I checked the crew quarters first. Several more mannequins stood around or slept in rope hammocks. These didn’t move, but I decapitated them anyway, to be safe. There was also a TV and video game system hooked up in one corner, along with a mini-fridge and several beanbag chairs. Just the thing for luring teenagers into your cult.
An aquarium bubbled and gurgled on a low table. The water was filthy, so the fish were little more than shadows moving through the algae and muck. I tapped the front with the tip of my knife.
A black shape three inches long slammed into the glass. The movement cleared the worst of the grime, giving me a brief glimpse of a black goldfish covered in bulging eyes, with small tentacles for fins.
My phone buzzed in my purse. Jenny had sent another message:Morgan is sleeping. He’s safe. Temple warded his room like Sage’s. Now tell me where you are.
Knowing Jenny and Temple were looking after Morgan eased a sliver of the tension in my muscles. After checking the rest of the room, I responded to Jenny:Thank you. Can’t talk now. Just found an evil goldfish.
I added heart and pirate-flag emojis and tapped Send.
• • •
From one of the speakers I hadn’t yet stabbed, the automatic tour guide was going on about pirate treasures. If Alex was in the ship, the recording covered any noises he was making.
I crossed the gun deck and paused outside the galley. This door was cold to the touch. The latch and padlock looked newly installed.
I didn’t bother with my lockpicks. I slid my blade beneath the latch and pried it out of the doorframe, then pushed open the door.
Alex wasn’t there. I lowered my knife and stepped inside.
Alex had turned this part of the ship into a workshop. Cans and vials like the ones we’d seen at the high school filled shelves that probably once held fake pirate cooking supplies. Books and papers covered the counter, all held in place with souvenir paperweights from the museum shop. A small, cleared area had traces of salt and sulfur.
A set of eight hammered metal symbols hung on the walls. They had the same geometrically twistedwrongnessI’d seen in Sage’s toy glyphs and Morgan’s drawings. I didn’t recognize the metal, which had a thin layer of sickly blue-and-green corrosion. Habit and experience made me pull out my phone to get pictures, but the cracked screen and dead pixels reminded me what had happened last time.
The feeling of being watched was stronger here, even though the room was empty of people, pirates, or mutant fish.
At the end of the counter, a silver platter held empty pill capsules. Beside it stood a sealed thermos. I opened it just long enough to get a glimpse of thick, putrid shoggoth goop, then screwed the lid back on tight.
Over the recording of the guide describing the typical pirate fare, I heard the creak of wood. I tightened my grip on my knife and turned toward the door.
“Annette Thorne.” Alex Barclay stood in the middle of the gun deck, leaning against a replica cannon. I hoped it was a replica. He held a pirate cutlass in his hand. I had no idea how he’d gotten so close without me sensing him. Maybe his descent into R’gngyk-worshipping evil had dampened his human desires too much for me to pick up on them, or maybe I’d been distracted by the chill of the magic in the galley.
Alex’s stubbled face was narrow and drawn. Deep crow’s feet by the eyes made him look older than his fifty-some years. He’d acquired a little bit of a gut compared to the photos Jenny had shown us, but his frame remained on the slender side. His short-cut hair was a dark, uniform brown that suggested hair dye.
He wore a flannel shirt, brown cargo pants, and black leather hiking boots. A black patch covered his missing eye.
“I know,” he said. “Eyepatch, pirate ship, cutlass...it’s all a little too on the nose.”
I readied my knife, grabbed the platter from the counter, and strode toward him. “I’m not Jenny. I don’t do the banter thing.”
“Fine by me.” He shrugged his shoulder and raised the sword. “How’s your grandson?”
He was trying to make me angry. Bad idea. I was already angry.
I whipped the platter at his head like a frisbee. He batted it aside—good reflexes, and quick—and then I was inside the reach of his sword and stabbing at his gut.
He twisted so my knife caught only flannel. His knee struck my hip and doubled me over enough for him to slam the pommel of the sword down on my back. Before I could recover, he was tossing me across the gun deck like I weighed nothing at all.
I reevaluated the situation as I got to my feet. Alex was significantly stronger than the trio I’d fought the other night.
“I’ve read all about you, Annette,” he said. “You spent your glory years enjoying life, slutting it up with vampires and demigods and sorcerers, but at least you embraced your power.” He attacked again, and I barely dodged. His sword shattered the wooden boards of the wall behind me.
“Is that what you’re doing? Trying to recreate the glory days of your childhood?” I lunged and thrust my knife toward his heart.
He actually laughed as he slapped my attack aside. “Why would I recreate that dysfunctional shitshow?”
“Jenny’s told me stories,” I said. “Raj was the tough one, right? Jenny’s backup brawler. Kayla was the smart one. And you were what, the comic relief?”
