The Storm King(113)

“How did you get in here?” the goth girl asked. “We blocked all the ways in and made sure every window was boarded over.”

“You barricaded yourselves in here?” Nate assumed it’d been Owen who’d clogged the exits and shifted the oven in order to keep the teens from escaping, though it was hard to imagine how even Owen could have done this all on his own so quickly.

The goth girl scowled at him. “This is our place.”

For a moment, Nate was stupefied—then he remembered what this pier used to mean to him. This was a place of his own, where he could be the truest version of himself. Or that had been the delusion. The problem was that the Night Ship was a trap masquerading as a haven.



“James said you weren’t going to scare us out of our own home,” Carlos said.

“And you’re not going to,” James said from the light’s perimeter. Nate had tossed away his baseball bat, but James now picked up a stalk of metal that might have once been part of a floor lamp. The boy was so angry. His rage was as blinding as Nate’s own had once been. “We aren’t going to fall for your tricks. What’re you trying to get us to do?”

“Owen’s trying to kill us. Can’t you smell the smoke? He set the Night Ship on fire. He clubbed Mikey. He killed Maura.” Nate’s shoulders dropped. Exhaustion took the steel from his spine. “He killed Lucy.”

There was a moment of perfect silence in the room.

“And he’s going to kill us next. We have to get down to the launch.” Nate reopened the door to the room. “Please. Your hurt friend’s down there. We don’t have any more time.”

Carlos and the goth girl looked back at James and then at Tara, and then at each other. Nate willed for them to move, and he could have dropped to his knees in relief when they did.

James took a step forward as if to stop them from leaving, though he didn’t. His face was alabaster in the light, his jaw clenched like a vise. But his eyes, his eyes were raw with pain.

“You need to be quick, but you also need to be quiet,” Nate said as the duo passed him and stepped into the hall. The path to the launch was currently clear, but he didn’t know where Owen was. The pair didn’t have a light, but these children were of the Night Ship. They’d find their way.

“He killed her,” Tara said, as the sound of her friends’ footfalls diminished. She didn’t say this as if it were a question.

“You’re lying,” James said, but there was no conviction in his words. He looked at Tara. A tear glistened on the precipice of his chin.



“He—” Nate’s throat constricted. A sound came from his mouth, but it wasn’t a word.

“It’s been Owen Liffey this whole time?” Tara asked.

Nate nodded because he didn’t trust himself to speak.

“We couldn’t see who came at us,” she said. “We were all downstairs sleeping. Mikey started screaming. There was blood all over him, and then we saw this guy in a raincoat and hood. But it was only for a second. The man started breaking the lanterns and we all ran up here—” Her eyes were wide and liquid. She looked so much like Lucy. “We thought it was you.”

It made sense that Owen would take out the lights. If the teens never saw him, they couldn’t identify him. Even if some of them escaped the Night Ship, Owen could still try to scapegoat Nate for the rampage.

Nate kept forgetting that Owen was deranged, but not stupid.

“Owen Liffey killed Lucy,” James muttered to himself. As if hearing this in his own voice would help him make sense of it. “Owen killed Lucy.”

“I thought we blocked everything,” Tara said. “What did we miss?”

“There are passages in the walls,” Nate said. “Just like in the stories. We never found them, but I guess Owen did.”

“Someone tried to get in here right after we wedged the couch against the door,” Tara said. “He almost broke it down. It took all of us to hold it. Then he stopped, and when we didn’t hear anything else for a while, James went out to take a look.”

James looked furious again, but for once this anger wasn’t directed at Nate.

“I don’t know where he is,” Nate said. “But the kitchen stairs are clear now. We can make it down there. If we see him he won’t be able to stop all of us.” If it came down to it, he’d waylay Owen long enough for the kids to escape.



“The Night Ship’s burning.” Tara turned to her brother. “We have to go.”

James closed his eyes and then nodded, suddenly looking completely spent. The truth was hard, especially when it changed on you. He let the metal rod clatter to the floor, and took a few steps toward the door, then stopped and turned back to the shadows.

All at once, the dark behind James shifted.

Tara screamed. It was a banshee’s wail, but it barely reached its full pitch before Owen had an arm as thick as a tree trunk wrapped around her brother’s neck.





Twenty-six

Tara’s scream didn’t fade so much as end. Choked as her twin’s breath was cut, as if the two of them shared the same thread of a windpipe.

In the circle of the flashlight’s beam, Owen was a monolith of black behind James. He wore the same raincoat he used to wear on Thunder Runs. With its hood cowled over his face, he might have stepped from any kind of nightmare.