Page 26 of Vicious
But my whistle wobbled flatly when my exhale puffed out a stream of fog in the middle of a boiling hot kitchen. Sweat gathered at the nape of my neck below my hairnet and tracked a sticky path between the girls squeezed together by my corset. I didn’t feel cold at all, and yet my breath saidotherwise.
Not usually a big deal, unless there was a ghostly presence nearby. Except this ship wasn’t hauntedanymore.
Maybe it was just the kitchen’s heat creating steam. Inside my mouth. A special kind of stupid inspired that line ofthinking.
I washed and dried my hands, then swept through the doors into the dining room. My bare arms registered the cooler change in temperature, but it still didn’t seem cold enough to see my breath. I rounded the new table, opened the door, and stuck my head into the hallway. Another slight drop in temperature, but it still didn’t feel coldenoughto indicate a ghost wasnear.
At the end of the hall, the light began to swing. My breaths clouded in front of me. A slimy shiver zipped up my back because I should’ve felt an arctic burstplusan extreme sense of unease. Not just the latter. Unless I was broken. Or the ship was broken. Or another explanation I hadn’t yetconsidered.
I stepped back into the dining room and kitchen, my senses on high alert, and got back to work. If I’d thought wrong and hadn’t cleared the ship of ghosts, they knew how to find me since I no longer kept them away with iron in mymouth.
Dinner went quickly without incident, though the crew complained of the extreme cold I didn’t feel. It reminded me of when I first boarded theVicious, when everyone had been bundled up incoats.
“Did you check the heat, Poh?” Captain Glenn asked over his emptyplate.
“It’s on full blast,” she said from her stance in front of the hallway door. The knives she usually had strapped down both legs were gonetoday.
Randolph’s hand shook as he poured himself more wine, slopping some of it on the new table. “Well, I feelfine.”
Mase touched my knee under the table. Circles shadowed his eyes since he hadn’t been sleeping well the past few nights, and the scar slicing down his cheek appeared starker as if She had pulled his skin tighter against his head to shrink his brain around only one thing—the need for He. We would arrive at the ring that would hopefully take us to Mayvel at about seven thirty, and Parker’s ship might as well have been kissing our bumper as a constant temptation to Mase. It hurt to see him likethis.
I shook my head at his unasked question. “I don’t have a clue why it’scold.”
The room quieted, and as if out of habit, everyone but Ellison and Poh looked toward the door that led to thehallway.
All our breaths streamed out in long, wispyclouds.
"What time is it?" Iasked.
Ellison turned her head toward me in slow motion to pin me with empty gray eyes. "Seven o’clock." She knew this without looking at anything I could see, as if from a Mind-I.
“How do you know that?” I demanded. If I had to dig open her skull with my fingernails, Iwould.
But before I could lunge across the table, a shriek from somewhere on the ship licked icy cold terror up myback.
The six of us froze and stared at each other, Mase, Captain Glenn, and Randolph’s expressions likely mirroring mine—not this again.Please, not this again. If only our faces could manifest thetruth.
Poh turned to face the door she stood next to, one hand on the lever, the other lifting her gun from herholster.
“Wait, Poh.” Captain Glenn stood and dodged to her side. “Not byyourself.”
Dread sank my eyes closed briefly as I hauled myself out of my chair to join them. Mase followed. Poh opened the door, but Captain Glenn blocked her exit with his beefy arm, then nodded at me. I stepped out first, searching for the source of the scream or any pulsing shadows that shouldn'tbe.
Everything appeared normal except the swaying light at the end of the hallway. I waited, my breaths pluming in front of me, and tapped my pocket of iron. Captain Glenn and Mase followed me out into the hallway, both their stances wide and their heads swinging in either direction. Poh stood inside the doorway with her gun trained on the floor, one foot in the hallway, the other in the dining room, her wide gaze aimed at me as if waiting for instruction. A blank-eyed Ellison peered around her. Randolph, still sitting at the table, gripped the edge, his whole bodytrembling.
When nothing happened again for several minutes, I took a single step toward the dining room, completely baffled. We hadn't imagined it. It hadn't been a case of group hysteria. Not on this ship. It was seven o'clock, theVicious's haunting hour, and yet just as it had appeared to start again, it had suddenlystopped.
I shook my head at Captain Glenn and Mase, my confusion digging between my eyebrows. "Idon't—"
"Absidy!"
The scream came from faraway and scraped terror up my back. I froze, my gaze connecting with Ellison's inside the diningroom.
It had sounded just like her. But it made no sense. She was here, right in front of me, but her scream had come from somewhereelse.
"I'm coming with you," Mase said, striding towardme.
“No,” I said. “You need to go with the captain to slow the ship before we get to thering.”
