Chapter 13
Tia Cameron
Call sign: Thimble
The sea monster from Rylan’s drawing wormed its way into Tia’s nightmare. Its tentacles were thick and translucent; she could
see the snakelike muscles twisting beneath glossed skin as they strained for the ship. For her.
When they reached her, she was in her bed, simultaneously viewing her own perspective and that of the monster as it unlocked
doors and slithered through the hall, leaving a wet trail in its wake. It wound around her foot, cold and powerful and impossible
to escape.
Tia woke and yanked her foot back toward her body. Beside her, Rylan snored softly in his bed. Her watch read 4:52 a.m.
She detangled herself from her bedding and rose. She needed to refill her water bottle in the galley sink. She tiptoed out
into the hallway.
A shock burst from her bare feet up through her spine.
The floor was wet.
She jumped and backed away, deeper into the hallway, but wherever she stepped, the floor was slick with water.
Was it flooding? A spill? No . . . A narrow trail crept down the hall, the same exact path of the horrible creature in her dream.
Tia dropped her water bottle and ran past the galley as her imagination colored monsters into every dark shadow.
She hadn’t grabbed her life jacket on the way up, but the sea was calm tonight.
Besides, there were bigger things to worry about. Bigger, slippery, serpentine things.
The thrum of the engine gave something for Tia to focus on. Francis must have ordered the motor to run so they could keep
on track without wind.
Tia locked her hands around the railing as she brought herself back to reality. She wasn’t about to dismiss monsters entirely—who
was she to say what was out there in the depths of the sea?—but a massive creature attacking her family’s ship seemed farfetched
at best. Rylan was always assuring her that the largest creatures of the sea, giant squid and blue whales, were gentle giants.
They didn’t have an aggressive tentacle or flipper in their bodies.
But why was the hallway wet in the middle of the night . . . Only the hallway?
Tia tipped back her head to examine the sky. Not a single cloud. So it couldn’t have been rainwater . . .
More stars than she’d ever seen freckled the night, and she was able to calm herself even more. How many people ever get to see stars like this? she wondered.
“Little late for stargazing, don’t you think, Miss Cameron?”
Tia spun around. Nico de la Vega stood in the cockpit, forearms resting casually on the wheel. The Old Eileen probably didn’t require much maneuvering when the ocean was this placid.
“Hey, Nico.” She joined him in the cockpit. She’d forgotten about the watch rotation. “I . . . couldn’t sleep.”
“Well, you came to the right place.” His easy smile shone like it lived among constellations. “I’m not allowed to sleep.”
“Do you get bored?”
Nico’s shoulders rose and fell. “It’s meditative at night in a way it wouldn’t be if I had company. Like I’m out of my body and one with the ship.”
“Damn, so I’m disrupting your path to nautical enlightenment?” Tia joked.
“Don’t act like you don’t like disrupting,” he replied.
Tia laughed. “Can I try it? Steering, I mean. Dad never lets me.”
Nico looked her up and down, pretending to mull it over. “You want me to shirk my responsibilities and turn command of a multimillion-dollar
ship over to my boss’s inexperienced daughter?”
Tia threw up her hands in defense. “Hey, I’m just trying to alleviate boredom. If I commandeer an entire ship in the process,
that’s just good business.”
Nico chuckled, and Tia knew she wanted to hear that sound again. He gestured for her to stand next to him and put her hands
on the wheel. The metal was warm from his grip.
She placed her feet shoulder-width apart to copy his stance. Nico tapped the screen in front of the wheel, which she’d never
paid much attention to. “This tells you what heading you’re at. We’re going pretty much straight South, so you wanna keep
between one ninety degrees and one seventy-five. There’s nothing much to fight you right now, no wind and tiny swells, so
it’s really as easy as it gets.”
The screen showed The Old Eileen, a tiny dot along a straight line that shifted direction as Tia moved the wheel. “What’s that number mean?” she asked, pointing
to a big black 6 in the corner of the screen.
“Six knots. It’s how fast we’re going,” Nico replied. “We can maybe hit eleven with full sail power, but we average more at
six.”
“So you just stare at the numbers and try to keep on track?” This was simpler than Tia thought.
When Tia was little, Francis had let her touch the wheel, his hands over hers.
Do you feel the power? he’d say in a low Disney-villain voice to make her laugh.
It had been a long time since then. Along the way, Francis had
stopped trying to teach her things.
“Yeah.” Nico let his head loll back, and starlight washed over his crooked nose and full lips. The dark prickles of his five-o’clock
shadow almost seemed to sparkle. He was, she had decided, extremely handsome. “But I don’t use the screen anymore,” Nico said
conspiratorially.
“Oh yeah?” Tia glanced back at the screen to make sure she was still at the right heading. She was.
“Yeah. At night, I use the stars. I pick out a bright one, or sometimes my favorite, and I see where it falls when I’m at
the perfect heading. Then if the ship ever strays, all I have to do is find my way back to her.”
A thrill spread through Tia and she found herself on her tiptoes, reading the night sky to find her favorite star. “I want
to do it your way,” she decided.
“As you wish,” he said and peeled off his windbreaker. He draped it over the screen, cutting out the only man-made light within
miles aside from the red and green eyes atop the masthead.
One of the most dazzling stars shone slightly to the left of The Old Eileen’s main mast. There were smaller stars around it, a shimmering royal entourage. “That one,” Tia whispered to herself. As long
as the main mast ran along that path of stars, her heading was true.
They stood side by side in reverent quiet for many minutes. Tia wondered if Nico was as taken with this sight as he was the
first time he’d seen it, if views like this ever lost their allure.
“You have a hand for this,” he murmured. His voice didn’t shatter the moment, like Tia had been afraid hers would. Instead, something about this—about them, the ship, the stars, the sea—felt indestructible.
It was the sea’s doing. Being out here had a way of mummifying time.
“I want to be a captain,” Tia breathed. She had, just now, decided.
Nico sat on the bench to her left, arms behind his head. “You know, Tia, I think you will be. Runs in your blood.”
“Right . . .”
Francis Cameron felt the draw of the sea. Hell, Tia probably inherited her fascination from him. Do you feel the power? his voice echoed in her head.
She did.
Tia pictured her father, strewn out on his king’s mattress belowdecks. She wondered if he slept well, if five-hundred-thread-count
sheets and bamboo viscose pajamas were enough to get through the night or if nightmares woke him up too.
Nightmares about monsters in the hallway.
Nightmares about hands clamping her shoulder.
Nightmares about what he feared his children wouldn’t—or would—become.