Star shrugged. “Who knows?”
She thought back to the night before. After Benjamin ran up the stairs and disappeared, she hadn’t seen any sign of him again. He must have left; the house was too quiet. She hadn’t heard a car drive off, but engine noise could have been drowned out by the storm. As nice as the weather was now, they should hear him return.
The guys came in covered with grease and grime, and made no effort to keep from leaving it behind them.
“Watch it!” Star wiped off a dark smear Kyle left on a cabinet.
“Fuck you,” Kyle said. “What do you care? This isn’t your place.”
No, her place had been a pigsty. This place was a palace.
Why did a grease mark on someone else’s cabinet bother her?
Because Benjamin’s castle demanded respect, that’s why.
Weird thought. Shaking her head to clear it, Star dropped the sponge in the sink on her way to the pot of soup.
She carried her bowl to the kitchen table where the others joined her. They slurped up the soup without speaking, and then lounged over the sardines and crackers.
“You find the problem?” she asked Jack.
He nodded. “Leaky fuel line.”
“I thought I smelled gas,” Wendy said.
Star shot her a glare. “Why didn’t you say something?”
The woman loaded a cracker with a sardine, and shoved the whole thing into her mouth without further comment.
“We’ll go down to the highway and look for a gas station,” Jack said, motioning with his head to include Kyle.
“We could all go,” Wendy said.
Jack shrugged. “What if the old man comes back and decides to lock us out? We might not get our stuff back.”
“We could put everything in the van,” Wendy said, her voice betraying her rising level of concern. “I’m not staying here without you guys.”
“The inside of the van’s all wet. And what if he decides to tow it? Then—”
“I’ll stay,” Star said.
They all looked at her as she ate another bite of sardine-covered cracker.
Funny, the idea of staying at Benjamin’s alone didn’t bother her at all, and she knew it probably should. She’d grown up on the same horror movies as everyone else. She even knew a few real horror stories her traveling companions most likely didn’t. Yet, she was quite happy with the prospect of spending time looking around. And if Benjamin came home before the others got back, well, she’d stand up to him like she had the night before.
Her stomach quivered at the prospect.
With the place to herself, Star studied the painting a while longer. It really was spectacular, not that she was much of an art critic. The thing just sucked her in and she was there. She wondered what life had been like back on that ship. Somehow, she was sure it had really existed, and not been the result of an artist’s imagination. No one could be that good.
After getting her fill for the moment, she checked out the rest of the room. A bookshelf covered a whole wall to the left of the fireplace. The books looked old and interesting, but pulling out one created a dust storm. She scanned those with titles she could see, and found books by authors whose names she recognized, like Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, William Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, and Mark Twain, and a lot more by authors she’d never heard of. She followed one row, just trying to pronounce the names. She could spend years in here reading without finishing all these books. The thought made her giddy, and she laughed.
All her life, she’d loved to read, but her chances had been limited by circumstances. At the Home, there hadn’t been many choices, and she’d been pretty young. Her first foster mother had said reading anything but the Bible was a sin, so she’d discovered the public library and sinned as often as she could sneak away. After that, it was hit or miss, until she’d had to put aside reading for two full-time jobs. Then she’d started hanging with Jones. He got annoyed if she read, said she was ignoring him. Over the last three months, she’d watched a dozen movies a week. How long had it been since she’d read a whole book through? Five years?
She abandoned the bookshelf to explore, wondering what other treasures the place held. Benjamin had said he’d be back this evening, and it wasn’t quite evening yet.
She stopped at the bottom of the long staircase, one hand on the rail, and listened.
Benjamin had also said they were to stay on the first floor, but she heard no hint of anyone on the floors above. What would it hurt if she just looked around? Hell, he wouldn’t even know. She didn’t want to take anything. Just look.
Sucking in a deep breath and blowing it out, she started up the marble stairs, tiptoeing. She couldn’t hear anything over the sound of blood rushing through her ears.
The second floor was darker than the first and had several rooms with locked doors. On each end of the floor, she found a bedroom open with the bed made, fireplace filled with logs ready to be lit, bathroom clean, but dust everywhere.
The third floor at first proved just as uninteresting, until she stepped into a room that was different from all the others. It had no windows, a low ceiling, and walls of solid wood. Although the room held a fireplace at one end and a narrow staircase at the other, it had the feel of the inside of a ship. Maps covered a table in the middle, and a desk had been placed across the back corner to take advantage of light from the fire and provide a view of the room. Behind the desk was another floor to ceiling bookshelf, but this one held books that looked much older than those downstairs. The covers appeared to be homemade, some out of leather even, and must be absolutely ancient. Another difference between this bookshelf and the one downstairs was the lack of dust.
The room smelled of rich pipe tobacco and cold fireplace ashes. It must be Benjamin’s hangout. It fit him, somehow.
She walked behind the desk, which held an old oil lamp, one of those quill pen gadgets you can get at a hobby store, and several stacks of yellowing paper. A large book lay open in the middle of the desk, filled with lines of ornate and flowing handwriting, nearly impossible to read. Most of it was smeared and stained, too, which didn’t help.
Star leaned forward and raised the edge of the book toward the light from across the room. She could just make out something at the top of the page that looked a little like a date. March something, 1891. Damn. The book was old.
Wait. She leaned closer. Not 1891, but 1691. Holy shit. This thing was historic. It should be in a museum somewhere.
She studied the feel of the paper under her thumb and realized it wasn’t paper but material of some kind. Very carefully, she turned to the first page and worked to read as much as she could. “Log book…something…Spencer.” She gave up on a whole smeared paragraph and moved on. “Captain Benjamin Bartlett, Bofton. Bofton?” Scanning down the page, she realized the s’s looked like f’s. “Oh. I get it. Captain Benjamin Bartlett, Boston.”
A shiver ran through her. Another Benjamin Bartlett, and a captain, too, but this one had lived centuries ago.
Reopening the book to its original place, she tried to make out the flowing words, but only got something about “returning to Boston,” and “heavily laden,” and “impending storm.” The next page was empty.
“Wow.”
Straightening, she circled the room, admiring paintings adorning the walls. Most were of sailing ships, amazingly realistic and detailed like the huge painting downstairs. Benjamin must know the painter. Star stood before each and studied it as well as she could in the dim light.
The last painting she found, in a small round frame about a foot high and two-thirds as wide, was