A Dawn Most Wicked

CHAPTER EIGHT

I found Jie exactly where I expected. It was within shouting distance of Lang but also where I’d said the ghosts would avoid: the back of the Texas Deck.

She sat on the balustrade with her legs hanging off dangerously and her hair falling from her braid. If she’d wanted, she could jump right off the boat—and fall three stories to a watery grave.

Her body tensed when Joseph and I approached, but she pretended not to notice us until we stood directly beside her. I knew she was pretending because I’d done the same ear-perk a thousand times. A pickpocket always knew who was around him—but more important, how to act like he wasn’t paying attention.

Of course she dragged this game out, and it wasn’t until I gave a loud cough that she pulled her eyes from the wake trailing behind the Queen. She gave me a once-over. “How’s your wrist?”

I bared my teeth. “It’s just peachy. Thanks for asking.” Then I cocked my head toward Joseph. “Jie, this is Joseph Boyer.”

She turned her face toward Joseph, a languid, catlike movement. “Hullo.”

Joseph stiffened. “You’re the boy who cheated us at cards.”

She barked a laugh and snapped her fingers. “I thought you looked familiar. Though . . . where’d your nice hat go? And your pretty white gloves?”

Joseph’s nostrils flared, but before he could open his mouth, I cut in, “Don’t be a smart aleck. We need your help.”

“My help, yeah?” She swung her legs around to face us. “With what?”

“Something important.”

“Very important,” Joseph intoned.

“And very secret,” I added.

Jie’s eyebrow slid up. “Let me guess: it’s also very illegal. Sorry, but I don’t break the law.”

“Yet you are willing to cheat at cards?” Joseph gave her a penetrating glare—the sort of glare that said, “Do not get on my bad side.”

Jie seemed to understand the look because she said—albeit grudgingly—“What do you want me to do?”

“Climb the jack staff,” I answered.

She hopped off the balustrade. “Why?”

I motioned for her to follow and guided her to the edge of the Texas. Far to the front of the boat, we could just glimpse the tall pole with the Lang Company flag waving at the top. “See the glint just below the flag? It’s a pair of gilded antlers. Can you get them?”

“Can I get them?” She snorted derisively. “Of course I can. The question is will I. What’s in it for me?”

“What’s in it for you?” I clicked my tongue. “I reckon you owe us, Jie. After cheatin’ us—and damned near knocking me out.” I was grateful when Joseph didn’t mention that I had also demanded “what’s in it for me?” less than twenty-four hours ago. “Why,” I continued, “we could just tell Lang about that bar fight last night. I bet he doesn’t like his footmen startin’ brawls.” I tugged the pliers from my pocket and held them out to her. “Or you can climb the jack staff and get the horns.”

“Hmph.” Her expression didn’t change, but she did snatch the pliers from my hand. “All right,” she said at last. “I’ll help. But”—she pointed to the pilothouse—“I’m pretty sure the captain’s gonna see me.”

I huffed out a relieved breath. “Don’t worry about the captain. I’ll deal with him and you deal with getting those gilded antlers down.”

“What of the first mate?” Joseph inserted, looking from me to Jie and back. “He is stationed at the boat’s bow and can also see you.”

“You mean that old man yelling about twains and bottoms?” Jie arrogantly tossed her head. “He’s too focused on that rope of his to notice me. I’ll be up and out of sight before he can even read the next depth.” She rolled her shoulders and turned to me. “I’ll count to two hundred before I climb. That means you have exactly two hundred seconds to get that pilot distracted. You can count, yeah?”

“Make it three hundred,” I said. “There’s someone I gotta see first, and it might take a few minutes of . . . persuading to get her to my side.”

Jie nodded, twisting as if to go—but then she paused and wagged her finger at us. “If I lose my job because of this, you’re both dead.”

“Should anything happen,” Joseph said, “I will compensate you.”

“Fine.” She swatted at me. “Go on! I’m already to three in my head. And you, Mr. Boyer”—she turned to Joseph—“are coming with me to explain exactly why I’m risking my neck for a pair of golden deer horns.”

I hurried over the Texas and counted—fourteen, fifteen. Three ghosts floated toward me. My pulse kicked up. I ducked into a shadow and flattened myself against the wall. They slid past, hissing for blood. . . .

How much blood would they take if they could actually touch me? The thought flashed in my mind . . . and my gut knotted up. The idea of a hundred spirits demanding I pay—a hundred spirits piercing me with guilt and physical agony . . .

It wasn’t the way I wanted to die.

The apparitions passed out of view, and with a fortifying breath I forced my feet back into action. Twenty-two, twenty-three . . . Once I reached Cassidy’s cabin door, I briefly debated knocking—but then decided I didn’t have the time.

So I barged in.

“Eek!” She sat up in bed, still in her uniform and her sheets clutched to her chest. Then she realized it was me. Her breath whooshed out and her shoulders slumped. “Heavens, I thought you were . . . I don’t know. Someone who shouldn’t be in my cabin.”

My lip quirked up at that—knowing she qualified me as someone who should be in her cabin—but then I shook my head and forced my mind back to the matter at hand. Thirty-five, thirty-six.

“Listen, Cass. There’s something I need to tell you, and there ain’t much time to tell it.” I scooted to her and knelt at the foot of her bed. Then I told her all about Joseph. I told her how he had found me on the street—sixty-four, sixty-five—and how I agreed to let him on the Queen in exchange for a job. I told her how I’d seen him touch the ghosts—seventy-nine, eighty—and how they were here because of a curse. A curse that could, at any moment, rip a hole between worlds and make the spirits solid.

I lost count shortly after one hundred. After I told her we needed the horns off the jack staff . . .

After, she started trembling, and her knuckles turned as white as the linens she gripped. “Why didn’t you tell me about the curse?” she whispered. “If we could all die from it—”

“Joseph just figured it out.” I pushed off the floor, slid my arm around her shoulders, and pulled her close. “And I didn’t tell you about Joseph because I thought you might feel the same way as your pa—that you wouldn’t trust him. But I should have told you. It wasn’t right for me to keep it secret.”

“I’m not mad, Danny.” She inhaled deeply, her chest expanding. “But I assume you came in here for something more than just confessing your sins.”

I cringed and drew back to grip her biceps. “I need your help, Cass. We need you to distract your pa—and fast. He’s got to be out of the pilothouse long enough for Jie to get the horns off the jack staff.”

“Without a ladder?” Her eyes grew large. “How can the boy manage—”

My hand shot up. “Trust me. He can do it. But . . . can you help?”

“Of course I can.” She slid off the covers, and her stockinged feet hit the floor. “But who will steer the Queen?”

“You.”

“Ah.” She scooted off the bed and strode to her boots. As she stuffed her feet in without bothering to lace them up, she asked, “And what do I tell Father?”

I pushed off the bed. “Tell him the command bells are stuck. Remember that time outside Memphis when the bells weren’t working? He stormed down to the engine room himself.”

Cassidy’s face scrunched up, unsure. “I don’t know.” She moved to the door and cracked it. “He’ll know the bells aren’t broken since the paddles will be working according to what he orders, and—”

“CASSIDY!” The captain’s voice thundered from above.

In the dim room we stared at each other, unmoving.

Then Cochran’s voice roared out again. “Cassidy, come here! The bells aren’t working!”

Cass gasped, and her mouth bobbed open and closed. “Did you do something, Danny?”

“No,” I said quickly. “This has nothing to do with me! But go! It’ll work just fine.”

“Right.” She nodded decisively, and my heart swelled. To see her with her jaw set like that—to see the way she carried herself purposefully through the door . . .

It was no wonder she had tamed the Mississippi.

And it was no wonder I was in love with her.

After her cabin door had swung shut and her drumming footsteps were out of earshot, I crept to the window and peeked behind the curtain. Eight long, tight breaths later, Cochran’s broad form stomped by and swooped down the stairs. Once his head vanished I counted to ten—enough time to get him too far ahead to see me—and then squeezed out the door. With my head constantly darting left and right I surged over the Texas and down to the Hurricane Deck.

But as I raced to the next set of stairs, a flicker of movement at the front of the boat caught my eye. A body at the middle of the jack staff. My stomach hitched. Where was Cochran? If he was still stomping in the same direction as me, he could see Jie too. . . .

Two heavy heartbeats thumped past. I didn’t move. But then Jie reached the top of the pole, and I realized that me standing still and holding my breath like a Nancy wasn’t going to change a damned thing.

I sprang into a run. Once we had the horns, I needed to get Joseph and Jie out of sight—stowed away somewhere safe and private to deal with the lodestone curse.

I bounded off the final steps and onto the Passenger Deck, my breaths coming in shallow and fast. Ghosts swooped and snarled, but I skittered left, right, left, and soon reached the main stairwell.

It was then, just as my feet hammered down the last set of stairs and the Main Deck opened up before me, that Cassidy’s voice screamed out, “Depth! Barnes, I need a depth!”

I jolted, almost tripping down the remaining steps.

“Depth!” Cassidy shouted again, her voice now shrill. Panicked.

Why wasn’t the first mate answering?

For that matter, where was the first mate? I jumped off the last steps and aimed right, toward the edge of the Main Deck where the old man should be. . . .

But he wasn’t.

I skittered to a stop, my arms flying out to keep my balance. Then I twisted around, cupped my hands over my mouth, and hollered, “Cass! Barnes ain’t here!”

For several moments the only sounds were the beating paddles and thrumming engine. Then Cassidy’s voice shrieked out, “Get me a depth, Danny!”

A quick scan of the first mate’s station showed his lead line was gone, so I swiveled around and dove toward the hallway behind the stairs . . . to a series of hooks where the extra lead lines should have been. They weren’t.

“Hey!” said a girl’s voice. “We’re over here!”

I flung a sideways glance, caught sight of Joseph and Jie hovering beside the clerk’s office, but all I could do was nod at them and then charge back onto the Main Deck.

“Cassidy!” I yelled up. “Full stop! Full stop! Now!”

Jie and Joseph rushed out behind me. “Where’s the first mate?” I asked them. “The man hollering depths—have you seen him?”

Jie shook her head. “He wasn’t here when I climbed down. The horns weren’t there either,” Jie added softly.

That stopped my shouting. “What?” I rounded on her. “Not there?”

“There’s only one set up there.” Jie lifted her hands defensively. “And it said Memphis on it.”

“Someone must have taken them down recently,” Joseph said. “Jie claims the wood is damaged.”

She nodded. “Maybe someone got to ’em before the race started.”

“Danny!” Cass’s voice ripped into my brain. “I need a depth!”

“The lead line ain’t here!” I bellowed back. “You have to call for a full stop, Cass! Full stop!” My gaze dropped down to the paddles, waiting for a slow in their rhythmic beat. If Cassidy didn’t know the depth and the boat ran aground at full steam . . . it would rip a hole in the Queen’s hull that would sink us in minutes.

Worse, it would jostle the boilers, and jostled boilers were a guaranteed explosion.

“Full stop!” I roared, and this time she roared back, “I’m trying! Murry ain’t responding!”

Black fear uncoiled in my chest. The command bells were broken—Cochran had said that. . . .

But why were they broken?

My eyes locked on Joseph. On Jie. We were going to die, and they saw it in my eyes.

As one, we burst into a sprint for the engine room. Behind the main stairwell, past the blacksmith, and finally into the electric-lit engine room.

But what met my eyes was far, far worse than I could have imagined. Sprawled just inside the doorway, blood seeping from the front of his head, was Second Engineer Schultz. I pulled up short, spinning my arms to keep from falling on him—and then I caught sight of Barnes, also in an unconscious heap a few paces away.

There was no sign of Murry. Or of Captain Cochran.

“Are they alive?” Joseph asked. He didn’t wait for an answer before crouching to check Schultz’s pulse.

And my attention whipped to the far greater emergency at hand: the paddles. Both pistons had clubs lodged in them—the valves were completely open and steam shrieked into the engine. But worse, the clubs were wedged twice as far as they were ever supposed to go—too far to be pulled back out. If the steam didn’t lessen, we could never slow the ship down.

I twisted toward Jie a few steps away. “Stop the firemen,” I ordered. “No more coal on the fires—none!”

Nodding once, she rocketed from the room. I jumped over Barnes, Schultz, and the kneeling Joseph, and scrambled for the speaking tube. I yanked desperately at the pilothouse bell. “Murry’s gone,” I screamed into the tube. “Schultz and Barnes are knocked out, and we got two engines jammed at full steam.”

I pushed my ear to the tube, and when Cassidy’s voice slid down, my heart stopped.

“Then God save us all,” she said.

A half breath later, the whistle screeched through the night, stabbing over the engines and shaking through the speaking tube. It would alert everyone on board to the emergency.

Then Cass was back on the tube. “Are Schultz and Barnes all right? And where’s my father?”

I glanced at the prostrate men. Joseph was applying pressure to Schultz’s head wound, meaning the engineer must still be alive, and Barnes’s chest moved steadily.

“You’re pa ain’t here,” I told Cass. “Schultz and Barnes will survive, but they can’t help me unjam the pistons.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“I’ll be too slow if I fix the paddles alone,” I argued. “But if someone could help me—”

“Danny,” she snapped. “It doesn’t matter. We’re coming up on Devil’s Isle, and I can see from here that the water’s low.”

My eyes clenched shut. Devil’s Isle. A vicious sandbar that ran more boats aground than any other bar in the Mississippi. Even if the river wasn’t low, it would take constantly changing speeds, constantly shifting directions, and constant maneuvering to get around that bar.

And we couldn’t maneuver if the ship was stuck in full steam ahead.

“How close?” I asked, my voice pinched.

“Less than half a mile,” she said. “Even if the furnaces aren’t fed and we release the extra steam, the ship can’t stop in that little a time. Not without the paddles in reverse. There’s only one thing to do, Danny, and that’s get everyone off the ship. Now.”

For three pounding heartbeats I didn’t answer. There was really nothing I could say.

Because of course we couldn’t get everyone off the ship and Cass knew that. The roustabouts had cleared away all the excess weight—including lifeboats.

A ghost flickered in front of me, rasping in the voices of my past, but for once I was too distracted to care.

“Cass,” I started. But then Jie’s voice exploded in the engine room: “The horns!”

I flinched, my body snapping around.

“The engineer has them!” Jie cried. “I saw him up on the Texas.”

Joseph pushed up from his crouch beside Schultz. “You are certain?”

“Yeah.” She nodded quickly. “Big man with white hair and coveralls like his.” She pointed at Schultz. “He was heading toward the pilothouse.”

That was when it all locked into place—when I suddenly knew who had cursed the horns. The answer had been staring me in the face all along. There was only one man on this boat who would benefit from a haunting on the Sadie Queen. Who had a real, vicious reason to hate the captain. A man who wouldn’t care about passengers but would want revenge.

“Murry,” I said roughly. “He’s behind this. He’s locked us full steam into Devil’s Isle. He knows we can’t escape, and that’s exactly what he wants.” I rolled my head back, my throat tightening until I could barely breathe.

“You must pay,” the ghost whispered, still floating beside me. Its frozen breath sent ice down the side of my face. “You killed me, and now you will die.”

“If the engineer has the horns,” Joseph said, coming up beside me and staring at the ghost, “then we can only assume the horns do possess the curse and that he intends to cast it soon.”

I didn’t react. I found my body had slipped into a place of cool resignation and it had no desire to move. The inescapable weight of the situation was heavy. We would die no matter what.

The ghost was right, and I deserved this.

Jie, however, did move. She stomped across the room and planted herself in front of Joseph. “How do we stop the curse? There’s got to be something we can do, yeah? We aren’t dead yet.”

Aren’t dead yet. Something we can do. The words kicked around in my skull, overpowering the dead man’s endless whispers of guilt and retribution.

And then I blinked. Jie was right. As long as I was still alive, as long as breath burned in my chest and my fingers could curl into fists, then there was always something to be done.

I tipped up my chin. “You’re right, Jie. There is somethin’ we can do: get the horns and stop the paddles.”

Joseph nodded, his expression stiff. Severe. And absolutely unafraid. “I will get the lodestone and stop this curse.”

“I’ll help,” Jie said.

I swung my head toward the pistons. Toward the club. “And I’ll get these paddles stopped. Before it’s too late.”

Without another word we split up. Joseph and Jie to the stairs and me to the blacksmith cabin. I spotted what I needed on the wall, an ax that was rusted but still sharp. I hauled it off, pleased by the weight of it. It was comforting. And capable of doing just the amount of damage I needed. I loped back toward the engine room—only to instantly stop.

The electric lights were flickering. Then they started dimming. Fear swelled big and heavy in my throat.

But it was the apparition in my path that almost turned my bowels to water. A spirit I had seen three months before. Her exposed skull still shone. Her scorched fingers still flexed—clawing for me.

“Blood,” she rattled, moving toward me. “I will have your blood.”

The air crackled with cold and static. The hair on my arms rose. My ears popped.

Then the spirit spoke in my mother’s voice, “You left me to die, Danny. You will pay.” A stench invaded my nose, coated my tongue. It was a pungent, dank smell that stung my eyes, that made me think of dirt and inescapable death.

This was the smell of the Dead. Of spirits returned.

Of vengeance unquenched.

This was the stink of suffering. “You left me to die, Danny.”

I nodded numbly—I had left her. Once Ma had hacked her last, blood-spraying cough, I had kissed her forehead and left her dead body lying in the alleyway we called home. Her blood had covered my hands, my shirt, my soul.

And now she wanted payment for leaving her—

The electric lights flickered again, jerking me back to the present. For a moment the apparition seemed to grow solid. To grow into real bone and real blood.

But then a surge of power slammed into me. The lamps exploded. Glass sprayed.

And an inaudible scream burned into my brain.

Blood everywhere!

The curse had cast. With the lights out I couldn’t see—but I didn’t need to. Somehow I knew the ghosts were solid now. And I knew this ghost wanted my blood.

Die, she shrieked in my brain, no semblance of my mother’s voice left. Just this ghost’s own personal rage.

Ice stabbed my neck. I screamed and swung my ax like a baseball bat. The cold pierced deeper, but then I used my momentum to wrench from the ghost’s grasp. My blood poured down my neck. I felt her claws reach for me once more. . . .

But I dropped to the floor and rolled, the ax clutched to my chest. Then I was back on my feet and sprinting toward the engine room.

Moonlight shone on the machines as I skittered through the door—careful to avoid Schultz and Barnes. With a single kick and a desperate prayer I shut the door before the ghost could rush through.

It seemed to stop her, for though the ghost’s screams grew louder in my mind, her form didn’t appear. But how long would this work?

“Mr. Sheridan.”

I whirled around, hefting the ax high. But it was only Kent Lang. He stood in the middle of the room, his eyes bulging. Sweat matted his curls to his forehead, and he looked as if he might piss himself at any second.

“What . . . what’s happening?” Lang asked in a rough voice. “It’s as if hell has broken loose.”

“Because it has.” I lowered the ax and staggered toward him. “All the apparitions—they’re real now. They have forms. They can kill us.”

“I . . . I know.” Lang gestured to his forehead, and I realized it wasn’t sweat that matted the man’s hair. It was blood. “Miss Cochran sent me here,” Lang continued, “to help in any way I can.”

“I’m not sure there’s much you can do.”

Lang hesitated, clearly at a loss. “I . . . But what are you doing? Surely I can help.”

I crossed toward the larboard engine and pointed. “You see that wood stuck beneath that lever? It’s holding the steam valve open.”

Lang nodded.

“I’m about to take this ax and beat that club to pieces. Every time the arm swings up, I’ll move in. Then I’ll dive back out before it swings down and breaks my neck.”

Lang’s mouth bobbed open and closed. His Adam’s apple trembled, and I was all set to dismiss him—there was work to be done.

But then he said, “Let me do it.”

“Huh?” I grunted.

“I said,” Lang pushed out his jaw, “let me do it. I can break out that club and you can go where you’re needed.”

“I don’t think that’s a—”

“Let me,” he snapped. He was a man who was not used to being disobeyed. “I know how I look to you, Mr. Sheridan. I’m some rich fellow with no grit. And I cannot lie, I’m scared to death. But I am not useless. I can help. You just have to give me that ax and trust me.”

I eyed the other man, a strange respect unfurling in my chest. I kept judging him by his looks—pretty and soft—instead of his actions. He had dominated Cochran up in the captain’s suite, so why couldn’t he dominate the engine too? It was something the other man could do, and I was needed elsewhere.

So I inhaled until my lungs pressed against my ribs, then I made a decision. “All right. Take this.” I thrust the ax into his hands. Then I grabbed his shirt and yanked him close. “You gotta be fast, Mr. Lang. If that arm hits you, it’ll kill you.”

He swallowed. But he didn’t flinch. And he didn’t turn away. “I understand.”

“Good.” I gave him a final once-over. Then I pointed at a tall brass lever. “When you get the wood cleared away, you hit that. It’ll shift this paddle into reverse and stop the boat. I’ll feel it when we stop, and then I’ll come get the Queen where she needs to be.”

Lang nodded. “Be careful.”

“Same to you.” I gave the other man a tight smile. Then I added, “And I’ll see you soon. Real soon.”