Wait, Etta wanted to say, but her mouth couldn’t seem to catch up to her mind. Where are we going?
“It’s coming from over here,” Sophia said, tugging her forward.
Etta took a step toward the Egyptian wing, and the sound grew more intense, the oscillations quicker, like she was working a radio dial and tuning until she found a signal. Another step, and the pitch rose again into a frenzy.
Like it was excited she was paying attention.
Like it wants me to find it.
“What is that?” she asked, hearing her own voice shake. “Why can’t anyone else hear it?”
“Well, we’re going to find out—Etta, right? Let’s go!”
In the dark, the Met wore a different, shifting skin. Without the usual crush of visitors clogging the hallways, every small sound was amplified. Harsh breathing. Slapping shoes. Cold air slipping around her legs and ankles.
Where? she thought. Where are you?
What are you?
They moved beneath the watchful gaze of pharaohs. In the daytime, during the museum’s regular hours, these rooms radiated golden light, like sun-warmed stone. But even the creamy walls and limestone gateways were shadowed now, their grooves deeper. The painted faces of sarcophagi and gods with the heads of beasts seemed sharper, sneering, as the girls followed the winding path through the exhibits.
The Temple of Dendur stood alone in front of her, bleached by spotlights. There was a massive wall of windows, and beyond that, darkness. Not here.
Sophia dragged her past the pools of still waters near the temple, and they ran past statues of ancient kings, past the gateway and temple structure, through to the small gift shop that connected this section of the museum to the American wing. There were no docents, no guards, no security gates; there was nothing and no one to stop them.
Nothing and no one to help her.
Go find Mom and Alice, she thought. Go home.
But she couldn’t—she had to know. She needed—she needed—
The blood drained from her head, until she felt as dizzy and light as the specks of dust floating through the air around her. It was like passing into a dream; the halls were blurring at the edges as she walked, devouring the gilded mirrors, the rich wooden chests and chairs. Shadows played with the doorways, inviting her in, turning her toward one of the emergency stairwells. The sound became a pounding, a drum, a call louder and louder and louder until Etta thought her skull would split from the pressure—
A deafening shot ripped through even the feedback, startling Sophia to a skidding stop. Etta’s whole body jerked with the suddenness of it. Awareness snapped against her nerves; the stench of something burning, something almost chemical.
She saw the blood first as it snaked across the tile to her toes.
Then the milk-white head of hair.
The thing was a crumpled body.
Etta screamed, screamed, screamed, and was drowned out by the pulsing feedback. She pushed past a startled Sophia to get to the body on the cold tile, heaving, a sob caught in her throat, and dropped down to her knees beside Alice.
Breathing, alive, breathing—
Alice’s pale eyes flickered over at her, unfocused. “…Duck?”
Blood sputtered from her chest, fanned out against Etta’s hands as she pressed them against the wound. Her mind began to shut down in its panic.
What happened? What happened?
“You’re all right,” Etta told Alice, “you’re—”
“Shot?” Sophia said, leaning over Etta’s shoulder. There was a tremor of something in her voice—fear? “But who—?”
A shout carried to them from the other end of the hall. Three men in tuxedos, one of them the man in glasses she’d bumped into in the Great Hall, followed by a security guard, seemed to come toward them in slow motion. The emergency light beside them caught a pair of glasses and made them glow.
“Call 911!” Etta yelled. “Somebody help, please!”
There was a slight pressure on her hand. Etta looked down as Alice’s eyes slid shut. “…the old…familiar places…run.…”
Her next breath came raggedly, and the next one never came at all.
The scream that tore out of Etta’s throat was soundless. Arms locked around her waist, dragging her up from the ground. She struggled, thrashing against the grip.
CPR—Alice needed help—Alice was—
“We have to go!” Sophia shouted into her ear.
What the hell is going on?
The door to the stairwell directly behind them scraped open. Loose hair floated around Etta’s face, clinging to the sweat on her cheeks and neck.
The stairwell was so brightly lit compared to the rest of the building that Etta had to hold up her hands to shield her eyes.
The humming…it was as if the empty air on the edge of the landing, just above the stairs, was moving, vibrating in time with the sound. It shimmered the way heat did when it rose from sidewalks on an unbearably hot day. The walls leaned in toward her shoulders.
“Sorry about this.”
She was shoved forward, and the world shattered. A blackness ringed the edges of her vision, clenched her spine, dragged her, tossed her into the air with crushing pressure. Etta lost her senses, her logic, her thoughts of Stop, help, Mom—she lost everything.
She disappeared.
ETTA DIDN’T SURFACE BACK INTO REALITY SO MUCH AS SLAM INTO IT.
Hours, days—she wasn’t sure—a small forever later, her eyes flashed open. There was pressure on her chest, making it difficult to draw a breath. When she tried to sit up, to open the path to her lungs, her joints cracked. Her arms and legs cramped as she tried to stretch out, to feel in the darkness—they struck something hard and rough.
Wood, she thought, recognizing the smell that filled her nose. Fish.
She coughed and forced her eyes open. A small room unfolded around her. The wood floor dipped violently to the right, as if someone had upended one side of it.
As the bright sparks cleared out of her vision, and her eyes adjusted to the dark, Etta dragged her legs in and her chest up, so she could sit up in—what was this? A large cradle, a bunk bed built into the floor and bolted to the wall.
The museum…what was going on?
There had been some kind of…some kind of an explosion.…
Where were the cold tile floors of the stairwell? Where were the fire alarms? Her heart was in her throat, fluttering like a desperate animal. Her muscles felt like they’d been carved out of wood. She reached up, trying to scrub the burning sensation from her eyes, erase the black spots still floating there.
Alice. Where was Alice? She had to get to Alice—
The fuzz of static in her ears burst like the first clap of rain from a thundercloud. Suddenly, Etta was drenched in sound. Creaking, groans, slamming footsteps, pops of explosions in the air. Screams—
“—forward—!”
“Behind me—!”
“—the helm—!”
The words took shape, strung together like dissonant chords, smashing cymbals. The room was clogged with silvery smoke.
This wasn’t the stairwell; this wasn’t any office in the Met. The walls were nothing more than panels of dark unfinished wood. When she turned, she could just make out the shape of a chair and a figure cowering in it, arms clasped over her head.
“Hello?” she scratched out, surging forward on unsteady feet. She was caught again by shock, the feel of rough fabric against her arms and legs. For the first time since she’d come to, her adrenaline slowed to a complete stop.
She wasn’t wearing her black dress.
This was…it was floor-length, some kind of pale shade Etta couldn’t make out. She ran her fingers over the bodice, tracing the embroidery in disbelief. The dress had her upper arms and chest in a chokehold, making it difficult to move.
“Oh!”
A girl’s voice. The figure in the chair moved, rising to her feet. A trembling memory flickered through Etta’s mind. T
he girl. The girl from the concert. Etta charged forward, knocking her aside to get to the crack of light she could see just beyond her—a door.
She pushed me in the stairwell, she shoved me forward—once she had the first glimmer of memory in place, the rest fell into line behind it.
“No—no—we must stay down here!” the girl cried. “Please, listen to me—”
Etta’s fingers ran along the wall until they found a latch, and she burst out of the cramped, dark room. A thick cloud of smoke rose up to meet her, and light flooded her eyes, bleaching the world a painful white. Etta felt hands at her back again, which made her fight harder to move forward, to feel her way through the smoke until her foot caught something and she went tumbling down.
Don’t think, just go! Etta reared up, then stopped. Her wide, white skirts were spread out over a man, flat on his back.
“I’m sorry, I—” she choked out, crawling over to make sure he was all right. “You—”
His pale blue eyes stared up at the ceiling, shock and anguish twisting his features into a stiff mask. A trail of gleaming buttons on his absurdly old-fashioned coat had been torn open and the shirt beneath was splattered with—with—
Oh my God.
“Sir?” Etta’s voice cracked on the word. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t blinking. She looked down, mind blank as it took in the dark liquid coating her skin, her chest, her stomach, the dress.
Blood. Her snowy white skirt was drenched with thick, crimson blood. She was crawling through that man’s blood. I’m crawling through his blood.
What is this?
Etta was up and on her feet before her mind registered moving, and headed toward the source of the light from above. The smoke reached out to smother her, locking tight around her neck. Glass lanterns crashed around her, exploding like pale fireworks. She kept going toward the light until her knees struck something—stairs. Etta grabbed her skirt, hauled the thick layers of it up around her waist, and started to pull herself up, not caring that she was crying, just looking for fresh air and a path out of this nightmare.
Instead, she climbed into the mouth of another one.
HELL AND DAMNATION—NOT THE BLOODY BELL, TOO!
Nicholas swung around, slamming his fist into the next face that tried to block his path. The thing was in pieces—hot, smoldering fragments scattered around the deck. And, unfortunately, in various parts of the bodies that had fallen when the grenade struck.
It had been impossible, in the thick of things, to form a true assessment of how badly the Challenger’s gunners had savaged their prize. Now that he was past the initial wave of violence that followed the boarding, Nicholas had had the chance to conduct a quick survey for himself on the state of the Challenger, and now, this captured ship. He tallied up each defect in the ship’s outward perfection. All three masts were standing—holding for now, if only just, despite the thrashing they’d taken; the mizzenmast, toward the rear of ship, seemed to be shivering and swaying like a drunkard with each faint breeze. The sails had been torn and punched through, but his prize crew could make quick enough work of replacing them. Once, of course, this ship’s crew surrendered.
Nicholas moved with the ship, catching the next spray of salt water full across the face. Most importantly, he noted that the ship wasn’t taking on water insofar as he could tell. The gunners hadn’t struck her below the waterline—which meant they had managed to disable the ship without wrecking her.
Nicholas refused to give in to the flighty, half-drunk feeling that victory was within arms’ reach. Before the day was out, he’d start sailing his first ship back to port as prize master.
He would finally be able to cut himself loose from his past.
Still—the damn idiots should have struck their colors first thing. Would have saved every party involved from a bloodstained affair, not to mention an ungodly headache for the carpenters. How unfortunate that sailing was one of the few occupations where a man could be praised for failing, so long as he did it bravely.
This ship—my ship, he thought stubbornly, because it would be, once the ship’s officers admitted to themselves the inevitable fact of their defeat—was a lovely piece of work, all damage from the Challenger and boarding party aside. A three-masted vessel, the foremast square-rigged, the mainmast carrying a large fore-and-aft mainsail, with a square main-topsail and topgallant sail above it. The moment they’d spotted the sails in the distance and her British colors, the Challenger had fallen on it like a shark. A fast, sleek schooner streaking after its fat prey. With speed on their side, it had hardly mattered that they were outgunned sixteen to twelve. The merchant vessel was a plum prize for the crew of the Challenger after weeks of fruitless hunting around the waters of the West Indies, but it was also the target he had been hired to track, and capture.
He was loath to admit the real reason they had stalked the waters, searching for it. Ironwood wanted the two women, the passengers, who sailed upon it.
The sudden shift of air at his back, the splatter of hot, salty sweat against his skin—Nicholas dove hard to the right, slamming his shoulder into the wood as a tomahawk sliced down behind his head.
The cannon smoke had choked the air from the moment the ships had exchanged broadsides, and the dismal breeze of the day refused to carry it off and clear the field. It was all fruitless fighting now; the result was obviously in his boarding party’s favor. Nicholas tried to find purchase against the ever-growing tide of bodies and blood staining the deck.
The sailor with the tomahawk stalked forward through the chaos of clanging steel and the earsplitting explosions of flintlock pistols firing.
The wood under him bounced as Afton, one of the Challenger’s mates, fell inches from Nicholas, his chest shredded by balls of lead, his face a death mask of outraged disbelief.
Anger roared through Nicholas, heating him at his core as he felt for a weapon. His own flintlock had been fired, and there’d be no reloading it in time. Throwing it would only stun the man, and would be a waste of a damn good pistol at that. Nicholas plucked a knife from a tangle of rigging someone had cut away. A deer-horn handle, ornately carved. His outlook on the situation brightened considerably.
The short, stout sailor with the tomahawk charged toward him screaming, eyes glassy, face gleaming with sweat and soot. Nicholas knew that look, when the burn of bloodlust had set in and you gave yourself over to the pounding rhythm of a good, hard fight.
His right shoulder burned as he lifted his unloaded pistol from his side, pretending to take aim. The gray light caught the muzzle, making it glow in his hands. The seaman drew up short so quickly that his feet nearly slid out from under him. He was close enough for Nicholas to smell him—the acrid sweat, the gunpowder—to see his nostrils flare with surprise. The sailor’s grip on the tomahawk eased, just for a moment, and Nicholas threw the knife. He imagined he could hear the thwack as it pierced the sailor’s meaty neck, and felt some grim satisfaction that he’d hit his mark.
The fight was finally slowing as more of the men realized the fact of their defeat. Bodies began to ache, and powder cartridges emptied; where there had been shouts, there was now a growing silence. The knife was lodged in the side of the sailor’s neck—he must have turned just before it struck. He’d given himself a bad death, drawing the whole business out as he drowned in his own blood. Nicholas leaned over him, instinctively bracing his weight against the swelling sea.
“Sent…down…to…devil”—the sailor’s eyes were narrowed, one last bit of defiance as he choked and hacked—“by—by—a—a shit-sack…negro.”
The last word was accompanied by a fine misting of blood across his waistcoat. The heat beneath Nicholas’s skin evaporated, leaving a perfect, cold diamond of fury in the center of his chest. He had been called far worse, been beaten for simply having been born on the wrong side of the blanket to a woman in chains. Perhaps it was the stark contrast of victory with defeat.
His life now held worth and value. On a ship, it mattered
less what your origins were, and more what work you were willing to do; how hard you’d fight for the men around you. Nicholas had decided long ago to keep his eyes on the horizon of the future, rather than look over his shoulder at what he’d left behind.
Only—that expression the sailor wore. The way his snarl had curled the word into something hateful. Nicholas took a firm hold of the knife’s hilt. He breathed in the sour stench of the man’s breath as he leaned over his face.
“By your better, sir,” he said, and drew the blade across the sailor’s throat.
Nicholas had never been one to crow or luxuriate over another man’s demise, but he watched as the last of the color left the sailor’s face and the skin turned a waxy gray.
“That was a far kinder death than I’d have given him.”
Captain Hall stood a short distance behind him, surveying the slowing fight with a filthy rag pressed against his forehead. When he pulled it away to get a better look at Nicholas, blood spurted from a gash over one thick brow.
Nicholas swallowed the stone that had formed in his throat. “Yes, well,” he said. “I’ve never particularly enjoyed viewing a man’s entrails.”
The captain guffawed, and Nicholas cleaned the knife against his breeches as he made his way to the side of the towering man. He knew he was tall himself, broad in the shoulders, strong-bodied after years of hauling lines and cargo, but the captain had seemingly been carved from the rocky shores of Rhode Island.
Nicholas had been in awe of Captain Hall from the moment they met nearly a decade before—the Red Devil, other sailors had called him. Now, only his beard retained some of that original color. The grooves in the long planes of his face were set deeper by the years, yes, and several teeth and fingers had been sacrificed along the way, but Hall kept himself tidy, kept a tight ship, and made sure his crew were fed and well-paid. In their sphere of life, there was hardly better praise to be had.
The captain’s eyes moved over Nicholas with a father’s instinctive concern. He’d spent years trying to break Hall of the habit, but some things truly were impossible feats.
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