The lounge smelled of damp metal, sea rot, and old blood. Cold air pressed on Frankie’s skin, thick and clinging. The chill soaked through her clothes, straight into her bones.

  Damon lay curled on the floor, shivering violently beneath Ted’s jacket. His teeth chattered. His eyes stared at nothing.

  “Hey.” Frankie crouched beside him, touched his shoulder. “Damon?”

  His skin burned under her palm. Fever-hot. Wrong.

  “He’s been like this for ten minutes,” Ted said. He stood guard by the barricaded door, white-knuckling a rusted iron pipe. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cold. “Won’t talk. Won’t move.”

  Frankie searched his face. The calm confidence was gone from his eyes, replaced by a flat stare. This was a stranger.

  She stood, clenching her fists. There was nothing she could do for him.

  Nothing.

  Across the lounge, Dee Dee yanked a drawer from a tarnished desk. “There has to be something here,” she said, her voice cracking. “Flares, a radio—”

  The drawer came free, spilling its contents across the warped floor.

  Dee Dee froze.

  “What?” Frankie crossed the room.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Dee Dee lifted a leather-bound book from the mess. Gilt letters on the cover: Captain’s Log – S.S. Wistaria.

  “Oh my God.” Her hands shook as she opened it.

  Frankie leaned in. The first pages were precise. But deeper in, the handwriting grew slanted, erratic. Dee Dee flipped forward. “Listen.” She read, her voice trembling:

  “‘April 12th, 1941. The attacks continue. Three more passengers dead. Exsanguinated.’”

  Dee Dee’s finger traced a line. “‘The crew calls her Vondra… a Soucouyant.’”

  Her breath hitched. “Soucouyant. It’s Caribbean. A… a skin-stealing blood drinker. I read about it once. I thought it was just a story.”

  The name meant nothing to Frankie, but the next words chilled her.

  “‘At night, she sheds her skin and becomes fire.’”

  Frankie’s mind flashed to the ballroom. The burning figure. The impossible heat.

  “Keep going,” Ted urged from the door.

  Dee Dee swallowed. “‘April 14th. We failed to kill her during the day. She commands the dead now… the crew I myself buried at sea. They obey her.’”

  “Skip ahead,” Ted cut in. “How do we stop her?”

  Dee Dee’s fingers flew, landing on a frantic, nearly illegible entry near the end.

  “‘April 16th. Final entry. The ship is lost… There is one weakness—her mortal shell. Every Soucouyant must remove her skin to transform. She hides it… if it is destroyed—salted and burned—she dies with it.’”

  Dee Dee read the last lines, her voice dropping to a whisper:

  “‘I am going to find where she hid her mortal shell. I am going to end this. If I fail, God have mercy on—’”

  A dark smear cut the sentence off.

  Not ink.

  Blood.

  The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating.

  “He didn’t finish,” Dee Dee whispered, looking up from the page, her face a pale mask in the gloom. “She got him. She got him before he could find it.”