Like blood.
Arthie stopped.
“I was expecting cells,” Matteo whispered.
“Me too,” Jin murmured. “Chains. Imprisonment.”
Instead, there were shelves upon shelves, empty, rising to the ship’s ceiling, each wide and tall enough to fit one particular style of cargo: coffins.
To prove her assumption, there was a single, empty coffin at the end. When she’d described the ship as a beautiful grave, she didn’t expect to find a literaltombin its depths.
“I—” Matteo stopped and cleared his throat. “This is worse than throwing a vampire in a cell. Imagine traveling across the ocean in abox.”
It was true the kidnapped vampires had little control over themselves, but Matteo was right—this was worse.
“It’s an entirely more efficient method of transport,” Arthie said,feeling sick. Jin looked equally ready to hurl the contents of his stomach.
Matteo’s mouth tightened. “I’d wager the coffins are lined with spikes too. As an extra level of precaution.”
For a moment, none of them said a word.
“Well,” Jin said finally. “It’s a good thing we were already angry, eh?”
11FLICK
Flick clutched the hat Arthie had given her to lend hersomeprotection from prying eyes as tightly as if it was her rampant heart. She was alone. As the stolen EJC ship drifted away, a gaping emptiness stretched inside of her.Naronic, the ship was named, painted in ivory along its dark bow. Several of the letters weren’t straight, the kerning slightly off, and Flick couldn’t look at them for long without turning antsy.
Better that than sad, she thought. When she had first begun working with the Casimirs, she’d never anticipated missing one so terribly to the point where it hurt to breathe.
Sadandafraid. She had waved Sidharth off when he wanted to leave before the ship disappeared from sight, and now she was beginning to regret it. The threat of her mother’s men surged again without the Casimirs’ presence to dull it, along with Arthie’s warning to Chester and the boys about the missing humans. Would the Ram kidnap her? It wasn’t as though her men knew Flick was her daughter.
Willard Otis handed her an address. “Meet me at ten bells tomorrow. That’s when my runner will bring around any new paperwork.”
Delightful, Flick didn’t say, taking the card from him.
He glanced at her dubiously one last time, his eyes brightening a fraction in what Flick feared was recognition. She whirled away, and after a moment’s pause, she heard him step into his carriage. Flick exhaled as his tawny horses trotted him away into the midday traffic,and then the dockworkers were rolling up the ropes that had cordoned off the pier.
“Want us to follow him?” Chester asked. “Make sure he stays quiet?”
“Arthie already took care of that,” Reni chided.
“Get back to the Athereum,” Flick said.
Felix frowned. “But—”
“Nope,” Flick said. “I’ve got work to do, and don’t tell me Arthie didn’t give you a list of tasks to do yourselves.”
“She’s right,” Reni murmured, guiding the younger boys away. “Be careful, miss.”
“I will,” Flick said with a nod, watching them weave through the square and into the street in the direction of the Athereum.
And then she was alone.
She sighed. It wasn’t that she didn’t want their company, but she was like Arthie and Jin and Matteo—recognizable. The last thing she wanted was to be responsible for them getting caught.
She couldn’t stay here forever, tucked into the shadows of the port offices, but she wasn’t particularly keen to venture back into the open either. Horned Guard were everywhere, their uniforms in every shade between white and black to indicate rank. Flick wrapped her arms around herself, wishing she had little Opal with her at least, but she’d left the kitten in the safety of her room back at the Athereum.
Flick tightened her hand around the satchel by her side and glanced back toward the expanse of the sea, as if Jin and the others might have already returned. “Now what?”
