Chapter 12
Sahara tilted the phone to find the one sweet spot on the bridge where the signal bars hadn’t completely given up on life. One bar. Two. One again. The Atlantic glared through the forward windows, gray and endless, refusing to cooperate with human technology.
“Come on,” she muttered. “You got me this far. Don’t quit on me now.”
Ezra leaned against the bulkhead a few feet away, arms folded, expression amused in that quiet way of his. “Talking to the network, or the ocean?”
“Whichever one listens,” she said. “If I lose this call, Rayna will assume I’m dead and start planning a resurrection.”
“That sounds labor-intensive.”
“You have no idea.”
The bar flickered back to two. Close enough. She hit connect on the group call before the Atlantic changed its mind.
Rayna’s face appeared first, slightly pixelated and scowling in concentration. Behind her, Sahara caught a glimpse of the mansion’s library: books, candles, and what looked suspiciously like a plate of Brianna’s cookies on the table. Mmm… cookies.
“Finally,” Rayna said. “Do you have any idea—”
Joell’s shoulder crowded into the frame, then her whole face as she stole half of Rayna’s square. “You’re connected! We were getting worried. Hey, you look a little green.”
“It’s the lighting,” Sahara said. “And the part where I’m on a metal box floating over certain death.”
“Very flattering,” Joell said. “Ship chic. I like it.”
A third square popped up: Bas, in what looked like a hotel room somewhere, very clean, minimal, and Scandinavian. She wore a neat dark suit jacket, white hair pulled back. The only evidence of witchcraft was the way the air seemed to settle when she appeared.
“Sahara,” Bas said, and in that one word was welcome, approval, and a faint undercurrent of ‘you had better be well’.
“Present and seaworthy,” Sahara said. “For the moment.”
Rayna leaned closer to her camera. “All right, report. How’s your excellent ocean adventure?”
Sahara straightened automatically, the way she always did when Rayna went full commander voice. “We cleared the harbor without incident. Cargo’s secure and warded. No resonance spikes beyond what we expected. Obelisk is quiet.”
“Quiet like ‘asleep,’ or quiet like ‘staring at you without blinking’?” Joell asked.
“Quiet like sedated and strapped down with extra seatbelts,” Sahara said. “But I’m not turning my back on it.”
Ezra shifted, stepping just enough into the frame to be visible over Sahara’s shoulder. Rayna’s gaze snapped to him with laser accuracy. “And the mage? Is he behaving?”
Ezra inclined his head. “So far.”
“That’s not as reassuring as you think it is,” Rayna said.
Joell elbowed her. “Stop interrogating her support staff. They’ve been at sea for, what, eight hours? Let them acclimate.”
“We’re fine,” Sahara said. “Ship’s crew is solid. Captain’s a no-nonsense guy. Nobody’s accidentally opened the wrong container and been melted by ancient curses. Really, for us, that’s almost a relaxing day.”
Bas’s eyes softened a fraction. “You’re not minimizing, I trust?”
Sahara hesitated. Bas could do that to her: nudge one word and make it sound like a warning. “No. I’m… adjusting. We’re prepared. If it wakes up, we have layers between it and anyone who doesn’t get hazard pay for metaphysical nonsense.”
Ezra added, “We’ve set initial wards keyed to non-magical minds. The crew should be insulated from any low-level bleed.”
Joell’s eyebrows climbed. “Look at you two, all synced up and finishing each other’s containment strategies.”
Sahara ignored that. Mostly. “Ezra’s wards complement the glyphs. It’s stable. For now.”
“And you?” Bas asked. “Any tugging? Voices? Unwanted guests in your head?”
There it was. Sahara resisted the urge to rub at the back of her neck, where phantom pressure had faded hours ago, but the memory lingered.
“Nothing beyond the usual background hum,” she said.
“Like listening to Lioness’s radio through a wall.
I know it’s there. It doesn’t know what station to tune to yet. ”
Bas nodded once, slowly. “Good. The distance will help. Seas and sky make blunt instruments of many things.”
“Speaking of Lioness,” Joell began.
Sahara pinched the bridge of her nose. “Oh, no. What has she done now?”
“Don’t worry. She’s just sharing remote viewing sketches of your journey. She said it was almost as if she were there with you.”
“Thank the Goddess for the word, ‘almost’,” Sahara said.
Bas smiled. “She cares about you. It’s nice to see sketches, but that doesn’t tell us what you feel and think. Stay in touch as much as you can.”
“I will.”
Rayna blew out a breath. “I still hate that you’re the one on that ship.”
“I’m the one it keyed on,” Sahara said. “I was always going to be on this ship.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Rayna said. “Just… if the crate starts chanting in hieroglyphs, call. I don’t care if you have to stand on tiptoes under the moon to get a signal.”
“I’ll add ‘sacrifice my dignity for bandwidth’ to the contingency list,” Sahara said.
Joell rested her chin on Rayna’s shoulder, crowding her more. “When you get back,” Joell said, “we’re doing brunch. Real food. No emergency snacks. I’m making a reservation and everything. That’s non-negotiable.”
“Do not promise brunch lightly,” Sahara said. “That’s a sacred oath.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Joell said. “That’s how I lure you home.”
It was ridiculous how much that simple future-tense promise unclenched something in Sahara’s chest. Home. Brunch. Not just getting through this crossing, but the assumption that she would still exist at the other end in a state that could enjoy Eggs Benedict.
Ezra must have seen something flicker across the room, because he shifted closer beside her, not touching, just a solid presence at her shoulder.
Rayna’s gaze cut to him again. “Ezra Vale. A word.”
He accepted it like a summons. “Of course.”
“If she comes back even slightly haunted,” Rayna said, “we are going to have a long talk about your future.”
“Rayna,” Sahara said warningly.
“That’s not really fair,” Ezra said. “But understood.”
He could have stopped there. Most people would have. Instead, he added, “She’s not my responsibility. We are each other’s backup. That’s the only arrangement I agreed to.”
Bas’s mouth curved, just a hint. “A mutual ward, then.”
“Yes,” Ezra said. “Exactly.”
Rayna folded her arms, not quite hiding the way her shoulders relaxed. “Fine. But if anything tries to drag her overboard, I expect you to fight the ocean.”
“I’ll do my best,” Ezra said. “Though I have heard it’s a bit temperamental.”
Joell snorted. “You’ll find a way.”
Bas’s attention came back to Sahara and sharpened. “Listen to me,” she said. “We’re with you. We trust you. Go be brilliant.”
That was the blessing she’d been hoping for. Simple and heavy as a hand on a bowed head.
Some part of Sahara wanted to close her eyes and let it sink in. Instead, she gave a short nod. “Copy that.”
“Bas, stop making me emotional before breakfast,” Rayna muttered.
“You aren’t emotional,” Joell said. “I’ve seen you stalwart during Super Bowl commercials involving puppies and horses.”
The signal stuttered. Sahara’s screen froze on Joell mid-eyeroll, Rayna’s mouth open as she was about to say something else, Bas’s gaze steady as starlight.
Then the bars dropped to one, then to none.
Connection lost. Sahara felt a little lost too. She stared at the blank screen for three counts longer than necessary, then locked the phone and slid it into her pocket.
“So,” she said. “That’s that.”
Ezra pushed off the bulkhead and came to stand beside her at the window, shoulder to shoulder, leaving just enough distance that she didn’t feel crowded. “You have a loyal crew.”
“They’re nosy,” Sahara said. “There’s a difference.”
“Nosy is just another word for caring.”
“Yeah, yeah…”
He watched the horizon for a moment. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve just left the last gas station before the desert and realized I should have used the bathroom,” she said. “But otherwise, fine.”
His mouth quirked, the faintest smile. “We’ll manage.”
“We have to,” she said.
They stood in silence, side by side, watching the faint line of horizon dissolve into haze and then into nothing at all.
After a while, when the only light came from ship instruments and a low gray sky, Sahara said, “All right. Before I start reciting my checklist out loud, we should go over logistics.”
“I thought that’s what we just did,” Ezra said.
“That was the emotional logistics,” she said. “Now we do the boring kind. Chow schedules. Watch rotations. Arcane tripwires. Whether we pretend the coffee in the mess is drinkable.”
“I fear you may be disappointed by my opinion on the last item.”
“I’m already disappointed,” she said. “Come on.”
She turned away from the window. Ezra fell in step beside her as they left the bridge, the door closing behind them with a soft, final click that sounded a little like the end of one world and the start of another.
The mess smelled like coffee that had been brewing for decades, and food with an unidentifiable, yet fried signature.
Sahara took it as an insult on principle and poured herself a mug anyway.
If she was going to be trapped on a floating metal rectangle with a mystical roommate, she was not doing it caffeine-free.
Ezra accepted his own mug from her with a small, grateful nod. He sipped, considered, and said, “It’s… energetic.”
“I’ve had worse. Rayna tried to make Turkish coffee once with a camping stove and several spirits of mischief egging her on.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“You should be.”
They claimed a bolted-down table in the corner, away from the few off-duty crew clustered near the television. The ship’s constant vibration hummed up through the metal bench, a steady thrum that made the mugs buzz faintly.
Sahara set her notebook between them and clicked her pen. The familiar ritual steadied her. Paper. Ink. Clean black lines. Things that behaved.
“So,” she said. “We’ve established the rules for the obelisk and the crew.”