Meal preparation without Randolph seemed unnaturally quiet. For the next three days, he stayed in his quarters until about a half hour before we were to eat. He didn’t trust himself, he’d said, and I think the very idea of poisoning someone with his food, whether he’d consciously done it or not, tore him apart faster than I could try to put him back together. While he found solace in his wine all day, I worried about him, but I kept my word and didn’t tell Captain Glenn about him. Mostly because I didn’t trust the captain, but also because I feared he would say something to Randolph that would dangle him over the ledge even farther.

I’d grown so used to Randolph’s grouchy mutterings and had looked forward to saying something stupid enough to make him throw back his head with a well-endowed belly laugh. To fill the silence, I whistled while I bathed the humo bird’s breasts in egg yolks, flour, and crushed tazil nuts.

But my whistle wobbled flatly when my exhale puffed out a stream of fog in the middle of a boiling hot kitchen. Sweat gathered at the nape of my neck below my hairnet and tracked a sticky path between the girls squeezed together by my corset. I didn’t feel cold at all, and yet my breath said otherwise.

Not usually a big deal, unless there was a ghostly presence nearby. Except this ship wasn’t haunted anymore.

Maybe it was just the kitchen’s heat creating steam. Inside my mouth. A special kind of stupid inspired that line of thinking.

I washed and dried my hands, then swept through the doors into the dining room. My bare arms registered the cooler change in temperature, but it still didn’t seem cold enough to see my breath. I rounded the new table, opened the door, and stuck my head into the hallway. Another slight drop in temperature, but it still didn’t feel cold enough to indicate a ghost was near.

At the end of the hall, the light began to swing. My breaths clouded in front of me. A slimy shiver zipped up my back because I should’ve felt an arctic burst plus an extreme sense of unease. Not just the latter. Unless I was broken. Or the ship was broken. Or another explanation I hadn’t yet considered.

I stepped back into the dining room and kitchen, my senses on high alert, and got back to work. If I’d thought wrong and hadn’t cleared the ship of ghosts, they knew how to find me since I no longer kept them away with iron in my mouth.

Dinner went quickly without incident, though the crew complained of the extreme cold I didn’t feel. It reminded me of when I first boarded the Vicious, when everyone had been bundled up in coats.

“Did you check the heat, Poh?” Captain Glenn asked over his empty plate.

“It’s on full blast,” she said from her stance in front of the hallway door. The knives she usually had strapped down both legs were gone today.

Randolph’s hand shook as he poured himself more wine, slopping some of it on the new table. “Well, I feel fine.”

Mase touched my knee under the table. Circles shadowed his eyes since he hadn’t been sleeping well the past few nights, and the scar slicing down his cheek appeared starker as if She had pulled his skin tighter against his head to shrink his brain around only one thing—the need for He. We would arrive at the ring that would hopefully take us to Mayvel at about seven thirty, and Parker’s ship might as well have been kissing our bumper as a constant temptation to Mase. It hurt to see him like this.

I shook my head at his unasked question. “I don’t have a clue why it’s cold.”

The room quieted, and as if out of habit, everyone but Ellison and Poh looked toward the door that led to the hallway.

All our breaths streamed out in long, wispy clouds.

"What time is it?" I asked.

Ellison turned her head toward me in slow motion to pin me with empty gray eyes. "Seven o’clock." She knew this without looking at anything I could see, as if from a Mind-I.

“How do you know that?” I demanded. If I had to dig open her skull with my fingernails, I would.

But before I could lunge across the table, a shriek from somewhere on the ship licked icy cold terror up my back.

The six of us froze and stared at each other, Mase, Captain Glenn, and Randolph’s expressions likely mirroring mine—not this again. Please, not this again. If only our faces could manifest the truth.

Poh turned to face the door she stood next to, one hand on the lever, the other lifting her gun from her holster.

“Wait, Poh.” Captain Glenn stood and dodged to her side. “Not by yourself.”

Dread sank my eyes closed briefly as I hauled myself out of my chair to join them. Mase followed. Poh opened the door, but Captain Glenn blocked her exit with his beefy arm, then nodded at me. I stepped out first, searching for the source of the scream or any pulsing shadows that shouldn't be.

Everything appeared normal except the swaying light at the end of the hallway. I waited, my breaths pluming in front of me, and tapped my pocket of iron. Captain Glenn and Mase followed me out into the hallway, both their stances wide and their heads swinging in either direction. Poh stood inside the doorway with her gun trained on the floor, one foot in the hallway, the other in the dining room, her wide gaze aimed at me as if waiting for instruction. A blank-eyed Ellison peered around her. Randolph, still sitting at the table, gripped the edge, his whole body trembling.

When nothing happened again for several minutes, I took a single step toward the dining room, completely baffled. We hadn't imagined it. It hadn't been a case of group hysteria. Not on this ship. It was seven o'clock, the Vicious's haunting hour, and yet just as it had appeared to start again, it had suddenly stopped.

I shook my head at Captain Glenn and Mase, my confusion digging between my eyebrows. "I don't—"

"Absidy!"

The scream came from faraway and scraped terror up my back. I froze, my gaze connecting with Ellison's inside the dining room.

It had sounded just like her. But it made no sense. She was here, right in front of me, but her scream had come from somewhere else.

"I'm coming with you," Mase said, striding toward me.

“No,” I said. “You need to go with the captain to slow the ship before we get to the ring.”

Mase took my elbow, his grip desperate. "There's no reason you have to do this all by yourself."

“Yes, there is. Go fly the ship so the captain can convince the Ringers to let us through. Poh can stay here.” I glanced at her, and she gave a faint nod. “I have iron. I’ll be fine.”

“But iron didn’t work on Orin after you invited the ghost in,” Mase said, squeezing my arm like a plea.

“Are there…more ghosts?” Randolph forced a swallow as if he might be sick. “But I thought you got rid of them.”

“I thought so too. Try not to worry,” I said, and with a deep breath that did nothing but sting my lungs with cold, I left Ellison, Randolph, and Poh in the dining room.

I hated leaving them alone when they would be so much safer with the ring of protection iron gave me, but I didn't have much of a choice. Ghosts became corporeal around me so they could torture me into letting them inside my mouth, but to others, the only way to harm them was to use their energy to poltergeist something into them. Like a kitchen table, for instance.

The door to the dining room clicked shut as Poh closed herself in with Randolph and Ellison. Two pairs of footsteps crept after mine as the captain, Mase, and I started toward the hanging light at the end of the hallway and the elevator beyond. The light swung harder on its twin cords the closer we drew, whirling light and shadows into a dizzying mix.

I held back by the Vicious room as Mase and the captain strode forward, their wide gazes glued to the light, their movements stiff. Captain Glenn turned right toward the elevator, but Mase stopped to look at me over his shoulder.

“I love you,” he said simply.

His words anchored in my chest, pulling everything else to a stop for a moment.

“I love you too,” I said.

He turned the corner just as the elevator doors dinged open.

I stayed put as the elevator swept them upwards, hopefully to safety, then stepped closer to the Vicious door. This was the area of the ship that always seemed to hold the most paranormal activity, though this didn’t feel at all like what I was used to. I’d heard Ellison’s scream from somewhere on this ship, plain as day, as she’d sat at the dining room table. It made no sense.

Yet I was relieved to be searching for answers alone. If the rest of the crew looked for the source of the scream with me and weren’t who they said they were—whether because of a Mind-I or enter-another-possibility-here—then I would have more problems than I needed at the moment.

The light swung harder as I moved toward the Vicious door. I pushed it open, and it swung inward. The stale air inside carried a scent like copper and cleaning chemicals. Silence at my back, just as impenetrable as the impossibly dark room. Unease spiked the hairs on my neck. I fished my phone out of my pocket, but its light barely penetrated the midnight black. Haunted or not, this room’s nightmares still darkened it. I moved closer to the door, braced myself against the frame, and leaned in, holding my phone out in front of me. My fingertips brushed something soft, warm, and so out of place in an empty room on a cold, metal ship that I jerked back with a gasp.

The room wasn't empty at all. Someone, something, lurked in here with me. Not a ghost. This thing felt the very opposite of dead. That thought chased my next breath out with a barely contained whimper.

Still searching for the light switch with one hand, I snapped the ice pick from my necklace with the other and held to it so tightly that my fingernails carved into my palms. “Who's there?”

No answer except a faint clatter somewhere else on the ship.

I dragged my fingers over the wall for the Feozva-damned light switch. Why was it so impossible to find? Finally, it rubbed between my knuckles and flipped on. I blinked under the sudden brightness, my heart kicking into my throat at what I might see.

Ellison’s doctor smock hung over the back of a wooden chair that faced the wall. It was slightly warm to the touch as if it still held a trace of body heat, as if she’d been wearing it not too long ago. Even though she hadn’t been. Not when I’d seen her just minutes ago in the dining room.

It hung in a wrinkled wad, not smooth and precise like every other article of clothing Ellison owned. Not like Ellison at all.

The chair faced nothing but the light switch, which was unsettling. Jezebel liked to sit and stare thoughtfully at the walls, but that wasn’t as creepy as imagining a human doing it, especially someone like Ellison, who didn’t have time for such nonsense.

Unless the chair hadn’t been used for sitting. I glanced up and around the rusted metal walls and floor covered in neat rows with claw marks—a record of how much time the Saelis females had been trapped in here, I guessed. On the other side of the room about an inch away from the ceiling, an air vent disappeared into the wall like a black hole. The grating that had covered it lay in the corner. I didn’t even have to look too closely to know it didn’t have screws, because in my thieving mind, I needed them more than it did.

I gripped the back of the chair, taking what little comfort I could in the warmth of Ellison’s smock, and dragged it behind me across the room. Using the wall for support, I climbed up onto the chair, its uneven legs teetering wildly underneath me. The air vent was pretty large, I supposed to allow more air to circulate since it was so cold in space. I hadn't paid much attention to the vents on the Nebulous, likely because they were much smaller since we only orbited Mayvel and Wix and not cold, deep space. Also because they were air vents. Not somewhere for a girl who lived in constant terror to go exploring.

“Hello?” My voice leaped down the shaft and back again.

A faint scurrying sounded, coming from deeper within the vent. Possibly no more than an old, creaking ship sound. And possibly not.

The overhead light behind me buzzed and faded, strobing a dimmed glow over the room.

Tight, enclosed spaces were my very favorite things, especially in a once-haunted room with a freaky light. Maybe if I told myself that a few hundred times with conviction, I would start to believe it. But whether I wanted to climb in there or not, I needed to know why Ellison had shouted my name when she clearly hadn’t. If worming my way through the ship’s air vents helped explain why, then there was no question I would do it.

With a deep breath, I scrambled up into the hole in the wall. A two-foot wide titanium tunnel stretched out in front of me, choked in darkness. The farther I went, the more the walls seemed to test that estimate as they pressed in and sealed my lungs together.

I forced in a shaky breath and shined my phone’s meek light both down and up the tunnel. My metal surroundings reflected it back as a moving orb I kept crawling toward but never caught. The tunnel dead-ended and forked both right and left. I wormed my way to the left, dragging myself along by my elbows. Strands of my long hair and chains pulled painfully when they snagged underneath my forearms. Short hair sure had its perks.

The ship’s telecom buzzed on. “On behalf of the Ring Guild, we wish you safe and happy travels,” a voice I’d never heard before said.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Captain Glenn said, his words tight, over the telecom. “Can you repeat the reason why you won’t let us through?”

So the Ringers wouldn’t let us back through their rings. No surprise there.

The shaft made a sharp right, so I slowed before I came to it, then eased the light around the corner with clammy fingers. All clear.

“A member of your crew, Mason Ryan, has turned traitor to the human race. Unless you show all seven of the lifeforms on your ship and can prove that none of them are in fact Mason Ryan, then and only then, will we let you through, Captain. Traitors are deemed a security risk, and because of the devastation of the Black War, we cannot allow someone who has ultimately sided with the Saelis to come in contact with humans when we’re still recovering as a species.”

“Ad astra, per aspra,” Captain Glenn murmured.

To the stars through difficulties. The phrase was in honor of the millions of lives lost in the Black War.

My scalp prickled, drawing a shiver down the back of my neck, yet I couldn’t pinpoint why exactly. I saw nothing but titanium, dulled over the years, so I stilled my breaths and perked my ears. Nothing but my own heartbeat.

I rounded the corner, and to the left was the elevator shaft. The smell of sour river beans permeated the air, evidence of Randolph’s week-long hideaway on top of the elevator. Ahead and straight up was another air vent only a ninja could climb. It was too steep for a regular human to scale, and no footholds or ladders lined the metal walls. If I somehow did make it up there, I bet I would be close to the engine room.

“Seven lifeforms,” Captain Glenn said. “You’re sure?”

Somewhere behind me, something crashed. I curled my fingers into the metal floor, the cold seeping up through my palms to chase a shiver up my shoulders. I flattened my lips to control my erratic breaths, listening.

Then a rustle of movement echoed down the shaft. Something was coming. Or moving away. Sound bounced in every direction in these vents. Either way, my time in ninja crazy shafts was done.

The vent dead-ended just past the impossible one that stretched straight up. I would have to go out the way I came. Toward the crashing sound. My muscles tightened.

“Yes, we’re showing seven lifeforms on your ship, the Vicio,” the voice said.

I pushed into a standing position in the ninja shaft, then turned and dropped into a crouch, my heart slamming against my knees, panic fueling my actions. I frantically dragged myself forward once again, around the corner, to the section of vent that led to the Vicious room.

Something banged toward me.

Panic swelled through my chest. I lunged into the darkened Vicious room, dangling headfirst. My light swept the walls in wild arcs.

Seven lifeforms. Seven. But the ship only had six crew members.

Something tight curled around my ankles and yanked.