I WAS AWAKENED by a deep rumble and the sense of movement. I opened my eyes, confused and frantic. It was pitch dark, and my entire body was cramped from being in the fetal position, and at first the movement and the dark and the discomfort tricked me into thinking I was back in Jones’s van, racing to Tesori Antico. But I could smell boxes and dust and ocean water. It was the last that jogged my brain back into place.
I pulled myself to sitting, pressing my palms flat against the floor. We were definitely moving. I crawled back to the door, which I could make out by a tiny sliver of light shining through the edge. I pressed my ear against the wood, but the engine hum only got louder, drowning out any noise from the room.
I sat back and licked my lips. I was thirsty, and still hungry, and hot, and my shoulder ached. And I hadn’t thought about how I was going to get out of here.
There you go, Nikki, barging into places without a plan again.
Chris.
I shimmied to one side so I could get to my phone. Chris hadn’t texted me back. Hadn’t called me, either. If I’d been able to see anything, I was certain everything would be gray and black. I dialed his number. It rang and rang and eventually went to voice mail. I tried not to think about the body lying on the ground outside Rebecca Moreno’s house.
“Hey,” I whispered. “Just letting you know that I’ve set sail. I have no idea where we’re going or how long we’ve been moving. I’m safe.” I started to hang up, then thought better of it. “I hope you are too.”
I felt the movement slow, the engine noise lowering an octave and getting quieter. Now I thought I could hear a thump of bass. Music was being played somewhere. I also thought I could hear distant laughter. I pressed my face against the stripe of light and tried to see out. I could only see shifting shapes, which was really all I needed to see to know I was completely fucked. There was no way I was going to be able to come out from under the staircase without being noticed.
I eased back, resting against the wall. I could feel the thump of feet at the back of my head, as expensive shoes clomped up and down the stairs. I weighed my options, which seemed few and far between. Come out with figurative guns blazing, try to slip out stealthily, or just stay inside. My leg cramped, giving me the answer for the last option. I was clearly not very good at the second option. Which left just one.
I checked my phone again. Still nothing from Chris. I closed my eyes and bounced my head softly against the wall behind me.
“Think, Nikki, think.”
I turned on my phone flashlight and looked around. Like I’d thought, there was nothing but me, empty boxes, and the pipes and wires on the walls.
Wait. The pipes and wires on the walls.
I ran my fingers down one of the wires. It was thick, white, and I had no idea what it powered. I also had no idea what would happen if someone were to rip a live wire out of a wall. Especially while sitting on water. Probably nothing good. But maybe not anything really that bad. Maybe just enough to cause a disturbance.
And causing disturbances was something I excelled at.
I turned off my flashlight and waited for my eyes to adjust again. They did, and I grabbed a handful of wires. I braced my feet against the wall and said a quick prayer.
“Please, God, don’t let me die in here. But if you do, make it quick.”
Without giving it another thought, I pushed against the wall with my feet and yanked on the wires as hard as I could. Nothing happened. The wires had pulled away from the wall a little, and that was it. I let out my breath and panted, my arms slack at my sides.
Well. At least I wasn’t electrocuted.
But I was still stuck in this place.
Building up courage was a little harder the second time, because I was afraid I’d somehow damaged the wires and just touching them would light me up like a sparkler. But after a few readying breaths, I planted my feet on the wall again, wrapped my hands around the wires, and pulled.
Something loosened, and then a wire pulled free completely. There was a muffled cry of surprise. I opened my eyes to see the strip of light had gone out.
It worked. Holy shit! It worked! Score another one for no plans, Martinez.
I released the wires as if they were on fire and thrust myself forward, feeling for the lock. I found it, swiveled it upward, and pushed the door open just a fraction. There were about twenty people in the room, most of them standing at the bar, and the ones that weren’t were so wrapped up in the drama of a power outage, there was no way they would see me. Not if I moved fast.
So I moved fast. I didn’t even bother to shut the door behind me. I spilled out onto the carpet, got to my feet, and booked it to the stairwell.
THE REST OF the ship still had power, and word hadn’t yet reached other decks about the outage upstairs. The main deck was wall-to-wall people, some of whom I recognized from Pear Magic, all dressed in fancy gowns and expensive-looking suits. All drinking and talking over one another. It wouldn’t be long before someone would start investigating what was wrong on the upper deck, and then they would find the open storage door and the loose wires inside. I had only a minute or two to make sure the rest of the ship was in the dark.
I raced downstairs, no longer worrying about the sounds of my footsteps. Nobody was on these stairs—they weren’t fabulous enough. It would be impossible to Make an Entrance on a back staircase. I plunged into the engine room of the lower deck and looked around. Nobody here, either. The circuit breaker box was there, though. It was time to take care of that.
I scurried into the storage room next door and looked around until I found a toolbox. Inside were the usual—screwdrivers, wrenches, nails, a hammer. I picked up the hammer and went back into the engine room.
My skin buzzed in silver squiggles. Bubbling and burbling yellows and oranges burst up into rusty splats. Beneath it all was a field of bumpy gray and black. I had to take a few deep breaths to stop the kaleidoscope from spinning.
As soon as I felt stable, I threw open the circuit box and smashed it with the hammer. The first hit sent a jolt of neon green up my arms, but I didn’t let that stop me. I swung again and again, even after I was bathed in darkness, pieces of plastic flying around me and skittering across the floor.
Satisfied, I dropped the hammer and walked out.
I HAD GONE to school with overdramatic rich girls long enough to know what kind of mayhem was going to ensue. People would scream in fear—dainty little squeals that they would later pretend to be embarrassed about. They would cluster together, all talking over one another. They would suppose this and suppose that, and nobody would have the first clue what to do, because there was always someone else hired to know how to take care of these kinds of things. I remembered thinking during one of our many fire-alarm pranks that I would be the only person to survive if there was actually an emergency at our school. The rest of them would die, in the most lovely, photogenic poses they could think of.
It wasn’t much different on a dark ship full of actors in the middle of the ocean.
For the first time, I was able to waltz right through the main deck without turning a single head. I wound my way through, listening to the ridiculous theories and complaints and the occasional couple who didn’t seem to really even notice anything was going on. I paused every time I came across anyone who even remotely resembled Luna, the boiling oranges and yellows licked ragemonster and drained into a sea of ink, until I realized it wasn’t her. Also, no Peter Fairchild, who would make a very satisfactory runner-up in the Who Becomes Nikki’s Punching Bag First contest.
I scoured the entire dance floor, the packed living room area, the bar. I pushed my way outside, where the people seemed much more chill about the power outage. I heard rumors of someone named Tony checking out the breaker to see what had happened. The lights should be on soon, the consensus outside seemed to be. The party would go back to full swing.
I sank onto a lounge chair in a shadowy corner and studied each face, each voice on the deck. No Luna. No Peter.
Frustrated, I pulled out my phone and checked for word from Chris. Still nothing. I shouldn’t have checked—now my nerves were out of control, the slate sliding over me, dampening the fire colors.
I got up and went back inside, taking everything more slowly this time, staying on the fringe of the crowd but paying close attention to each person. I continued to search in a second living room next door, where people were quivering on couches like this was the Titanic and the whole damn thing was going down. Beyond that, I passed through a less formal bar area—nearly empty, save for an entwined couple making full use of the dark—and into a quiet hallway.
More cabins. I hadn’t had the chance to explore these earlier because of the housekeeper. A quick look in the first one told me it belonged to Peter Fairchild. Men’s shoes lined the floor at the end of the bed. A jacket hung from the closet door. Colognes and aftershaves were scattered atop the dressing table. I took a quick tour of the room, looking for anything that might help me bust him, but of course I found nothing.
I peeked in another room; it was empty.
But there was a third room at the end of the hallway, and I heard voices coming from it. I edged along the wall and positioned myself just outside the door, near a hallway bathroom, so I could see inside.
A man and a girl. The girl crying, the man bent over her, gently murmuring, consoling her. Even from the back, I could tell it was Peter Fairchild, his white-blond hair nearly glowing in the dark. My skin crawled and I felt a tingle go up my spine. Finally, I had found him.
He shifted position, and I could see the brown wavy hair of Celeste Day peeking out from the side. But there was something off about her. She was shorter than she’d originally appeared at Pear Magic. And there was something about her cry. Something familiar. I inched closer so I could hear them.
“This was supposed to be my big night,” she whimpered. She blotted her eyelashes—carefully, carefully, just the lashes—with a tissue.
“And it still will be,” Peter assured her.
“The tabloids are here,” she said. “They’re supposed to be here to cover me. To make me officially part of the scene.” Her cry had gone angrier, and the familiarity deepened.
“And they still will.”
“How can they?” she seethed. “There are no lights on this piece-of-shit boat. How is anyone supposed to see me? How is anyone supposed to appreciate me and all that I’ve done?”
He put his hand on her arm, a calming, almost sweet gesture. “They will. The lights will come on and everyone will see you, Luna. I promise.”
“Don’t call me that,” she growled.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s a habit, I’ve told you. I will always see my little girl under that face, even if you get a million surgeries.” He ran a thumb down her cheek. “Even if you change your hair a hundred times or buy a hundred colors of contacts. You’re beautiful, just like your mother. Much prettier than that silly little starlet was, Luna.”
She slapped his hand away. “I am not Luna. I am Celeste. Why can’t you get it through your thick skull that I am Celeste? Not a silly little starlet. I am a star. Luna was a nobody. Luna is dead. I am not a nobody. I will not let you make me a nobody again.”
Realization washed over me like a tidal wave, and I swam in a gray and black sea. Of course. That was why her cry was familiar, why her voice was familiar. She wasn’t disguising it because she thought they were alone. But now I could see it. In her movements. In her posture. In her pitiless crocodile eyes. I sagged against the wall.
“You were never a nobody,” Peter was saying, but I couldn’t pay attention to his words, my mind was racing so hard.
I heard footsteps coming up the stairs and pressed myself into the shadows of the restroom.
“Sir?” a voice said. I peeked out to see a short man in a sharp uniform standing in the doorway.
“What is it, Tony? Why don’t you have the lights back on yet?” Peter snapped, irritation lining his face as he advanced on poor Tony.
Tony held up the hammer that had been hanging slack at his side. “Someone destroyed the breaker box, sir. Smashed it to bits.”
Peter took the hammer from Tony. My stomach lurched.
“Destroyed it?” he said, almost to the hammer itself, as if he expected it to be able to answer him.
“Yes, sir. It is not fixable tonight. We will need to replace the whole thing. There are also wires loose in the upstairs storage room. Door was unlocked and open.”
Peter’s face twisted. “Wires loose?”
“Yes, sir. Someone wanted the lights out tonight.”
Peter gazed at the hammer again, turning so he could gaze between both Luna and Tony. When he moved, Luna was fully exposed. She looked up, but her stare went past Peter and past Tony, directly across the hall and into the shadows of the bathroom.
I felt my face light up when our eyes connected. Ice filled my entire body. Gray and black ice.
“Who in the world would want to sabotage the Celeste?” Peter asked, still dismayed.
Luna’s reptile eyes glowed as they stayed locked on mine. Her chin was tucked into her chest, her shoulders taut.
“Nikki Kill,” she answered. Then to me, “Boo.”