Cape Storm

“This is Lyle,” David said.

“Seriously?” I blurted. They both shot me an odd look. “I mean, come on. Lyle?”

Lyle smiled. He’d filed his teeth into sharp little points. “You got a problem with that?” He had a surprising Deep South accent, slow and warm. It didn’t sound artificial, as if he was mocking me, either.

Another oddity.

“Uh, no, no problem,” I said. “It’s just not exactly the kind of name I’m used to hearing from supernatural beings. A little too—”

“Human?”

“Country,” I said. “Not even a little bit rock and roll.”

David decided it was time to intervene before my conversational skills cost me a bruise or two. “Lyle became a Dji

“Which one?”

“They come so close together,” David said. “First?”

Lyle nodded. “I kept my human name. A lot of Dji

“No, you’re not,” I said, and he smiled again. This time, he’d put away the scary teeth, and his dentition was blindingly white and perfectly human-normal.

If anything, that was weirder.

“Lyle was checking for energy signatures,” David said. “Did you find anything?”

“Yes. Weaker than the one you two tripped across, though, and well hidden.” Lyle’s rust-colored eyes darkened just a shade. “They’re hiding as humans.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Two more?” My throat threatened to close up around the words, and Lyle sent me a sharp look. I needed to work on my poker face. “What do we know about them?”

“They’re wearing skins,” Lyle said. “The skins used to be people, so they have history and weight in the aetheric. They took care not to kill the skins. I think they knew it was a good disguise. Good enough to fool most Dji

He was trying to describe something that I was trying equally hard not to imagine. “These people—can we save them?”

“Not people,” Lyle said. “Like I said, they’re just skins now. Nothing inside.”

I wished he hadn’t said that. Or at least, hadn’t sounded so matter-of-fact about it.

“Why haven’t they attacked us already?” I asked. “They probably know their big brother’s gone, right? What are they waiting for, the all-you-can-eat-buffet light to go on?”

“They’re definitely waiting on some type of signal, if they haven’t struck at us yet,” David said. “They can afford to bide their time. We don’t even really know what they’re capable of doing, not yet.”

“No,” I said slowly. “They did strike already. They killed the Dji

It was the perfect dead end, and it was wasted on David and Lyle, who looked at each other as if silently thinking that I’d gone just slightly nuts. Humans,Lyle’s shrug said. Who knows what goes on in their tiny heads?

“We need to backtrack and figure out why they felt threatened by that Dji

“It was,” David said. I heaved a deep sigh of relief.

“We should kill them now,” Lyle said.

“How? Just one of them was capable of nearly killing me, fighting David to a standstill, and halfway destroying Ve

Lyle cocked one thin eyebrow. “Swim back to shore.”

“Just run away.”

“Unless you want to wait for them to strike first.”

“You weren’t serious about the ru

“Oh, he was,” David said.

Lyle nodded. Lyle was turning out to be the least confrontational supernatural being I’d ever met. Under normal circumstances, that would have been a refreshing change, but considering that I wanted a bunch of fire-eating, hard-charging badasses to back me up right now . . . not so much.

We both looked at David, who seemed to be half a world away. He dragged himself back with an effort. “We bide our time,” he said. “It’s too dangerous to go after them right now. Ve

“Yeah, got it. Find out the right frequencies to do damage, and get everybody up to speed on the info, quietly. Oh, you probably should tell me just who I’m avoiding, here. Not Wardens?” Because I’d hate to have missed that in my initial checks.

“No,” Lyle said, relieving me of screwups. “One is crew, an engineering mate below passenger decks. The other is hiding as a stowaway in the ship’s hold. He will be difficult to reach, and harder to trap.”

“Let them hide for now,” David said. “Watch them. Any change, any indication something’s happening, report it as soon as you can. If they try to sabotage the ship—” I hadn’t even thought of that, and the idea twisted me deep in the gut. “Could they?”

“Of course. But not easily, and probably not fatally. With the Wardens and Dji

Lyle gave a very human-sounding snort. “Why would I?”

“Because Joa

“Their names,” I said.

“What?” Both Dji

“The people. I’d like to know their names.”

“Why does it matter?” Lyle asked. “They’re skins. I told you, they’re empty.”

“You also told me the skins used to be real people. Real histories. Families. Friends.” I held his gaze. Good thing I’d had practice with that, because Lyle had the eerie Dji

He seemed to understand that. “The engineer’s mate is Jason Ng. He joined the crew twelve years ago. He had a wife and three children in New Orleans, and a mistress in Brazil. The other was once named Angelo Marconi, from Naples. His sister owns a restaurant there. His family thinks he’s still away at school.”

“School,” I murmured. “How old—”

“He is dead, Warden.”

“How old?”

“The skin is sixteen,” Lyle said. “I’m sorry. But you can’t let what they’re wearing fool you into hesitating. You know that, don’t you?”

I knew. I also knew that if push came to shove, if I had to stand there and sling fire at a sixteen-year-old boy, I wasn’t going to be very good at it.

But I knew someone who would be.

I found Kevin Prentiss on the ship’s main promenade deck, standing at the railing. He was watching the thick gray foaming clouds and the iron-colored water with its lacings of white, and he looked—as always—like a punk streetwise kid who needed to learn the concept of personal hygiene.

The difference these days was that Kevin had pulled himself together, to a greater extent than I’d ever thought possible. He’d earned himself some respect from his fellow Fire Wardens. He’d learned something from his apprenticeship to Lewis. He still looked greasy, but it was mostly hair product and deliberately baggy clothing. He had at least a handshake acquaintance with regular bathing.

However, Kevin stillhated me. The look he sent me as I approached was a shot across my own personal bow, warning me to steer clear. I ignored it and took up a post at the rail beside him, leaning on the wood and bracing myself against the rise and fall of the deck with my feet well spread.