Read Chapter 17: Crossing the Atlantic

The wind had teeth in it now. Mack stood at the helm, one hand wrapped around the worn wood, the other resting on the hilt of Blackwood's blade at his belt. He hadn't meant to keep it there. It had just found its place, like it belonged.

Ahead, the horizon burned—a red smear that bled into the darkening sky like a wound that wouldn't close. The compass swung lazily, then settled. Northeast. Bermuda. Except the ship was cutting through the swell at a clip that had nothing to do with the sails he'd ordered raised.

The sails were full. And the wind was coming from the wrong direction.

Rosa's boots thudded up the companionway. She stopped two steps short of the helm, arms crossed, face set in that expression Mack knew too well—the one that meant she'd already made up her mind about an answer before she'd asked the question.

"Tell me what's happening," she said. "And don't give me the storm talk. I've been on the water since I was twelve. A ship doesn't sail into the wind unless something's pulling it."

Mack looked past her shoulder. Below deck, he could hear the low murmur of the crew. Lee and Tomas were in the galley. Abigail was in the captain's cabin with the package. The others were bunked down, but he knew none of them were sleeping. They'd felt it too—the change in the ship's rhythm, the way the hull seemed to hum with something just below the register of sound.

"Rosa." He said her name slowly, letting it sit between them. "You asked about Jake. About what happened to him. I told you what I found on the wreck. But I didn't tell you everything."

Her jaw tightened. "No. You didn't."

"The knife wasn't Jake's." Mack pulled the blade from his belt. The steel caught the red light, and for a moment, he could have sworn he saw his own reflection twist in it—not him, but something wearing his shape. He shoved it back into the sheath. "It was Blackwood's. And Blackwood's not gone. He's in the gold. In the instruments. In this blade. And now he's in me."

Rosa took a step back. Not fear, not quite. Computation. She was measuring him the way she'd measure a current or a line. "In you how?"

Mack looked down at his hands. They were his hands. Same scar across the knuckle. Same calluses. But when he flexed them, he felt an echo—a second set of fingers moving beneath his skin.

"When I touched the gold on the Santa Catalina, something got inside me. A presence. A voice. It's been getting louder since we opened the package. When the ghosts came for Cruz's crew, I saw through their eyes. When I looked in the sextant, I saw—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I saw him wearing my face. Thorne told me I have to command the ship. That the curse won't lift until Blackwood's final voyage is completed. And I think—I think this ship is already his. I'm just borrowing it."

Rosa was quiet for a long moment. Then she closed the distance between them and grabbed his collar. "You listen to me, Mack Donovan. You owe me more than this. You owe me the truth about Jake, and you owe me a way off this boat alive. If you're going to let some two-hundred-year-old dead man pull your strings, you do it with your eyes open. You hear me?"

"I hear you."

She released him and stepped back. "Good. Now what's bearing down on us?"

Mack turned to the horizon. The red smear had resolved into something sharper—not a storm front, but a shape. A ship. Its sails were black as oil, its hull grey and slick like a whale's back. And as it drew closer, Mack felt his blood go cold.

It was the Sea Serpent.

Same lines. Same mast configuration. Same worn patches on the mainsail that he'd been meaning to repair for months. But it was wrong. The wood was darker, rotted in places, and the crew on its deck—

"Jesus," Rosa breathed.

They were dead. All of them. Men in rotted sailor's clothes, their faces half-gone, their eyes sockets of darkness. They moved with the slow, patient purpose of things that no longer needed breath. And at the helm stood a figure Mack knew from every nightmare he'd had since he'd first laid eyes on the Santa Catalina's wreck.

Blackwood. His coat black, his beard grey, his hand raised in a silent command.

The ghost ship was coming straight at them.

"How is this possible?" Tomas had appeared at the companionway. His face was pale. Behind him, Lee was muttering a prayer. "That's us. That's our ship."

"It's not us," Mack said. "It's what we're becoming. What I'm becoming." He looked down at the blade at his belt. Thorne's words echoed in his head: *the crew waiting below the keel.* This was them. Blackwood's original crew. And they were sailing to meet him.

"The course is true," Mack said. The words came out of him before he could stop them, in a voice that wasn't quite his own. "Through the darkness, to the delivery. The admiral waits."

Rosa grabbed his arm. "Mack. Snap out of it."

He blinked. The glassy edge receded. He was himself again, but he could feel it slipping—like standing on wet rock, the purchase never quite solid.

"Abigail," he said. "Get her up here with the package. We're going through."

"Through what?" Tomas's voice cracked. "Captain, that ship is full of the dead."

"Through them," Mack said. "Blackwood's spirit is already inside me. If they wanted to kill us, they'd have done it by now. They're here to escort us. Or test us." He didn't know which. He couldn't know. But the compass had stopped swinging. It pointed straight at the ghost ship's heart. "Hold the course. Full speed."

Rosa didn't move. "You're going to ram a ghost?"

"I'm going to sail through it. There's a difference." He hoped there was a difference. He hoped he wasn't just finding new ways to get his crew killed.

Abigail appeared at the rail, the package clutched to her chest. Her hair had come loose and the red light caught it, making her look like something from a painting. "I had it open," she said breathlessly. "There's a hidden panel in the box. A letter. I haven't read it yet."

"Read it," Mack said. "Now. Before we go under."

She fumbled with the package. The ghost ship loomed. Fifty yards. Forty. Mack could smell it now—salt and rot and something like old copper. The dead crew on its deck had turned to face them. Every one of them was staring at Mack.

No. At his belt. At the blade.

"Please," the ghost at the helm seemed to say. Blackwood's lips didn't move, but the word settled in Mack's skull like a stone. *Please.*

Thirty yards. Twenty.

"She doesn't have time for the letter," Rosa shouted. "Mack, do something!"

But Mack couldn't do anything except hold the course. The blade at his belt was warm now, almost hot against his hip. And in his chest, something answered—a voice that was his and not his, speaking words he didn't choose.

*I am the captain. I am the course. I am the weight of what I carried.*

Ten yards.

The ghost ship's bow split the water. Mack saw Blackwood's hand lower. Saw the dead men on the deck reach out toward the rail. And then the Sea Serpent's hull cut through the spectral ship's side, and it was like being doused in ice water—a cold that went bone-deep, that stole his breath and stopped his heart for a single, terrible beat.

Then they were through. The water behind them was empty. The red horizon had faded to the grey of a coming dawn. The Sea Serpent sailed on, whole and silent and impossibly fast.

On the deck, Tomas was on his knees. Lee was crying. Rosa was breathing hard, one hand pressed over her heart. And Abigail was staring at an unopened envelope in her hands, the package open at her feet.

"It's sealed," she said. "Wax. Admiral Pimm's mark."

Mack took a breath. It tasted like salt and copper and something else he couldn't name.

"Open it," he said.