10.

THE GIRL IN THE YELLOW DRESS

IMOGEN WAS ALREADY DRAFTING HER NEXT ship’s log when the Invictus’s rear hatch opened, spitting in a wind-licked, royally peeved version of her cousin. His curls were everywhere, hands clenched into fists.

RMS FARWAY HAS TAKEN AN ICEBERG BLOW. ABANDON SHIP! WOMEN AND RED PANDAS FIRST!

No…delete that. It was too lighthearted.

None of this was funny: The look in Farway’s eyes as he stomped into the console room sans the Rubaiyat. All of those faces of all of those passengers Imogen saw through the datastream. The tooth-raking sound of ice on steel as the collision took place just meters below. It was an awful noise. Imogen covered her ears, and she wasn’t the only one. Both Gram and Priya paused from their tasks—booting up the nav systems, latching the Invictus’s door shut—to block it out.

Farway alone listened. He stood in the console room—eyes scalped, hands bare. She’d seen this look on her cousin only once before: the evening she force-fed him honeycomb gelato and found that exquisite real-paper message.

It meant the loss of everything.

When the iceberg and the Titanic parted, all was quiet. None of the Invictus’s crew wanted to be the first to test the wounded-animal look on their captain’s face. Even Priya, who always gave Farway a once-over for injuries, hovered to the side, scanning him with eyes alone.

This was uncharted territory. They’d never not pulled off a heist.

They’d never returned to Lux empty-handed.

The thought turned Imogen’s stomach. She’d only met Lux once, but that one time was more than enough. There was something off about the man they called boss. She got the distinct impression that he was a devil without the d. Not the sort of person who’d forgive the loss of eighty-five mil. Imogen wasn’t sure what the black market mogul would do in mercy’s stead, and she really, really didn’t want to find out.

Similar thoughts layered Farway’s face—denial, anger, desperation—sketching his emotions into new dimensions as he strode to Gram’s station. “We have to go back. I have to try again.”

The Engineer was staring at the numbers in front of him and whispering to himself, traces of gibberish syllables. He held one of his prized Rubik’s Cubes in his hands, twisting without thought. Imogen had never seen Gram so imprecise, in word or motion. Muttering into unhearing screens was usually her forte….

“Gram! I need you to focus! I need you to skip us to earlier in the timeline, so I can get that hashing book before the girl does! Go back to the time we were supposed to land in before this whole mission went to shazm!” Farway’s voice was sharp enough to make Imogen look at his eyebrows.

No trembling. This time he was truly pissed.

Gram looked up. There was sweat on his face; it caught the display’s glow, shimmering from his cheekbones and brow. “Can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I don’t know why or how, but we can’t jump to that time. I tried plugging the numbers in—”

“So fix it!” Smack. Farway hit the frozen Tetris screen. Its glass held, but the rest of the Invictus flinched. “Isn’t that what I pay you to do?”

“I tried,” Gram said again. “I tried, and I’m telling you, I can’t. It’s impossible.”

His sweat had collected into beads, rolling down his face so profusely that Imogen knew the Engineer—though he made no sense—was telling the truth. Farway must have come to the same conclusion, because he started back for the hatch.

“Imogen, get the feed back online!” he barked.

“No!” Imogen swiveled her chair too hard in her franticness. “You can’t go back down there! The ship is sinking. There are too many variables now—”

“Do I look like I give a hashing bluebox about variables?” Her cousin halted. “That’s two hundred mil I just lost down there! Lux isn’t going to let that go easy, and I sure as Hades won’t, either! Bring back the feed!”

Lux’s wrath loomed, true, but Farway’s descent into the gathering deep wouldn’t change that. “The girl’s gone,” Imogen reasoned. “She’s not gonna stick around with loot like that when the ocean’s knocking!”

Yet stubborn is as stubborn does, especially where McCarthys were concerned. Farway made for the console room door, only to find Priya blocking its threshold. She stood there with her arms crossed, eyes relentless. “Imogen’s right. You can’t go.”

“Move,” Farway said. “Please.”

“Sometimes,” Priya spoke in a whisper, “it’s okay to fail.”

Imogen watched her cousin’s face turn a shade darker and found herself wondering if there was any gelato left in her freezer stash. She could use some right about now, but she had a feeling the last carton of raspberry had fallen victim to nighttime cravings over a week ago.

NOTE TO SELF: SAVE AT LEAST ONE PINT OF GELATO FOR EMERGENCIES.

“I didn’t fail.” Farway’s words seared. “I never fail. I was robbed.”

“Can you really be robbed of something you never had in the first place?”

The whisper had come from Imogen’s corner, just over her shoulder. Gram, Priya, and Farway all turned to look. When Imogen followed suit, all she saw was Bartleby, but once her sight started to adjust, she realized there was another human shape cookie-cuttered into the darkness behind the mannequin.

The shadow stepped forward.

It was the girl in the yellow dress.