“Nixie.”
I turned. Slate had retaken the wheel, and he hadn’t relaxed. “What?” I said, although I knew what he was going to say.
“I need you.” His voice was soft, pleading. “I need your help. I can’t miss that auction. I have to have that map. Please.”
I kept my face stony, but the guilt in me was rising like a tide. I’d chosen the wrong map, I’d plotted the wrong course: mistake after mistake after mistake, all the way back to the start. “I’ll check again. Maybe there’s something I missed the first time.”
“Not likely,” Kashmir said, winding his pocket watch.
“I appreciate your confidence,” I said in a flat tone. “Wait a minute.” I grabbed for the watch and missed. He was much quicker than I. “Let me see that.”
Once I asked, he handed it over without a fuss. The watch was three inches across, a triple-case gold repoussé design of Adam and Eve in paradise, and it was heavier than it looked. On the back there was the signature, even a serial number—and of course, it was in exceptional condition for its age, in spite of its dunking. I pressed my lips together. After scolding him for taking it, the hypocrisy stung . . . but it was worth twice what I would have gotten for the tigers.
Kashmir inclined his head; he understood. “What’s mine is yours, amira.”
I leaned into him, resting my temple on his shoulder in a gesture of thanks. Then I straightened. “Captain?”
“What?”
I tossed the watch to Slate, who caught it and held it up to the light. “I’m sixteen.”
“Right,” he said absently, studying the watch. Then his eyes widened. “Oh!” He closed his fingers around the watch and kissed it. His knees sagged and he leaned against the wheel, laughing.
“Easy come, easy go,” Kashmir said. Another indignant roar drifted up from below; he rolled his eyes. “Well, most of the time.”
“Why are the tigers so restless?” I nodded toward the captain, who was opening and closing the watch case, delighted. “I know for a fact we’re not out of opium.”
“No, amira, but we’re out of meat. I’ve fed them every last scrap on the ship.”
Rotgut’s head whipped around, the thin braid of his beard flying in the wind. “You gave them everything in the galley?”
“And the bag of jerky from under your mattress.”
“Thief!” Rotgut scowled.
Kashmir grinned at him. “Glutton.”
Rotgut swore in Chinese. Kash responded in Farsi—and Bee interrupted with a jangle of the bell she wore. “Settle down,” she said in her quiet whisper, her brown eyes sparkling. “You’re both right.”
“So,” Kash said to me. “Where can we leave the tigers?”
“Leave them?” Rotgut straightened up. “Why leave them?”
I cocked my head. “What else do you want to do with them?”
“Kash just said we’re out of meat.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at his joke. At least, I hoped it was a joke.
“We’re not eating them,” Slate said. “Christ.” He turned the wheel and pointed us toward the dark shoreline. “We’ll drop them off ashore.”
“What? Just—just drop them off? Where?”
He grinned at me. “That is an excellent question!”
“Fine.” I stared upward, trying to think. No stars here; the sky was the flat navy of a city night. “Okay. Just a minute.” I jogged below to my cabin. My cell phone was still in the back pocket of the jeans I’d worn the last time we were in New York. I’d prepaid for twenty dollars’ worth of data then, definitely enough for a few Google searches. I powered it on as I returned topside. “Rotgut?”
“Eh?”
“Can you get a line in the water? And Kash, we should run dark for this. Will you take in the lanterns?”
“And what will you be doing?” Kashmir nudged me as he sauntered past, toward the bow.
“I’m looking up the local donor list for the Friends of the Bronx Zoo.”
We left the tigers in the Hamptons an hour past midnight, on a private dock behind a hulking mansion belonging to a philanthropic wildlife lover. Rotgut had landed a few bluefish and released them reluctantly to Kashmir, who used them to slip the tigers enough opium to calm them. Then we sailed away at speed. About an hour later, helicopters flew over us as we were passing Fire Island, but they didn’t stop.