Hello, Friends! Here is the latest chapter of Jack's adventure in modern Las Vegas! A big thank you to all who have read and reviewed this story…I hope you like it!

As usual, I do not own any of the characters from Disney's POTC; just the plot line and the characters I make up in my sad, sick widdle brain.

Chapter 19: Introductions and Speculations

Jack had at first been quite alarmed when the woman had verbally attacked him after surprising him in the bedroom, but when Nicodemus eagerly approached her, he realized that if the dog trusted her, she could be trusted by him as well. When she swayed weakly, he hurried to help the obviously exhausted woman to the room's only chair. Cocking his head and looking at her suspiciously, he watched the woman as she closed her eyes and sank into the chair, looking positively miserable.

"You seem somewhat familiar……have I threatened you before?"

She couldn't hold back a chuckle as he spoke the familiar words, and her weary eyes reflected her amusement as she replied. "No, but we've met under very intimate circumstances, Jack m'lad….I'm one of only a handful of people in this dimension who have seen your tattoo'd arse up close and personal, but that's neither here nor there. I'm Bethany, your dresser from the museum, not that that matters much. Peacock, we have a serious situation on our hands----our darling girl has gotten herself snatched by that bastard boss of ours."

Jack had still been trying to process the fact that the woman before him knew what he looked like in the nude, but her knowledge of Jo snapped him back to the present. "How do you know all this?" He grated out, suddenly looking like the fierce pirate captain she knew from the screen.

Bethany sighed. "Because I was here when she was taken, you dolt! Why else do you think I look like death warmed over?" She paused momentarily to run a hand over her face in a tired gesture. "I overheard the men who were assigned to dispose of me mention that the others were taking her to the rendezvous point to hand her over to him. Guess they didn't think it mattered since they injected enough drugs into me to kill a normal man twice over. Fortunately" she grinned, "I'm not normal." Jack noticed a strange glow in her light eyes, and realized that the being beside him was not your average human. "It took me a few minutes, but I managed that poison out of my system. Unfortunately, by that time they were long gone, and I've no idea where they have taken Jo."

"Finding Jo isn't our only worry." Jack's voice was unusually somber as he handed her the letter. "There's more to this situation than meets the eye, Bethany….it seems that I'm not the only visitor to this realm from my own."

Bethany quickly read the note and gasped as she recognized the signature at the bottom. "How is this possible?" She murmured, and then looked up at Jack before asking softly. "Give me a moment, will you?" Jack nodded and turned away, seeing her close her eyes and murmuring some sort of incantation as he glanced back from the open doorway. Heading to the kitchen, he decided to make tea, filling the kettle and putting it on the stove, turning on the gas as he had seen Jo do before picking up the cookie tin from the kitchen floor.

Just as the kettle began its moaning whistle, Jack turned to see Bethany standing in the kitchen doorway with Jo's mane clasped in one hand across her chest, her eyes filled with worry and unease. She grabbed the kettle and poured them each a cup of the steaming brew before she spoke. "There's dark magic at work here, Jack, and Jo's managed to get caught up in the middle of it. There's a drain on one of the ley lines, invisible rivers of magic, that flow into the city," she added with a faint smile at his widening eyes, "and the aura of the one doing the pulling isn't familiar to me."

"So you're what I'd call a witch then?" Jack shifted uncomfortably in his chair as he eyed the woman warily, not sure he was at all comfortable dealing with a woman who might possibly shrivel his Jolly Roger with a spell or potion should he happen to raise her ire. Men with swords and guns he could handle, but he had had more than enough experiences with curses and the occult to last a lifetime.

"More of a healer than magic caster, so your manhood is safe, Captain…and before you ask, I'm not a mind reader. You reacted like just about every other man I've met who learned my other calling in life." Bethany chuckled and took another sip of her tea before becoming serious again. "There's something you should know, Jack. Michael created Barbossa the same way Jo created you, out of metal, glass, wax and hair, but that's where your similarities end. Your possessions of these forms on our plane came about much differently….you answered the call from Jo's spirit willingly and without coercion, just as I am sure your enemy did not. Barbossa is most likely bound to this place by a person or object, or quite possibly even a pact made with the one who called him forth….it could even be all of the above. None the less, it is a subject that I do know a bit about."

She reached out and laid her hand over Jack's where it rested otop the silky tresses shorn from the woman they both cared about. "We'll get her back, Jack, and then we'll make them pay. Right now, we have the advantage---they think I'm dead, so they'll expect you to charge in to save Jo all by your onesies, as you're so fond of saying. Give me an hour to recharge my batteries and call in some reinforcements, then we'll show them how wrong it is to mess with magic folk, especially in Vegas, hmmm?" He met her grin with one of his own as she reached for the phone book.

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The drug running through her system made everything happening to her seem surreal. With the blindfold on, Jo had no clue as to where she was being taken, and at that point she was beyond caring. She slipped into dreams where she and Jack were sailing together on The Black Pearl, making sweet, passionate love on a warm, sandy beach with waves washing over them, or curled against Jack's chest beneath a blanket by a crackling fire while the waves lulled them to sleep, only to be jarred back to reality when the van crossed over a particularly deep pothole or came to a sudden stop. At one point she caught the familiar odor of coffee, and later smelled and heard her captors enjoying a quick meal of burgers and fries. She was slightly irritated that they didn't offer her anything, even though the smell of the food made her slightly nauseated. In those few brief moments of clarity, she realized that it seemed like they had been driving an awfully long time, and wondered if they were merely driving around aimlessly until it was time to take her to meet her fate…

She drifted off again only to be awakened by one of her captors releasing her chains and pulling her into a sitting position. The sudden movement awoke her nausea once again, but she was distracted from her illness when those same hands began pulling her shirt over her head. Filled with the sudden horror that she was about to be raped, she began to cry out and claw at the hands, even though she knew she had little chance of stopping whatever was about to happen. Her hands were pushed back down into her lap and a callused hand caught hold of her chin as the familiar voice spoke to her firmly.

"Settle down, princess. Our employer provided us with more suitable attire for your meeting, and you're going to wear it. Now, we can do this easy or we can do this hard…but either way, your clothes are coming off. So what's it going to be, hmmm?"

With a choked sob, she stopped resisting and allowed his hands to remove her shirt, shivering as he ran a single finger down her damp cheek. "Good choice, precious…I hate to deliver damaged goods." His cool chuckle made her stomach heave, and she was rewarded by his startled curse when she spewed bile in his general direction before passing out once more.

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Bethany set the phone down in its cradle and turned back to jack, a satisfied smile crossing her face. "Good news, Peacock….we've got help on the way. We're lucky, I managed to get a hold of Max just before he left the dojo. He teaches Tae Kwon Do during the week and works weekends as a knight at Medieval Times Las Vegas." She added, then chuckled and shook her head gently at the blank look that crossed Jack's face. "Never mind, peacock…let's just say that he is ready, willing and able to kick some ass for the good guys. I think you'll like Misty, too….she's a showgirl who's got it and isn't afraid to show it off. She also happens to be the most powerful priestess of light that I know. She and I will be able to work together to pinpoint Jo's location, and also take care of whatever spell has your old shipmate bound to this plane. Between the four of us, I think we'll be able to put a crimp in Michael's plans for the evening, don't you agree, Captain Sparrow?"

"Y'know Bethany, m'love, you're a rather bloodthirsty wench….ever considered a career in piracy?"

She merely smirked at him and reached for another butter cookie as she replied with a chuckle. "Jack, I work in Vegas, remember…..we INVENTED piracy!"

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Coming up next: Jo meets the men behind her abduction; the allies meet and make plans for the final showdown….Stay tuned!