Sail (Haunted Stars Book 1)

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  “You’re hurt,” she whispered, dark eyes wide.

  Franco moved to close the door with a quiet click and finished buttoning his jeans. “There’s a dead guy in the woods? You didn’t kill him, did you?” He gulped. “Did you?”

  “Of course she didn’t kill anyone.” Moon’s voice held a razor’s edge, and the solid belief in her words tightened my throat. I’d known her a year and a half, and already she was the best friend I’d never had.

  I turned away and stared at my currency card leaning against the framed drawing of Feozva, goddess of the iron religion I invented when I was a kid to explain away my obsession with metal. All secrets could be hidden under the guise of faith, and so far, it had worked. Even Moon didn’t question my so-called beliefs.

  Wild chains teased the air around Feozva’s head and cascaded down her body. Last time Pop visited, he said it was the most beautiful self-portrait he’d ever seen of me.

  “No, that’s Feozva, Pop,” Ellison had corrected him, and I’d felt like a fool, like I’d reverted back to childhood and announced my imaginary friend was ready to take us all doll shopping.

  Feozva’s gray eyes were the same color as Ellison’s and mine. I’d heard stories that ours matched Mom’s, but every photo of her was destroyed in the house fire back on Wix before I was born. With a great shuddering breath, I steeled my spine then stuffed the card in my pocket.

  “Absidy.” A warm hand touched my shoulder. “You’re bleeding.”

  I shrugged it off. “It’s nothing.”

  “It most definitely is something. You’re dripping all over my Presiante rugs.” Moon Dragon’s hand became an iron claw when she pushed me by the shoulder into a desk chair. She floated her fingers above my head with a grimace like she was afraid to touch it. “Your chains… What happened?”

  I heaved a deep sigh and sank into the seat while Moon went to the service panel by the door and flew her fingers over the keypad. A large folded cloth and a tube of Second Skin landed in the panel’s bin with a soft tink. Blood-loss already made the room spiral, and a dripping trail would lead the police right to me. Then I wouldn’t be much good to Ellison at all.

  “The dead guy ripped some chains out of my head,” I said.

  Her eyes widened. “Holy shit, that’s heavy.” She squatted in front of me with the bandages and medicine.

  Franco whistled as he stepped closer to inspect the damage. The ends of his long chestnut hair brushed against his well-formed pecs, and they tickled my nose when he leaned in. “Well, if you did kill him, it would serve him right. That’s a nasty scratch you got there.”

  “Absidy could never kill anyone,” Moon said, squeezing a glob of medicine onto the cloth. “On three, okay?” She readied the cloth above my head, and we both stiffened our shoulders because we knew this would hurt. “One…” She must’ve lost count because she smashed the cloth into my head.

  “You fucker,” I hissed through my teeth, but the pain wasn’t near as bad as my ripped open scalp. Tears coursed down my face anyway.

  “Remind me to never bleed around you, Moon,” Franco said, and dropped a kiss on top of her head.

  She quirked an eyebrow and tipped up the corner of her mouth in a smile that vanished with her next question. “Why would the Saelis take your sister?”

  I sagged my shoulders with a sigh. “I don’t know. She took a cruiser to deep space and—”

  “Wait. Deep space? Is your sister demented or something?” Franco asked.

  I cut my gaze to him and answered with a simple, “No” that snapped his mouth shut again.

  “I’m sure she had her reasons,” Moon said and pressed her lips together into a thin line while she unfolded the cloth. Blood colored most of it except a patch below her thumb. “But it’s a wasteland out there. There are ship-eating nebulas and rogue planets that zap ships out of the sky.”

  “And space pirates,” Franco added. “So I’ve heard.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” I said and pointed at my ankle. “Can you put some Icy Skin on this?”

  Moon swallowed then glanced at my suitcase on the bed. “But what are you planning to do? Go after her? Are you going to shout her name out a ship’s window until you find her?”

  “Well, I can’t stay here. Besides, some guy in the woods snapped a picture of me covered in blood standing over the dead guy. I’m as doomed as one of Jezebel’s crickets.”

  At the mention of her name, a long furry arm tipped with three inch blue claws reached down from her tree post attached to the ceiling, and gently curled under my chin so I’d look up at her. Her tilted head, the softness in her clear blue eyes, the feel of her fur against my skin—I couldn’t help but offer her a small smile.

  My relationship with Moon had cemented itself because of Jezebel, Moon’s pet slothcat. I’d applied to Smixton with the hope of maintaining my reclusive lifestyle, but much to my chagrin, roommates were required. But Moon and I found an instant common ground laughing at Jezebel’s crazy antics. It was impossible not to fall in love with something that insisted on sleeping nose-to-pink nose with me or that raced a victory lap around the ceiling after every successful poop. I was powerless against both the blue fur ball and Moon.

  “So…” Moon strode to the control panel for the Icy Skin then dabbed some on my bruised ankle. “What were you doing in the woods?”

  I winced at the pressure of her hand and what I knew I had to tell her. Could I trust her with the one piece of information that didn’t spotlight me in my finest hour? At Smixton, stealing was stealing, no matter how small the object, and though it wasn’t as serious as murder, this particular crime I’d actually committed. I rolled my lips together and glared at the crook of her elbow while she capped the tube. The bruise had already faded, and the pain had eased considerably.

  I took a breath. “I stole some iron washers.”

  “That was dumb,” Moon said, and that was all she said about the whole metal thing. She never threw questions at me like every other welding jerk on the planet who thought they had a right to know why I lived my life the way I did.

  “It was a moment of weakness.”

  Moon nodded and shot a grin at Franco, who winked. “Believe me, I’ve had those. A lot.”

  Franco’s warm cinnamon eyes lit with his smile, and the atmosphere between the two lovebirds charged a blush into my cheeks just from my proximity. I cleared my throat to remind them I still sat there.

  “Right, well,” Franco said with a small chuckle. “How do you even know the Saelis took her? They aren’t known for their prolific ransom notes.”

  “I don’t. Not for sure, anyway,” I said. “The Ringers think she wasn’t taken by Saelis because of the last word she uttered into her telecom, but they’re up to their general what-the-fuckery instead of pouncing on this. It’s the Saelis. I can feel it in my gut.”

  “What was her last word?” Moon asked.

  “Sail,” I said.

  “An old rebel term?”

  Franco rubbed at the solid bricks that built his stomach, a frown pulling at his eyebrows. “A term derived from the days of the Black War when soldiers broke from their duties, ended all ties with the real world, and went rogue to drift through space. Some say they did it because they turned their back on the human race to side with the Saelis. I didn’t know that was still a thing people did.”

  “People might do it, but not my sister. She’s a doctor, not a soldier. She was trying to say Saelis, but must’ve got cut off.”

  Moon shook her head. “But what if that wasn’t what she meant? Because homonyms, Absidy. What if she meant sale, as in S-A-L-E. Maybe she went on a shopping spree. Think about it.”

  “No. She would never just up and leave Pop and me and go to deep space for the hell of it. She loves us too much to do something so reckless. She must’ve had a reason to go there, and now… I have to bring her back.” I hated the desperation in my voice, the tears at the back of my throat, but I cou
ldn’t rein my feelings in. Not when it came to Ellison.

  “Well, it’s a long way there to find someone who, and please don’t hate me for saying this, may not want to be found,” Moon said. “Why else would she switch off her telecom?”

  “She wouldn’t just leave.” I stood to pile random things into my suitcase, including my picture of Feozva and all the iron I had.

  A holographic three-dimensional map of a cluster of solar systems burst out of Moon’s eyes, courtesy of her Mind-I, and filled the room. Mayvel, one of the smallest planets in this system, spun lazily on its axis. Rich blues and reds dusted with gold circled the center in a perfect ring.

  Wix, the next planet over which looked like a big swirl of orange and blue, was where I’d called home for the first fifteen years of my life. The next three I’d spent on the Nebulous, which orbited around Mayvel in a continuous loop for the benefit of rich sightseers whose wallets were too heavy to see space in anything but a luxurious cruise liner. I should be on that ship now, in our tiny but cozy service quarters, with Pop and Ellison within touching distance.

  “Absidy?” Moon said softly. She studied me through the spinning, rotating map. Lines of Mayvel’s latitude and longitude gridded her face with squares, but the planes of her face stretched and warped them into imperfect shapes. “Are you deliberately not looking at where you’re talking about going?”

  “Of course not.” I scoffed, but maybe I was. I plotted the path, trying to imagine the exact route Ellison had taken.

  On the far side of Wix, she would have travelled through the space-bending ring orbiting it to thrust her out of this solar system and into the next, then through another into what used to be Earth’s solar system faster than light. Everything in that system and beyond was considered deep space. Few dared to go there because that was Saelis territory. Besides, there was nothing to go to anyway unless you wanted to meet up with the large ice slugs on Europa. And who would?

  Moon pointed at a blinking red dot with celestial coordinates typed next to it. “Either the Ringers or someone else have marked this as the spot your sister’s cruiser is. Her story is all over the Mind-I news feeds.”

  I stared hard at the blinking dot, committing the coordinates to memory. It moved slowly through the layers of black dust and debris where Earth once existed. There was nothing around the dot but stars and nothing nearby but more stars. Where had she been going? More importantly, where was she now? Was she still on her ship?

  Franco stepped toward the remains of Earth and traced the broken holographic fragments like he could repair it with a God-like finger. “The Saelis won the Black War when they destroyed Earth and killed millions of our ancestors two hundred years ago, and no one’s heard a peep from them since. If you’re right and the Ringers are wrong, what would the Saelis want with your sister?”

  “It would be so dangerous, Absidy,” Moon said, “and the same thing could happen to y—”

  Someone knocked at the door. All of us jumped.

  “Police. Open up,” a voice boomed.

  I gasped and stumbled further from the door. Moon’s fingers fanned over her chest and crept up to her throat like she might be holding back a scream. The glow from the holographics tinged Franco’s face a pale blue before he double-tapped her temple and her Mind-I snapped the map off. Both of them turned to me.

  Decision time. I looked at my hands, at the dried blood wedged into the cracks in my palms, at the pricks in my fingertips from gripping Pop’s nails, and swallowed. The police thought I’d killed someone, and the fact that they were here, for me, bowed my head with a thick and heavy shame.

  I could tell the police what really happened, or as much of it as they needed to know, sure, but would they believe me? Maybe, but I didn’t have time for maybes. In my gut, I knew the truth—Ellison was in trouble and she needed me. She was more important than my scholarship, my undecided major, and my future, hands down, and I knew she’d do the exact same thing for me.

  Snatching my suitcase from the bed, I took a step toward the window. My choice brought shining tears to Moon’s eyes, and I wondered if she would have had the same reaction if I’d chosen differently.

  Another loud knock plunged a weighted dread into my stomach. “Open this door.”

  “Just a second,” Moon called in her best theater voice as she swiped at her cheeks.

  Franco swept his furry parka off the back of Moon’s desk chair and held it out to me. “Take it.”

  “I’ll cover for you,” Moon said in a low voice, “but you have to promise to call me so I can help you.”

  I nodded and took the coat, too touched to argue with either of them while I bundled myself into the warm fabric. Inch by slow squeaking inch, I slid the window open and swung a leg over the ledge onto the fire escape.

  Moon stepped toward the door, not even bothering to tighten her robe around her exposed body, her watery gaze never leaving mine.

  I stared at her then up at Jezebel balled up in the corner of the carpeted tree taking up most of the ceiling. She gave me a look like Where the heck do you think you’re going? A biting ache speared through my heart. No words would come, not even a goodbye or a thank you. I was glad they wouldn’t, though, because a single syllable might be my undoing.

  As I quietly closed the window behind me, Moon’s voice drifted out to say what could very well be the last thing I’d ever hear from her in person: “I am not putting any pants on.”

  I turned and ran.

  Chapter 4

  According to Moon, as of that morning the police only wanted to question me about the robbery. Maybe the guy with the red backpack who’d snapped my picture had made a detour on his way to the police station or he’d had a Mind-I malfunction. No one seemed to know about the dead man in the forest, but Moon agreed to call in an anonymous tip once I was safely off Mayvel. Whether he’d tried to kill me or not, I couldn’t leave him there to rot.

  I’d slept under the professor’s desk in the chemistry lab last night, courtesy of the key I may or may not have swiped my first day at Smixton. Moon had called early and told me to meet her in the appearance modification booth at the edge of campus.

  “Shove over,” Moon ordered when she arrived, knocking her hip into mine so she almost sat on my lap.

  The booth barely had the capacity for one person, and my side pressed painfully into the unforgiving wall. I swiped the identification card Moon had given me and hovered a finger over the female button on the large screen in front of us, but Moon slapped my hand away.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  “You said you needed to blend in, and as Absidy Jones, wanted thief, I’m sorry, but you just don’t,” she said. “As a boy, though, you could fool everyone.”

  Wanted thief, not wanted murderer. Not yet anyway. “I’m not getting a sex change, Moon,” I said with a sigh.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, chuckling. “You can still keep your girl parts. We’ll just go with a male look, that’s all. Plus, you have to be a boy to get off this planet.”

  I wrinkled my forehead. “No, I don’t.”

  “As a chef’s apprentice son aboard a transport ship headed on a similar route as your sister, yes, you do.”

  Right. How could I forget? My ticket off Mayvel was through one of Moon’s uncles who wasn’t really an uncle and who’d just taken a chef position aboard a ship called the Vicio because the old chef up and quit. His real son, who was also a real apprentice, “decided” not to go with him. The chef must’ve been surprised to learn he had another son last night, who also happened to be his new apprentice. An apprentice who was neither a boy nor had any experience inside a kitchen. Pretty sure Moon had shelled out some major credits to get both him and his son to agree to that kind of nonsense.

  “Besides, the police won’t be looking for a boy.” Moon dropped her hand from the screen to squeeze my elbow, her expression softening. “You don’t have to go, you know. We could find another way. You could just explain�
�”

  “No.” There was no other way, and even if there was, there wasn’t enough time to find it. Not with the dead body in the forest with my leaked blood in the snow around it and the red backpack guy’s picture of me with him. And especially with Ellison and the Saelis. She might’ve already been… I cleared my throat hard enough to expel that thought for good. “You came up with a good plan, and I’ll owe you forever, but do you think it will work?”

  “Of course it’ll work. You’ll have to lose the chains and the silver eye paint.” Her eyes tracked over my chest. “Put a muffle on your ladies there and voila.”

  “Voila. Excellent,” I said dryly.

  “The rest is called acting, Absidy. Act like a boy and people will think you are a boy. Grunt to communicate. Feed your face during meals. Think about sex all the time. It’s simple, really. They’re simple, which is why I like them so much.”

  But Pop wasn’t like that at all. He spoke more eloquently than most of my professors, had impeccable manners with utensils, and… probably only thought about sex twice while conceiving Ellison and me. I grimaced. I supposed she was right, but I didn’t have any other basis for comparison.

  “Okay, push the male button,” I said, because hopefully they really were simple and the trip to deep space would be a breeze.

  Moon did and skipped her fingers over the hair options. “No. No. Not fire. No live snakes. Just a simple, typical boy cut…” Her finger flipped past picture after picture until the model’s head blurred across the screen. “There.” She stopped on a cropped haircut not even an inch long. “That one.”

  Imagining that hair on top of my head knotted my throat. All my hair would be gone after I’d fought so hard to keep the rest of it. I’d begged Pop for chains to fill in the large gaps in my scalp so I didn’t have to cut my hair off because I’d wanted it to be like Ellison’s, flowing down to my butt in soft, dark curls. I’d never had any of it cut my entire life just for that reason. And now, cutting it all off would mean slicing free my last physical tie to Ellison.