The silence where the bellhop had been was a physical weight. Frankie’s breath hitched. A low groan echoed from the direction the ghost had pointed. Deeper this time. Guttural. It was followed by a thin, sharp sound. A scream?

  Damon grabbed her wrist. “We should look for Ted and Dee Dee.”

  Her vampire senses flared. She could hear them. Heartbeats. Ted’s steady thump. Dee Dee’s rapid flutter. Somewhere ahead. She ran.

  Rusted walls blurred past. Her sneakers slipped on something wet and slick. She caught herself on a doorframe.

  The ship groaned, a deep sound from its belly.

  Damon was right behind her.

  “Frankie!”

  Ted’s voice. Ahead. Through a set of double doors.

  They burst through the doors.

  The space opened up. Huge. Two stories high.

  Gilt pillars. A vaulted ceiling. Chandeliers hung like dead spiders.

  In the center of the warped floor, Ted and Dee Dee.

  Their faces were white.

  “You guys okay?” Frankie crossed to them.

  “We’re okay,” Ted’s laugh came out shaky. “I think. We saw… a guy with no legs walk through a wall.”

  Dee Dee pushed her glasses up. “The ship’s not abandoned. It’s occupied. By—”

  The temperature dropped.

  Instantly.

  Frankie’s breath came out white. The cold bit through her red t-shirt, raised goosebumps on her arms, made her jaw ache. This wasn’t ocean chill. This was something deliberate.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “What the hell,” Damon said.

  The upper balcony erupted with movement.

  The spirit that materialized wasn’t sad like the bellhop. It was fury given form—a twisted, skeletal thing with limbs bent at impossible angles, its face locked in a scream without sound. Its eyes were pits. Its mouth a ragged hole.

  It launched.

  The thing moved like a film with frames missing—here, there, at them—covering the distance in a stuttering rush. No footsteps. No breath.

  Frankie shoved Damon sideways. “Move!”

  She pivoted and swung.

  Her fist connected with—

  Nothing.

  Cold smoke. Her knuckles passed through the apparition’s torso, the sensation making her stomach lurch. Frost bloomed across her skin where she’d touched it. A burning cold. Her hand went numb.

  “Shit!”

  The spirit whirled on Ted.

  He stumbled backward, eyes wide. “Uh—guys?”

  The thing’s white claws, dripping a spectral mist, moved toward his neck.

  Dee Dee screamed.

  Damon grabbed a section of the staircase railing—already half-rotted, hanging loose—and wrenched it free. The metal screeched. Bolts snapped. He swung the iron bar in a wild arc.

  The apparition drew back.

  A sound like shattering glass filled the ballroom. The spirit’s form flickered—solid, transparent, solid again—its edges vibrating violently. It hissed, a sound like steam escaping a ruptured pipe, and shot backward into the shadows beneath the balcony.

  Gone.

  The sound vanished, leaving a ringing quiet.

  Frankie’s chest heaved. Her right hand throbbed, fingers tingling as circulation returned. She stared at the spot where the thing had disappeared.

  “Did you—” Ted swallowed. “Did you actually hit it?”

  Damon held the railing like a baseball bat, his knuckles white. “I have no idea. It just… backed off.”

  “The iron,” Dee Dee breathed, her eyes wide. “The railing. It’s iron.”

  Frankie flexed her numb, burning hand. Cold. The spirit was cold.

  “Spirits… folklore,” Dee Dee said, thinking out loud. “They can’t touch it. Cold iron. It… it disrupts them.”

  “So it’s their kryptonite,” Ted said, the realization dawning on his face.

  Frankie flexed her aching fingers. One weapon. One weakness.

  Damon held the railing tight, his eyes scanning the upper balcony. The space around them was vast and dark.

  The silence rushed back in, heavier than before. It wasn’t empty. She could feel them now. In the shadows. Under the staircase. Watching.

  The ship wasn’t haunted. It was infested.

  And they were trapped inside with the dead.