The Girl from Everywhere (The Girl from Everywhere #1)(8)

The captain returned that evening with a heavy briefcase and a buoyant air, while Kash and I were still only between the first and second coat of varnish. Slate dropped the briefcase on the deck and ran up to us, palms up, grinning.

“What do you want?”

“High fives,” he said, as though it was obvious. Kashmir started laughing. I glanced down at my fingers, stained black and sticky, and then back up at Slate’s clean hands. Then he winked at me, and I couldn’t help but return his smile. Slate clapped Kashmir on the back and put his other hand on my shoulder, warm and firm. “Good work on the pocket watch! You couldn’t have planned it better.”

I made a face. “I didn’t plan it at all.”

“Well, you know what they say! Chance favors the prepared mind, and there’s no mind more prepared than yours.” He leaned in to kiss the top of my head.

“Dad!”

“And fortune favors the bold,” he added as he sauntered backward, pointing at Kashmir. “They say that too.” He raised his hands again, tilting his head to gaze at the heavens. “The stars are aligning for us!”

I followed his eyes upward and laughed. “There are no stars.”

“Yeah? Then what’s that?”

“Jupiter.”

“Well, there are still stars,” he said. “You just can’t see them. If you could, they’d be aligned, trust me.” He picked up his briefcase and turned to his cabin. “It’s fate. This is all meant to be. I guarantee you, by tomorrow night we’ll be back in paradise.”

The smile wilted on my face. “So what time is the auction tomorrow, Captain?”

He stopped in his tracks, and it was a moment before he answered. “Early.” Then he opened the door and vanished behind it.

I stared after him. It was never a good sign when he wouldn’t give me a direct answer, but I wanted to be there tomorrow to see the map, to know what I was facing. Forewarned, forearmed, as Cervantes had said.

Kashmir was watching me. He quirked an eyebrow, but I pretended not to notice. “I never thanked you for the watch,” I said, dipping my brush into the varnish and running it along the black spar. “I should have thought of something like that instead of bothering with the tigers.”

“It was more fun this way.”

I gave him a pointed look. “Maybe for you.”

“Mais non, amira, come on.” He wiped his cheek with his shoulder. “We brought two Bengal tigers into the twenty-first century, where Bengal tigers are a rare and precious resource.”

“Not as precious as a pocket watch.”

“Not as pricey, perhaps. Who said it was thieves who know the price of everything and the value of nothing?”

“Oscar Wilde,” I said. “And it’s cynics, not thieves.”

“Ah! That explains it, then.”

I stuck out my tongue at him. Then I looked down at the brush marks in the tacky varnish. “Think we’ll finish tonight?”

“This coat needs time to dry. We can finish in the morning.” Kashmir regarded me for a moment. “Early.”

We woke before dawn to put the final coat on the mast. After we’d finished, Kashmir found the thinner and wiped his hands with meticulous care; I did a more cursory job, leaving the half-moons under my nails as black as rotten teeth. Kash took a nap in my hammock while we waited, but I stood by the rail until Slate appeared on deck, sharply dressed and vibrating like a plucked string. He stopped in his tracks when he saw me there.

“You’re coming with me?”

“I thought I could help,” I said, but he just stared at me. “Give you a second pair of eyes? In case it’s a forgery or a copy or something.”

His face darkened. “It’s not a forgery.”

I tried to laugh, but it came out like a cough. “I’ve seen your other 1868s, Slate. Some of them were practically drawn in crayon.”

“Christie’s doesn’t sell fakes.”

“They did a couple years ago, actually. A painting called Odalisque. Big scandal.”

He opened his mouth, shut it again, then ran his hand over his scalp, tousling his carefully combed hair. “I’m going to be late.”

“Then let’s go.”

I shook Kashmir awake, and the three of us took the subway from Brooklyn to Rockefeller Center, emerging into a sea of sundry New Yorkers, both permanent and temporary: texters looking down and tourists looking up, and crowds of girls my age waiting to scream for some celebrity outside NBC Studios. Christie’s auction house was a large limestone building located at the south side of the plaza, where flags in all colors from all nations snapped in the summer air.

Kash and I accompanied the captain as far as the lobby, where the security guard put down his newspaper and asked for government-issued ID as he eyeballed Kashmir, who wore his white linen shirt in his typical fashion, unbuttoned nearly to his waist, and me, with my black nails and my tattered hoodie. Slate was the only one with a valid card.

The guard made a call from the phone behind his desk, staring at Kashmir the whole time. When he hung up, he shook his head and apologized in a way that made it clear that he had no regrets; Slate spread his hands and started toward the elevators. “Sorry, kiddo. I’ll be back in a bit.”

“But Dad—”