The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)

 

“Dad . . .” I touched his side, my hands gentle, plucking at the blood-soaked fabric of his shirt; the bullet had dug a furrow through his flesh, skipping along his ribs like a stone. It wasn’t life-threatening—but where would I have been shot, if I’d still been at the helm? Under my fingers, Slate’s skin was clammy, and his whole body trembled. “We’ll get you to the hospital.”

 

“No!” Clumsily, he threw my hand off. “No hospitals.”

 

I rounded on him. “What’s wrong with you? You need stitches, you need medicine—”

 

“Oh, yeah?” He laughed coarsely as he struggled out of his shirt. Wadding it up, he wiped the blood from his tattooed flesh. Under the ink, it was pale as smoke. “Like painkillers?”

 

“You could still go to the hospital. Just tell them you don’t want any drugs.”

 

“You think so?” He smiled darkly, his voice bitter, and I realized how naive I must have sounded. He hadn’t been clean for years—maybe not since my mother died. Who was he, without his opium? Had I ever known my own father?

 

Oblivious to my scrutiny, Slate leaned heavily against the bulwark and spat into the water, wiping his mouth with his arm. Then he closed his eyes and put his forehead down on the rail. “It’s more blood than guts. I don’t die today. I know my fate. I’ll see her again.”

 

He spoke the words like a dreadful incantation—a prayer, or a curse. My father loved my mother. I knew it like I knew the position of the stars, or the pitch of the deck. His search for her had defined the last sixteen years—the entirety of my existence, for her life had ended as mine began. She was his safe harbor . . . or, more accurately, his white whale. Giving her up would be infinitely harder than giving up the drugs. His knuckles were pale as he gripped the brass. Was he trying to convince me, or himself?

 

After a long moment, he gritted his teeth and pushed himself upright. Then he turned from the rail and swore. “What are you looking at?”

 

I blinked, but he wasn’t talking to me. Following his stare, my stomach sank like an anchor. There he was, standing in the open doorway of the captain’s cabin: Blake Hart, the boy from 1884.

 

He still wore his nineteenth-century suit, very dapper once, though the hat he used to wear had gone missing somewhere back in Honolulu. Billie trotted up to him, wagging her tail slowly, but Blake ignored her, staring at the electric gleam of the glass fantasy of Manhattan. Over his shoulder, the green copper figure of Lady Liberty raised her spotlighted torch; back in his native time, Blake would not have even heard of her. “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me,” I said under my breath.

 

“What?” Blake’s face was white, and his voice cracked when he spoke. “What is this place?”

 

I tried to smile. “Welcome to New York.”

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

 

Fifty years ago, Slate had been born during a blackout in this protean city; when he was a child, he had watched the Bronx burn. New York had changed a lot since then—so much so that some longtimers found it unrecognizable. But even they would have felt more at home in the city than a boy from a bygone kingdom.

 

A speedboat roared past us, the prow painted with leering teeth, the laughing shrieks of the passengers drowned out by the motor. A helicopter whuffed overhead, seeking the latest news. We passed a garbage barge heading south; the stench wafted to us along with the screams of the gulls. And Blake stood dazed on the main deck as the salt of the Atlantic curled his golden hair. “Where are we, Miss Song? And where are all the stars?”

 

I followed his eyes to the orangey-blue bruise of the city night. A myth came to mind: a man cast out of paradise. But would any god be so cruel as to throw someone from Eden into New York City?

 

As I stood there, hesitating, it was Kashmir who took his arm. “Come, Mr. Hart. You should still be resting. Let’s get you downstairs.”

 

“He can have my cabin,” I said suddenly, remembering a day, nearly three years ago, when I’d done the same thing for Kash. He too had come aboard with nothing but the clothes on his back; now he steered Blake toward the hatch with a surprisingly gentle hand. Perhaps they had more in common than I’d thought.

 

Slate disappeared into his room, leaving Bee to take the helm; as he flopped down on his bunk, I retrieved my cell phone from the secret cupboard where we kept the radio. When I powered it on, the date showed as August second.