“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.”
Chapter 10
I couldn’t tell her. Maybe someday, but I wasn’t so sure she’d believe me like Mase had. Or sort of did. Dear Feozva, I didn’t know anything anymore.
But Mase had experienced it for himself. As far as I knew, the closest Moon had come to a ghostly encounter was what she’d heard that morning. She was my friend, the only friend I’d ever had, and that was what friends did, right? Believe each other when things got…weird. Only what if she didn’t?
Maybe I’d tell her when I wasn’t afraid of what lurked right outside the double doors. I didn’t hear anything for the rest of the morning, but that meant nothing. I’d been around the block often enough to know that silence offered a false sense of security.
As quietly as I could, I prepared lunch, without my spatula since it was still wedged through the double doors’ handles, and hoped that when the rest of the crew came, their reactions to the dining room would clue me in if it was safe or not. Just like my mind, my figurative balls had rusted out a long time ago.
Just as I spooned macaroni and cheese onto a plate, the dining room door clicked shut behind the double doors. No shouts. Just a clearing of a throat, the soft thud of feet circling the entire table, tapping on the walls, and the creak of a bench. Doctor Daryl. Relief lightened my shoulders at the reassuring sounds of his OCD tendencies.
I edged the spatula through the handles of the double doors inch by slow inch. With a thick swallow, I nudged the doors open just enough to see straight through. There sat the doctor in his assigned seat, totally oblivious that the gurney hadn’t been set for lunch yet.
I bumped the door open, and to show my gratitude that it was only him and not some other dark presence, I twirled the spatula in a grand sweep in front of my face, not caring one bit that it wasn’t a boyish thing to do.
But the spatula slipped from my slick hands and clipped the bottom of my chin with a sharp edge. I wiped at the sting with the back of my hand. Blood smeared my knuckles.
I glanced up at Doctor Daryl to see if he’d noticed my klutzy moves. He stared back at me with eyes shining an unnatural green.
What in Feozva’s hell? My breath hitched, and I stepped back.
A rough growl peeled his lips back.
“Doctor…?” My skin prickled. I squeezed the spatula, questions tumbling through my mind too fast to catch.
He hunched low over the gurney until his chin nearly touched it. He looked like an animal, ready to pounce on its prey.
Me.
He leaped. I screamed.
The gurney skated toward me with him on top of it. He jumped on me, and we both crashed through the double doors. The titanium floor slammed into my back and head with the force of a cannonball. Pain stitched through every nerve in my body. My lungs emptied, both from the harsh landing and the doctor’s weight on top of me.
He clawed at my arms and fought to pin them over my head. I punched and kicked and tried to squirm out from underneath him. There were shouts, but I couldn’t pull in enough air to make any myself.
His teeth snapped at my face, around the blade of the spatula, which somehow I still gripped tight in front of me. Still dazed, I pushed the end into his face to cover his hungry mouth and to bite the sharp edge into the spot just under his nose. I didn’t need air to scrape the doctor’s fucking face off.
Then, just as suddenly as he was on top of me, he wasn’t. The captain and Mase held a writhing, drooling, mad doctor in a death grip while he lunged and reached for me.
“Get him out of here,” Mase shouted and pulled at him while the captain pushed him out the door.
I lay there gasping for a long time, wondering what in Feozva’s hell just happened, when the tears started. They couldn’t be stopped no matter how much I wished them to, so I just let them come. These weren’t self-pity tears—I’d stopped crying those long ago. But tears did manage to wash some of the pain and fear away when I felt both. And I’d felt both so often.
“Absidy.” A whisper, but not one that came from something that sounded like it had swallowed rocks. This one was gentle, deep, and soothing.
I brushed the tears from my cheeks and peered up into a pair of mismatched eyes. Concern waved wrinkles across Mase’s forehead. “Are you all right?”
I honestly didn’t know how to answer that question, so I offered him a gloved hand instead.
He took the hint and helped ease me up off the floor. His gaze roamed over my face and lingered for a split-second on my mouth. He looked away quickly, rubbing his knuckles over his eyes. “Are you going to make me ask that question again?”
“I’ve been better,” I said and staggered toward the nearest stool. “If your next questi
on involves me trying to kill the doctor, you can save it. I didn’t do anything to him.”
“I know. I saw.”
“What did you see?” I asked with the hope he could piece together what I couldn’t.
“Him flying through the air and tackling you to the ground.”
“I take it he’s never done anything like that before.”
“No,” he said. “The captain put the doctor in his quarters. We’ll wait until he calms down to ask him what the hell happened.”
Groaning, I touched the back of my head. I’d sprouted another smaller one in just minutes like some medical marvel. I stood with a nod and started for the door to the hallway. “I’d like to know that, too.”
Mase popped up and blocked my way with a wall of muscle. “Hey, whoa. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Says who?” I asked without bothering to step out of his personal space.
“Says me,” he said, curling his lip into an irritated scowl. He held my gaze for several faltering heartbeats before looking away. His voice, his nearness sizzled a fiery energy over my skin, a welcome distraction of the panicked aftershocks still trembling through my body.
He cleared his throat. “Clean yourself up. You’ve got blood sliding down your neck. You’re going to ruin everyone’s appetites.”
I took the hand towel from my waistband and pressed it to my chin. Red dotted the white fabric, and that horrible scene in the snowy forest sprang into my mind again. I’d been bloody then, too. Both before and after the vendor chased me since little scabs still dotted my fingertips where I’d gripped Pop’s nails.
“I’m bleeding,” I whispered.
“I see that. What are you going to do about it?”
“I was bleeding that day in the forest,” I said. “One of the… The vendor who worked at the market… He thought I was stealing some of a neighboring vendor’s products, and—”
“Were you?”
“No.”
Mase arched an eyebrow.
“Maybe a little bit,” I admitted.
“A little bit?” Mase scoffed. “Like the little bit of iron you’ve been stripping from this ship? Are you sure you didn’t murder those two men just a little bit?”
Sail (Haunted Stars Book 1) Page 11