Page 63 of No One Aboard

“With the... But... You’re here to talk aboutEileen?” This didn’t make any sense. Jerry had been holed up with Madden for days. If there was a break in the case, she would have told him. Unless even she didn’t know. And since when were the feds tied up in a missing persons case?

“I’m not here about the ship, Mr. Baugh. At least, not directly.” Agent Koshida slid his badge back into his pocket.

“What, then?”

The agent smiled once again, this time sympathetically, as if he knew what he was about to say was going to split Jerry’s life in two.

“I’m here to talk about Steven Baugh.”

Chapter 31

Rylan Cameron

Call sign: Minnow

Day 7 at Sea

Sleep evaded Rylan once more, burning his eyelids and twisting just out of reach. He drew instead, sketching for hours, and underlined passages of his beat-up Jules Verne novel. Pirate slept beside him, occasionally rousing to make biscuits on Rylan’s thigh. Rylan didn’t want to think about what Alejandro had said, that the cord had been cut since the beginning of the trip, that it was meant to protectourselves. He didn’t want to think about what they needed protection from or how tiny that speck of land looked in the middle of the ocean. All he could stand to think about was his drawing.

So he drew.

“Perfume is the soul of the flower, and sea-flowers have no soul.”

He drew a garden underwater, azaleas drowned and drifting.

“Steam seems to have killed all gratitude in the hearts of sailors.”

He drew a steamship running over a sailboat and splintering it to pieces.

“We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.”

He drew a body folded in a freezer, barnacles blooming over its eyes and mouth, seaweed snaking its claim across theconcave chest, and salt water loosening sinew until the corpse spread like unwound string.

Rylan’s wrist ached in protest. He needed sleep but could not command it to come to him. He glanced at Tia, mouth agape and breathing steadily in her bed.

Rylan flipped the page of his sketchbook. He set aside20,000 Leagues Under the Seaand picked up a book about sea monsters through the ages. He opened to a random page and skimmed it as he sketched.

The Blue Men of Minch were blue-skinned people in Scottish myths who lurked beneath the surface in the hopes of dragging down passing ships. They were also called storm kelpies for their ability to summon tempests and were thought to be angels who’d fallen from the heavens and landed in the seas.

A blue man took shape on Rylan’s paper. He was slender and ribbony, his eyes huge like the creatures in the deepest parts of the sea. He was creeping down the hallway ofThe Old Eileen, leaving a trail of salt water with each step.

There was one way to save yourself from the Blue Men of Minch, Rylan read as he shaded water droplets on the monster’s skin. The creatures often called out lines of poetry to the men aboard their ships, and the captain would be tasked with completing the verse. If he could not, the creatures sank the ship.

Rylan listened for a fallen angel’s poetry through the door to his cabin. The pain in his arm reminded him that the Blue Men of Minch had come to life in his sketchbook and nowhere else. He had no reason to believe in actual monsters.

Rylan snapped his sketchbook shut and forced himself out the door and to the companionway. He focused on the pain in his arm. That was real. The Blue Men of Minch were not.

The night that greeted Rylan up on deck was muggy.

He realized he’d sweated through his T-shirt, which stuck to his chest. He massaged his palm and looked to see who was steering in the cockpit.

Francis.

“Couldn’t sleep, son?”

They were alone, the two of them. The rest of the family and crew were asleep. Or dead. Rylan took a deep breath. He didn’t need to be scared of Francis. Francis was the person protecting them from... from what, exactly, Rylan didn’t want to know. His father waved him over, and he approached the cockpit, cradling his drawing. “Guess not.”

“Keep watch with me, then.”