on the bed, bringing her back to him. Her mind went to the journal in her pocket. Perhaps he was awake enough to see it.
He whispered, “There are things to say, Quin, now that I’m awake. You kissed me on the ship.”
“I thought you kissed me,” she responded, teasing him lightly.
“I did,” he whispered seriously.
That kiss…she’d replayed it in her mind hundreds of times. They’d kissed and held each other during the nightmare, whirling crash of Traveler, and it had been right. They had been so close as children. They’d remained close during all of their Seeker training, even when John came to the estate and altered the dynamics of their lives. But it was not until they’d met again in Hong Kong, changed and older, that she’d seen him for what he was—not just her oldest friend but the other half of her.
“Is it too strange, the two of us?” she asked before she could stop herself. She wasn’t sure of her footing in this new and unfamiliar territory of intimacy.
“It’s so strange,” he replied immediately. Quin didn’t like that answer at all, but Shinobu drew her hand up to his chest before she could respond, kissed the palm, and whispered, “I’ve wanted to be with you for so long, and now here you are.”
The words and the weight of his hand filled her with warmth. “But…all those girls from Corrickmore…” she said. There had always been lots of girls in Shinobu’s life. He’d never once given the impression he was waiting around for her.
“I expected those girls to make you jealous, but you never noticed,” he told her. He didn’t say it bitterly; he was simply opening his heart. “All you cared about was John.”
She responded softly, “You took care of me anyway. When John attacked the estate…and in Hong Kong…on Traveler…You’re always taking care of me.”
“Because you’re mine,” he whispered back.
She glanced at his face and saw a sleepy smile appearing. He moved her hand closer to his heart, held it there. She turned toward him on the bed, thinking it might be time to kiss him again—
“Ow!” he gasped.
“What happened? Did I—”
“It’s—at your hip.”
“Sorry! That’s the athame.”
Quin scooted away from him and drew the stone dagger from its concealed location at her waistband, where it had just been crushed into Shinobu’s hip bone.
“Oh, there it is,” he said, and he took the ancient implement from her hands. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot while I’ve been lying here half-asleep—or dreaming about it, maybe.”
The athame was about as long as her forearm and quite dull despite its dagger shape. Its handgrip was made up of many stacked circular dials, all of the same pale stone. This particular athame belonged to the Dreads. The Young Dread had handed it to Quin after the crash of Traveler, and it was somewhat different from the other athames she and Shinobu had seen during their Seeker training, more delicate and also more complicated.
Shinobu shifted the stone dagger’s dials with practiced ease, his IV tube bobbing as it trailed off his left hand. “It has more dials, so you can get to more specific locations than you can with other athames, don’t you think?”
Quin nodded. She’d spent hours in the quiet of the hospital room examining this athame. As on all athames, a series of symbols was carved on each dial. By rotating the dials, you could line up seemingly endless iterations of those symbols. Each combination was a set of coordinates, a place a Seeker could go using the ancient tool. The additional dials on this particular dagger meant one could choose locations with much greater precision. During their fight on Traveler, the Dreads had used it to enter the moving airship. It was a feat that would have been impossible with any other athame. None but the athame of the Dreads could access a moving location.
Watching Shinobu study the dagger so intently and rotate the dials so nimbly, Quin decided that there was no reason to wait; he was alert enough to hear more. She pulled the leather book from her jacket and held it out to him.
“Is that…?” he asked.
“It arrived this afternoon.”
It was a copy of the journal that had belonged to John’s mother, Catherine. Quin had had the real journal with her when she and Shinobu had parachuted onto Traveler during that crazy night two weeks ago, but she’d lost it—or rather, John had found it and taken it during the frenzied confrontation on the airship.