Cape Storm Page 0,91

was a real bitch." He seemed to think so, too. " Grand Horizon,signing off."

" Sparrow,signing off." I put the old click-to-talk mike down and sat for a moment in silence, staring at the equipment.

Then I rummaged around in the desk drawers. It was a battered old thing, looked like it had seen service in the First World War, and I surprised a long-tailed rat in the top drawer, who stared at me with beady little eyes and an entire lack of alarm. A pet, maybe.

Or maybe this was his ship, and I was the infestation.

I shut that drawer and tried the next one. The rats had made nests of the paperwork that had once been in there; it was nothing but shreds.

The third drawer yielded an almost empty bottle of Cutty Sark.

"Score," I said. I unscrewed the cap, wiped the lip of the bottle with my shirt, and threw back the rest of the booze in one long, thirsty pull. When there were no more threads of amber snaking their way down the glass to my mouth, I lowered the bottle and set it on the desk.

"David?"

He opened the door.

It's not that easy to catch a Djinn who's alert for treachery, and David - even though he loved me - knew better. I'd just told him not to trust me.

But he gave me the benefit of the doubt, even with the empty bottle open on the desk in front of me.

I looked up at him and said, "We need to talk, honey." Lewis sent Brett Jones, Fire Warden, former Special Forces. He was bigger than Josue, and after a dick-measuring initial meeting, Josue evidently accepted that Brett was meaner as well. I didn't know Brett that well, but Lewis did, and if Lewis sent him to take care of us, then we could trust him.

"Watch your back," I whispered to Brett as I passed him. He'd come armed to the teeth, which made him fit right in with all my pirate crewmates; on him, though, it looked like professional accessories. He nodded to me. It seemed like a thousand years since we'd sat in the movie theater on the Grand Paradise, watching as our colleagues were carried off in body bags after that first clash with Bad Bob's storm.

Brett looked as hard and tired as I felt. He also looked very alone, standing at the bow with his arms folded, watching the speedboat head back to the distant cruise ship. The weather was still foul over in that direction. The storm just wasn't about to give up its prize, no matter how hopeless it was.

Standing in the filthy confines of Josue's tiny captain's cabin, I brushed the worst of the tangles out of my hair, and used a burst of power to clean my clothes and remove the worst of the grime from my skin. As accommodations went, even temporary accommodations, these earned zero stars; the bed was filthy, the floor was littered with toenail clippings, and the walls were pasted over with hard-core porn actresses in action shots.

David opened the cabin door and stepped in. He watched me in silence, not touching me.

We'd talked about all this, but convincing him was another matter altogether. And even when he bowed to necessity, he did it grudgingly.

I wished I could really tell what he was thinking, but then, he probably was wishing the same thing.

"One good thing about this," I said. "This time, we get to do it right." He shrugged. "As far as I'm concerned, the first time was good enough for eternity." That made me smile. "You must be a romantic. I mean, what with all the mayhem and the chaos and the not finishing the ceremony - "

"If I wasn't a romantic, I wouldn't be here."

He had an excellent point. I decided not to pursue it. Instead, I put down Josue's comb and did another critical review. I looked... surprisingly good, actually. The sun and sea had given me a blush of bronze, and my eyes seemed clear and cool as the Caribbean waters. My hair had, for a change, taken its glossy curls to a style, instead of to a mess.

David slid his hands over my shoulders, and I looked up at him. "It's time," he said.

"Wouldn't want to keep the guests waiting."

The guests were, of course, the assembled pirates of the ship I'd recently, and randomly, named the Sparrow. None of them had made any effort to change clothes, splash water on their faces, or brush