None? That couldn’t be right. “Are you certain—” Arthur caught movement on the second-class deck out of the corner of his eye. “Grab her!”
But no one on the ship reacted as a white woman in a brown fur coat stepped right up to the railing of the second-class promenade and unhesitatingly tipped forward over it.
The passengers on the dock screamed as the woman fell more than twenty feet to the Delaware River, hitting the water with a sickening splash. Arthur made a move toward the water, but men in uniform were already shoving their way down the pier.
“Move, move, move!” came the shouts, and then Arthur heard another splash.
He glanced in the water. The woman had surfaced, her trancelike state gone and her face sheet-white with terror. A man was swimming toward her, a life ring in his hand.
Arthur hesitated, but another man had jumped in, and he’d be in the way if he added another body to the water.
So with the path no longer blocked, Arthur seized the moment of chaos and sprinted up the ramp into the ship.
At the top of the ramp was a small, bare deck, empty of passengers or crew. The ship’s engines were running, diesel ones, not the older coal boilers, the vibration familiar under Arthur’s feet. But otherwise, the ship was oddly silent.
As he stepped on the deck, his skin erupted with prickles, the hairs rising on his neck and arms. Tiny painless shocks danced over his body like static electricity—and then it was gone like a gentle breeze disappearing into a summer night.
He rubbed a hand over his arm. “Teddy?” he whispered.
Because that was Rory’s magic, he was certain. He recognized the touch from the night it had chased away his nightmare, and maybe even from before that, weeks earlier in a speakeasy in Harlem.
There was no answer to his whisper.
Arthur pursed his lips and turned aft, toward the stern, following the deck to where a heavy door was set into the side of the ship, clearly labeled.No third-class passengers beyond this point.Arthur shoved it open with his shoulder and stepped into a narrow hall that cut sideways across the ship.
A few steps and the hall opened into a small lobby area, with modest furniture and hallways leading off in both directions that were lined with simple cabin doors. A small set of stairs led down, deeper into the boat. Two white men in navy service uniforms were in the lobby, both standing nearly motionless and staring blankly forward.
Arthur’s stomach dropped, but he approached anyway. “Excuse me,” he tried. “Have you seen anything odd tonight—?”
But neither man twitched.
Arthur frowned and stepped closer. “Hello?”
“The man’s clothes are very strange,” the shorter of the sailors said. “The orb clinks where it hangs on his belt.”
Arthur’s eyes widened.
He wastalking bunk, as Rory would say—exactly like Rory in a vision.
The other sailor tilted his head, looking past Arthur. “He’ll stay at this castle awhile. He likes the screams.”
Arthur took a step backward.
He had to find Rory.
Where would Hyde be keeping him on a ship like this? Arthur could only guess in the belly, where they’d be undetected. He took the stairs two at a time to the door at the next level, another third-class area that smelled of the chlorine of the swimming pool. The halls were more mazelike here, doors to the shared third-class cabins every few feet. He turned at the squash court, toward a door markedStaff Only.
Behind that door was another staircase, this one a small and poorly lit spiral. The stairs were steeper too, and so shallow that Arthur had to turn his feet to fit them on the steps.
Below decks the ship was cramped, the hall barely wider than Arthur’s shoulders. It was hot as well, no doors or windows to let in the cold night air and counter the engines. He passed the post office and pushed his way into the first-class baggage rooms.
Trunks and crates were stacked to the ceiling, forming tight corridors like a hedge maze. Just before departure, the room should have been bustling with the sounds of porters and workers, grunting, swearing, and snapping, the crash and thunks of outrageous amounts of luggage being loaded onto a ship.
But the room was uncomfortably quiet. Arthur turned a corner and froze. Four men were standing motionless in the small space, their eyes completely vacant.
“More screams,” said one. “They’re all going to die.”
Arthur swallowed and took a step backward—
