Sail

Captain Glenn thanked me for jumping in front of Mase. Mase mumbled something that might have acknowledged me somehow, but nothing else happened that night. The screw, the washer, and the nail in my mouth must’ve been enough to radiate protection. By that rate, I’d be completely out within twenty-four hours. Or less.

While worry ate up my insides, I eventually fell asleep on the floor of the dining room and shivered myself awake the next morning. Before, the temperature had risen inside the dining room to close to hell-like proportions. In my baggy sweatshirt and gloves, sweat had poured down crevices I didn’t even know existed. But today the temperature had significantly dipped. Time for more iron.

As I dragged my mattress back to the pantry, the crew rustled awake. All of them had been tense the night before, like they were holding their breath for something else to happen.

Nesbit blew into his gloved hands on his way out the door and looked back at Mase, who still sat at the gurney. His broad shoulders rose and fell in a deep sleep.

“Let him sleep,” the captain said and followed Nesbit into the hallway.

Now it was just Mase and me. Alone. Scattered, naughty thoughts flipped through my brain one at a time in vibrant detail. Shame on my subconscious for thinking such wholly inappropriate thoughts about this man I didn’t even know at a time like this. What in Feozva’s hell was wrong with me? Did I want to jump him because he hadn’t ratted me out yet? Or because it intrigued me that he hadn’t? It couldn’t be that he liquefied my insides to mercury with one sweep of those mysterious eyes. Couldn’t be.

Spatula. I needed it in my hand to distract me or I might talk myself into running a finger through his hair. One finger wouldn’t wake him.

Spatula!

I slithered through the double doors and set to work finding random recipes on my phone. It concerned me that Moon had never texted me back about the BIG PROBLEM. After breakfast, I’d call her again during my next iron and Randolph hunt.

Omelets, fresh fruit, bacon and sausage, and a large portion of sexual frustration soon crowded the gurney. Mase must’ve slipped out while I’d played with my spatula.

During breakfast, he avoided my entire side of the gurney with his gaze.

“Captain,” Doctor Daryl began, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle in his red scarf. “About last night. We all saw the crowbar thrown at Mase’s head. Imagine the kind of damage it could have inflicted if James hadn’t been there to block it.”

“If it’s my pretty face you’re worried about, doc, don’t be,” Mase said between hurried bites.

“My point is that the haunting has turned physical. What if one of us is harmed past the point of mere stitches?” Doctor Daryl asked.

Captain Glenn took a long draw of coffee while staring at the doctor over the brim of his mug. “It’s a good thing we have a doctor aboard this ship, isn’t it? You were there when we discussed this yesterday. We don’t tell anyone. We don’t stop until the delivery is made. I thought I made myself clear.”

Doctor Daryl nodded and gazed down at his half-eaten omelet, a defeated frown pulling his eyebrows together. “You did, captain.”

“Good, then I’m done discussing it.” Captain Glenn rose, wiping his mouth, his lips pushed tightly together. “Anyone who wants to search the first floor for Randolph with me before they go about their duties can join me. Except you, James, since we don’t know what we’ll... Just let the adults handle this.”

Was the captain thinking what I refused to? That Randolph could be hurt or worse?

“But I can help,” I blurted.

“You’re not coming,” Captain Glenn warned, and the tone in his voice snapped my mouth shut.

Nesbit stood. “What’s an absidy?”

My fork clanked to my plate, my stomach falling with it. I shot my gaze to him, silently begging him to swallow back what he’d just said along with the egg dangling from his lip.

“She…she said that last night,” he said. “They’re all dying absidy. What does that mean?”

I wished I knew that too.

Captain Glenn shrugged. “I don’t know. Mase, make sure we’re ready for our entrance into deep space.” With that, he ended the conversation by leaving the dining room, Nesbit hot on his heels.

Doctor Daryl followed, and Mase pushed away and left quickly as if he couldn’t stand to be in the same room with me alone. I couldn’t blame him. My presence probably reminded him of the tricky position I’d put him in.

I wanted to go with them to search for Randolph and to keep them safe with my metallic protection, but I couldn’t exactly steal the ship’s iron supply while they watched either. Maybe I could give them a head start and then discreetly follow them.

When I’d almost finished clearing the dishes, the hallway door crashed open and footsteps came up fast behind me. I turned and saw Mase, his face twisted in a rage, a piece of paper gripped in his hand. He snatched my elbow and dragged me back to the gurney.

“What the fuck?” I demanded, trying to pull free from his iron rod fingers.

He slammed the paper on the gurney and pointed at it. “Start talking, Absidy.”

I wrenched myself away, throwing fire into my glare at him, then followed his pointed finger. My insides plummeted. “Oh,” I said and picked up the paper. “No.”

My face stared back at me, a snowy forest as a backdrop. My hair and chains whipped around my head in a swirl of movement. My expression looked panicked, wild. Blood soaked the side of my face and dribbled down my neck. Below my face, it read WANTED in big, bold letters. And underneath that: For questioning in the murders of Vissle Ponton and Otto Quinsbey.

I sank onto the nearest stool, all the strength in my body gone. Vissle Ponton. Otto Quinsbey. Murdered. The names didn’t sound familiar, but one look at that photo told me who one of them belonged to. The guy with the red backpack snapped this picture of me standing over the marketplace vendor’s body, but…who else had died?

“I didn’t m—” I couldn’t even say the word. Couldn’t think of the face that belonged to the one I knew was dead. Vissle Ponton. Otto Quinsbey. Both dead, but not because I’d murdered them. “It was an accident.”

“You’re a fugitive,” he said, spitting the final word like a curse. “You changed your appearance and pretended to be some crazy chef’s apprentice so you could run away from the law.”

“I had to,” I whispered.

“You had to kill them?”

I snapped my head up to meet his accusing gaze. “No.”

He leaned into me, a sneer curling his lips, which had been so relaxed in sleep just hours before. “I don’t believe you.”

I resisted the urge to back away from his low, fierce tone. Vissle Ponton. Otto Quinsbey. Dead. Something had happened in that forest, but it didn’t involve me killing anyone. Sure, Ellison’s disappearance had fogged my mind to the point where I couldn’t say for sure what really had happened. I thought I’d heard the vendor growl and saw his eyes glow green for Feozva’s sake.

But I knew this for certain: “I could never kill anyone.”

“You were there in the forest,” he said and tapped the picture. “The man who snapped this picture saw the body and what you did to him. You took his eye out and left him to drown in his own blood. I saw it all over the newsfeeds. Is that his blood all over your face?”

“It’s mine.” What did it matter whose blood it was? Besides, Mase had already decided anything I said was a lie.

“What did he do to you? Sneak into your sorority? Did he break your heart or some shit like that?”

“I didn’t even know him.”

“So it was just some random kill.”

“I told you, I didn’t—”

“Why this ship, huh? Why did you and Randolph come aboard the Vicio? Don’t you think we have enough problems of our own without some whacked out killer sorority girl on board?”

“It wasn’t my choice to make,” I snapped. “None of this was. Randolph had no part in this. He just agreed to help an old family friend whose roommate was in trouble. He didn’t know anything, I swear, and if I could be anywhere else in the entire universe, believe me, I would.”

Mase was silent for a long moment, then he asked, “Did you kill Randolph, too? Are you planning to kill all of us next?”

Oh, good Feozva, was he even listening to a word I’d said? Why were we having this conversation if everything fell on deaf ears? I stood, ready for it to be over and for him to leave and go tell the captain.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” I said through gritted teeth. “Don’t you remember the part where I already said that?”

Mase shook his head as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t you remember the part where you’re now a fugitive aboard this ship? If the police find out you’re here, they’ll come snooping, and that can’t happen. If you don’t explain to me how these men ended up dead in the same forest you happened to be in, then I’ll tip them off that you’re here.”

Then the police would declare me guilty, drop me on the prison planet, and I’d never see Pop and Ellison again. Rusted balls, what had I gotten myself into?

“You’ve already convicted me, so why should I? You won’t believe anything I say,” I spat.

“Humor me,” he said with a shrug. “I like a good story.”

He had me cornered and he knew it, the arrogant fucker. While the Vicio shot toward Ellison, I felt like I was getting farther and farther away from her at the same time. Like in those dreams I sometimes had where I’m running nowhere fast. I knew he wouldn’t believe me, but I took a breath and unfolded most, but not all, of the story. That way, this near to deep space, I’d be as close to Ellison as I’d ever be again.

“Sail,” Mase said when I finished.

“Here,” I said, fumbling for my phone. “You can look to see she’s really missing yourself.” I tossed it to him—okay, threw it—and he caught it with one hand, eyeing me with a look I couldn’t read.

His forehead creased as he searched my phone. “And you think she was trying to say Saelis but got cut off.”

“Yes.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I know my sister better than anyone. She wouldn’t just run off to a place like deep space. She’s smarter than that.” I raked my fingers through what used to be my hair and sighed at my wanted face on the gurney. “If you’re going to turn me in, fine, but I wish you’d just do it already and stop playing head games.”

Mase sat back in his chair, the weight of his gaze almost as heavy as the words on the bottom of my picture. “Deep space is a dangerous place. You might not survive.”

What was that supposed to mean? That he believed me? That he wouldn’t turn me in?

“Then I’ll die doing what I have to,” I said.

“And if your sister’s already dead?”

I looked at my lap, hating him for even saying it.

“You love your family,” he said, his voice a note softer than it had been.

“More than anything. Don’t you?”

A grimace passed over his face, but he tried to hide it with a clear of his throat. He pointed to the picture. “What’s with your obsession with metal? The newsfeeds interviewed people at Smixton College, and they all call you the Iron Maiden. Is that some kind of sorority hazing thing?”

“No sorority would ever have me. I’m an outcast. Always have been.”

He studied me for a long moment, processing. “Then enlighten me about the Iron Maiden.”

I worked my mouth, trying to form words around what I’d never told anyone. Ever. He seemed to believe my story about Ellison since I could show him proof, but I’d erased every scar of my past with appearance modification. I couldn’t even show him the chunks of hair missing on my head anymore since it’d been obliterated to nothing but fuzz. The one thing I had going for me right now were his experiences on this ship. Maybe that would be enough. But what if it wasn’t? Yet what other choice did I have?

“I’m a…a ghost magnet. A sensitive,” I began. Feozva, how I hated how weak that made me sound. “According to my sister, ghosts are a build-up of negative energy that are stuck between this life and the next. They’re attracted to sensitives’ positive energy because they think I’ll…help them.”

“Help them how?”

I looked up at him, trying to gauge whether he believed me so far, but I couldn’t read his blank expression. “They think they can pass to the other side through me.” I took a deep breath and stood so I could pace the room. “But for whatever reason, I attract only wicked ghosts. All the others act like they don’t see me. My earliest memories are ghosts haunting me, torturing me, to go to the other side, and nearly killing me in the process.”

“Torturing you.” Not a question, a statement, and for some reason, that unnerved me.

“Yes.” I bit the screws and washer in my mouth to help still the quavering in my voice. “They turn corporeal when they get close enough to me. One yanked me out of bed so hard and hurled me against the wall. Huge chunks of hair ripped from my scalp. They would cut me so deep, I had to have three blood transfusions. I’ve had forty-seven broken jaws, countless broken bones, and I’m not even twenty yet.”

Mase glanced down at the picture with my chains whirling around my head in mid-spin, his eyebrows drawn down in a deep V.

“My dad didn’t know what to do to make them stop, so my sister took the matter into her own brilliant hands and researched solutions to my…problem.”

“Metal?” Mase asked.

“Iron to be exact. Gates around graveyards are made out of iron for a reason. At least, they used to be a long time ago when iron wasn’t so rare.”

“To keep the ghosts contained.”

I nodded. “Or to keep them out. They can’t pass through because iron repels them. It unmagnetizes them to me. They were attracted to my positive energy, but iron makes me a walking antennae for different kinds of energies, like from other people, even things. It changes my natural energy so much, ghosts can no longer tell I’m a sensitive. And they leave me alone.”

We both looked down at my picture again, at the chains, at the spiked metal and leather corset, at the whole fucked up silver package.

“I guess you could say I took it a bit too far,” I said.

“But…” His gaze swept over me, and even now, at the most inappropriate of times, the flash of heat that still sparked in his eyes sped my heartbeat. “You’re not wearing any metal now.”

I stuck my tongue out at him with the waning screw perched on top. “I don’t have to wear it; I just have to breathe it. Every inhale changes my energy, and it stops them from trying to come inside me to pass over.”

“Inside you. Like a possession?”

I dropped my gaze to the gurney, remembering the ones that had tried to force their way in. Somehow the ghosts knew what I was and how to cross over, but I knew very little because I didn’t come with an instruction manual.

“I guess you could say that,” I said.

“So that’s where all the screws went. You can’t just…suck on one piece of iron all the time?”

“They dissolve in my mouth. I prefer wrought iron to alloy since it lasts longer, but I take what I can get.”

Mase narrowed his probing eyes. “And you literally take it, don’t you? Is it like a drug?”

“I can’t live without it, so in a way, yes.” I shrugged.

“And it keeps the rest of us safe just by being near you, is that right?” Mase asked.

“As I said before, I repel ghosts.” Until now. The iron was somehow losing its effectiveness, and I had no idea why. Was finding Ellison more important than the risk of a haunted ship and my fading ghost repellant skills? Absolutely. I’d just have to find a way to cope. “So,” I said and cleared my throat. “What happens now?”

Mase sat quiet for several minutes while he stared off into space with his chin propped in his hand.

Finally, I couldn’t stand his silence any longer. “I’ve laid it all out on the…gurney. I’m a liar. I’m a fugitive. But I’m not a killer.”

Without a word, he stood and walked to the door.

“Where are you going?” I asked, not at all sure I wanted to know.

“If you hurt any of the crew, I’ll kill you.” The warning edge in his voice made it sound lethal, and I didn’t doubt he meant it. Then he was gone.

I guessed that meant he wouldn’t tell anyone, though it sure didn’t sound like he believed me. Not one hundred percent, anyway. I had to wonder at his reasons. If the police found out where I’d been hiding, they would come down hard on the crew for transporting a fugitive, whether the captain, Doctor Daryl, or Nesbit knew what I’d supposedly done or not. But having me on board would mean the crew would get a good night’s sleep and have hot, mostly edible food in their stomachs. Were those the only reasons? Were those things more important than the risk? In Mase’s case, I supposed so. The man did love food, after all.

My phone rang, and I jumped out of my stool from the sudden noise. Pop’s picture showed up on the screen, his wide grin stretching so far up, it twinkled inside his dark eyes. I stared at his face, unsure if I could make my voice sound normal for him. Eventually my recorded voice answered, and he left me a message.

“Absidy, tell me what you’re mixed up in.”

The low, disappointed defeat in his voice undid me. I crushed the phone to my forehead and bit back a sob.

“I’m so sorry, Pop,” I cried, careful not to touch the button that would answer him.

The rest of his words lost themselves in the sudden cascade of tears that plinked onto the gurney. He’d likely seen my picture plastered all over the newsfeed. What could he possibly be thinking right then? That the disappearance of one daughter had been made a thousand times worse by his other daughter? He’d never believe I’d murdered anyone, but still. The kind of pressure Ellison and I had just put him under would crack him.

When he finally hung up, the sadness that rang in his voice lingered around my heart with painful spasms. It took a long time before I thought I could control the shake in my voice to call Moon. Her Mind-I must’ve broken because all I heard instead of ringing was a series of strange clicks. I hung up and tried Franco. He picked up on the second ring.

“Franco, I need to speak to Moon. Is she there?”

“Oh, shit,” he said. A door slammed on the other end of the receiver. Breathing, lots of heavy breathing, and then, “You still there?”

“I’m here.”

Frantic whispers morphed into Moon’s pissed off yelps. “Absidy Jones, I can’t believe you. You scared me half to death when you didn’t text me back. I thought you were dead. Or worse, captured. What’s wrong with you? I have sixty-seven problems right now, and they’re all. Named. Absidy. Jones.”

I winced. Feozva, help me. “I’m sorry?”

“You suck. I doused your stuff with gasoline and I’m holding a burning match over all of it as we speak.”

“I own two things in that room,” I said with a sigh. Leave it to Moon to call in the drama department. “You probably doused your stuff by mistake.”

“I hate you.”

“As long as you know I didn’t kill anyone, that’s fine that you hate me.”

“Don’t you think I know that? Jezebel would never cuddle up to a potential murderer. She’s always been an excellent judge in character. She misses you like crazy, by the way.”

I closed my eyes at the memory of her sweet, furry face. “I miss her, too.”

“The police, Absidy…”

“Tell me.” I tensed, ready for her to spill it.

“They think you killed two men that night in the forest, the marketplace vendor and a guy named Otto who was found at the bottom of a ravine with your picture on his Mind-I.”

The guy with the red backpack who had snapped that picture of me was dead, too? At the bottom of a ravine? He could’ve just slipped on the snow and fallen. Or he could’ve seen something much more terrifying than me that made him fall.

“That same night after you left, they tore through your stuff, which was apparently a lot of my stuff, from top to bottom looking for evidence or clues or whatever. They found your metal shrine to Feozva and all your metal corsets, which made them ask all sorts of questions about if you were into some kind of kinky bondage stuff. Are you into kinky bondage stuff?”

“Only on Wednesdays,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Keep going.”

“I didn’t think so, but I told them I didn’t know anything about your sex life because I really don’t. Are you a virgin? I can’t believe I never asked you that.”

“Yes. Moon, please. I know they didn’t just ask about my sex life.”

“They didn’t, but see that’s what makes me so clever. I brought it up to make it seem like I hated living with you, that you were the bane of my existence because of all your whoring.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly.

“See, I wanted them to think I hadn’t helped you get on the Vicio, and that I had no contact with you whatsoever. They took my Mind-I anyway, just to cover their perky asses. After I wiped the Mind-I clean, of course.”

“They took your Mind-I?”

“And your box with Jezebel’s old whiskers in it. What the hell is that about?”

“I was…” I sighed. No one was supposed to ever find that. “I was…planning to rebuild her after she dies.” True story. Add that to my list of crazies, but every discarded part of Jezebel, except for her poo, went into that box as a kind of keepsake. Now it was gone.

“Out of whiskers?”

“And sunbeams. What else about the police?”

“Well, all of their interviews with the Smixton professors and students painted a picture of you—an off-kilter, inaccurate one that I couldn’t argue against since I was the one who put you on the Vicio. I’m sorry, Absidy.”

I scrubbed a hand over what used to be my hair. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. They think that with all your iron armor and everything that your brain is completely rusted. Maybe the best thing you could do would be to come back so you can clear your name.”

“I can’t.”

“After you get Ellison back, then.”

Her deliberate use of ‘after’ instead of ‘if’ turned the corners of my mouth up, if only for a split-second. “Yes, after. Thank you, Moon.”

“Any time.”

“Hopefully just this once. But…is there a way you could get word to my dad? To tell him that I’m…” What? Not a killer? Sorry that I made everything worse? That Ellison and I will be home for Christmas? “Tell him that I love him.” Tears welled up in my eyes because that didn’t begin to describe all that I needed to tell him. I’d do it myself, but I couldn’t bear to hear his disappointment in me again.

“I’ll do that,” she said, her voice a solemn promise.

I nodded since I didn’t trust myself to speak.

“Hey, is Randolph okay? I haven’t been able to reach him either.”

I stared at the wall the dining room and his quarters shared. “He’s around here somewhere.” I winced at my non-answer, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

“Well, tell him hi from me.”

“Yep.”

“Okay. Call Franco if you need anything. I’ll just wipe his Mind-I’s memory for him. He’s here hanging on every word, but he won’t say anything.” Her voice lifted, and I knew she was giving him a sly smile. “Trust me.”

“Moon.” A sudden thought knifed a cold tremble up my neck. “When was your Mind-I taken?”

“Um, two days ago. Wh—You called it, didn’t you?” She heaved in a sharp inhale.

“Yes. And all I got was clicks.”

“They’re tracking you, Absidy. Shit. And they may not be the only ones because of the massive bounty on your head.”

A loud boom from down the hallway thundered vibrations under my toes. I leaped into the stool, knocking it into the gurney, which slammed against Randolph’s wall. Another boom, closer this time. I fumbled in my pocket for a washer, only semi-aware that Moon was still talking.

“What was that? What’s happening? Absidy?”

Boom. That one rattled my teeth together. I backed into the double doors while I counted the seconds until the next… Bang. Closer still, almost right outside the dining room door. No human could make the whole ship tremble like that. I tried to steady my erratic breathing to inhale as much energy as I could from the iron in my mouth.

“Aaaaabbssssssssiddy,” a raspy female voice outside the dining room door called. It ripped frozen needles up my back. That same bitter tobacco smell seeped under the crack.

Moon gasped into my ear, the phone still clutched tight in my hand. “What was that?” she whispered.

I shook my head, hugging my arms to my middle at the onslaught of creeping horror just feet away. The double doors flapped closed as I backed into the kitchen and flipped open again to show the dining room door straight ahead. Flapped closed. Flipped open.

The lever on the dining room door began to turn.

Flapped closed. Flipped open.

Someone sat in the captain’s chair, someone who wasn’t the captain. Sweat poured down his pudgy face and slid down the jowls at his neck. To his right was the red-haired black woman who sat ramrod straight while staring at the man in horror.

“After you collect it…” the man began.

Flapped closed.

“…kill them all.”

The door stilled. Silence except my roaring heartbeat. What was that? A residual memory playing back?

Seconds passed while I stared hard at the double doors, searching for any sign of a deathly pale hand clawing through the middle to open it. And what would I do if it did? I’d spent so many years hiding behind my metal armor that I had no idea what to do without its protection.

“Absidy…” Moon said, not much more than a quaver, “is there anything else you need to tell me?”

My faithful spatula lay on the small table behind me. I closed my fingers around it and jammed it through the double door handles.

A pause while I caught my breath, rolled my tongue over all the metal in my mouth, imagining it altering my energy, then whispered, “No.”