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"No," I said.
The two men looked at me.
"It's not a bad idea," Curran said.
"Have you two gone crazy? This is a horrible idea. First, the two of you hate each other."
"I don't hate him." Saiman shrugged. "It's too strong a word."
"If I hated him, he'd be dead," Curran said.
They were nuts. "How long does it take to cross the Atlantic?"
Saiman frowned. "Depends on the magic waves, but generally between twelve and eighteen days."
I turned to Curran. "We'll be stuck together on a small boat for at least two weeks. What happens when on day two he gets bored?"
"It will be fine," Curran said. "We can handle it. If he gets out of hand, we'll tie him to the mast."
Saiman gave him a derisive look. "We will be taking the Rush. It runs on enchanted water, steam, and diesel. It doesn't have a mast strong enough to hold me."
Curran exhaled. "Then we'll lock you in a cellar."
"Brig," Saiman corrected.
"Whatever." Curran dismissed it with a wave of his hand.
"Draw up a formal contract," I said. Saiman was egotistical and sometimes cowardly, but he had a ridiculously strong work ethic. If we could lock him in with a contract, he wouldn't break it.
"Oh, we will," Curran assured me. "Let's talk numbers."
Fifteen minutes later a satisfied Saiman left, escorted by Shawn. He was carrying his suitcase and ours. He was happy, the Beast Lord was happy, so why was I so uneasy?
"You'll regret this," I told Curran.
"I know. We don't have a choice. We have to get the panacea." He leaned over and kissed me. "I love you. Thank you for the ship. Thank you for doing this with me."
A little thrill ran through me. "I love you, too."
Getting the panacea meant that each baby born to the Pack would have a forty percent better chance of survival. It meant Maddie could become herself again. To make this happen, Curran would swallow his pride. He'd make a deal with Saiman, he'd bargain with Carpathians who had humiliated him, he'd cross the Atlantic and half a continent. And I would back him up every step of the way. Curran was responsible for the welfare of the Pack, and so was I.
"We have to get the panacea," I agreed. That was all there was to it.
Chapter 5
The caravan of Pack vehicles roared and thundered down the road. The magic was up full force and enchanted water engines belched so much noise, all of the windows were closed. Curran drove. In the backseat Barabas and Derek sat next to each other.
We left Julie in the Keep. She wanted to come and then she didn't want to. We said our good-byes. She hugged me and cried, so desperate and sad that I almost cried with her. I sat with her for twenty minutes, until finally we couldn't delay any longer. She was still crying when I walked out. I hoped this wouldn't be my last memory of her.
Somehow I always managed to screw things up when it came to Julie.
The highway snaked its way through a flat salt marsh. Reeds and grasses swayed gently, giving us a glimpse of wet mud exposed as low tide sucked the water out of the marsh. A sign flashed by, a yellow diamond with a turtle on it, followed immediately by another sign, a triangle bordered in red. A turtle in the center of the triangle had a dark cone touching its mouth.
"What does that mean?" Barabas asked from the backseat.
"Magic turtle crossing."
"I got that one, but what about the second one?"
"Beware the magic turtles."
"Why?"
"They spit fire."
Curran chuckled to himself.
The road turned. We shot onto a wooden bridge, the boards thudding a little under the pressure of the tires. Another half-mile and we rolled through the massive iron gates of the port.
"Which dock did Saiman say?" Curran asked.
I checked the paper. "Berth two. Just below the bridge."
The ruin of the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge swung into view as if on cue, its concrete supports sticking sadly out of the water, the steel cables hanging over them like a torn spider web. We passed the remnants of the bridge and Curran stopped before a pier. A large vessel waited on the water, its two black masts rising above the deck that had to be close to four hundred feet long. I knew next to nothing about ships, but even I could tell this was no merchant freighter. It looked more like a naval ship, and the enormous gun mounted on the deck in front of the bridge only made that fact more apparent.
Curran studied the ship. "That's a Coast Guard High Endurance Cutter."
"How do you know?"
"We bought a gun from a decommissioned vessel. That's what's mounted in the forward tower by the gates."
"Do you think Saiman bought a Coast Guard cutter? How much money . . ."
"Millions," Barabas said, his voice dry.
We stared at the cutter.
A man strode down the gangplank. Large, broad-shouldered, he wore a plain sweater and jeans. A short brown beard traced his jaw. He looked like he worked for a living.
We got out.
The man approached us. I checked his eyes and saw the familiar superiority. He was painfully aware that his world was populated with people of lesser intelligence, and his eyes told me he was regretfully resigned to slumming. Saiman.
"May I present the Rush?" Saiman said. "Once USCGC Rush, now just the Rush. Three hundred and seventy-eight feet long, forty-three feet high, displacement of three thousand two hundred and fifty tons. Two gas turbines, four enchanted water generators, maximum speed during magic twenty knots, during tech twenty-nine knots. Otobreda seventy-six-millimeter super-rapid artillery gun, three ballistas, and a number of other bells and whistles, which makes it the finest vessel in my fleet. My flagship."
"Spared no expense?" I said.
Saiman grinned, displaying even, white teeth. "I prefer to travel safely or not at all."
* * *
I stood on the deck of the Rush, smelling the salty, ocean-saturated air, and watched our supplies being loaded. The sailors on the ship at the next pier watched also. They had a crane. We had Eduardo Ortego, who picked up five-hundred-pound containers and casually tossed them onto the deck, where Mahon and Curran caught them and lowered them into the cargo hold.
The human sailors were looking a little sick. I was glad Eduardo was coming with us. Mahon had chosen the massive werebuffalo as his backup and nobody objected.
Family members and various shapeshifters swarmed over the Rush. Jim marched about, muttering things under his breath. George was showing cabins to her mother. The wind tugged on the unruly halo of her long dark curls, which she unsuccessfully tried to tame with a rubber band. Mahon's wife, a plump, happy African American woman, followed her daughter with a proud smile on her face. George was built like her dad-taller, sturdier, broader in the shoulders than her mother-but her big smile was the same: bright and infectious. I wasn't the smiling type, but when either of them smiled at you, it was hard not to grin back.
