Read Deadshifted for Free Online Page B

said drily, and poached a fry off my plate.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    After our picnic, we crawled into bed. Asher slept soundly and I envied him. I wanted to, but couldn’t. I missed my Ambien prescription. Ironically, I could get Hector MD to write me one, but I felt stupid needing it now that I was supposedly on a day-shift schedule. I hadn’t thought about the stresses of jet lag, finding out my period was late, and discussing whether my morally ambiguous boyfriend should kill someone, even if he was a really bad someone, on my vacation trip. Oh, well, I didn’t know if Ambien was safe for indeterminately pregnant people, either.
    I was too keyed up to sleep. My mind was an angry dog, chasing after endless cars.
    Would Asher make a good dad? I thought he would. Then again, his own dad sucked. But what better excuse to overcompensate than to fix your own past?
    Would I make a good mom? Oh, God, who knew. I knew I’d be full of good intentions—just like the proverbial path to hell.
    I threw the sheets off me and walked across the room to the balcony, unlocked the doors, and stepped outside into the night.
    The Maraschino put out too much light pollution itself for me to see the stars. But the newly waning moon was overhead. I knew all weres were safe from its pull for now. I leaned against the railing, looking out at the water.
    Was it even safe to bring a kid into this world? One that I knew had vampires, and weres, and a hundred other things that could go bump in the night in it? If we did have a kid—ours, or adopted—and it was scared of something under the bed, would I honestly be able to tell it that things would be just fine?
    “Edie?” I heard Asher’s voice from the room behind me and turned around. There were no lights in the room; his disembodied voice was coming from the dark. “Come back to bed.”
    I walked back into our cabin, blindly. I didn’t lock the balcony doors behind me, because really, we were six floors up and in the middle of the ocean. It wasn’t like we were expecting a visit from Batman. I took three steps in—and then I turned around and walked back and did lock the doors, because, well, who knew.
    When I slid back under the sheets Asher moved to spoon me. “Why’re you so cold?” he murmured, and threw an arm across me to pull me close.
    *   *   *
    In the morning, the ship was bucking against the waves. I didn’t know if this was normal or not, but it felt as if the ocean were trying to throw the Maraschino off, and it was making me seasick.
    Asher was already awake, reading a book beside me. “You ready?” he asked as I wiped the sleep out of my eyes.
    “Not really. But let’s go.” I knew that you were supposed to use your first pee of the day for pregnancy testing, and I didn’t want to wait too long.
    We got up and dressed, and the elevator we rode down was full of people. Many of them got off and immediately went to queue up at the guest services station, where I could see them handing out seasickness bags. Maybe somehow we’d gotten contaminated with norovirus, like I’d privately feared, after all those shows about “my cruise ship tried to poison me” on the news. Whatever it was, I was glad to know I wasn’t the only one who found the current motion disconcerting.
    We reached the first floor alone, although I realized when we got there the ship was actually deeper than this—there must be floors underneath that were all engines, laundry, and rooms for the crew. The medical center was down the rightmost hallway. I walked through the open door into a small waiting room, with another open door beyond, and I peeked into it. There was a short examination bed, a desk, some cabinets, and a chair—and a man sitting in it with his back to me. I went back to Asher. There was only room for one of us in the medical room, really. “I appreciate the moral support, but you can stay here.”
    “I’ll be right outside.”
    I knocked on the doorjamb and took a step