Maggie on the Bounty by Kate Danley Read Free Book Online Page B

here."
    That's when I saw her.  A little
girl walking slowly along the upper level.  She was dressed in a lacy white
dress with a drop waist and her blonde hair hung in curls that would have sent
Shirley Temple into fits of jealous rage.  The little girl looked down at me
and stared straight into my eyes.  I put my hand on Killian's arm and pointed. 
He looked up at her and she vanished.
    "Did you see that?"
    He nodded.
    "She was completely
corporeal.  We are way in over our heads, Killian."
    "Perhaps we should reconsider
my suggestion to take the half payment and enjoy our vacation," he
offered.
    I looked around at
the milling tourists. They were so desperate for a ghostly encounter and had
completely missed that there was one standing right above them.
    "No," I said.  "That
little kid specifically wanted us to see her.  She hid herself from everyone
else.  I can't leave her roaming this boat when she's asking for help."
    I might not have my mom's gifts,
but I had picked up a thing or two about the family trade.  Being a ghost sucks
balls.  If you miss that window into the afterworld, you are in for a world of
misery for the rest of eternity.  It is how my mom tried to teach me to have a
little more sympathy for the ghost banging around our place when I was a kid. 
So, if this little girl was stuck, and she knew enough that I might be able to
give her a hand... well.  Sometimes you're in a place for a reason.
    "Maggie, are you getting soft
on me?"
    "Don't go spreading it
around," I warned.
    Killian and I dutifully shuffled
along with the herd as our group was led out and into an elevator.  The guide
pressed the button for "down."  Down, down, down into the bowels of
this ship until we couldn't go any farther without diving gear.  We stepped out
into the hull of the boat.  As far as the eye could see was a rusty room with
open beams and catwalks.  The ceiling seemed like it was a million miles above
us, which it might as well have been—the guide announced that we were thirty
feet below the waterline and only six inches of steel was protecting us from
the crush of the ocean.
    There was a catwalk way up there,
though, and the tour guide pointed up. "People have reported seeing a
ghost-like figure overhead, to hear troops marching around when there aren't
soldiers on this ship."
    That was all well and good, pretty
typical Haunted Wherever script.  I always felt like invoking
"troops" was a way to stir patriotic feelings or gain sympathy from
the crowd.  I was so busy judging the tour guide for playing his tourists that
I didn't notice the gaping hole in the middle of the bulkhead until I was
almost in it.  It was... massive.  Just... a hole... in the steel plating
separating one section of the boat from another.  Physically, probably
thirty-by-thirty feet, but crackling with energy along its edges.  I looked at
Killian, "Do you feel that?"
    He shook his head.
    "What are you even good
for?" I asked.
    "Looking good while saving
you."
    "Touché.  There is an energy
signature around this whole... hole," I said, pointing at the big opening
in front of us.  "There are fissures in the boundary.  It's like someone
has been digging a tunnel with a teaspoon so no one will notice while they get
ready to bust on through.  This is massive and SO not legal."
    Killian gave a low whistle.
"So, do we return to The Other Side to report it?"
    "They'll just send me back to
fix it," I said, wishing my cell phone could take a picture of Other
Worldly Energy so that I could send it to my dad.
    "Would they pay you to come
back and fix it?"
    "I'm getting the feeling we
don't have time to wait for the bureaucratic bullshit machine to spit out the
right paperwork.  I'll send a report as soon as we get into cell territory, but
I'm feeling like this one might be gratis.  You know.  If we don't all
die." 
    "Die?" Killian repeated,
suddenly realizing the gravity of our sitch.
    I stared at the cracks in the
boundary with a