Violet made herself look away, up and around the cabin. Most of the yacht’s rooms had been thoroughly plundered, but even Anais had been a little squeamish about entering the cabin where her father’s bloated corpse rocked with each new current. A collection of framed photographs of sea animals had remained untouched, including one of a leaping orca that Violet had turned toward the wall. The walls were white, and the bright blue ceiling echoed the color of the carpet. There was a chrome desk clogged by warped papers and photographs, a shelf of rotting books with dreadful titles like The Financial Warrior, and a glass cabinet full of brightly colored crystal dolphins and brandy decanters long since flooded with salt water. There was a single door, barred on the other side, and three shattered portholes much too small for Violet or Dana to squeeze through. An early attempt to get out through the vents had proved to both of them that that was impossible, too.

Violet never doubted that Luce was looking for them. The yacht where Violet and Dana were imprisoned was north of the tribe’s usual territory; Luce just hadn’t thought of checking it yet, that was all. But, smart as Luce was, Violet was surprised that she was taking so long to figure it out. It definitely made a kind of perverse sense that Anais would use her family’s sunken yacht as a prison. She still thought of it as her personal property, almost as her home.

A warty, banana-colored starfish oozed out of a large purple vase, its legs groping at the aquatic emptiness. It flopped onto the desk and lay there upside down. There was something hopeless in the feeble way it squirmed, Violet thought, as if it didn’t actually believe it could ever right itself.

No one was there with her except for the sleeping Dana, the skeleton, and the starfish. But somehow Violet felt exactly as if somebody had just accused Luce of not caring what happened to them. Luce hadn’t found them, the invisible presence suggested, because she wasn’t bothering to search. Maybe she hadn’t even noticed that Dana didn’t come to visit her anymore or thought about it enough to realize that Dana’s disappearance must mean something bad had happened. All Luce cared about was herself and her singing . . .

“That’s not true,” Violet whispered. It seemed important to answer out loud, to make sure whatever it was heard her, but on the other hand she definitely didn’t want to wake Dana. “Luce is coming to get us out of here. I know it. She would anyway, but especially since—since we’re only in here because we were loyal to her.”

The presence didn’t seem to be convinced. Violet felt something like a contemptuous shrug close by.

It was her own shoulders.