Page 23 of Break Out the Girl

It’s wonderfully dark inside. It smells like old iron, dead crabs, and has that deep hollow sound that makes my footsteps go ‘slap, slap, slap,’ across the concrete floor.

Blimey, just imagine what my hooves would sound like!

“You’ve got your magic back?” Kitten asks Shane.

“Mostly, and you?”

Kitten shrugs. “I can feel my spark, but nothing's connecting yet.”

Ooh, spark. That must be the thing inside me. “Teach me a spell, Shane. I think I’ve got the zip-zaps too!”

Sadly, he doesn’t hear me. Instead he follows Burt into a little room tucked in the corner. An office, I think, for people who liked desks and piles of paper. It has a cracked glass window that lets in the gray harbor light. All the cabinets are covered in a thick blanket of dust, like Sleeping Beauty’s furniture.

“Here, look at this,” Kitten says, her yellow mackintosh rustling like a bag of crisps. She’s looking at a map.

No, it’s a sea chart.

Burt drops our very important bag of food on the floor. Good thing dented tins make the best suppers. He presses his mitts flat against the paper, making it flat as a pancake. “This is good, shows both islands, though what we really need is intel. An internet search would give us plans on what’s built where.”

Shane steps up. Maybe he’s got cyber-powers? I wonder if he makes that whirring, noisy dial-up sound?

If he does, it’s disappointingly silent. “This one has actual routes marked, but the other just has brown dashes—that’s private roads. Doesn’t take a genius to guess where a hidden brothel would be,” Shane says, being clever.

I don’t want to one-up him, so I just nod my agreement. No need to point out that I knew that as I’ve actually been to the baddest island in the world before. And anyway, I hate thinking about that. Instead I can focus on the charts.

I love chart-art!

I elbow my way in between him and Burt. “This line is the shipping channel,” I tell them, tapping a long, purple mark with my fingernail. “The magenta ones mean it’s a Traffic Separation Scheme, see? Proper highway for the big boys, so the cargo hulls don't go bonk in the night.”

Burt gives me a look, the kind he uses when he thinks I’m about to start whistling or doing a dance. “London, do you actually know what you’re talking about?”

I huff, adjusting my floral cardigan because it’s bunching up at the armpits. “See the little numbers scattered all over the blue bits. Look at that twenty-two right by the entrance. It’s in fathoms and feet. Six feet to a fathom, everyone knows that! Twenty-two fathoms means it’s deep enough to hide a whale, but right next to it—see that little six with the underline? That’s a drying height, silly billy. It means when the tide goes out, the mud comes up to say hello and your boat goes crunch.”

Shane blinks, his dark eyes narrowing as he leans closer to the dusty paper. “You actually have this knowledge?”

“Of course!” My fingers dance across the crinkly paper, following the wiggly contour lines that look like giant thumbprints. “And look here, at the gap between the mainland and the first island. You see those tiny magenta feathers on the arrows? That’s the tidal stream. The numbers next to them—three-point-five and five-point-zero—that’s the knots at springs and neaps. If you try to take a little jaunt through there when the ebb tide hits the western wind, you’ll get the yikes.”

Burt’s brow is so furrowed it looks like a plowed field. “And this?” His finger traces over a tiny symbol—a little circle with dots around it and a line through the middle. “There be a sunken wreck right there, matey, arrr,” I grin in my best pirate voice.

Kitten snuggles into my side, making me the happiest chappy in kingdom-come. “Where did you learn this, London?”

“Sailed the sea with Captain Xi,” I tell her. “You should see me with a sextant.” I give a wink.

“This is great. So what boat shall we steal?” Kitten asks, getting all excited about doing some naughty nautical nicking.

Shane has been awfully quiet. His vibrations aren't wobbling at all. It’s like he’s frozen. I pinch him on the bottom to make sure he’s not stuck.

“Get off me, un imbécile absolu.”

Oh, phew. He’s still with us.

“Yeah, a boat.” Burt looks at me. “Thoughts?”

My chest swells with pride. Burt? Asking me for my thoughts? That hardly ever happens. In fact, it’s never happened. Aw, love him.

“Something shallow-draft would be super-duper, then we can zoom over sandbanks even at low tide. Hmm. But we’ve got some real sea to cross, so a jon boat might be too oopsie. A dingy, I think. Sailing dingy with oars, then we can pull the keel up. Lovely job.”

Burt looks at Kitten, then at me. “You can get us there without putting Rory in any danger?”