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The groan of metal filled the air, then a sound like a shotgun. The boat lurched, spilling people into the narrow gap between the boat and the river. A chasm that was filled with solidifying slush. The ice would crush the boat, and everyone else would be crushed by the pressure or sent into the river.
The CPD was behind us, and they’d get divers out as soon as they could. But we were here now.
I wasn’t entirely sure whether vampires could drown or get hypothermia—surely not?—but it didn’t really matter. Our chances of survival were higher than theirs. So we had to take the chance.
A look at each other, a confirming nod, and then we climbed onto the balustrade, and jumped.
• • •
Vampire and gravity were friends. Maybe not BFFs—we had to plan our falls to keep from being injured—but we made the twenty-foot drop to the boat below without breaking any bones. We still skidded along the ice-covered deck but managed to catch ourselves, stand up straight again.
And we probably should have announced our presence, because two people suddenly dropping into a ship of screaming passengers didn’t exactly help calm them.
“I’ll help those in the gap,” Ethan said.
“I’ll take this deck, try to get them down the stairs and closer to the dock.”
I’d guessed marriage was going to require divvying up responsibilities. I hadn’t expected we’d be dividing jobs in two separate rescue missions less than twenty-four hours into it.
Forever, Ethan said to me, then jumped down to the second deck.
“It’s all right,” I said, striding forward to the humans who were hanging on to benches bolted to the deck in an effort to stay upright and keep from sliding into the gap themselves. “We’re going to get you off the boat. And onto the dock,” I added, since getting them off the boat and into the water was a real possibility.
The boat’s staff were downstairs, so I looked around, found someone who looked reasonably strong and reasonably calm, pointed at him. He was young, with tan skin, dark hair, and a faint mustache over his top lip that he probably wished was thicker.
“You!” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Pham.”
“Excellent, Pham. I’m Merit. You’re going to help me, okay?”
He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing in his thin neck. “Okay.”
I put a hand on his arm. “You’ve got this.” I glanced around, pointed to the closest stairway—or the boat’s half-ladder, half-stairway version of one—where people were pushing and shoving to get to the first deck. The stairs were already leaning and slick, so pushing was a recipe for certain disaster. “Go stand at the stairs,” I said.
“I can’t swim,” he said, blinking back tears I could see he was working not to shed. “I don’t want to drown.”
“Pham, do you know who I am?”
“Vampire,” he said with a nod.
“Exactly. I’m immortal, which means this water can’t hurt me.” Or so I hoped. God, I really, really hoped. “So one way or another, I will be here to make sure you get off this boat. Okay?”
That seemed to be enough to satisfy him. With grit in his eyes, he nodded, then slip-slid down the leaning deck toward the stairway, squeezing his lean form into the line and positioning himself at the access point. “One person at a time!” he yelled out. “One person at a time!”
I found another supervisor, a woman with strong shoulders and a narrow waist. A swimmer’s build, I hoped. Just in case. I put her in charge of the opposite stairwell.
“Get the fuck out of my way!”
I looked back, watched Pham work to stop a man in a suit who tried to push an older woman out of the way so he could get to the stairs first.
And that was my cue. I pushed through the throng, grabbed him by the arm. I saw fury fire in his face, replaced by quick confusion, and then anger again when I pulled him back.
“Get your fucking hands off me.”
I hauled him closer by the lapels of his very expensive coat. “You will not make this situation worse and more dangerous by being an asshole. You can’t follow the rules, you go to the back of the line.”
He tried to shove my hands away.
