choice, they still fight it. “It is as though I’ve been cast in stone.”

  “Does it hurt?” Jessie wrinkled her forehead in empathy.

  “The pain I think comes from fighting the energy that is pulling me there.” He smiled at her concern for him. “It took me years to learn how to escape it.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “It was in my dreams that I found the key.”

  “Your dreams?” Jessie asked skeptically.

  “Ah—I see you do not believe me.” He laughed. “Dreams are more powerful than you can imagine. I existed there for years before I learned how to harness that part of my mind. And now, Voilà, I am here.”

  “Are you?” she asked, looking at his vaporous image.

  “Oui!” Jacques nodded. “I am, because I believe it to be.”

  “Now I know you’ve been watching too much TV.” She chuckled.

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” he scoffed.

  “I have faith,” Jessie said.

  “And so do I,” Jacques said. “That is my secret.” He jumped up rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Tell me, what treasures did you find for me at the second hand porno store?”

  “You just had to remind me about that, didn’t you?” Jessie smiled as she revealed Betty Boop, leaving Jacques to poke around curiously in the package.

  “You know curiosity killed the cat,” Jessie warned.

  “You may be right.” Jacques grimaced as he levitated a book entitled 101 Crock Pot Delights over the bed. “Are you hoping to join me soon?”

  “It was a parting gift,” Jessie defended.

  “Steer clear of it,” he warned, tossing it.

  “Hey, I can cook, thank you,” Jessie said with a slight edge of annoyance to her voice.

  The book bounced on the bed as another one lifted into the air from the sack, this one on the afterlife. “No, no, no,” he tsked, throwing it to the side as he pulled up another which soon followed. “How disappointing,” he muttered.

  “What?” Jessie asked as she gathered up her books.

  “I figured after the fuss you made that perhaps you had picked up something, shall we say, more interesting, risqué even.” He shook his head with regret.

  “This is interesting.” Jessie picked up one book that had a tunnel with white light coming out of it. “Don’t you want to find your way into the light?”

  “Non.”

  “No?” Jessie asked. “Why not? You could be reunited with your loved ones. Your mother?”

  “Now you are just trying to scare me.” Jacques laughed as he settled himself to rest on the other side of the bed.

  “Stop it,” Jessie said as she climbed in next to him, pulling up the cover and gathering up the books on her lap. “Maybe that is why you are still here?”

  “Because you think I’m scared?” He snorted. “My mother forcibly married me off to a troll.” He shook with distaste.

  “You were married?” She didn’t know why, but the information surprised her.

  “Oui!” He stated emphatically. “Why else do you think I left my home to become a pirate?” He laughed at the joke while she frowned. “What? We have something in common. No?”

  “Yes,” she sighed. Tucking a stray curl behind her ear, she faced him. “Do you want to be stuck here like this?”

  “It has its days,” Jacques said, grinning over at her.

  “This is serious.”

  “Augh,” Jacques let out a long suffering sigh. “We tried.”

  “We?”

  “Your Aunt Katie and I,” Jacques explained. “She read all those books, but nothing helped.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Non.” He shook his head sadly.

  “Well, I’m going to read them.” Jessie put her reading glasses on and opened the book.

  “Suit yourself.” He gave her a bored look. “I can’t believe that you would want to spend time in pursuit of this when the treasure to El Dorado does not even make you curious.”

  “What?” Jessie glanced up. “Did you say El Dorado?”

  “Ah, see?” he cried triumphantly. “You are curious!”

  “You never said anything about the fabled treasure of El Dorado.”

  “It is not a fable,” Jacques said with a note of absolute knowing and pride. “I found it.”

  Chapter 6

  “You’re telling me that you know where the golden city of the Incas is?”

  “Oui.” He nodded.

  “Hmm.” She made the little noise before turning back to her book and reading.

  “What do you mean, hmm?” he asked, somewhat surprised. “You are not intrigued?”

  “Actually, I think they found it already,” Jessie said, not bothering to turn her head.

  “What?” Jacques flew up from his resting spot in a pique. “No!”

  Jessie looked up over her glasses at him. “I’m fairly certain I watched a documentary on it.”

  “Non!” He placed his hands on his hips. “Next you will tell me that they have found Atlantis.”

  Jessie couldn’t help but find him entertaining. Watching him standing as he was on the bed in that pose, she could well imagine him sailing a ship, looking stoically out at the distant horizon. She couldn’t keep the corners of her mouth from lifting as she nodded. “They have.”

  “You tease!” He pointed accusingly at her.

  “No.” Jessie started to laugh. “Honest.” She tried to do the girl-scout thing. When he threw up his arm and struck another pose, this time one of pained silence as he looked away, she started to laugh. “They found Atlantis off the coast of Spain. I watched another documentary on it.”

  His sigh of disgust only earned him yet another bout of laughter.

  “Whoa!” Jessie said, gripping the sheets as the bed levitated several feet off the bed.

  “Okay, okay.” She sat up.

  “Do you give up?” Jacques stood above her.

  “Uncle, Uncle,” Jessie cried with laughter.

  The bed hit the floor with a jolt that threatened to bounce her off onto the floor. “I bet your fun at Disney Land.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said glumly.

  Jessie sobered immediately. “I think we should place that o
ne on the bucket list.”

  “Hmm,” he snorted.

  “What’s so ‘hmm’ about it?” Jessie asked.

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you.”

  Jessie moved to her knees. “Tell me what?”

  “Non.” He shook his head. “It’s a bad idea.”

  “You’re seriously not going to tell me?”

  She looked crestfallen.

  “It is,” he started then stopped.

  “Yes?” she encouraged.

  As though it was his greatest shame he confessed, “I am tied to this place.”

  “What do you mean tied?” Jessie asked. “I saw you in the library.”

  “That is just it, yes?” Jacques said. “This place.” He threw his arms out in a circle. “I cannot leave this town.”

  “Really?” Jessie asked in wonder.

  “Oui!” He turned away deeply troubled and walked to the window. “I have tried. Something keeps me here.”

  “Is that normal?” Jessie asked.

  “Normal?” He raised a brow. “Normal has a different meaning to me than I think it does to you.”

  “I meant for you.” Jessie sat back and patted the bed beside her. “Maybe we can at least discover what is normal for you.” She picked up the book and patted the bed once again. “I don’t bite.”

  “More’s the shame,” he sighed as he reluctantly returned.

  “Maybe we can even figure out why the curio downstairs has such an effect on you.”

  “So you are interested in my treasure!” he accused again.

  Jessie sighed. “I am not interested in pursuing your treasure, Jacques.”

  “Why is that?” Jacques asked suspiciously.

  “Well, for one, it’s already been found.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I’ll prove it then,” she said, looking down into the book she’d opened earlier. The Muisca Indians would coat the Zippa in gold. He was their head chief to be,” she looked up briefly before resuming, “thus he became the guilded one, or El Dorado.

  “This means nothing that is a man, not a place,” Jacques pointed out. “And how does the crock pot cook know this?”

  “I googled it.” Jessie smiled, lifting her cellphone from within the pages of the book she’d supposedly been reading.