Page 13 of Until the Stars Fall

Eyre approached, her skin flawless, her winged eyeliner sharp enough to cut glass, and her wavy, raven’s wing hair the epitome of a gothic princess. She sat beside Beck and leaned her head into the group, insinuating herself into the conversation. “What are we talking about?”

“Fortified food packet yumminess,” Beck said, with no trace of making fun of me in his voice.

“Ugh,” she groaned, tucking an iridescent strand of hair behind her ear as her big brown eyes widened at me in apparent sympathy. “We ate too many of those after Hurricane Macaron King, so I feel for you on a deep, spiritual level. I’m Eyre, by the way.”

I reached out and shook the hand she offered. “Air?”

“Eyre, as in Jane Eyre. My parents are English professors,” she explained, opening her lunch box.

Zola joined the group, dropping to the carpet between Eyre and Hannah with the grace of a ballerina. “Well folks, we made it into space, and all our spells are holding…sort of.”

Sort of? I was a deer in headlights, but laughing, whoops, and applause broke out around me. How could they joke about our casual relationship with dying in space?

“Oh, so let me fill you in on our little crew’s roles and responsibilities,” Summer said, briefly touching her hand to my arm. “Hannah and I are co-captains, Eyre’s our navigator. The three of us’ll trade off shifts on the bridge, but I’ve got the lion’s share since Hannah’s helping Zola with general management, and plus she made all the shift schedules.

“Zola, of course, is our badass high priestess, spiritual advisor, chief séance officer, and resident doctor and energy healer.” Summer paused to place her palms together and incline her head to Zola, who returned the gesture.

High priestess? Séance officer? I looked around at my crewmates. Did they all have stupid titles or just Zola?

“Eyre’s also our head chef and kitchen witch,” Summer continued. “Hannah said she told you how hard we worked on the spells that’re keeping the ship flying. It’s crucial that you don’t disturb them.”

Beck and Hannah occupied themselves with their meal, neither revealing a morsel of guilt at betraying my stupidity to Summer.

“If you see duct tape holding something together, don’t remove it. Crystals in odd places?” Summer shook her head. “Just leave them. You’ll see strange markings and candles lit. Please, for the love of Hestia, your rule of thumb on this ship is going to be: if it’s lit, don’t do shit. If you don’t understand why it’s there, leave it. Turn nothing off that’s on, and turn nothing on that’s off. Our collective survival depends on this.”

I nodded, my cheeks burning. “Got it.” All I wanted was to curl into a ball and hide. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the windows lining the wall, at the brutal expanse of space. I wished the solid Earth was still beneath my feet so it could swallow me whole, and I missed not feeling like my death was imminent.

Eyre spoke up. “We’ve been growing food on the ship from almost the moment we got our hands on it,” she said, “and we went into debt to buy the things we couldn’t grow. I’ll cook daily, and we’ll all have shifts in the kitchen and the garden in the ship’s forest. I’ll post menus on the Common network.”

“And that just leaves Beck, our renaissance man,” Summer said, “who as you know will be in the engine room with you.”

Zola leaned forward, looking at Beck. “How are you feeling? Don’t think I didn’t notice that you escaped the med bay without my permission. Is your arm giving you any trouble?” she asked.

All heads turned worried faces toward Beck. He waved them all off. “I’m fine.”

“Okay, tough stuff!” Zola exclaimed. “Y’all don’t let him fool you. It was a bad burn.”

“Who gets a second-degree burn making cookies?” Eyre cackled, falling into Beck.

He laughed back in the same fit of hysteria. “You know if somebody’s gonna do it, it’s gonna be me.”

Laughing harder, Eyre wiped tears from her eyes. “You even burned the cookies!”

“Yeah, because I was too busy hollerin’ and running water over my arm.”

While everyone else snickered at the exchange. I was judging how many chips I had left. Just four more, plus one little pot of pudding that I was hellbent on finishing, because chocolate. Then I could feign being too tired to socialize with people like Beck, who could apparently smile at anybody but me.

“Zo, the eczema on my fingers has been crazy since we made all that soap,” Eyre said. “Can you help me out?”

“Of course! When we’re done eating, let me fix you up.”

I didn’t want to know more about Zola’s alternative healing credentials, but having a real doctor on board was a blessing. Even though a cruiser this old must have an AI nurse, it could do only so much.

“What’s the plan for tomorrow, Captain Beautiful?” Summer said to Hannah.

Hannah’s face lit up. “Well, Co-Captain Beautiful—”

“Get a room,” Eyre teased.

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