Grinning wickedly, I hurried down the last few rungs of the ladder into the darkness of the ship. Above me the thud and scrape of thirty-plus men shoving barrels of tea around was almost deafening and the interior of the ship had an overpowering musty smell that made my stomach roll a little. The joy of sticking it to Elliot faded quickly as goose bumps prickled up my neck. Remember, Regan, said the voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like my mother, people are never more violent than when two powerful entities collide—the soul-deep conviction of being right and the liberating freedom of having nothing to lose. I squinted in the dark, looking left and right, not sure which way the Butterfly had gone, and that’s when I saw it. The flick and click of a lighter being lit. A lighter that wouldn’t be invented for another two hundred years. Bingo.

I put my hands out to either side of me, using them to feel my way quickly down the passage in the dark, using the memory of that flash of light as my homing signal even after it went out. A sense of urgency pushed me faster and faster, and I barely registered the pain as my shins hit stray barrels and crates in the dark. The farther down the passage I got, the less it smelled like must and the more it smelled like something else. But what was it? Gasoline? No, that couldn’t be right. The smell was definitely chemical, though. It had a sharpness to it that set off alarm bells in my head.

The flash of light came again less than ten feet, but this time it didn’t go out immediately. The Butterfly moved it in a quick arc, and with a speed I wouldn’t have thought possible, that flickering speck of light leaped from that lighter to the wall of the ship’s passageway and ignited. The flame illuminated the face of the Butterfly just as he turned toward me, a look of shock and surprise on his face at being discovered mid-arson. I skidded to a stop, yanking my shirt up above my mouth and nose as the flames licked hungrily up the walls. Smoke burned and blurred my eyes as the Butterfly whirled and raced away down the passageway.