The Dead Read online

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Calm breath. I could detangle and he wouldn’t be any the wiser. Follow detangle protocol and all would be good. Leg first. Get the leg off him from the place it had decided it should drape over his and then tuck itself in between his calves. Damn, my leg was a total hussy.

  I’d just managed to detach my torso from where it was partially resting on him when he seemed to stir, and I leapt to my feet, as if I hadn’t been anywhere near him.

  He sat up and stretched, looking about until he saw me. Whew, looked like he had no idea I’d draped myself all over him.

  “Couple hours until dawn still, but you want to get going?”

  Good. He’d assumed I was getting up to break down camp. “Let’s get going. Definitely.”

  * * *

  “Bitters?” Dax shouted as he busted into the one-room hut without knocking. I was starting to realize Dax had a real problem with putting knuckles to wood.

  I should’ve been more nervous as we walked into Bitters’ hut. When Dax had tried to explain that Bitters could use his magic to help protect me, I hadn’t cared about the details. I’d been immediately all in. Anything that would lend me some protection against the Wood Mist was all right in my book.

  But now that we were here, and I watched as Bitters was getting up from where he’d been lying on his bed, a cigarette of some sort in between his fingers and the air especially pungent, I wasn’t so sure I should be adding this chapter to my book. Maybe I should’ve left this sucker closed.

  Bitters coughed and some smoke escaped his lips. “What are you doing? I could’ve been in the middle of something very dangerous or maybe top secret!”

  “But you’re not,” Dax said.

  Bitters just shrugged, as if to say, Okay, so I wasn’t.

  “Are you capable of doing a Grounding Spell?” Dax asked.

  Bitters walked over to his table, heaped so high now that it looked like there would be an avalanche at the slightest tap, and sat on the chair beside it. He leaned back and found the last three inches of space left on the surface to prop up his heels. After getting himself quite comfortable again, he took another drag from the cigarette in his hand and answered, “I’m the best wizard I know. Of course I can do a Grounding Spell.”

  “So that spell does exist?” Dax asked.

  “Sure,” Bitters said, his hand waving the cigarette and leaving streams of smoke ribbon in the air. “It’s been about a century since I’ve done one, but shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “I need you to do one on us,” Dax said, pulling me beside him.

  “Who’s the anchor?” Bitters asked, eyeing us up and then pointing at me. “She doesn’t look too sturdy.”

  “She’s sturdier than she appears,” Dax said.

  “You know it can’t be undone, right?”

  All the nerves that had started to wake up before suddenly felt like they got a bucket of ice water dumped on them. “Wait a second. What is this exactly?” I asked.

  “I told you. It’s something that’ll keep you alive.”

  “Am I doing it or not” Bitters asked as he started rifling through dusty bottles sitting on the table with his free hand.

  “Yes,” Dax said to Bitters, and then turned his attention back to me. “You said you’d do whatever it took. This is part of the price.”

  No denying I’d said that, but doing “whatever” was an easier thing when you were doing it in the far-off distance. “What exactly is a Grounding Spell?”

  “It ties our life spans together.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “When you talk to the Wood Mist, they can’t kill you unless they kill me as well. The downside is, when I die, so do you. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t die easily.”

  “That’s all it does?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I could talk to the Wood Mist and they couldn’t get inside of me and kill me?”

  “They might be able to get inside you, but they can’t kill you unless they kill me too.”

  This didn’t sound so bad. This was definitely something I could get behind. “Sign me up.”

  Bitters walked over to a roughly drawn calendar hanging on his wall. “What am I getting paid?”

  “What do you want?” Dax asked.

  “Hmmm. I’m not sure. I don’t really need anything. We’ll work it out later.” He started tapping his finger on the blocks. “Come back on Friday.”

  “That’s almost a week from now,” I said. Croq looked like he might not have two days left, let alone a week, especially if he kept hitting up his cure.

  “I know. I can count. It’s also the new moon.” Bitters stabbed the calendar with his finger, and I saw the little circle inside the box he was pointing at.

  “Wouldn’t you want the full moon?” I asked. In every book I’d ever read, the good stuff always happened on a full moon. If we needed a moon cycle, that seemed like the one we’d want.

  “Noooo,” he said. “Or I would’ve said come back in three weeks. Who’s the wizard here?”

  Looking at it that way, one week was better than three.

  * * *

  Dax and I got back to the ship late. I stopped to grab a snack from the galley, and by time I got to the cabin, he was already settled in my bunk.

  “You’re really going to sleep there every night?” I asked as I climbed up onto the bunk next to him, liking how he threw off so much heat. The place had been a lot chillier before he’d shown up, that was for sure. And if I was going to start admitting things, at least to myself, it was nice knowing I didn’t have to bar the door or step over trip wires. Everything about the sleeping arrangement was an improvement. Only problem I had was I became a stage-one clinger in my sleep.

  I’d settled into my corner like I usually did when he surprised me by saying, “If you really want me to leave, I’ll go.”

  Shit. He would? “No, you wouldn’t,” I said, and then closed my eyes, hoping to end the conversation.

  “Really, go ahead. Tell me you want me to go.”

  “I don’t know why you even say that. You wouldn’t leave.” I pulled the covers up over my shoulders and hoped he’d shut up about it. “You never do what I tell you to.”

  “Are you asking me to leave?” he asked.

  “Didn’t I just do that?” I asked, knowing I hadn’t actually asked him to.

  “No, you didn’t. Are you?”

  This was getting tricky. Why was he trying to get me to ask him? Couldn’t he just shut up and go to sleep? “Would you if I did?”

  “Immediately,” he said. “If you didn’t feel like cuddling anymore, I wouldn’t want to crowd you.”

  “What are you talking about? We don’t cuddle,” I said, so glad I was facing away from him and he couldn’t see the panic that was surely written all over me.

  “I’m not sure what else you’d call what we do every morning, but okay,” he said.

  I turned, forced to defend myself against how bad it looked. “I get cold at night. That’s all it is.”

  He remained lying on his back as he stared at me. I watched as his hand reached up, and then it cradled the back of my head as he pulled me down to him. His lips grazed mine feather soft as I leaned on his torso.

  His hand dropped and then he was shifting out from underneath me and rolling on his side, giving me his back.

  “Goodnight, Dal.”

  “You’re going to sleep?” I asked before I thought about how that sounded and what I’d implied.

  “Yes. Why?”

  He was really going to sleep. I wanted to plant my foot on his ass and shove him out of the bunk. What did he think he was about? He gets me all jazzed up and then rolls over? What? Did he think I was going to beg him to roll back on over? Because I wasn’t.

  I turned over, giving him my back and trying to be noisy enough about it that he’d know.

  I shouldn’t say a word, but I couldn’t resist. “Just for the record, you aren’t always very nice.
”

  “Neither is leaving without so much as a note.”

  26

  The door swung open to my cabin just as I was pulling my shirt over my head. If I hadn’t sensed Dax, I would’ve known anyway, because no one but him would have the balls to barge in like that. They could talk all the trash they wanted when Dax wasn’t around about how they could take him, but no one ever tried.

  He walked over and placed a small packet wrapped in fabric on the bunk. “This is yours,” he said.

  He turned to leave but paused by the door. “Also, looks like Jacob’s about to take over a ship. I don’t think there’s going to be much of a fight from the looks of it, but you may want to stay down here,” he said, and then went to shut the door.

  “Wait! You can’t say that and just leave,” I said as I threw on my boots and grabbed my knives. “The pirates are taking a ship?”

  “You know, I knew this wasn’t going to go smoothly,” he said, shaking his head and talking to himself. “Try not to get involved. We need this ship and people to sail it.”

  Well damn it all to hell and triple shit, I hadn’t even had breakfast yet. He had a point, though, about stepping on toes. It was bad enough we were stuck waiting, and Jacob hadn’t taken too kindly to his schedule getting interrupted because we couldn’t leave the area yet. But still. I had to do something. “What about negotiating on their behalf? How do you think that would fly?” I asked as I thought of the best approach.

  “My guess? It would probably depend on if Jacob enjoyed his eggs today.”

  I hated being a guest. The shit was almost worse than being a prisoner some days. You had to go along with whatever they wanted and you couldn’t even act pissed off about it.

  I let out a stream of curses, unlike any tirade I’d ever let loose before. That was one of the good things about pirates. I had a whole arsenal of new curses to add to my vocabulary to spruce things up when needed.

  I headed toward the door and he put out an arm to stop me. “Just keep in mind, if it gets ugly and I have to kill everyone, they’ll be no one left to sail the ship for us. Who’s going to sit with it in port when we go ashore?”

  “I get it. I’ll try and keep the peace,” I said, and stared down at his arm until he dropped it.

  Dax followed me as I made my way on deck. I figured he was going to go do his own thing once we reached topside, but he dogged my steps all the way over to the rail as I spotted the new ship in the distance.

  We hadn’t even gotten to the other boat yet. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I told you I’d try and do this peacefully. Don’t you believe me?”

  “I’m here to watch the show.”

  “The show?”

  “Yes, the one where you try and tell Jacob how to run his crew while not insulting him. I need something to amuse me on this damn boat.”

  I nodded. I could see a certain amount of entertainment value in that. It also wouldn’t hurt to have someone like Dax there beside me when I was arguing my point. “So you’re going to back me up?”

  He tilted his head back and crossed his arms before he said, “Would never think of stepping on your toes like that. You don’t need anyone, remember?”

  Eyes narrowed, I tried to think of a fitting response, and couldn’t come up with anything reasonable that wouldn’t make me have to eat my own words.

  Lacking a good comeback, I rolled my eyes and huffed. It was lame, but I had bigger issues, like saving however many people were on the ship we were about to take over.

  “Jacob,” I called as I approached where he was standing on the upper deck, looking through the coolest set of binoculars I’d ever seen.

  “What is it? I’m busy right now.”

  This didn’t appear to be going down the way my interrupting his breakfast normally went. I turned, looking for Dax and wondering if I could use the appearance of him to my benefit, even if he didn’t actually support me. He managed to plant himself ten feet down and was looking as uninterested as possible, with a smug Oh, you need me? expression pasted on.

  No, I don’t. I watched as the ship got closer in range and hung back. I’d take this minute by minute. Or more likely, blow by blow?

  The closer the ship got, the more splintered and worn the wood appeared. The boat was half the size of our ship, and yet there were more than twice the amount of bodies we had, just topside.

  No one offered a fight when the pirates strung the boats together, or even as they boarded. Jacob was one of the first on deck of the taken ship, and I was close behind.

  “Jacob, these people have nothing to take,” I said to him.

  There was a slight nod as he examined the group. Their clothes were filthy and their hair greasy. The boat itself carried an odor from having too many passengers on board. Even the ship was near broken, with holes in the decking.

  Jacob moved forward, making his command known. “I control these waters. What are you doing here?”

  An older man stepped forward. “We didn’t mean to trespass. We’re simply trying to get as far from the Bloody Death as possible.”

  There were murmurs of agreement that ran through the crowd.

  “How bad?” I asked.

  “It’s taken over the entire southern East Coast.”

  Jacob took a step backward, fearing anyone who’d been in a plague-stricken area.

  I could see him give the nod to his men. He was going to let the ship go, and quickly.

  Things had been going so smoothly and then I saw her, tucked behind a group of people. I’d almost missed her. The grey mist that hovered around Dark Walkers was barely noticeable until the sun had come out from the clouds and hit her just right. She was my age, tops, or so she looked. Between Dax and the Dark Walkers, I’d learned you could never truly know how old someone or something was.

  I could let her go. Pretend I’d never seen her. But it wasn’t a her and that skin she was wearing was probably from a person she killed.

  “Don’t let the ship go yet,” I said to Jacob.

  A quick nod and he was reversing the silent orders. He hadn’t become the Pirate King by being stupid.

  I walked closer to the group, not having the fear of catching a disease like the others, and used my knife to point at her. “You, front and center, now.”

  I saw it in her gaze. She knew she was caught. Had probably been waiting for this from the moment I’d stepped on board with my flaming red hair and gloves. I didn’t know how, but they all seemed to recognize me.

  There was only a second’s hesitation before she stepped forward. I saw the change as she emotionally prepared herself to die.

  I’d been through this too many times and didn’t bother with the bullshit anymore. “You going to talk, or should I just skip forward and kill you?”

  She tilted her head back, offering me her neck. Of all the things I didn’t know about the Dark Walkers, I did know this: most were loyal to a fault. Was it by choice? Who knew, but it didn’t change my situation.

  I gripped my knife as I focused on what I had to do while everyone waited and watched. Only two others, Dax and Jacob, knowing what was about to happen.

  The mist was so slight around her that I had to keep telling myself there would be no logical reason for it to be there other than she was a Dark Walker.

  I had to keep reminding myself she wasn’t really a young girl, either. The signs were there, and only a Dark Walker would offer themselves up like this. A human would be pleading for her life.

  Maybe I should try and question her anyway, but I already knew I wouldn’t get answers from this one. If I waited much longer, I’d talk myself out of doing what needed to be done.

  With a quick slash, I ran my knife across her throat and she fell to the deck a minute later, motionless.

  I heard the gasps of surprise and then outrage from the captured boat’s passengers. I turned back to Jacob. The pirates might have remained quiet, but I could see the surprised looks on their faces. They didn’t understand what
had just happened or why.

  “Have your guys throw her overboard,” I said, knowing the telltale rotting would take place if the passengers on board tried to save her body for a land burial.

  Jacob nodded and gave the order, understanding the problem.

  I walked back across the plank onto our ship and headed toward my cabin, feeling like the coldblooded killer everyone appeared to think I was.

  27

  Settled on the quarterdeck, I took a sip of whiskey and watched the pirates celebrate their recent coup. It seemed like a silly celebration to me, as they hadn’t won anything. The people on the ship had had nothing to win. In the end, it hadn’t even been worth taking the ship itself, it had been in such disrepair, but I guessed the pirates didn’t like missing an opportunity to party.

  And there was Dax, drinking right beside them like he was part of the crew. They were welcoming him in as if he were one of their own, like a long-lost brother or some shit.

  I leaned back against the bulkhead and tilted the bottle to my lips, the image of killing that girl—that Dark Walker—playing over and over in my head. She’d seemed so young, so human. I kept wondering if I’d made a mistake, but all the signs had pointed to the fact that she was a monster.

  So I’d killed her, like I’d killed so many of them before her. I’d stopped counting the kills after I hit double digits, especially as I just kept finding another one to kill and the number kept growing.

  Living so close to death for months was starting to do strange things to me. Staring it in the face, over and over again, so close that it felt like I could almost see into the abyss of nothingness, it made me want to cling to life even more firmly.

  I saw Dax break from the group. He headed below deck, hesitating slightly as our eyes met. Now there was someone who knew something about death. He nodded slightly before he continued on his way. He knew I was off just as he knew there was no perfect string of words that could fix the mood I was in.