Free Steamed by Katie MacAlister Page A

tradition.”
    She moved to the top of my mental Women I Want list again, with a couple of bullets and big arrows pointing to her name. “Has anyone told you that you’re just about perfect, Octavia?”
    Her eyebrows rose slightly. “What a very odd question. I am in no way perfect, I assure you, Mr. Fletcher. Especially when I am in danger of being so delayed that my schedule is irreparably harmed.”
    “I think we’re going to get along well.” I smiled and took Hallie’s unresisting arm again, gently tugging her down the alleyway. “Really, really well.”
    She looked disconcerted at that thought.

    Log of the HIMA Tesla
Monday, February 15
Forenoon Watch: Six Bells
     
    “ W ell, that brandy did the job. It shook her out of the stupor she was in, and she’s taking everything better than I thought she would.”
    I straightened up from where I had been leaning against the wall outside my cabin. “Indeed. I—”
    A woman’s scream interrupted me.
    We both turned to look at the door. The scream was one of fury, and died off into a loudly shouted stream of profanity that made my eyebrows rise.
    Jack’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “Or not.” He winced at a particularly profane reference coming from the cabin. “I think she’s finally accepted that this isn’t all a dream. She’s . . . upset,” he added, as if that explanation needed to be made.
    “It’s understandable. I find myself having somewhat the same sort of difficulty believing your tale. You realize, of course, that you are asking us to believe something quite outrageous.”
    The door to the cabin was jerked open, and the passive, glassy-eyed woman whom we had brought back to the Tesla a short while before now stood staring out at us, her hair as wild as her eyes, her breath somewhat ragged as if she’d been under an extreme exertion.
    “Quite outrageous!” she yelled, the strained note in her voice giving proof that she was perilously close to hysteria. “Quite outrageous?”
    “Hallie, calm down, or the steward will be forced to sedate you.”
    “Go ahead,” she said, marching out of the room, glaring at her brother. Her clothes, the lovely silk tunic and trousers, were dirty and wrinkled from the visit to the refugee quarters. “Sedate me! Knock me out! Maybe that way I’ll get out of this nightmare and back in the real world!”
    “I don’t think you’ve been properly introduced. This is my sister, Hallelujah Norris, better known as Hallie,” Jack said, giving me a wry smile. “She doesn’t normally swear like a sailor.”
    “The hell I don’t!”
    “Hal, this is Octavia Pye. She’s the captain of this . . . er . . .”
    “Say it,” Hallie snarled at her brother, her eyes narrowing. “Go on, say it. Drive me over the edge! Drive me over the goddamned fuc—”
    “Hal!” Her brother interrupted her with a worried look my way. “I don’t think Octavia appreciates swearing.”
    I gave the distraught woman a quelling look. “Indeed.”
    “Fine!” Hallie yelled, tossing her hands in the air. “I won’t swear, because it will offend this pretend woman’s delicate sensibilities! Have it your way! I’ll just go quietly insane on my own, then, shall I? Without swearing?”
    “Pretend woman?” I asked, eyeing her lest she should try to escape again. We were once again under way, but I worried that in her distraught state she hadn’t taken that fact in.
    “Now she thinks this is a delusion,” Jack said quietly to me as his sister paced back and forth across the narrow hallway, her hands gesturing as she mumbled to herself. “She thinks that we somehow ingested some sort of hallucinogenic, and that we’re imagining all of this.”
    “I must admit that I find your story just as unlikely as she finds us,” I said, relieved to see Hallie stop muttering as she stopped before one of the portholes that lined the corridor.
    Jack gave me an odd look. “You say unlikely, but not impossible.”
    I raised my eyebrows.