Shannon Delany - Thunderstruck

It was bolted to the floor.

He focused on it, staring at the belt lashed across the back of it and lying open and loose. Nearby a small, overturned table wobbled on its rounded edge, rolling with the gentle and somehow haunted movement of the ship. Leaping forward, Rowen righted it, only breathing again when it stood still and mercifully silent.

Evie brushed past him, sweeping garbage and clutter out of her way with a swing of her foot. Things grated and smeared across the floor beneath her boot’s sole, becoming multicolored smudges and elongated puddles between the remnants of food and drink.

The smells of meat, wine, recently baked bread, sweat, and fear hung heavy, despite the movement of the air.

“A bit of help, please?” Evie asked. Moving to one end of the long table she looked at Rowen.

But Ginger Jack slipped around him and set something Rowen presumed came from one of their attacker’s lightships. Striding to the table’s far end, Ginger Jack grunted agreement and, smacking his palms down on its edge, asked, “Ready, gorgeous?”

Evie looked from Rowen to Jack. “Are you talking to me or the pretty boy?”

Jack snorted. “Nothing pretty about that boy from my vantage,” Jack replied, adding a laugh.

“That’s because you’re short—you’ve got a bad angle,” Rowen returned, his chin raising arrogantly.

“Bad angle. That must be the reason,” Jack agreed as he and Evie reset the table.

“Must be,” Evie agreed with a wink.

“I am very nearly as pretty as they come,” Rowen added. “And I am man enough to admit it.”

Jack chuckled. “Is he flirting with me, Evie?” he joked. “I’d hate to break his heart, but I have eyes for another,” he admitted, “and not one of his gender,” he clarified, a grin sliding across his face. “Even though he does scream like a girl …”

Evie barked out a laugh. “True, true! Well, for the sake of that other, ” she said, “I do hope you have more than just eyes for her.”

Jack’s grin widened. “Oh, I do. I most certainly do,” he promised.

Rowen rolled his eyes and rubbed his chin. It was disastrously stubbly again. When had he last shaved? Before they had docked in Bangor? No wonder Jordan was taken aback. A man must keep his appearance up whether aboard a pirate ship or a luxury liner if he wished to impress a lady, Witch or not. He brushed his hands down the front of his shirt and adjusted his collar. “You two seem quite comfortable—”

“In what way precisely?” Jack asked, stepping away from the table.

The flirting between the Tempest ’s engineer and the ship’s captain immediately stopped.

“In the way that you both seem quite at home considering we’ve barely been here half an hour—aboard a ship we wanted to wrest control of forcibly if need be.”

“ If need be, ” Evie specified. Evie and Jack stripped off the tablecloth. “Where’s that girl?” she asked, ignoring Rowen’s implied question.

“The servant?”

“Yes,” Evie said, kicking the stained fabric aside. “There is a severe need of linen laundering and I would suggest a thorough swabbing of this deck.”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe she disappeared belowdecks?”

“Are you ignoring me?” Rowen mused aloud.

Evie shook her head at Jack and muttered, “Someone needs to do something around here. This is a liner of good repute. Airworthy and well-formed. It should be kept in top condition, whether under siege or not.”

“You are ignoring me,” Rowen said, incredulous. “Did you know the ship would be ours so easily?”

“There is no need to let standards slip,” Jack agreed.

A grumble grew in Rowen’s throat. “How long have you planned to take control of this ship?”

Evie gave a negligible shrug. “We never intended to take control of this ship ourselves. We were simply a means to achieving a goal obviously reached before someone with an itchy trigger finger harpooned a table full of food,” she said. Her gaze fell on Jack.

“You said, bring us alongside, and I took the appropriate steps to bring us alongside.”

Unimpressed, she turned her attention back to Rowen, cocked a hip and raised an eyebrow. “I do believe you are assuming things again due to our occupation.”

“Right,” Rowen said, folding his arms over his chest. “Of course. Because of your occupation.”

“We cannot help it if, subconsciously, you are still not keen on being allied with—”

“— liberally aligned traders ,” Rowen said, though he knew them for what they were: pirates.

She smiled. “Our intention was not to captain a second ship—captaining one is work enough. But we did need to get creative when you changed our timeline by being discovered in the Hill King’s Cavern. We are used to traveling with wanted men, Rowen Burchette,” Evie said, putting an emphasis on his surname, “but not someone wanted by so many different people for such high prices.”

By the ship’s controls, movement and discussion ceased. Out of the corner of his eye, Rowen noted Caleb and Jordan watching him from the corners of theirs.

Spotted in the open, the Fennec foxes were chased by a laughing Meggie.

Rowen lowered his voice. “It was never my desire to draw such attention—or trouble—to myself. You both know I have had only one goal since being taken forcibly by your crew in Holgate.” He stared openly at Jordan, raising his volume, and said, “There was only one thing—one person, one goal—on my mind the entire time I was with you.”

Jordan turned away, fiddling with the ship’s controls.

“I did everything I could to reach that goal. I never intended to be kidnapped.”

“You throw that in our faces all the time,” Evie said, again winking at Ginger Jack, “as if it was a bad thing. Imagine how dull—how drab—the last few weeks of your life would have been without being a part of the Tempest ’s crew.”

“Drab,” Rowen muttered, scrubbing a hand across his face. “I could do dull or drab. Both at the same time, in fact.”

“Pish-posh,” Evie scolded. “Adventure makes the man far more than any clothing does.”

Rowen adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves. “That is a good thing, considering my current selection of clothing.”

The Wandering Wallace approached, his slender form top-heavy beneath the rhinoceros’s head he wore. No matter what face he hid his own behind, Rowen recognized him by his body language—his grace and poise. The Wandering Wallace had headlined Jordan’s disastrous birthday party. He moved like a prowling panther—elegant, sleek, and dangerous, his beautiful Oriental companion a shadow at his back.

“Wandering Wallace,” Rowen greeted.

The Wandering Wallace had taught Rowen basic sleight of hand for Jordan’s party—a skill that had come particularly in handy when Rowen slipped Jordan the birthday gift he’d commissioned for her: a brass heart pin engraved with the words Be brave .

Be brave were words he’d used to encourage her to try things beyond what she’d been taught was proper—like sneaking into Philadelphia’s most dangerous (and exciting) neighborhood known as the Below. Like slipping out into the Astraea family hedgemaze high on the top of the Hill late at night to meet him beneath the moon and the stars.

Be brave were their watchwords, as much a part of their personal language as right as rain was part of the rebel vernacular.

The Wandering Wallace dipped his chin, his well-polished rhino horn glinting. “We meet again, Rowen,” he said. “We live in a small, small world, do we not?”

“It seems you are a more integral piece of my world than I suspected,” Rowen countered.