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 still hated 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.
“You look like shit,” Kevin said, and flipped half a lit cigarette into the air. Before it hit the water, it had burst into flame. Nothing but ash to litter the ocean. “Congratulations on the improvement.”
“Well, you know me, I’m all about the cutting-edge fashion trends.”
“What, beat to shit is the new black?” Kevin abandoned the ocean to turn and face me. He still needed a haircut, but his pimples were mostly gone now, and he’d filled out while I wasn’t looking, turning from a skinny beanpole to something closer to lean and hungry. I supposed some girls went for that.
Like Cherise, now that I thought about it. The kid was legal age. I knew she’d originally been attracted to him because he was needy, broken, and bad; I also knew that she’d been the perfect foil for him, to remind him that he had better things inside.
Kevin liked to put on the badass hat, though. And always would.
He studied me out of the corner of his eye. “You want something,” he said.
“Why would you say that?”
“Because you never talk to me unless you want something.”
“So not true,” I said. I held my breath for a second, then let it out. “Okay, I want something.”
He didn’t even have to waste his breath on an I told you so. “Big or small?”
“Pretty big.”
“And I’d do it for you because . . . ?”
“Because you’re a good man, somewhere deep underneath all that greasy stupid kid disguise,” I said. “Because you want to be, or you wouldn’t be out here on this insanely stupid trip. And because you don’t want anything to happen to Cherise.”
He straightened up. He was getting taller all the time, and now his body language reminded me less of skate parks and more of Lewis in a really foul mood. “You should never have dragged her off with us.”
“I didn’t. Cher goes everywhere with her eyes wide open, you know that. I’m just saying that of all of us, she’s the least able to defend herself if something bad happens, so she’s a good reminder note, because we both care about her.”
Kevin muttered something impolite under his breath that I pretended not to hear, and turned back to glare at the ocean. Steam rose from a couple of waves before he got himself back under control. I was impressed. A few months ago, he’d have vaporized a few metric tons of ocean in a fit of pique.
Of course, not having a fit of pique would be better still, but baby steps.
“What do you want?” he asked, in a different kind of tone than before. Actually asking for information instead of confronting. Good for him. And good for me, of course.
“I want you to make friends with a Djinn named Lyle,” I said. “Pick a team and stay alert. You may have to react quickly.”
“Lyle?” Kevin let out a braying laugh that got whipped away by the fiercely driven wind. I licked my lips, and tasted salt and metal. “You’re shitting me. Okay, never mind, I won’t even ask. React quickly to what?”
“He’s going to be keeping watch on a couple of people who aren’t supposed to be here.” I reached out and grabbed Kevin’s shoulder, turning him toward me. “Kevin. Pay attention. This isn’t a joke. These two are very, very dangerous, even to the Djinn. Even to you. So don’t get cocky.”
“Me?” He gave me a look so ironic it was practically tipped over into sincerity. “You’re not telling me something. Or, like, anything.”
“I told you they’re dangerous.”
“How, toxic body odor? Really sour attitudes? Can they kill me with their brains?”
I gave up, and held on to the rail as the ship took a particularly hard dip into the water, almost a bounce. The waves were getting thicker and deeper, and the storm behind us was finding gangs of friends to our port and up ahead. It was going to hit us sooner rather than later.
“They’re not human,” I said. “They’re fast, they’re deadly. Think Alien, made out of indestructible crystal, only with human skin.”
“Wouldn’t that be Terminator or something?”
“Enough of the movies. This isn’t funny, Kevin, it’s serious. The one in the ship’s hold is wearing the body of a sixteen-year-old boy.” There, I’d said it.
And he understood it. “And that’s easier for me, right? Because I won’t see him as just a kid. I see him as more of an equal.”
I nodded unwillingly. “I’m not putting you out there alone,” I said. “But I know you. I know you won’t hesitate if—”
“If I have to kill somebody who looks like he just got passed up for his junior prom? Yeah, I’m definitely that guy.”
I didn’t answer that, because there was a new note in his voice: self-loathing. Kevin hadn’t lived an easy life. He was more pragmatic than most kids I’d ever met, and tougher, too. But that didn’t mean he wanted to be, even though he wore his damage like a badge of honor.
“I’m sorry,” I said, finally. “I wish I didn’t have to ask you.”
“I wish I wasn’t the go-to guy to kill monsters dressed as teens, but there you go.” He shrugged. “At least I’ve got experience.”
And that was the heart of it, at last. I’d come to Kevin because I’d seen him kill without hesitation, and without remorse. Granted, he’d had plenty of personal hatred built up, but it took a special kind of detachment to do what he’d done and never suffer much guilt about it. He mostly resented the fact that we all knew about it—not that he’d been forced to do it.
“I’m not your pet psycho.” I flinched, because Kevin could have been reading my mind. “But yeah, I’ll find Lyle and do this. Just don’t put me on speed dial the next time you have to push a school bus off a cliff or something. So. What’s our approved monster-killing technique?”
I pulled the tissue-wrapped crystal tooth out of my pocket. “Let’s find out.” The thing glittered like a diamond in the dull light.
We took the fragment with us, found a crew member to open up the gym for us, and moved equipment to get clear floor space for our experiments. Kevin took to the scientific method with enthusiasm, because there’s nothing a teenage kid likes better than trying to destroy something that’s indestructible. Kevin tried so many kinds of fire that even I was impressed with the variety and breadth of control he had over it, especially since he didn’t kill us in the process.