The Girl from Everywhere (The Girl from Everywhere #1)(5)

“You didn’t do anything?” Kashmir said to me.

“What?”

“To the map.”

I blinked. “No! If I had a mind to sabotage a map, there are better candidates.”

“Ah.” He leaned against the rail, tilting his head to study me. “So,” he said. “What makes you nervous about Honolulu?”

Turning to face the water, I frowned at the waves. “It’s complicated.”

“I haven’t got anywhere else to be.”

My fingers tapped an idle beat on the metal rail; the brass was cool under my palms. Kashmir was the only person aboard the ship who did not know every detail of the circumstances of my birth, and I was reluctant to surrender the strange, small bliss I had in his ignorance. Kash was the most confident person I knew; would he even understand how scared I was? Or worse—might he fear for me, too? Still, at this juncture, even if I didn’t tell him, he would know soon enough. But how to explain? I’d never told the story before.

“Oi!”

Startled by Rotgut’s shout from the crow’s nest, I followed his skinny finger to the lights in the distance; a sleek white boat on the water, far off, but coming toward us.

“What is it?” I called up.

“Coast Guard!”

I stared at the boat for a long moment, trying to convince myself it wasn’t headed our way—until another roar echoed in the hold. Then I ran to knock on the captain’s door, hard, though I counted to ten before opening it.

Even so, Slate looked surprised to see me. I met his eyes, deliberately not glancing at the box in his hands, the box he normally kept under his bed. It wasn’t worth telling him to hide it; if we were boarded, it would be harder to explain the tigers than to explain his stash of opium. “We need you on the radio,” I told him.

His fingers tightened on the box. “It might help the map to work.”

“Now, captain.” I shut the door behind me, harder than I had to.

Back on deck, Bee was taking the ship around while Kash raised the sails. We were moving again, plowing the waves, heading east along the southern coast of Long Island. I grabbed the halyard, helping Kash with the sail as I watched the lights of the boat off our stern, closer now and gaining.

According to Slate, the Coast Guard in New York had always been a pain, but much worse, of course, since 2001, far nosier and almost impossible to bribe. Nothing like the eighties, in the uncivilized city of my father’s youth. To make it worse, the Coast Guard was full of people who loved boats, and they couldn’t keep their hands off the Temptation.

She was a striking caravel, her black hull copper clad below the waterline to keep out worms (and worse, depending on what waters we traveled). She rode on a keel fashioned from what looked like the rib of a leviathan, carved with labyrinthine runes from stem to stern, and at the prow, a red-haired mermaid bared her breasts to calm the sea.

Even if the Coast Guard wasn’t inclined to search us, they would take any chance to stand on the deck and spin the wheel and tell Slate how they played pirates when they were children. Of course, once on deck they were bound to hear the tigers roaring. I gritted my teeth and waited for the captain as below, our illicit cargo growled in their rickety cages.

Just as I was about to knock again, Slate emerged from his cabin with the radio hissing, but he stared at the Coast Guard ship for a long time, blinking slowly in the fading glow of sunset. My heart sank; his pupils were the size of dimes. “Captain?”

My voice startled him to action. He lifted the microphone. “New York Coast Guard, New York Coast Guard, New York Coast Guard, this is the ship Temptation, Temptation, Temptation, over.”

A brief crackle of static, and then a hiss as we waited. Bee gnawed her finger. “Did he find another map?”

I shook my head. “He can’t Navigate now, not with them watching.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Bee said.

“Shouldn’t,” I said. “People will report it. Or film it and put it on YouTube.”

“Privacy is important,” Bee said. “You get little of it in prison.”

“New York Coast Guard, New York Coast Guard.” Slate bounced the microphone impatiently in his hand. “This is the ship Temptation, over.”

The lights off the stern were getting closer; another roar reverberated through my feet. “What do we do if they don’t answer?”

Kashmir made a face. “We could throw them overboard.”

“The drugs?”

“The tigers.”

“New York Coast Guard,” Slate repeated. His brow shone with sweat. “This is the ship Temptation, over.”

No answer, and the lights grew closer still. “Captain—”

Slate swore and dropped the radio to the deck, striding toward the helm. “Bring me a map, Nix!”

“What map?”

“Any map!”

“But—”

“Nix!”

The speaker crackled then; we both froze. “The Temptation, this is the New York Coast Guard, please switch to channel sixty-six, over.”

Kashmir scooped the radio off the deck and handed it to the captain. “New York Coast Guard, this is the Temptation, switching to channel sixty-six, over.” Slate did so, the speaker still hissing softly.