Page 22 of Vicious
Randolph nonchalantly took his wine glass from next to Poh’s plate and tipped the rest of it into his mouth. “Who wantsdessert?”
Mase poked a finger in the air. “Ido.”
“Anyone else?” He rose to his feet on wobbly legs. “Good. Great. My apprentice and I will be rightback.”
I stood, followed him through the double doors, and posted my arms on the little table in the middle of the kitchen to give him the full weight of myglare.
He fussed with the knobs on the oven, then eyed me over his shoulder. “Okay?”
“Not okay. You’re being ajerk.”
“So I have some trust issues with anything scaled. Can you blameme?”
Not really. But if Mase had programmed the phones himself, then someone must’ve tampered with them. Unless he was lying, but he had no reason to. My mind kept circling back to Ellison, how she didn’t leave the ship with us, how gray and faraway she looked. Randolph, too, who had walked away from the poisoned butter-garlic sauce and had acted like he hadn’t even heard me calling after him. Anyone could’ve gone into the infirmary for the pills. They were stored in a locked glass case, and the key hung on a rack next toit.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” I said. Not just the phone tampering and the attempted poisoning, but the whole ship. The air was darker, thicker, and it slimed up my lungs with every breath. I’d only first noticed it this morning in the engineroom.
Randolph took a swig from his silver flask. “You’re telling me. I’ll let you get the peach cobbler out of the oven. I'll follow with a scoop of ice cream. I don’t think I can mess that up, canI?"
“No, I supposenot.”
When we came back into the dining room, Captain Glenn had leaned back in his chair, studying each of the crew in turn with his sharp dark eyes that didn’t miss much. He’d likely come to the same conclusion as I had—one of us, maybe more, maybe Ellison, wasn’t who they pretended tobe.
7
After Randolphand I cleaned up lunch, I tucked him away in his quarters next to the dining room. He promised not to move, but because his door locked from the inside, I didn’t know if he’d keep that promise. To be on the safe side, he agreed to be barricaded inside his room for a short time with a chair wedged underneath the door’s handle on the outside. I hated doing this to him, but I didn’t really have a choice until I figured out what was happening on the ship. Besides, I didn’t want him around when I told Captain Glenn about the pills in the food. The captain needed to know, and I would do my best to spin the blame offRandolph.
I searched for Ellison, but she wasn’t in the infirmary. Captain Glenn wasn’t anywhere either. They must’ve somehow known I was looking for them and had run in the other direction. Sighing, I made my way back to the second floor, past the empty infirmary once again, and down a dark hallway that led to where the teralinguas had once been kept as cargo. The same hallway I thought I’d seen someone vanish down after our disastrous trip toOrin.
I flipped the light switch on the wall even though I knew it didn’t work because I was a sucker for punishment. This time, though, I had my dinky phone. Its glow cast a meager light that cut into the darkness a couplefeet.
There weren’t many doors in this hallway, but I tracked my progress anyway on the imaginary periodic table map in my head, more out of habit than to mark my location. I could now navigate this ship in the dark—if I liked the dark, which I didn’t, and if there wasn’t always the feeling of something or someone lurking around the next corner, haunted ship ornot.
Fur and poop smells still traced the air outside the cargo room door. I tried the handle. Locked. As soon as I released it, the door popped open. I leaped back and stabbed my fingers into the iron in my pocket, the phone in my other hand shuddering in mygrip.
A sliver of darkness grew into a black mass as the door opened wider. It spilled out into the hallway, looming over me, and yanked the door shut behindit.
“Absidy?”
I tipped my phone upward toward wide, dark eyes. “Captain?”
He shielded his face with his hand. “Do youmind?”
“Sorry.” I slanted the light downward a bit. “What are you doing in thedark?”
“Doing a bit of cleaning up.You?”
I glanced at his empty hands. What had he been cleaning with? “I was looking for you, actually. I need to tell yousomething.”
“Okay.”
A shiver rolled over my shoulders. I ticked my gaze to the door behind him, unease gathering at the base of my neck. The light hadn’t been on inside for him to see anything. I would’ve seen it under the crack in the door. He likely knew this ship’s every corner better than I did, but I doubted even he could “clean” in thedark.
“Uh…” I stared hard at the whites of his eyes, which seemed to float amid his dark skin, black clothes, and the midnight color choking the hallway. “Can we go to the dining room totalk?”
“Okay.”
When he didn’t move from his stance by the door, I gave a jerky nod. “Right.”
