Night's Reckoning by Elizabeth Hunter

Author:Elizabeth Hunter [Hunter, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-941674-44-4
Publisher: Elizabeth Hunter

19

Ben decided that the official discovery of the Qamar Jadid deserved a party, both for historical significance and to kill some of the tension building on the ship. Cheng’s human crew needed to socialize with the university people, who needed to at least meet the vampires—even though they wouldn’t know they were vampires—so they wouldn’t become overly curious.

He planned the party for six thirty so the vampires could join the humans who weren’t on duty. Some of the crew would be at their posts on the ship and some of the university crew would be monitoring the cameras they’d set up around the wreck.

Cameras that would be shut off as soon as the vampires started working, of course.

Meanwhile, Ben and Fabia were doing their best to decorate the mess hall with limited resources.

“I can’t believe you ordered a cake to bring on the ship.”

Ben set the frozen sheet cake on a table to defrost. “I’ve learned a few things about people in my many years on earth, Fabi. And one of them is that even enemies will sit down together if there’s cake involved. If you add champagne into the mix, you get even closer to world peace.”

“And you don’t think we should save all this for the end of the project?”

“Absolutely not.” They needed warmer relations now, before the university people realized that the vampires had already confiscated some of the artifacts.

He’d noticed the blank spaces immediately. There were naturally occurring blanks in any artifact retrieval. Things moved. They broke. If they were in the ocean, they drifted away.

But then there were new, obvious blanks.

Obvious blanks where storage jars—or the remains of them—should have been. The rest of the humans might not notice, but Ben had been around vampires too long not to be suspicious.

He wasn’t happy about it, but he was trying not to overreact. Maybe Tenzin had an explanation for it. After all, it was her father’s shipment. It would all belong to Zhang in the end.

But Zhang and Cheng had agreed to let the university to document the recovery. That was the only reason he’d been able to convince Fabia to come along. If the vampires were looting, that made Ben a liar.

Perhaps one of the storage jars contained artifacts that were evidence of vampire existence. That had to be it.

Fabia held up a long loop of bright blue rope. “I could print out some pictures from my phone and hang them on this for a banner?”

“Great idea.” He was doing his best to draw a mural on the giant whiteboard at the end of the room. It was difficult when you only had black, red, and green to work with.

“Did you say the galley was making a special dinner?”

“Uh… kind of?”

“Kind of doesn’t sound very special.”

“They’re making noodle soup.”

Fabia narrowed her eyes. “Like the noodle soup they serve us every night? Don’t get me wrong. It’s good, but—”

“Not like the noodle soup they serve us every night.” Ben turned around. “They are adding beef to the soup.

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