I took the pill bottle from the shelf, my heart pulsing wildly. Small, circular pills filled about a third of the container. How many had been put in our food? Enough to make us sick or enough to kill us?

Randolph shoved open the double doors into the kitchen behind me, and I jerked back. He leveled me with a watery gaze as he slurred, “Ishur hope you plan on settin’ the table.”

“Randolph…” Had he been the one to spike the food with pills? Was rough-around-the-edges Randolph capable of attempted murder? He’d been standing in front of the pan when I’d walked in. I dragged in breath after breath while I studied his ruddy features for any sign that he knew what I was about to say. “Someone put ground up pills in our food.”

He blinked and some of the alcoholic haze vanished from his eyes. “What?”

I thrust the bowl of buttered pill fragments at him with sticky fingertips and shook the bottle of pills. “Who put it there, Randolph?”

Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead as he turned his gaze toward the bowl. “What? You can’t think I did this.”

“Did you? I saw you walk away from the pan.”

“I would never. You have to know I would never do that.” He shook his head so hard his jowls shook, and he raked a hand through his bushy hair. “You can’t tell the captain you think I did this. You can’t. I need this job too much. I can’t be fired again.”

“Okay. Calm down.” I guided him to the small table in the middle of the kitchen, and he sat, breathing hard. I didn’t really think he could do something like that, but people were notorious for dark surprises.

But if not him, then who? Ellison? She’d been the only other person in the kitchen when Mase had given me my Christmas present in the dining room. But it didn’t make any sense that my sister, who’d gone all the way to deep space to collect more of the parasite she thought would save me, would try to kill me and the rest of the crew.

Randolph stared at me, heartbreak etched into the deep lines on his forehead. “You can’t tell the captain. He could fire me anyway for negligence. I’m in charge of what happens in this kitchen, and if someone was trying to sabotage...” He scrubbed a hand down his face, a sick green color creeping over his skin.

“All right,” I said, squeezing his shoulder. “I’ll have to tell him something, though, because lunch is in about twenty minutes and we don’t have a butter garlic sauce for our baked veggies. Unless you’re ready to help me?”

“Yes. Of course.” He stood and crossed toward the stasis pantry, his troubled gaze aimed at his shoes. “I think maybe… I think maybe I should let you cook from now on. I’ll prep since… You said you saw me walk away from the pan?”

I nodded.

“I was in my room next door. I’ve been…well, I’ve been drinking, so if I wasn’t there, then…I blacked out. And if I’m blacking out and doing that?” He shook his head while tears tracked down his cheeks. “I have no business being head chef.”

My throat tightened. I leaped up and wrapped my arms around his burly frame. Would someone who was guilty appear so realistically wrecked? Possibly, but my doubts about Randolph faded the harder he squeezed me back.

“Whatever you need,” I said.

He stepped away and swiped the wetness from his cheeks. “There’s pre-sliced bread in the pantry. There’s not much I can do to muck that up.”

I poured the remaining butter garlic sauce down the sink and scrubbed both the bowl and the pan until I could see my reflection. When Randolph came back, I donned a hairnet and we worked in silence, our doubts and fears likely mirroring each other’s. I really didn’t think Randolph was capable of attempted murder, but that didn’t change what had happened. Was it mind control? But he didn’t have a Mind-I, unless he’d tripped and fallen on one on Orin, and it had embedded into the back of his head. A lot stranger things had happened lately. Unless he was lying about not having one.

Or unless Ellison did it.

A shiver of unease raced down my back. Did she have a Mind-I she hadn’t bothered to tell me about? All these thoughts pinwheeled though my mind on repeat while I finished lunch and Randolph set the table. The door opened, and in strode Captain Glenn and Poh.

“What was that, Captain?” I asked, setting down the steaming plate of freshly cut marinated meat. “Did something hit—?”

He held up his meaty hand, his nostrils flaring, and rounded the table to his spot. “Wait until the rest of the crew gets here.”

Holy Feozva, what else had happened? Our stop on Orin seemed to have caused a rippling shit storm.

Poh’s yellow gaze pinned to mine for several beats before she scanned the rest of the dining room with vague interest. She hadn’t changed out of her brown duster, and her gun was still holstered at her waist and her knives still strapped to her pants as if she expected to slaughter her own dinner. She hadn’t brought any bags on board with her. It was almost as if she didn’t plan on sticking around. I glanced at the butter garlic-sauced veggies in the middle of the table. Had Mase done enough to check her credentials? Maybe we should’ve contacted her references twice, had her plot a family tree, played charades, anything more than what we’d done before we invited her on this ship.

Yet she’d helped us at the bar and kept us hidden. That wasn’t part of the job offer.

“Um, Poh, that’s where the engineer typically sits,” I said, pointing to Nesbit’s old spot across where Randolph usually sat.

She held to her wrist and leaned awkwardly against the hallway doorframe. “If it suits the captain, I prefer to stand.”

“Do what you want.” He took his seat at the head of the table and gave me a hard stare. “Everyone else does.”

I offered a strained smile and ducked back into the kitchen for everyone’s drinks. Now didn’t seem the appropriate time to remind him that I’d gone to Orin to help try to get word out about the Saelis’s plans and had also inadvertently helped save his pilot. He didn’t appear to be in a listening mood. Despite spending most of my childhood trying to hide from ghosts, my people-reading skills were…average.

As I set Ellison’s and the captain’s waters in front of their places at the table, Mase and Ellison came in, but Mase didn’t shoot me one of his brain-melting smiles like he usually did. The ends of his blond hair brushed his stiff jaw, and worry puckered between his eyebrows. I caught his gaze for a moment, but he just shook his head as he sat at his spot across from the captain. More good news, it seemed. Mase and the captain looked like they might self-destruct with it and ruin the new table at any second.

I quickly served everyone, then poked my head into the kitchen to fetch Randolph and his bottle of wine.

“Do we need anything else?” he hissed from his perch at the little table.

A breath at my neck whirled me around. Poh stood right behind me in the doorway and tried to edge around into the kitchen. I kicked out my boot against the doorframe to stop her, a burst of distrust curling my mouth into a sneer.

“No engineers in the kitchen,” I blurted.

“Why?” Her big yellow eyes narrowed. Under the hard lights of the dining room, the twin lines of scales down the center of her pale face gleamed multiple shades of green and blue, not just gray. “It’s just a kitchen.”

“Because we have…” I looked to Randolph, at a complete loss.

He hiked up his shoulders around his ears. “Rats?”

She gazed around at as much of the kitchen as she could see from the doorway. “Then cook them.”

“Why didn’t we think of that?” I moved into the kitchen and let the door flap closed on her face. “Mase needs milk,” I told Randolph.

He rose. “I can get it.”

“No.” The sharp tone with which I said it wilted him like a dying plant. I squeezed my eyes shut, but he looked just as shriveled when I opened them again. “I’m sorry, Randolph. I’ll get it. You go try to smooth out everyone’s nerves.”

He brushed a piece of fuzz from his vest, avoiding my gaze, gave a short nod, and drifted through the double doors.

With a glass of freshly poured milk, I stuck a fake grin on my face and swept back to the dining room just as the captain lay in to Mase with sharp words and an even sharper finger point. That right there dripped the smile down my chin as I set Mase’s glass at his table spot.

“You brought this on yourself, Mason. Why can’t you just pay the man?” Captain Glenn demanded.

“Because it’s not money he wants,” Mase snapped. “He literally feeds on people’s addictions. He creates She, the drug I used to inject myself with. But he also creates He, and when those two drugs are combined, it’s a massive high for both him and me. I’m not myself when I’m on both drugs. Hell, I’m barely myself with She electrocuting my veins even after you goddamned shot me.”

The room went dead quiet. I jerked backward as if I’d been struck. I knew he was lying when he said he was fine, but to hear him admit the truth cracked my heart in two.

“Mase…” I started, but I had no idea how to finish. I wasn’t exactly one to offer advice on addictions since I had a stash of iron in my pocket and doused my tongue with hot sauce every day.

He shoved his hand through his messy blond hair and glanced at me. “Parker’s following us, Absidy. At close range, likely so he can stop when we stop, and then slip me He.”

My mind spun at full force, and I grabbed the back of Randolph’s chair. “Why?”

Mase collected the moisture on his glass with a drag of his fingers and a sigh. “Once when we were both high…” His throat bobbed, and his gaze connected with mine, a mix of pleading anger. “He said he loved me. Definitely a one-way feeling since I don’t swing that direction. Shocking, I know, since the captain thought I was fucking a fourteen-year-old-boy named James, chef’s apprentice to Randolph here.”

At the mention of his name in this conversation, Randolph tipped the bottle of wine on the table over his glass and filled it to the brim, the steady glug-glug the only sound in the room.

Mase glanced at Poh by the kitchen doors. “James was Absidy dressed as a boy, by the way, in case you’re trying to keep up.”

I sank into my seat between Mase and Randolph, my limbs heavy, while I stared at Mase. Parker was in love with him. I didn’t think someone like that could be capable of love. But how could anyone not love Mase? Not even counting the rugged, scarred total lip-smacking hottie package, he was brave, funny, and had a heart bigger than the planets Mayvel and Wix combined. Still, I’d never learned to share. I never had any reason to since the ghosts clamoring to get inside me destroyed all my belongings.

Mase was mine. Parker needed to learn that, and lucky for me, I had twice the ice picks now.

“If anyone has been paying attention on this ship, then it’s no secret where my heart lies.” Mase pushed his hand across the table toward me, palm up, his public declaration mirrored in the way he looked at me.

I took his hand, melting into his rough skin and the way he loved me. He wasn’t apologetic or embarrassed over his feelings or his past, even in front of the rest of the crew. It took my breath away.

“We know, Mason,” Captain Glenn said, a thoughtful line creasing between his eyebrows.

Poh crossed her arms. “If Parker’s following us, can we lose him?”

“His ship is a lot faster than this one.” Mase stabbed at a potato piece covered in fresh butter-garlic sauce, his other hand still gripping mine. “Much newer too.”

Captain Glenn turned to Poh. “Can you see about making some adjustments to the engine?”

“Yes, Captain.” Poh glanced at him while she drummed her fingers against her crossed arms. “I’ll push it as far as it can go.”

“Aren’t you hungry?” I asked her.

She stalked behind the captain to the hallway door, her white ponytail swaying behind her back. “I don’t eat.”

Randolph chuckled, the hue in his cheeks about as red as his wine. “You don’t eat. You don’t sit. What do you do?”

She gazed at him sharply from her stance by the hallway door. “I engineer things. That’s why I was hired. What is it you do, Tits, other than dribble wine down your shirt and take up space?”

Captain Glenn’s eyes went wide, and he choked on his first bite of his marinated beef sandwich.

I dug my fingernails into the underside of my chair and level my gaze at Poh. “His name is Randolph. Not Tits.”

“Are we not even gonna address the fact that she has scales?” Randolph shot back with slurs and spittle. “Are you planning on murdering us now or later? I bet it was you who—”

I flashed out a hand to squeeze the holy shit out of Randolph’s arm.

Captain Glenn recovered and slammed his hand on the table. “That’s enough. Both of you are just trying to rile each other up.” He pushed Randolph’s wine glass toward Poh’s untouched plate of food. “Let’s lay off this for a bit.”

Poh leaned against the doorframe, seemingly bored. “You bet it was me who what?” “Uh, no, Randolph.” I squeezed his arm harder, my mind racing for a cover story. It turned out I didn’t have to think very hard. “It couldn’t have been her who tampered with your phone this morning so it wouldn’t work. She wasn’t even here yet.”

Captain Glenn leaned forward. “Hold on. Your phone didn’t work either?”

“Wait. What?” Mase skipped his gaze around the table. “I checked them myself before I handed them out this morning. All of them were at full power, programmed to call each other with one button if shit hit the fan. Which it did, in case you weren’t paying attention.”

“Did you get a phone?” I asked Ellison.

She carefully unfolded her napkin, her mind appearing somewhere far away. “I didn’t leave the ship.”

“I know that…” I blinked at her. “Are you all right?”

“Just tired is all.”

Something was off about her, other than her gray complexion, something I couldn’t pinpoint. A strange sense of deja vu tied a worried knot into my gut. Doctor Daryl used to sit in her same spot and fuss over his napkin, too, while his Mind-I took his full attention. She hadn't found Nesbit’s Mind-I, had she? Surely she was smart enough not to insert it in her own head to communicate with Josh or someone else. She knew as well as anyone that it could be used for mind control, but sometimes love made us do crazy things. Like run to deep space and addict yourself to drugs.

Randolph nonchalantly took his wine glass from next to Poh’s plate and tipped the rest of it into his mouth. “Who wants dessert?”

Mase poked a finger in the air. “I do.”

“Anyone else?” He rose to his feet on wobbly legs. “Good. Great. My apprentice and I will be right back.”

I stood, followed him through the double doors, and posted my arms on the little table in the middle of the kitchen to give him the full weight of my glare.

He fussed with the knobs on the oven, then eyed me over his shoulder. “Okay?”

“Not okay. You’re being a jerk.”

“So I have some trust issues with anything scaled. Can you blame me?”

Not really. But if Mase had programmed the phones himself, then someone must’ve tampered with them. Unless he was lying, but he had no reason to. My mind kept circling back to Ellison, how she didn’t leave the ship with us, how gray and faraway she looked. Randolph, too, who had walked away from the poisoned butter-garlic sauce and had acted like he hadn’t even heard me calling after him. Anyone could’ve gone into the infirmary for the pills. They were stored in a locked glass case, and the key hung on a rack next to it.

“Something doesn’t feel right,” I said. Not just the phone tampering and the attempted poisoning, but the whole ship. The air was darker, thicker, and it slimed up my lungs with every breath. I’d only first noticed it this morning in the engine room.

Randolph took a swig from his silver flask. “You’re telling me. I’ll let you get the peach cobbler out of the oven. I'll follow with a scoop of ice cream. I don’t think I can mess that up, can I?"

“No, I suppose not.”

When we came back into the dining room, Captain Glenn had leaned back in his chair, studying each of the crew in turn with his sharp dark eyes that didn’t miss much. He’d likely come to the same conclusion as I had—one of us, maybe more, maybe Ellison, wasn’t who they pretended to be.