Chapter 48
Lila Logan Cameron
Call sign: Cassiopeia
Lila locked herself inside the primary suite’s bathroom. Her husband steered the ship overhead, leaving her to move about
The Old Eileen on her own.
Lila grazed her fingers over the golden bathtub faucet. The floor beneath her slanted, a victim to the storm that sang outside.
Was that storm killing Alejandro at this very moment? Or was he already dead?
She switched on the water, watched it stream into the porcelain tub. As the bath filled, she drifted to the porthole and unlatched
it. Rain daggered its way inside the room. Lila reached past the length of her silk robe sleeve and found a bottle of bath
oil on the sink counter: English Pear and Freesia. She unscrewed the cap and poured the entire thing into the tub. She wanted
to reek of it.
The bathwater sloshed over the lip of the tub and spread its fingers across the ivory tiles.
It seeped underneath the door. Lila lifted one foot over the tub.
The movement nearly sent her toppling with the motion of the ship, but she sank into the water without bothering to shed her robe.
Once submerged, nothing could touch her.
The silk swirled—rendered almost ethereal beneath the surface. Lila let her head slip underwater.
When Francis first asked her out and she’d said no, he had returned months later driving a Porsche. Alejandro had been with
him again. He was always with him. And though Francis seemed to tire of Lila once he won her, Alejandro remained in awe.
Was Lila only desirable when she was out of reach?
She screamed underwater, the sound disembodied from her.
Lila’s face broke the surface, and she reached her long arm to the counter where she found her pack of cigarettes and lighter.
She smoked in the bath in the storm, the perfume of oils intoxicating enough to make her believe she was liquid herself.
Lila blew smoke through peony lips and let it skitter like water striders over the surface. Alejandro had looked Francis in
the eye and vowed his undying loyalty. He’d said it to the wrong person.
Now he was dead or would be within the hour.
She floated, unblinking, in a veil of milk-white smoke and moonlight hair that dripped diamonds down her shoulder blades.
Maybe his loyalty hadn’t been so cut-and-dried after all. She’d know for certain when the clock struck twelve.
Thirty-five minutes to go.
The Old Eileen hit a large swell without warning, and bathwater cascaded over the sides, flooding the bathroom floor even more. Lila braced
herself on the sides of the tub, beads of rainwater falling onto her nose and cheekbones.
She inhaled enough smoke to cloud her doubts for good, then dragged herself out of the bathtub. The silk robe hugged her body
in a downward curve, longing to plunge her back from where she had come. Her breasts and hips bloomed beneath the fabric,
threadbare centimeters from being exposed.
She stepped onto the floor, and her feet sent delicate ripples out, like rose petals falling on the surface of a lake. She walked into her bedroom and opened wide the door to the hallway.
A blast of lightning outlined the space and everything in it with a purple glow.
She had been walking this hallway almost nightly after her bath. Francis must have noticed, he must have stepped in the trail
of water, but he hadn’t said a word about it. She wondered if he kept quiet out of kindness or discretion. Perhaps both.
But it didn’t matter. By morning, if Alejandro had kept to his word, she’d be back on land, her children safe, her career
secure. Her family’s faces would be splashed across every tabloid in the country as survivors of the merciless sea and its
terrible storm. She’d be famous again. Free. And fueled with enough aesthetic nightmares to last a lifetime of acting.
Lila walked the halls of The Old Eileen, drenched and ghostly. There was something feminine about the walk, she decided. She was a widow pacing the shore for her
wayward sailor-love’s return. She was a sea witch enchanting a curse with the pattern of her footfalls. She was a goddess
built of sea-foam, a huntress tracking enemies through snow.
The water overflowing from her bathtub raced over the teak wood floor and poured into the small holes in the bilge panels.
Filling up the sailboat one inch at a time. Lila’s robe trailed in dripping tentacles around her as though she were some ocean
beast with only one thought to drive her forward.
I’m about to sink this ship.