The Storm King(87)

She used a straight razor to slit the linings of the suitcases and fed the thousands into them as if they were satin piggy banks. The stacks sagged in uneven lumps. June loathed sloppiness, but she didn’t have time for a more thorough job. A glance at the clock told her she’d left the kitchen over twenty minutes ago. Carl would cover for her, but eventually someone would come looking. But being discovered in mid-escape wasn’t her biggest concern. Once that silver bowl had been sent on its way to Strong another kind of countdown had begun.

A few quick stitches resealed the suitcase linings, then she began emptying entire drawers into the bags.

“June, you’re not even folding,” May said from the doorway. “Mama would have folded first.”

“Close the door, dearest. I have a surprise for you.”

“A surprise?” May’s face lit up like the lake at dawn.



“A trip. A vacation, just like we always talked about.”

“To where?”

“Wherever you like.”

“The city? Oh, or the islands? Or maybe California!”

“All those places. But we need to go tonight. We need to go now.”

They’d have to keep moving. For a while, at least. But maybe forever. This was the path June had committed them to once she let that bowl leave the kitchen.

“In the middle of the party? How will we say goodbye?”

There was a noise upstairs. A scream that held a single note like the clear blast from a trumpet.

“We’ll send them postcards. One for each place we go. Help me, now. Fetch our shoes. We can sort them later.”

“Maybe we can go to the city first. I’d like to see Broadway, where Mama danced. They say you can see the lights for miles. I bet you can see them from the moon.”

Upstairs, the music came to a halt like a crashing train. Now the screaming was impossible to miss. In the sound, June heard more than surprise and disgust. These were keening wails of terror.

May glanced toward the hall. “Someone’s hurt.” Her face was an amalgamation of uncertainty and concern.

“Stay here, dearest. Get the shoes. May. May!”

May disappeared down the hall.

June started after her, then remembered the suitcases packed with their clothes and lined with their life savings. She forced the bags shut and dragged them to the closet.

A tremendous crash shook the pier, and June couldn’t imagine what had caused it. She locked the door to their room and ran down the passageway to the kitchen stairs. The screams were a roar, and she could hear now that they belonged to both women and men. Their cries reverberated through the planks even louder than had the band’s music. Water poured in streams down the walls as if the pier had sunk and the lake now sat above it instead of below.

The kitchen was empty when she got there. Faucets ran into the sinks, and smoke billowed from the ovens. June had been in the undercroft for little more than half an hour, but in that time Armageddon had descended upon the Night Ship.



“May!” Panic threatened, but she forced it down. She was Just June. She was queen of this place. She was a terrifying creature to behold, and there was nothing she could not do.

She burst through the kitchen doors into the smoke and shouts of the nightclub.

Tabletops were pillars of flame that clawed for the ceiling. Blazing curtains wreathed the windows in fire. There were bodies, too. Crowds were packed as tight as herded animals at either end of the club. Three women and a man lay in the center of the dance floor vomiting onto the black planks as the bright curves of fish flapped around them like bacon on a skillet. June could only assume that Strong had shared his special punch after all.

A man and woman were stooped over an elderly gentleman in the throes of a seizure. Alone among the guests, this couple tried to help. They protected the convulsing man from the violence of his own limbs, while the rest of the guests tore at each other to get to the exits.

The sparklers and candle centerpieces must have toppled and begun the fires that triggered the panic. Apparently, in their frenzy to escape, the crowd had also destroyed the club’s immense aquarium.

The stampede for the doors had left a trail of men and women trampled amid shattered glass and wrecked furniture. Legs were buckled at unreal angles and rib cages rendered concave.

Looking at their broken bodies, June’s fear crested and then overwhelmed everything else. She screamed for her sister, but her voice was lost in the bedlam.

The Century Room had vanished in a tempest of smoke. The air was thick and biting, and the edges of things began to blur. June ran to search the faces of the fallen. Some were conscious and others were not. Some were familiar and others were strangers. May wasn’t among them.



Like a levee overwhelmed by floodwater, something finally broke loose. The people pressing for the boardwalk exit burst from the suffocating space, taking with them some of the Night Ship’s smoke and noise.

June tried to regain her internal balance. May was here. She would never leave without June, just as June would never leave without her. May was June’s heart, and June had to find her. She must have gotten caught when the crowd bolted for the exits.

On the boardwalk, wind scattered the smoke across the lake as if it were fog. As if it signified a change in temperature and not absolute catastrophe. Across the water, celebrations continued at the Wharf. There, it was still Independence Day. It was little more than a mile away, but from where June stood, it might as well have been a portrait of a lost world.