The smell of sour tobacco rolled into the dining room on a tidal wave. An awful screeching noise sounded from down the hallway, like claws on metal, growing louder. The crew jumped up and backed toward the walls. My muscles clamped up with a full body tremor, and I couldn’t move.
Mase’s chest rose and fell in rough gasps, pluming his breath out in front of him in long wisps. “What are you doing…here?” he asked whatever was coming for him.
Over his head, something spasmed and twitched. But it passed right through his head again and again, and he didn’t even blink. Something transparent. A pair of swaying legs hanging from the ceiling.
Oh, good Feozva, no. I leaped up from the gurney, clutching my neck to fight back a scream, and stepped toward Mase. Someone had hung out there and died, right there over where Mase was standing.
How was I seeing this reenactment when I stood just feet away? I flicked the iron again with the tip of my tongue. Still there. So why wasn’t it working? Unless the ghosts detected me because of the iron.
I threw in another piece as a biting dread pushed goose bumps all over my skin. The rising screeching noise spiked the hairs at the back of my neck.
“Mason,” the captain said sharply, his terrified gaze trained on what swung above his pilot’s head.
The screeching sound became unbearable. Nesbit threw his hands over his ears; I fought the urge to do the same. Whatever was coming at Mase, whatever had locked him in its fearful grip, had frozen him to the floor. It may not be able to hurt him directly like it would hurt me, but it could poltergeist another object like it had the old kitchen table to cause damage. Like it could with the crowbar.
The screeching sound stopped, and as soon as I heard the scrape of metal on metal, I lunged for the door without thinking about anything but Mase. I snatched him by the collar, blocking him with my body, just as the crowbar smashed down on the padded arm of my coat. The crowbar clattered to the floor as I dragged him into the dining room.
When I turned back to slam the door, the hanging ghost no longer twitched from the ceiling. She stood in front of me inches away.
Brown shoes. Green pants. Short, red hair lay plastered to her dark-skinned face and covered her eyes. Her head rested against her right shoulder, the bones of her neck protruding out from behind a thick rope burn.
I reeled back, my flesh scuttling with her nearness and whatever else lurked out there. The smell of sour tobacco choked back my scream. I scrambled with slick hands for a grip on the door. Before I pulled it closed, the woman’s head snapped up with a sharp crack. She pierced me with completely black eyes. Her wrinkled, pale lips opened.
“They’re all dying, Absidy,” she said in a jagged voice that drove icy spikes up my spine. “They’re all dyyyyiinnnngg.”
I slammed the door closed, tears spilling down my cheeks, my breathing labored, and stuck a washer in my mouth. Just go away. Just go away.
“Sorry, Mase,” Doctor Daryl whispered, then he gave an audible gulp. “It’s not seven yet.” Then he held his breath like the rest of us.
Chapter 9
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 slammed 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 s
natched 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 s
till 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.
Sail (Haunted Stars Book 1) Page 10