A Dawn Most Wicked

CHAPTER ONE NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI, 1873

This was not how best friends hugged.

Maybe best friends of the same gender could get away with this, but Cassidy and I were definitely not the same gender.

In fact, should anyone walk into the Sadie Queen’s engine room right now and see us, they would not notice how brightly I’d gotten the brass machinery to gleam. Nor would they notice how doggone tired I was after four hours of engine scrubbing. They also wouldn’t notice that my greasy shirt was halfway unbuttoned.

No. They’d only see the captain’s daughter bouncing excitedly on her toes with her arms flung around my neck. And trust me when I say that my body was noticing it too—and it was letting me know exactly how different our genders were.

Best friends, I told myself as I gazed into her smiling face. Her freckles blended into her rosy flush and her dark eyes shone. You’re the striker, the apprentice engineer, and she’s the apprentice pilot. Best friends—nothin’ more. But no matter how many times I shouted at myself, it was damned near impossible not to pull her just a little closer. Not to dig my fingers ever so slightly into the supple shape of her waist.

But then movement flashed at the corner of my vision—at the entrance to the engine room. I lurched back, panic flashing over me . . . but when my eyes latched on the door, I found it empty.

You’re being paranoid, I chided. Ain’t no one there. Fortunately Cass didn’t seem to notice the speed with which I’d detached myself from her. So I tried to salvage the moment as best I could with a rakish grin.

“Why, Miss Cassidy,” I said, “we’ve only been docked a few hours, but you look like you ran clear across Natchez and back.”

“Because I did run.” She spoke in a breathless way that made my blood stir. “I was at the Natchez telegraph office waiting for the news, and it came, Danny!” She dug around in her gray uniform’s pocket—a match for mine but with skirts instead of trousers and looking fresh instead of grimy. Then she whipped out a newspaper and shoved it at me. “It’s today’s Picayune.”

I took the New Orleans newspaper warily from Cass’s hand. Sure enough, a glance at the top showed, “June 16, 1873.” I scanned the headlining article as fast as my meager reading skills could get me.

Haunted Steamer to Race

New Orleans is alight with news that Eric Dunlap, captain of the luxury steamer Abby Adams out of New Orleans, has accepted a race challenge from his longtime rival, Captain Robert Cochran of the Sadie Queen. Once the most popular steamboat for Mississippi cruises, the famous Sadie Queen recently lost all business due to a series of hauntings that began in April of this year.

“Apparitions or no, we are the fastest ship on the Mississippi,” claimed Captain Cochran to this Picayune reporter three weeks ago. “We will prove it once and for all, if Dunlap is man enough to accept my challenge: A race from New Orleans to Natchez.”

Racing steamboats, a long tradition on the Mississippi, can bring captains and their ships great fame or great failure. Early yesterday, Captain Dunlap accepted Cochran’s challenge, declaring that “the Sadie Queen is about to taste the bitter tang of loss.” Such a highly publicized rivalry and race have not been seen since the Great Steamboat Race of 1870, in which the Robert E. Lee raced the Natchez from New Orleans to St. Louis. Already bets are being placed on who will win this latest competition.

According to Kent Lang, heir to the Lang Company, which operates out of New Orleans and owns the Sadie Queen, “We hope that winning this race will prove to potential passengers that the integrity of the Lang Company’s fleet has not been affected by the hauntings.”

Yet even with a win for the Queen, this Picayune reporter speculates nothing can bring back the steamer’s glory days.

I reached the final line—a line I was inclined to agree with—and noticed that a familiar clack-clack-clack, thwump!, clack-clack-clack had filled the room. I lifted my eyes to Cassidy. She held her tarnished old spyglass and was extending it. Clack-clack-clack. Then snapping it shut. Thwump! Open, shut, open, shut—she always did that when she was nervous.

The electric lamplight flickered on her hair, making the mahogany color shine red. Her eyes met mine, and a grin spread over her lips. Clack-clack-clack, thwump! “Well?” She dropped the spyglass in her pocket.

“It wasn’t an optimistic article,” I said cautiously. “The reporter said we’re doomed no matter—”

“I don’t care what the reporter said.” She grabbed my wrists, rocking back and forth on her heels. “Dunlap accepted Father’s challenge. That means we’ll go back to New Orleans tonight to get as prepped as we can before the race next week. If we win—and by God, we have to, Danny—then the Langs won’t shut us down.”

Won’t shut us down yet, I thought. But I kept the sentiment to myself. What the Sadie Queen needed was passengers, and if she didn’t get some soon, the Lang Company was going to take her—and all her crew—off the river. I didn’t think a race would change that.

Cass must’ve realized the direction of my thoughts because her smile faltered . . . and then fell. She released my wrists. “You don’t think we can win?”

“Of course I do.” I slung off my flat cap and scrubbed at my scalp. “You’re the best apprentice pilot on the Mississippi.”

“Damn straight.” She stomped one heel and set the command bells—an array of all sizes that hung on a column between the engines—to ringing. “And you’re the best striker on the Mississippi. No engineer is as fast as you.”

“So there you have it.” I spread my hands. “We’ll whip Captain Dunlap and the Abby Adams. Me and you. A team.”

“A team,” she repeated. Then she punched the air and gave a loud whoop. “We’ll whip ’em, all right.” But almost instantly her arm dropped . . . and her smile crumbled. “I wish Ellis could see it.”

Ellis. Cassidy’s little sister. I’d only met the girl once, but it had burned her image in my brain—a neck swollen wider than her head and a life confined to a hospital bed.

“Hey now.” I tugged my cap back on. Winning a race wasn’t going to change Ellis’s fate, and I wasn’t about to let Cassidy lose hope already. “What was the very first thing I told you when we met?”

Her forehead bunched up, replacing her frown. “I don’t know. That was a year ago, Danny.”

I took a step toward her. “I said that if anyone could tame the Mississippi, it would be you.”

She gave a sly, satisfied smile—my favorite kind. “How could I forget that? I usually catalog all your compliments up here.” She tapped her temple. “I’ll just file that one under M for ‘Mississippi.’ Or should I make it T for ‘taming’?”

I laughed, but before I could summon a worthy response, her eyes widened. “Why are you half dressed?”

“Are you just now noticin’?” A blush warmed my face, and I tugged my shirt collar closed. “I’ve got to put on my coveralls and clean the boilers.”

“But didn’t you just clean the entire engine room? Where’s Murry? Or Schultz?”

“Schultz is seein’ his family today, and Murry’s old and half blind.”

She frowned. “That doesn’t make it all right to shirk.”

“It ain’t shirkin’, Cass.” I swatted the air. “I’m the striker. It’s my job to keep everything clean and running smooth.”

“You may be the apprentice, but you do the same work as the full engineers.” She pushed out her chin. “In my book that means the full engineers should help you from time to time too. I’m only the cub pilot, but Father still shares the work with me fifty-fifty. We have to since we’re only a skeleton crew these days.” She planted her hand on her hip. “Should I say something to Father?”

“No.” I shook my head quickly. The last thing I wanted was for Captain Cochran to lose his temper. Especially at Murry. The rumor was that all the burn scars around Murry’s eyes—and the reason the Chief Engineer could barely see anymore—was because Cochran had shoved the man’s face in a boiler furnace.

I didn’t know if that was true, but it wouldn’t have surprised me. The captain had a temper, and as a rule, I avoided that temper at all costs.

“All right,” Cass said slowly. “I won’t say anything. . . . But don’t let Murry overwork you. This team”—she motioned between us—“won’t work if one half is broken.” She twirled around to leave, a whoop already bursting from her lips. “We’re going to race, Danny Sheridan, and we’re going to win!”

I watched her go, hair falling from her bun, and prayed she was right. Because if we didn’t, then the Sadie Queen and all her crew really were doomed.

Once I’d donned my coveralls and snagged a chain from the blacksmith’s office beside the engine room, I stalked out to the Sadie Queen’s Main Deck. My mind was still on Cass. On the hug. On the way her hips had felt beneath my fingers . . .

I swallowed and cleared my throat. Cassidy Cochran was my best friend—no matter how much I might’ve wished otherwise. She was the captain’s daughter; I was a lowly engineer’s striker. Trying to make more of that would only ruin the friendship we had. One day I might be a full engineer—no more scrubbing boilers or following Murry’s orders—but that day was a long ways off.

I stepped into the midmorning sun and took in the Sadie Queen. Everything about her catered to the lap of luxury—from the filigreed, whitewashed balustrades and elegant windows to the lush, costly interiors. Four floors of opulence: the Main Deck, with the engine room and space for cargo; the Passenger Deck above it, with the enormous saloon and sixty-one (now empty) passenger cabins; the Hurricane Deck, with a nice area for viewing the river and fifty more, empty cabins; and finally the Texas Deck, with the crew’s staterooms. It was no wonder we normally needed hundreds of crew—from waiters to footmen to cooks—to serve all those hundreds of passengers.

Of course, that was normally, and we hadn’t been “normally” since the ghosts had arrived back in April.

Towering over it all were two cherry-red smokestacks and the jack staff—a pole at the ship’s front with a navy flag and the words “Lang Company” in curly red script. Below the flag were the two pairs of golden racing horns we’d won . . . back before the ghosts had taken over. Back when we’d still had passengers.

I sighed and swung my gaze toward Natchez. The city stared down at me from atop a green hill. The muddy wharf at the foot of the hill crawled with burly roustabouts, their job to unload cargo from the few steamers that had already arrived. They were also bringing new cargo down to the Sadie Queen. Tobacco and cotton weren’t nearly as lucrative as luxury passengers, but they kept the steamer afloat.

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.

I peeled my eyelids back. “You’ll . . . lose,” I rasped.

For a moment he stood frozen before the door. Then it clicked softly shut, and his boots stomped back to me. Next thing I knew, Cochran was crouched beside me, his face in mine. “What did you say?”

“You’ll lose . . . the race.” I sputtered a cough and gulped in fresh air. “Murry and Schultz . . . can’t work as fast as me. . . . You need me . . . sir.”

His lips curled back, but I could see in the way his eyes darted that he was considering my words. “Fine,” he hissed at last. “You can stay until after the race and then you’re off.”

“But there’s no reason for me to win now—”

Hands grabbed my shirt and yanked. The world spun in spurts, moving in time to my pulse . . . until suddenly I was back on my feet, Cochran’s breath rolling over my face and his grip tight.

“Do not play games with me, Striker. The bounty on your head says nothing about you being alive.” He pulled me even closer, his eyes boring into mine. “But if you want incentive, then I’ll give it to you.” Gripping my head, he twisted it to one side and whispered directly into my ear. “If you stay until the race and if you win, I won’t turn you over to Clay Wilcox.”

“Or I could just run,” I croaked out. “Hop off the ship right now—” My words broke off as fingers laced around my neck. Pushed into my windpipe.

“You try running, Striker.” He squeezed. Stars speckled across my vision. “See how long it takes me to find you. I may have lost my fortune, thanks to these goddamned ghosts, but I still have more money and more connections than you. I will hunt you down and destroy you. But if you stay . . .”

He released me. I doubled over, gagging, and grabbed at the anvil to stay upright.

You should’ve stayed quiet, I thought. And then a deeper, sadder part of me said, And this is why you’ll never be good enough for Cass. No matter how much I wished for a different past, there was no changing what I was.

I was a fugitive.

And I was a murderer.

“I’ll . . . stay,” I said, forcing my head to tip up. Forcing my eyes to stay open and meet his. “I’ll stay until the race, and then I’m gone.”

“Good.” A slow, easy smile spread over his lips. “And in the meantime you keep away from my daughter. If I see you anywhere near her, then—race or not—you will die, and I will collect that bounty. I have plans for Cassidy, and they sure as hell don’t include a piece of crap like you.”