Page 106 of When the Sky Breaks

“I’ll go find somewhere I can get a whiskey without mixed company,” he muttered, shooing us out and heading for the door.

Nobody got any sleep that night.

Ansel got to our cabin, locked himself in his bedroom, and spent every minute until dawn going through the reports on portals and cults he’d received from the outpost in New York.

Sorcha was too warm, and the heat worsened her nausea. She’d thrown up three times by midnight, prompting me to track down a steward and figure out how to open the completely jammed window in our stateroom. By the time she was settled and asleep it was well past midnight. I hadn’t closed my eyes once.

And then at two o’clock, barely an hour after we’d finally gone to sleep, I startled awake from yet another nightmare where Sorcha died in my arms. She was sitting on my chest again, shaking me again, yelling my name. A giant, scrappy black cat perched in front of her, licking my face.

“What happened this time?” she asked, climbing off me and getting up to light a lamp.

“You drowned,” I said, raking a hand over my face and sitting up. “Somehow when the portal opened it didn’t have a demon inside—it had a whole ocean. And we all drowned.”

“I hate traveling,” Sorcha muttered.

“You going back to sleep?” I asked.

“Eventually,” she replied. “Startling awake to your husband screaming in bed next to you isn’t exactly relaxing.”

“You too warm again?” I ghosted a hand over her forehead. She was sweating.

She just shrugged.

“Can you read without getting seasick?” I asked.

“Even the menu at dinner was pushing it,” Sorcha admitted, “which means that unless the cats get very entertaining I’m liable to die of boredom in the next two weeks.”

“Come here,” I said. “Let me read to you. Just pick something in English. Okay? And we’ll go back to sleep when you’re tired again.”

And the plan almost worked. She curled up with her head in my lap and listened, and I could feel her drifting off. Until just after three o’clock when Sorcha sat bolt upright, eyes wide.

“There are no fish,” she said in a panic.

“What the hell does that mean, Sorcha?” I mumbled. I was already half dozing myself.

“I mean that there are no fish,” she repeated. “We’re in the middle of the ocean. So there’s this background noise in my magic. The fish. Right? But now it is gone. All gone. Why?”

“Sorcha, I have no idea why the fish would have all left suddenly,” I said. “Just try and sleep. Please?”

“But we have to go figure out—” Sorcha began.

I didn’t let her finish. “Love, we are not going to be able to figure out why the fish left right now. So try to sleep. We can talk to Ansel in the morning. You want me to open the door and get the cats?”

Sorcha looked utterly defeated, but she nodded.

Forty-Five

Sorcha

Iwoke half buried under a pile of cats. They seemed to have multiplied overnight. It was almost nine when Neal finally shooed them away and bribed me into getting dressed with the promise of tea if we could get up to the dining room before ten.

“Go change,” were the first words out of Ansel’s mouth when we finally went out into the sitting room.

“It’s fine,” I insisted. “I’m pregnant.”

“You don’t wear a tea gown to breakfast,” Ansel said, “pregnant or not. You want Guinevere to cause another scene?”

“No,” I grumbled.