The great cabin was stuffed with warm bodies and the sounds of sleep. Tavia remained in her corner, both horn and eyelids lowered in the meditative state that passed for sleep in unicorns. Shaw sprawled out on the opposite side of the room like a jumbo-sized tabby cat, his rumbling purrs making the room vibrate.

Caleb lay in his bed, doing his best to accommodate not one, but two little companions. Breena had curled up by his side, her body radiating feline heat like a little radiator. Daffodil ended up on his other side, though her cool reptilian scales acted like a heat sink.

On the plus side, the two acted like little speed bumps or bracers that kept him from getting tossed out of bed. As soon as the rain had started to come down in earnest, he’d ordered Sienna to get the remaining crew on deck into slickers. The gale that followed on the heels of nightfall wasn’t hurricane force. But it was enough to partially reef the sails and call the lookouts down from the fighting top.

Even now, the ship rocked and her timbers creaked like never before. Yet somehow it didn’t both Caleb as much as it might have before. He had a well-built ship, a well-trained crew, and most of all, he had his friends all around him. Some literally at his side, letting out little brisling-scented snores.

The only light in the room came from the glimmer of Tavia’s horn glimmered. Though it was barely audible over the rush of water and the creak of wood, she murmured a phrase to her war-god Kirren over and over again. From what he could make out, it sounded once more to his ears like Latin.

O deus, quaeso, potestatem da mihi amicos meos tueri.

He closed his eyes and listened to all the creatures surrounding him, their murmurs, their purrs, their snores, their gentle breathing.

I’m glad no one decided to jump ship on me, he admitted to himself. Some part of me has become deeply attached to that griffin and unicorn. I made the right choice to rescue them when I opened that prison door.

Something about that phrase stuck in his mind as darkness enveloped him.

God or Danu herself knows how my life had been different if I hadn’t opened another door…

He felt himself falling.

A great wind buffeted the back of his head, his hands, his legs.

The sounds of the gale and the smells of salt and tar and fish vanished.

A thump as he landed on the sofa in his master’s cabin aboard the Second Chance.

Caleb sat up. The plush white leather squeaked as he looked around, trying to get his bearings. Smells of spilled rum and freshly smoked cigarettes filled his nose. He ran his hand thought his hair.

I must’ve nodded off, he thought, as he rubbed his chin. Fresh stubble gritted against his fingers. Damn. Gotta cut back on the booze.

He got up and looked out the porthole. Sunlight broken only by the ripple of near-calm ocean water gleamed back at him. Sure enough, there was the ship he was supposed to rendezvous with out in the middle of nowhere.

She was a large multi-cabin cruiser with the name Rabszolga emblazoned on her side next to the Liberian flag. The ship had sleek lines, though her speckled brown and red paint gave her a shabby look. The Rabszolga was only half the length of the Second Chance, though she made up for it with a triple deck and a lot more bulk.

A trio of his crewmen busied themselves tying the cruiser’s hull to his own luxury yacht. Caleb set his jaw, straightened his shirt, and left his room. As he went through the main crew cabin, something caught his eye.

He frowned. The kitchen table had a square mirror and razor blade left out. Traces of white powder clung to the black Formica next to the mirror. Two of the three crewmen looked up sullenly from their work as he came out on deck.

“Martín, Joaquín,” Caleb said. “What the hell did I just find in the crew cabin?”

The two just shrugged and looked over to the third crewman. He finished tying off the rope to the holding cleat and sauntered back over. Jet black hair and a devil-may-care attitude barely took note of Caleb’s stern glare.

“Eh, capitán, lighten up!” the man said. “Life is good!”

Caleb grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him close. His voice remained low, but it contained barely leashed anger.

“Bastian, that’s coke out on my kitchen table. What did I say about using stuff like that aboard my boat?”

“What’s your problem? It’s not the Nepo’s stuff, it’s my own stash.”

“Dammit, we’re barely thirty miles off Boca Raton as it is. Any federales who pulls up in his go-fast boat, even if they don’t have a damned sniffer dog, and we’re royally screwed.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“Go. Clean. It. Up. And then dump the rest of your stash over the side!”

Bastian shoved Caleb hard enough to force him back a step.

“Back off, pendejo! I only take orders from you ‘cause I need the money.”

There’s that, Caleb thought, And the fact that no one else will hire a druggie. Even one with your nautical skills.

His knuckles went white as he balled one hand up into a fist. But before he could do anything, he heard a whistle from the cruiser’s upper deck. A stocky man with bloodshot eyes, disheveled blond hair, and a dirty white tee-shirt called down to him. His voice carried some mish-mash of an accent from Eastern Europe.

“Szia kapitány! Hey, Ledger! You got trouble at home? Ha!”

Caleb forced himself to smile as he looked up.

“Just stuff among the familia, Tomaz,” he said. “Nothing worth writing home about.”

He glared at Bastian before dismissing him with a toss of the head. For his part, the younger crewman appeared to weigh whether it was worth causing more of a fuss before deciding to shuffle off.

Thank God for small favors. Dealing with the any of the Tarantus family’s bad enough. Tomaz is the worst. Showing discord among my crew would just add more problems.

Caleb had captained the Second Chance for eighteen months. He’d been hopping from island-to-island or island-to-mainland U.S. more times than he could count. Each time, smuggling his cargo into port. Onto small motor launches by deserted cays or reaches of mangrove swamp. Sometimes, like today, transferring kilo-sized bricks of coke ship-to-ship in international waters.

In all that time, he’d gotten to see all sorts of men – they were always men – in this trade up close. Some were decent-but-desperate, driven by poverty or debt into selling or receiving the blessed white powder. Most accepted the fact that they were criminals and puffed themselves up by draping their shoulders with gold chains or bikini-clad women.

Then there were the few that were the true sociopaths. Caleb could sense nothing behind their eyes, only a cold emptiness. Deacon Love was one. El Príncipe Nieve – Prince Snow – was another.

And then there was Tomaz Tarantus. Something about the man chilled Caleb to the bone. Here was a man who truly didn’t care about anything but whatever he lusted after at the moment.

Worse, Tomaz was visibly on what the Nepos called the cuesta abajo, the downhill slide. Sampling product, showing up high, and not caring who he’d take down alongside him.

Caleb prayed they could get their business over with quickly.

“I’ll have my men bring up the cargo,” Caleb said.

“Baszd meg! Like hell! You bring it to my cabin in person. We have toast to celebrate!”

Celebrate what? But Caleb let it go. He went to the yacht’s onboard safe and took out twenty kilos of Caseteja White, packed into a hard-shelled briefcase. When he came back out, Martín and Joaquín had set out the gangplank to make it easy to cross between ships.

“Stay at the ready,” he said quietly to Martín. “And keep an eye on Sebastian, he’s supposed to clean up his mess.”

“Sí, Capitán,” Martín acknowledged.

Caleb crossed over to the Rabszolga and looked both up and down her length. No one greeted him, no one pointed him where to go. He slid open one of the cruiser’s side-cabin doors and found himself inside a corridor that ran the length of the ship.

Suddenly, one of the crewmen emerged from a compartment. His face was stained with grease. The man hurried along, carrying an armload of tools.

“I’ve got something for Tomaz,” Caleb said, holding up the case. Looking at the tools, he added, “What’s going on?”

The sailor talked, reluctantly and in broken English.

“Is problem in engine room. All hands trying to fix.”

“Okay, good luck with that. Where is Tomaz?”

Another crewman poked his head out of a compartment towards the rear of the ship. He shouted at the first, his rough voice echoing off the walls.

“Hé idióta, ezek kellenek nekünk!”

The sailor nodded towards the forward end of the corridor. “Tomaz is there. I must go now.”

He then squeezed his way past Caleb, carrying the tools at a run.

Nonplussed, Caleb walked towards the direction indicated. As he did so, he heard the whine of an engine being started, followed by the coughing choke of it dying. That was followed by a trio of taps, and a similar set of longer metallic bangs.

They might be having problems with the ignition system, he thought idly. Or someone dropped a nut into the belt box. Might explain the tapping and banging.

The engine whine didn’t repeat, but the same trio of taps and bangs repeated itself twice more. He shrugged off the odd pattern as he reached the end of the corridor. All of a sudden, he was faced with an odd set of choices.

A door with a window lay directly in front of him. The window showed clearly that it let out to the bow deck. A second, rust-tinged door, this one without a window, sat on his right. But to his left, a set of stairs led towards the next deck up.

All the crewman said was ‘Tomaz is there’. Well, if the man’s still on the upper deck, then that means I should take the stairs.

He put his foot on the first step when he heard the same tap-and-bang pattern repeat again and again. It came from behind the rusty door. The hair on the back of his neck prickled up as he realized what he’d been hearing.

The series of taps spelled out an SOS in Morse Code. The universal distress call.

He turned and put his hand out to grasp the rusty door’s handle. His brain went into overdrive as he did so. Multiple thoughts flashed through his mind.

Don’t do this, this is going to be trouble!

Why even try? Of course this is going to be locked.

Walk away! You’re here to perform a simple job, it’s none of your business!

Almost against his will, he turned the knob. The door swung open easily.

Caleb’s breath rushed out as he saw inside.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “Tomaz, what the hell have you done?”