A Dawn Most Wicked (Something Strange and Deadly 0.5)(6)

My mother’s.

I jolted upright, the dregs of sleep threatening to pull me back under if I didn’t. . . .

“Wake up,” I muttered to myself. “It was just a dream.” After a few panting breaths I managed to get my heart to slow.

Just a dream. The words repeated in my brain, like they did every night when the ghosts of the Sadie Queen flickered through and haunted my sleep.

I swung my legs left and felt the cool planks beneath my feet. A sliver of light peeked under the door.

We were in New Orleans now. A week had passed since Cass had told me about the race, since Cochran had beat me to shit. My ribs and back still shrieked with pain—and my face was still speckled with bruises and cuts.

But those aches didn’t hold a candle to the agony from a nightmare.

Just a dream, I told myself again, pushing onto my feet. I staggered to my window, careful to avoid the boots and uniform I knew lay on the floor. As I flung open the red curtain, the lamplights of New Orleans seared into my eyes. I reckoned it was near ten o’clock, and the streets were crawling with people. Tourists, merrymakers, and more than a few gamblers out to decide between the Abby Adams or the Sadie Queen.

“Just a dream,” I whispered one more time, digging the heels of my hands in my eyes. It was the same routine every night—the same cold sweat and exhaustion to hold me close; the same failed attempts to clear away the nightmares’ claws.

But no matter how often I reminded myself they weren’t real, the dreams still left me shaking in my bunk. Still left my mother’s screams blasting in my ears and rattling in my lungs. That had been our last night in the Ropers’ house. The last night we had a roof over our heads and the first night we lived on the run.

I didn’t want to think about it—so I did what I normally did to forget. I crossed to my bureau, to the only neat part in my room, where boxes of organized, unfinished tinkerings lay. And where A School Compendium of Natural and Experimental Philosophy sat wrapped in twine. I picked it up, careful about unwrapping the string now that the cover had fully disintegrated. I’d worn it out from all the reading and skimming and tracing. This book was the reason I had taught myself to read—all those diagrams of machines had downright demanded I learn my letters.

But just as I leaned against the window and held my favorite page to the light—page 258, “An Introduction to Electricity”—cold licked over my cheeks and grabbed at my neck.

I wrenched my gaze left just as a misty ghost floated through my cabin door. The blistered, scorched mess that was his face glowed a soft blue and lit up my room.

“Blood,” he whispered, a sound that pierced my ears. Pierced my lungs. “Blood everywhere.”

I eased out a shaking breath. I knew that voice . . . a voice from my past. The ghosts did that—spoke in voices that weren’t their own. Sometimes they were the voices of the dead . . . and sometimes they were the voices of the living.

This voice belonged to the dead.

To the man I had killed.

The ghost’s mouth sagged open. “Murderer,” it moaned. “You’ll hang for this.”

Fear spiked my gut—brief and insistent. I had almost hanged for it, and if Cochran didn’t keep his word, if he told Clay Wilcox about me . . .

“Oh, stop being a Nancy-boy,” I growled at myself. “That ghost is harmless and Clay Wilcox is a thousand miles away.” I let my voice rise over the ghost’s hissing, and then—to prove to myself I wasn’t a coward—I made a quick decision.

I was going out.

No one was supposed to leave the steamer tonight, on account of the race . . . but if I stayed, I would lose my sanity on top of my sleep. Nightmares didn’t even compare to the rage that had been growing in my gut for the last week. Rage at Cochran for firing me. Rage at Murry for lying about me. Rage at Cassidy for not noticing I had avoided her.

In just over a day I’d be out of work . . . and on the run again. Life was spiraling that way no matter what I did, and tomorrow I would wake to a dawn most wicked. So I might as well enjoy myself before.

A splash of water and a clean uniform later, I crept to my door. The ghost still floated there, and I almost considered not leaving . . . just so I wouldn’t have to walk through it.

But with a steeling breath, I walked directly into his wispy form.

Cold, more biting and complete than any natural cold, snapped through my bones. A dank, earthy scent filled my nose. And then I was through, my teeth grating and my hands shoving the door wide . . .

I was almost halfway down the pier, the hum of Canal Street becoming a mighty roar with each racing step. I had managed to get off the Sadie Queen unnoticed by anyone, and the life of the city was calling to me. It was a steamy night with humidity so thick you could grab it. And there was an electricity shimmering through the air—the sort of charge you felt only on summer nights in the South.

I jogged around a giant stack of crates and skittered to a stop, my arms windmilling. A girl marched toward me, the burnt orange silk of her evening gown like a flame in the dark. I didn’t have to see her face—I knew from her long strides that it was Cass.

Shit. I huffed in air, trying to catch my breath. I’d done so good at avoiding her. A week of hiding behind boilers, skipping lunch, sleeping outside with the deckhands. Maybe I could scoot back behind the crates. . . .

Her gaze landed on me, and even in the shadows I could see her eyes widen with recognition. She stopped dead in her tracks.