A Dawn Most Wicked

And they didn’t mind the ghosts.

I strode to the ship’s front, where the boilers stood. They were outside so air could whip through the attached furnaces and keep the fires stoked. These eight long tanks served as the intestines of the ship. If they got clogged with mud, they didn’t work. It was one of the striker’s jobs to clean the boilers because, as a rule, we were younger and smaller than the engineers. While I was certainly thinner than Murry or Second Engineer Schultz, I was a full head taller. In fact, I had to fold my body near in half to get into the tank, and if there was one way I didn’t want to die, it was trapped inside a boiler.

Two months ago, in the middle of the night, I had thought I might die such a death. We’d stopped between Baton Rouge and Devil’s Isle because the boilers had taken on too much mud in the night. Captain Cochran had dragged me from my bunk with only a dim lantern to see by and a harsh order to get the boilers cleaned.

So I’d stuffed my body inside . . . and that was when I felt the cold. It had brushed over my neck. The hair on my arms had shot up. Then blue had flashed at the top of my eyes, and I’d paused mid-scrape to glance up.

To stare straight into the charred eyes of a dead woman.

“Blood,” she hissed. “Blood everywhere.”

White panic exploded in my brain.

“Blood,” she hissed again. Then her voice had changed, shifted into the voice of my mother. The raspy, rattling voice she’d had just before she coughed her last breath. . . . “You left me, Danny Boy. It’s your fault I died.”

Bile burned up my throat at those words, at that voice. How this ghost could speak with my mother’s tongue, I didn’t know . . . but I didn’t care. It was too real.

I had left my mother. It had been nine years, but I would never forget that wet, blood-filled sound of her final breaths. . . .

“You must pay, Danny Boy. You left me, and you must—”

Without thinking, I pitched my hammer at the ghost’s face.

It went right through her. She reached for me with spirit fingers, but her hand slipped through my chest with nothing more than a cold stab.

She yanked her arms back, and that’s when I started hollering—really shrieking—for someone to get me the hell out of the boiler.

And ever since then, even if it sometimes interrupted the Sadie Queen’s schedule, I had never, ever again cleaned the boilers at night.

And no one had really blamed me—not even Captain Cochran.

When I crawled from the eighth boiler almost nine hours later, it was to the sound of boisterous hollers and the hum of other steamboats. The volume had been gradually growing until almost all of my senses were overcome by sound. All the tobacco and cotton would be loaded by now, and our new deckhands—the men who kept the ship running—would be hunkering down for the journey. Cochran couldn’t keep any deckhands longer than a trip or two—the nightmares and ghosts always scared ’em off. These days he was having to offer double wages to hire enough crew to get us to New Orleans and back.

It was then, as I sat there wiping my sweat and watching the deckhands get organized for departure, that I heard the familiar slow, scraping shuffle of an old man. “Striker,” Chief Engineer Murry shouted as he came toward me. I turned and looked at him. His eyes were permanently coated with a white film, and one was half closed—almost sewn shut by scar tissue. The skin was puckered and shiny on his forehead and beneath his eyes.

It sure looked as if Cochran had shoved Murry’s face in the furnace.

Murry’s half-blind eyes squinted, then he smiled. “Just who I was lookin’ for.” He beckoned me over, so biting back a sigh, I went.

“Sir?”

“Cap’n wants to see you.” The edge of his lip curled up. “You shouldn’t have done that, Striker. Mighty stupid of you.”

“Huh?” I reared back slightly. When Murry wore a smile like that, it only meant bad things ahead. “What did I do?”

“You know damned well.” He snickered, almost gleefully. “And by the Shadow of Death, it was stupid. Ha!” He gave a guttural laugh and clapped his big gnarled hands. “It’s nice to see someone else feel the captain’s wrath for a change.”

Then, faster than I knew the old man could move, his hand snapped out and grabbed my collar. He yanked. “Come on, then, Striker. Don’t wanna keep Captain Cochran waitin’ no longer—it’ll only make this worse, and I need you alive t’work the engine. Or”—he towed me into a walk, throwing me a milky-eyed glare—“I need you mostly alive.”

Moments later I found myself in the blacksmith’s office, the tiny room beside the engine room where we mended broken parts and made new ones. Chains and hatchets and screws gleamed at me from all corners of the tiny room, building terror in my chest.

I’d insisted I could walk myself, but Murry had, in turn, insisted he didn’t trust me. So he’d dragged me by the collar the whole way before shoving me inside with a cackle that was still ringing in my ears.

And then he’d left me. To wait. And with each passing second, my fear ratcheted up another notch. I had no idea what I’d done, but it had to be bad if the captain wanted to see me . . .

When Cochran finally slammed inside, my panic boiled straight into my skull. With his huge shoulders tensed straight to his ears and his eyes on fire, I knew I was in for it.

Shit. I scooted backward until my legs hit the low anvil in the center of the room.

“As soon as we reach New Orleans,” Cochran said in a voice lethal and low, “you are off this ship.”

My jaw sagged, surprise briefly stifling my fear. “What?”

“What, sir,” he snapped. “And you heard me. As soon as we hit New Orleans, you’re gone.”

“Why?” I asked—but when his face turned even darker red, I quickly added, “Sir. Why, sir?”

“I ain’t blind, Striker.” He took a long step toward me. “I know damned well how you feel about my daughter, and if you think you can kiss”—spittle flew with the word—“then you’re wrong. Murry saw the two of you, and there’s no way in hell I’ll stand for it. When we hit New Orleans, I’m turning you in.”

“But I haven’t kissed her.” I gaped at him. “I swear, Cap’n. I didn’t t—”

His fist hit my eye faster than I could blink. I crumpled to the floor—just in time for his boot to smash into my ribs. My back hit the anvil with a crunch, and I toppled onto my stomach. My skull was on fire. My ribs screamed.

“You think I don’t know who you are?” he snarled, towering over me. “I have news for you, Sure Hands. I’ve known about your past for quite a while now.” He smiled, clearly pleased with himself, and it took all my self- control to keep my face blank as he went on.

“You see, Striker, there’s a man named Clay Wilcox, and he has a reward out for a boy your age. He says this ‘Sure Hands’ fellow killed a factory guard over in Philadelphia. That he blew up the factory, and—imagine this!—the picture of Sure Hands looks just like you.”

Don’t react! I shouted at myself. Don’t react. But it was damned near impossible. Why was Clay Wilcox still looking for me? He had set me up to die in that explosion—set me up to take his fall and rot in prison for his crime. I had killed the guard on accident, but I sure as hell hadn’t blown up the factory.

“The thing is,” Cochran drawled, “I’m not the sort of man to miss out on easy money. I’ve only ignored this reward money because you’re so good with an engine. I’ve kept you on this long because my steamer needed you. . . . But now?” His boot suddenly slammed into my kidney. Black rolled through my brain.

“That boy ain’t me,” I finally ground out. “I ain’t been to Philadelphia, and I ain’t kissed—”

Another kick and another black wave. Then more kicking, over and over again, until I prayed that unconsciousness would overtake me.

But finally—finally—after twenty kicks or maybe a hundred Cochran made a satisfied grunt, as if pleased I would never budge again. Then his footsteps moved away from me, and I heard the door click open.