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somehow decided that the most important thing there ever was or would be was the witch woman he was following out of the high school. The other person in my head was me, too, but a tiny little me who was screaming silently, who was terrified of the witch and the tattooed man and Mr. Jellyfish, who wanted to run, to save himself.
    Trouble was, the little me was having no effect whatsoever. We crossed the football field, heading toward the old oak tree, which had been struck by lightning a couple of years back and now just stuck up into the sky like a rotten tooth. The sun had just gone down, but the sky was still light. I was shivering.
    The witch turned to the tattooed man. “Scarabus, contact the transport.”
    He bowed his head. I could see goose bumps on his skin under one of those not-quite-clear images. He raised a finger and touched it to one of the tattoos on his neck, and suddenly I could see that one clearly. It was a ship under sail. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the pupils were glowing gently.
    “The ship Lacrimae Mundi at your bidding, lady,” he said in a distant voice like a radio broadcast.
    “I have our quarry safely here. Bring her in, captain.”
    “As you wish,” said the tattooed man, in the distant voice. Then he closed his eyes and took his hand off his tattoo; and when he opened his eyes, they were normal once more. “What’s the word?” he asked in his normal voice.
    “They’re bringing her in now,” said the jellyfish man. “Look!”
    I raised my head.
    The ship—it seemed as big as the auditorium—that was materializing in the air in front of us looked like every pirate ship you’ve ever seen in old movies: stained wooden planks, big billowing sails, and a figurehead of a man with the head of a shark. It was gliding toward us about five feet above the ground, and the green grass of the football field tossed back and forth like the surface of the sea as it passed.
    The big me couldn’t have cared less about ghost ships sailing through the air, as long as the witch lady and I were together. The little me that was trapped in the back of my head was sort of hoping that all this was just a bad reaction to some new medication the nice doctors were trying on mein whatever mental hospital they had me locked up in.
    A rope ladder was thrown over the side of the ship.
    “Climb!” said the witch woman, and I climbed.
    When I was up over the side of the ship, huge hands grabbed me and dropped me on the deck like a sack of potatoes. I looked up to see men the size of wrestlers dressed like sailors in pirate movies. They had scarves tied around their heads and worn old sweaters and battered jeans, and were barefoot. They were more careful with the witch woman, lifting her carefully over the side of the ship. They all backed away then. I guessed that they didn’t want to touch the jellyfish man or Scarabus, the tattooed guy, and I couldn’t really blame them.
    One of the sailors looked down at me. “Is that what all the fuss is about?” he asked. “That shrimp?”
    “Yes,” said the witch woman coldly. “That shrimp is what all the fuss is about.”
    “Lumme,” said the sailor. “Are we going to drop him overboard, then? Once we’re under way?”
    “Hurt him before we get back to HEX and every warlock in the Tarn will want a little piece of your hide,” she told him. “He dies our way. What do you think powers this ship of yours, anyway? Take him down to my quarters.”
    She turned to me. “Joseph, you need to go with this man. Stay where he tells you to stay. To do otherwise would make me very unhappy.”
    The idea of hurting her made my heart ache. Literally—there was a stabbing pain inside me. I knew that I could never do anything to make her unhappy in any way. I would wait for her until the world ended if I had to.
    The sailor showed me down a flight of steps into a narrow corridor that smelled like floor polish and fish. At the end of the corridor there was a