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and that — combined with her early start — had left her dog-tired.
    She glanced about her small cabin. It was decidedly more spartan than the grand cabin she had occupied aboard the Vampirate ship. There, she had slept like a storybook princess in a vast bed, piled high with cushions and hung low with tapestries. Now, she bedded down on a simple single bunk with one pillow, which itself had seen better days. But Grace wasn’t complaining. She rather liked her new abode. It was comfortable enough, and it was certainly nice having daylight filter in, even if it was through a somewhat grimy porthole. Besides, better to have a cabin to yourself than to sleep — like Connor — in a dormitory where the other pirates’ snores and wheezes, coughs and farts played like a strange symphony through the night.
    Besides the bed, there was little other furniture in the room — a small wooden chair that she chiefly used to hang her clothes at night, a small cupboard, and some shelves. But it was more than enough room for someone who had as few possessions as Grace. Uncurling herself slowly, she slipped down from the bed, and knelt on the floor. She reached her hand under the bunk, moving aside a box of old rope and a blanket, which were simply decoys to prevent prying eyes from finding the small case that she kept there.
    Now, she took it in her hands and climbed back up onto the bunk. It was Darcy Flotsam who had given the case to her. “Because every young lady needs a place for her secret things,” she had said. It was typical of Darcy — the kind gesture, the rationale, and the case itself. It was, strictly speaking, a “vanity case,” deep red leather on the outside and shocking pink silk padding on the interior. It was intended for storing combs and brushes, makeup compacts, lipsticks, and the like. Grace had none of these and no desire for them. But with its hidden compartments and, most usefully, its small lock and key, the case was the ideal place to keep her secret things.
    She turned the small key and lifted the lid, smiling as she surveyed the contents. There were the notebooks and pens she had brought with her — at the Vampirate captain’s urging. She reached in and extracted the small leather notebook in which she had started to write the “crossing stories” of the Vampirate crew — the accounts of what their lives were when they were mortals and how they had gone from that world to this. So far, few of the pages had been used. It only had Darcy Flotsam’s story — written in Grace’s best handwriting — and Sidorio’s much darker tale, hastily scrawled under somewhat different circumstances.
    Her eyes ran over these last words. His tale was as thrilling to her as it was horrific. Lieutenant Sidorio had revealed that, many centuries before, he had kidnapped Julius Caesar and later been killed in revenge. In spite of the raw fear Sidorio instilled in Grace, she was glad to know his story and to have captured it in this book. She had plucked a dark secret that few others in this world knew, and to Grace that was as heady a thrill as if she had pressed the rarest of orchids between the pages of her notebook.
    As she came to the last page of writing, she sighed. She would dearly love to add to the journal. Aboard the Vampirate ship, she had hatched a plan to chronicle the crossing stories of each and every member of the crew. That thought still sent a shiver of excitement through her, though she knew she had little hope of making it happen.
    Grace’s eyes were growing as tired as the rest of her body. She closed the journal and placed it beside her on the bed. She lay back on the sheets and she closed her eyes. She brought her hand up to her neck, tracing the chain hanging around it. As her index finger followed its path down below her shirt, it found the heart-shaped locket Connor had given to her. Her fingers pushed it to one side and made contact with Lorcan’s Claddagh ring. As she touched it, there