“We should have stayed with you in your forest,” Allie said.

Lief smiled gently. “It would have been a fun forever.” Then he looked at the kids all around him. “But that’s okay. I don’t mind. I’m ready.”

“Ready for what?” Allie asked.

Lief found himself perplexed by the question. “I don’t know” he said. “Just … ready.”

That’s when the drone of the Sulphur Queen’s engines died. A few moments later the entire chimed mob swung forward, then back as the ship ran aground.

“We’ve stopped,” said the high-chimed Boy Scout.

“We always stop,” said another.

“No, this is different.”

“Quiet,” shouted Allie. “Listen!”

There came the sound of far off footsteps on metal that quickly grew louder. It wasn’t just one person descending into the bowels of the ship, but dozens.

Allie was the last. Allie was the first, just as the fortune had said: She was the last to be chimed, and the first cut down.

The McGill burst into the chiming chamber with the full complement of his crew behind him. He came straight to Allie.

Allie found the McGill even more hideous when looking at him upside down. She could see into his massive misshapen nostrils full of metaphysical nastiness. Fortunately she didn’t have to look for long, because with a single slash of his razor-sharp claws, he cut Allie’s rope, and she fell headfirst to the sulphur-dusted floor. She got up quickly, determined to stand eye to eye with the beast.

“Where are we?” she asked. “Why did we stop?”

The McGill never took his eyes off her, but he didn’t answer her either. Instead he spoke to his crew. “Cut them all down” he said, “and use the ropes to tie their hands behind their backs.”

“You’re setting us free?” asked the high-strung Boy Scout, to which the McGill answered, “I’m sending you to your reward.”

“Yay!” cried Lief.

“It’s not that kind of reward,” Allie told him.

Lief gave her an upside-down shrug. “Yay, anyway.”

The McGill grabbed Allie’s arm, and although she tried to shake him off, he held tight. “You will come with me, and you will do exactly as I say.” Then he brought her up on deck.

Allie had lived in South Jersey before her fateful car crash—Cape May to be exact, the state’s southernmost tip. Yet even though it was only an hour from Atlantic City, Allie had never been. Her parents despised the crowds and general vulgarity, and so they avoided Atlantic City as if they were making a political statement.

Still, Allie knew where she was the moment she came onto the deck of the Sulphur Queen. She had to hide her excitement or the McGill might be suspicious. Her plan had worked! Or at least it had worked so far. There was a long way to go—a dozen things that could go wrong—but there was one thing she knew she could count on: the McGill’s arrogance, and his blind faith in her false fortune. Perhaps that would give the Twin Pier Marauders the edge they needed to defeat him again. My enemy’s enemy id my friend, thought Allie. No matter how savage the Marauders were, if they brought down the McGill, they would be good friends to have.