Deadshifted (12 page)

It was melodramatic, the stuff of old fairy tales or tragic myth. But I found solace in it nonetheless, because it was a story. And stories had to make sense in a way that it increasingly looked like my life did not.

*   *   *

I didn’t remember falling asleep, or even being tired. But sometimes my body shut down under stress, and maybe the pregnancy, or me not eating much but puking a ton, had taken a toll. I woke to a commotion out in the hall as the sun began to set, and looked at the alarm clock on Asher’s empty side of the bed: 8
P.M.
, local time. Not even twelve hours since he’d left.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I thought about taking the mask out with me. But if I brought it, there was the chance that people would want to know how I’d gotten it—what was so special about me? I doubted they were like life jackets, one for everyone on board. I’d seen enough mob mentality in the hospital; I didn’t want to invite it. Besides, if whatever Nathaniel had set on us was that contagious, I’d probably already been exposed to it. I just wouldn’t touch anything or come within droplet range of anyone and trust my nursing immune system to do the rest. I opened up my door and listened—and all the voices I heard were angry. I carefully snuck out and walked down the hall.

“You’re kidding me—I’ve got a dinner reservation at Le Poisson Affamé tonight,” someone in a suit was saying ahead, butchering the pronunciation. “I booked it before I even got on board!”

I reached the back of a small group of people who were complaining to two cruise employees stationed at the stairs and noticed that the floor indicator lights above the elevators were off.

“What’s going on?” I asked a woman standing near the back.

“They’ve just shut down all travel between floors,” she said, crossing her arms, face sour. “And I’ve got late-night bingo plans.”

“You will be refunded,” one of the employees was explaining to the angry man. “But we need you all to go back to your rooms.”

“This is unacceptable,” the bingo woman muttered.

“The captain will be explaining things shortly.” The cruise employees were burly, but they didn’t look pleased to be playing the heavy in the face of so many angry vacationers. “Please go back to your rooms, and stay indoors.”

“How long?” I asked, over the crowd.

“The captain will be explaining shortly—” the man repeated, patting the air in front of him to get us to settle down.

Just in time, chimes sounded overhead, and people quieted to hear what the captain would say.

“This is Captain Ames speaking. I’m sure you all have noticed that we are no longer allowing travel between floors. While there is no reason to panic, we need you all to stay in your rooms for a short portion of our voyage.”

“How long is that?” one of the angry people asked aloud, as if the captain could hear him and answer back.

“Our legendary room service will continue to be available upon request. If you need anything, or begin to feel ill, please contact guest services immediately. Please be patient, and we’ll continue to keep you informed.”

The chimes descended in tone, letting us know the captain was tuning out.

“What’s that even mean?” complained the man missing his reservation.

“It means you will be refunded for the special dinner you are missing tonight,” one of the employees repeated.

“My travel agent’s going to hear about this. And the entire Internet. And my bingo club!” the woman complained.

One of the guards tried hard not to crack a smile at that. If guest services hadn’t been overwhelmed earlier, they would be now. Maybe that’s why people were jumping—they couldn’t handle the horror of the bingo club cancellation.

I snorted, and then I realized the captain had stopped just short of calling this what it was—a quarantine. I stepped back, keeping even more space between me and the other complaining passengers.

“You heard the captain. Please go back to your rooms, and this will all be over by morning,” the cruise employee repeated.

Which wasn’t precisely what the man had said, but I suspected the “guards” here would have changed shifts by then, and his lie would be someone else’s problem at dawn.

I hung back in the hallway, not touching the wall nor anyone else around me as the crowd dispersed, and then I approached the two cruise employees, trying to seem pleasant and meek.

“Hi there—my husband was out earlier on, and I’m not sure where he is now.” Might as well lie all the way.
Husband
had a weight that
fiancé
did not. “I think he might be trapped on another floor.”

“The phone systems on board are fine. I’m sure he’ll call your room soon,” he said, with an emphasis on the word
room,
with the implication that I wouldn’t know if he’d called unless I was back there. “Please don’t worry, this is just temporary.”

I inhaled to fight him, but I didn’t know with what. I could hardly tell him that there was a mad scientist on board. I didn’t like being turned away, but I wasn’t sure what else to say. “Sure, okay.”

*   *   *

I walked back to my room, as pissed off as the bingo-lady and a hundred times more frightened. I heard someone sneezing in their room as I passed by and thought darkly about calling guest services to make a report. I shook my head and opened my room door with more questions than answers, again.

I washed my hands, and then paced. There were no messages waiting for me on the room phone. I pulled out Asher’s cell phone and tried to call out, but I didn’t get a signal. I hadn’t brought a laptop, since we were supposed to be vacationing. And I tried to make an outside call from the in-room phone, only to find that that system had been disconnected as well. Probably so people like my neighbor couldn’t already be complaining to their bingo buddies. Guest services got through, but only to hold music, and then a “your call will be answered in thirty-seven minutes” automated system.

The most sensible thing to do would be to wait here for the full twenty-four hours. Asher would come back, or if he couldn’t, he’d figure out some way to contact me.

But the small dark voice of my mind whispered,
If he doesn’t, what then?

I didn’t really know.

I stared at the N95.

If I had a temperature of 106 for very long it would boil my baby alive.

But if Asher didn’t come back, then that would mean something bad had happened to him. Asher didn’t say things he didn’t mean—and he didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. If twenty-four hours passed without him—thinking about it made me feel nauseous all over again. I dry-swallowed and tried to calm down.

There was no point in making any hard choices—yet.

I sat on the bed, pulled my knees up to my chin, and turned on the TV.

*   *   *

An hour of television I couldn’t remember later, there was a knock at the door.

“Asher?” I stood, brimming with hope. And then I remembered that he would have a room key. I walked over to the door and peeked through the peephole. “Who’s there?”

“I need a favor,” a man’s voice with a light Indian accent said through the door. It was the father of the family next door. I locked up the chain and opened up the door the six inches it allowed—revealing him standing there, with his daughter at his side, her Coke-bottle glasses peering out fearfully. “My wife’s still down there with our boy. I need to check in on them. Can you watch her?”

“Um. Hang on.” I closed the door again and undid the latch so we could have a normal conversation. “How are you getting down there? We’re all supposed to be in our rooms.”

“With these.” He held out his hand. His wife’s diamond earrings sat in his palm.

“Those are expensive—”

“Precisely.” He closed his fingers around the stones. “And I’m not an idiot—there’s more than one set of stairs on this floor.”

I looked from him to his daughter—I wasn’t in the mood to babysit. “I’m sorry, but no—”

“I’ll be right back. I just have to check up on them. And I can’t take Emily with me.” His daughter was clinging to his leg like a barnacle. Ignoring me, he started to pry her loose.

“Look, you really should wait. I’m sure it won’t be long,” I lied, trying to shut the door, wishing I’d never undone the chain lock.

He craned forward to look quickly around my room, and then nodded, as if making up his own mind. “You’re not a parent, you wouldn’t understand.”

At that, my jaw snapped shut. He grabbed Emily bodily and pulled her off him. “Emily, I need you to stay here with this nice woman, sweetie. I’ll be right back, with Zach and Mommy, okay?”

Emily didn’t say anything, but she did nod, once. With him so bound and determined, what else could she do? He shoved her at me and handed me a room card. When I didn’t take it, he let it drop on the floor.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said and rushed out of the room, slamming my door. I opened it, with a
Hey!
on the tip of my tongue, but he was running the other direction from the elevator and stairwell down the hall—and I found I didn’t want to get him busted. I swallowed my shout. Maybe his crazy plan would work. It didn’t occur to me until then that I should have asked him to check in on Asher, too.

I looked down at Emily and she started to cry.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Usually when I had to deal with crying children, I was getting paid to do it, which made it easier. Not only was Emily crying, but she’d face-planted on my bed, with her likely contaminated clothing. Her long thick braid spooled beside her tearful face like rope. I picked up the key to her room and wiped it on my jeans.

“Hey, Emily. My name’s Edie.”
And I am so not in the mood.
I patted her back awkwardly, fighting down the urge to spray her with housekeeping cleaner fluid like a bad house cat. “I’m sorry, just, stop that. Don’t.” I pulled the comforter out of her hands and sat beside her. “Emily, is it?”

“I’m Whisper,” she corrected me, after heaving a particularly pathetic sob. “Whisper the pony.”

“Well, okay then. I’m Edie, the nurse. Nice to meet you.” I offered her the remote control in lieu of a hand shake. She took it.

“I want my daddy.” Her glasses made her eyes larger than they really were, magnifying long eyelashes sprinkled with tears. Her lower lip quivered as she asked, “Can you make my daddy come back?”

“Oh, honey.” What kind of person would ditch their kid with a stranger? “Not yet. Soon though.”

“Where is he?” she asked, sitting up to look around the room like he might be hiding somewhere.

“He’s very worried about your brother.”

She finished her circuit of the room, found me again, and sighed. “They’re always worried about him.”

“Well, yeah. Some brothers are like that. Believe me, I know.” I latched on to an idea. “Hey, so, Whisper—I have a confession to make.”

Her teary eyes narrowed. “What?”

“I am terribly allergic to ponies. Can you go wash your hands real good, with soap?”

She made a face that said she knew I was lying to her. “Fine.” She hopped off the bed and went into the bathroom.

We were going to be breathing the same air in here. Although chances were, if she’d been hanging around her brother during his contagious phase, she’d have it already, whatever
it
was.

“I’m hungry,” she complained when she emerged from the bathroom. From the looks of it, she’d dried her hands on the front of her shirt.

I reached over to one of the room service trays on the couch and opened it to reveal a grilled cheese sandwich. “Bon appétit.”

*   *   *

Having a physical child present in the room anchored me. I let her control the remote. She watched children’s programming while I watched the clock as it neared midnight.

I found it hard to believe that everyone else was just calmly waiting in their rooms. I peeked outside now and then, and once I saw a room service waiter furtively carrying an overloaded tray into someone else’s room. He then emerged empty-handed and walked down the hall the opposite way from the guarded stairwells and turned-off elevators. Emily’s dad was right: There must be a service elevator or stairs hidden elsewhere on each floor.

I let the door fall closed. Emily was watching the TV in that fixated way that kids did, as if the programming were an alien transmission meant especially for her, another sandwich half eaten in her hand. That was good at least. I had no idea how I’d manage to listen to the inane chatter in the background all night, but it was better than making conversation with a strange child.

I licked some salt off a fry and drank some water. And then I tried to actually eat a bite. The second it hit my stomach, I could feel the churning begin. Hurlsville.

“I’ll be right back,” I warned Emily and dashed into the bathroom, barely managing to close the door behind me before I threw up. Was it going to be like this the whole time I was pregnant? Nine months of this was going to be a very, very long time.

I heard the children’s programming stop, and there was a tentative tap at the door. “Are you okay?” Emily asked me.

“Yeah. Just hang on.” I clung to the sides of the toilet. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wished I had the Internet, and then I remembered that there probably wasn’t a
What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Half-Shapeshifter Baby
book out there. After this I could write one, though. Chapter One: Prepare to Stay in the Bathroom at All Times.

There was another knocking—only not at the bathroom door. “Emily—don’t get that—” I stood and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth.

But it was too late. “Daddy?” Emily guessed with hope, and I heard the cabin door click.

“Oh, look at all this food!” said an unfamiliar voice. I opened the bathroom door just as a stranger walked by.

From the back she looked normal, but when she turned I could see her stomach was distended abnormally. Like pictures of starving children from Africa, or people with end-stage liver failure, only she wasn’t orange. Emily got out of her way, and she snatched up the sandwich Emily had left behind on the bed to take a bite of it as if it were her own.