Published at 8th of March 2024 7:43 am

Chapter Three

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I did not go to the briefing. I didn't pass out either. What I did was lay down a bunch of wards with my grease pen to make sure no one but people I wanted (mostly room service) would ever think to go near my cabin.

The trip was three weeks long, and I intended to spend most of it in this room, watching TV and being drunk. On the occasions when I felt sociable and/or adventurous and left the room to scratch that itch, I didn't want anyone to wander over and see what the weird pale mans room looked like, or if I had anything worth stealing.

It was perhaps a bit much, as the only valuables I had brought was the $200 I had in my wallet, the cards in the wallet and my phone, all of which I had warded so that anyone but me who grabbed them would writhe in sudden agony and drop them. It'd be like trying to steal a very, very bity cobra with your bare hands... if the cobra was made entirely of fangs. Okay so maybe the simile falls apart upon any kind of examination, but you get it.

Now that I was done I was faced with the oddly horrific decision of what to do with my free time. I laughed out loud, aghast at myself, and scratched my head.

“Free time,” I said to no one.

I glanced at the clock. A little after four. I wasn't exactly hungry, but I could eat. Let's go find the... cafeteria? The Galley? Dining Area?

I dropped my phone in my pocket, stuck a grease pencil in my breast pocket, stuck my hands in my pockets and went to see what I could find.

***

I was surprised to find we were moving. I stood on a balcony walkway that surround deck 2, feeling the ocean breeze on my face and finding it, if you'll forgive me, a little adventurous—if only for the fact that I was simply doing nothing. Which was a fascinating revelation, the fact that I found doing nothing exciting.

We weren't out of the bay yet, and southern California was in evidence all around us. I overheard one of the couples ask a crewman what was happening and apparently we were being tugged out of the immediate area of the dock and would soon be moving under our own power. I smiled. We were moving, and it was exciting, despite my jaded thoughts from earlier.

The walkway was populated, many of the passengers had come to see the... disembarkation? Jettison? Whatever the appropriately confusing nautical term was for leaving the dock in a boat. Most of the passengers were middle aged couples, but I could see a couple families and a few people my apparent age and younger.

I heard the click of an old fashioned film camera and turned to find one pointed at me. The camera was lowered to reveal the face of a very lovely woman who had the expression that communicated “oooo I probably should have asked before I did that.”

“Sorry!” She said, with a surprisingly full, not-quite deep voice. She was wearing a loose blouse that left her shoulders bare and billowed about her waist and a pair of jeans with so many holes I wondered why she bothered to wear them. She was very tall for a woman, which meant she was only a head shorter than me instead of competing with my sternum to see who was higher. Her skin was brown from either a strict tanning regimen or Latin descent, it was hard to tell, and her hair was brown with blonde accents. She had a wide, expressive mouth that was currently set in a slight wince and her large, equally expressive green eyes were searching my face for signs of displeasure. The only flaw I could find in her appearance, if you could even call it a flaw, was her nose was not quite straight from what I guessed had to come from having it broken early in life.

She continued talking in a rush. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I knew I should have asked but you just had such a—a profound expression I had to get it before it disappeared.”

Being in my profession—a warlock who regularly kidnaps people and barters their souls with a demon—makes me pretty loath to get photographed. It was another point of weakness in security, another point of contact that the police could use to narrow their search to find you. Again, I probably shouldn't have cared, as the police didn't have the capacity to pass any basic attention ward I could produce unless I did something stupid like kill someone right in the middle of the House of Representatives during the State of the Union address.

But she was pretty and looked genuinely worried, and I didn't want to sully the first day of my vacation with making someone feel bad. (Aside from that teenager, of course.)

“It's fine,” I said, in a tone that said it wasn't. I shook my head, feeling my shaggy hair floof out a bit as I shrugged my shoulders and ducked my head, trying to convey... something. “Okay, I was a bit irritated, but it really is fine. I'm just not used to being... out.”

She frowned thoughtfully and joined me at the handrail. “Out? Like prison?”

I barked a surprised laugh. “No,” I said, my irritation melting. “Outside my house. Around people.”

She mouthed “Aaahh” and leaned back against the railing, here eyes never leaving me face. “First vacation in a while?” She asked.

I nodded. “First one since... hell, this is the first vacation alone, without my parents. Well, second, if you count that time I was delayed in Reno for two days while I hunted for a transmission in the local junkyard.”

She smiled and shook her head. “I don't think you should count that.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I said.

She crossed her arm over herself and held her hand out to me. “Alice,” she said.

I took her hand. She had a strong grip, which made me like her more. “Colm,” I replied.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Colm,” she said, relaxing her arm back onto the railing behind her.

“Back at you,” I said. “You'll have to show me how that photo came out.”

She nodded. “You'll have to wait until I can find a dark room, which will probably be when we hit Hawaii.”

“Old school, actual film? What are you, a Luddite? Do I need to hide my phone?” I teased.

“Har har,” she replied. “No, I just like film more than digital. There's something... unforgiving about film. Like it forces you to know what you're doing before you take the picture, because you—you don't know how it turned out. You can't just look like you can with digital cameras.”

“Makes you have discipline, perhaps?” I suggested.

“That's a good way of putting it,” she said.

“So is that what you do? For a living?” I asked.

She glanced away, watching the dock drift away behind the boat (ship? What's the difference between a boat and a ship? I'll have to look it up later) before turning back to me. “Off and on. It doesn't pay the bills but it gives me some extra cash. I'm actually a data analyst for a security company.”

I felt my eyebrows rise. “Is that as rad as it sounds?”

She snorted. “Fuck no,” she said, then froze, looking around quickly. She relaxed and gave me a slightly worried look. “I forgot there are some kids around.”

I shrugged. “Fuck 'em,” she gave me a mock-horrified look, while laughing. I glanced around as well, making sure there weren't any kids around, which made her snigger. “So, from your tone, I assume data analysis is boring and/or tedious, and not super spy hunting slash hacking hacker time.”

She laughed throatily. “Okay, it's not as bad as you're making it out, but no, it's not any of those things. It's mostly just sorting through relevant data, what can be actionable and what can't.”

I nodded. We were approaching the mouth of the bay now, with the ocean stretching out before the boat/ship. There was a fair bit of traffic, a couple of oil tankers, cargo barges, things-that-looked-like-oil-tankers-but-had-cargo-but-I-didn't-know-the-name-of-besides-calling-them-slightly-different-cargo-barges, tugboats, pleasure vessels, sailboats and bigger sailboats which I assumed were yachts. “What makes it actionable?”

Her smile fell a fraction. “I'm not supposed to say--”

Before she continued I mimed locking my lips. “Forget I asked,” I said. She rolled her eyes but seemed thankful to drop the subject. “Instead, I shall ask, is this your first cruise? Or are you a veteran of the Cruise wars?”

“Veteran,” she said. “I take a cruise almost every year, though this will be the first one on a ship this small, or a cruise this long.” (Ah, it is a ship. I reinforced my mental note to look up the difference between a boat and a ship.)

I frowned. “Uh oh. Did I make a mistake on my first cruise? Did I pick the advanced course and not know it?”

She shook her head and turned around on the rail, leaning on it with her elbows. Her gaze went to the ocean as she replied. “No, no, it's just—uh, shorter cruises are generally where you go to get hammered and party and, uh—hook up with strangers. Leaves less time for that awkward 'sooooo should I call you?', you know?”

I didn't, but I could imagine. I nodded, glancing up and down the balcony walk way. I noted most of the people were over 30 or 40. “So this is the cruise for older, more boring people.”

“You said it, not me,” she said, then laughed at my expression. “No! No, not really. It just a more relaxing, less party-hardy experience.”

“That's exactly what I wanted,” I said. “I have been—stressed is too small a word for what I have been. Saying I have been stressed and anxious is like saying the ocean is wet.”

“I mean, it's true,” she prompted.

“And yet does not convey the whole truth, or the magnitude, of the situation,” I elaborated.

She nodded. “Your job got you stressed? What do you do?”

I had thought ahead. I don't actually work a job, and the method I use to generate funds is highly or slightly illegal, (I had never worked up the stones to corner a law professional to ask) so I had come up with what I thought of was a good lie. “I'm an investigator,” which was somewhat true, in that I do a lot of investigating for my payments. I leaned forward and mirrored her posture on the railing. “I mostly do consulting for the odd cold case and help with missing persons.”

She looked impressed, her eyes wide. “Have you saved anyone?” She asked, excitedly.

Oddly, and stupidly, I had not anticipated this line of inquiry. Luckily I had been lying by necessity for the better part of a decade and it came pretty naturally at this point. Which, if I was the kind of person who attempted to be a good person, would be worrying.

“Ah, no,” I said with a small wince. “I'm usually called in to find... remains.”

This was strictly not true, but I was very good at finding remains during my investigations, so there was a kind of truth to it? But it was a grim subject matter and it was my hope that that grimness would ward off further prying.

I was right. “I can see how it'd be stressful,” she said.

I was silent for a solid ten seconds before she straightened abruptly. “You know, I believe I came on this cruise to get hammered and to definitely not think about work. I'd bet my lucky rock collection you feel the same?”

I nodded with a smile.

“Would you care to join me for dinner and drinks?” She asked.

My smile grew wider. “I would like that very much.”

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