Burning Up

through his veins. In front of his crew or not, no one dismissed him on his ship. Closing the door, he stepped toward her—and forced himself to stop. She still hadn’t looked at him. Temper darkened her sharp features, her soft lips in a thin line, her green eyes stormy as she focused on something within the tank.
    He glanced inside. The squid and several silvery fish darted about the water. At the bottom, a foot-long metal replica of a kraken lay on its side, its eight segmented arms waving about and tentacles limp, looking as pathetic as a beetle turned upside down.
    Eben bit back his laugh, studying her face again. So that was it. She’d been angry at him often enough, but this time it had naught to do with him. He might as well not have even been here for all of the attention she turned his way. And given her dislike for the project, he’d have expected her to crow over her failure, but she was right pissed off that her prototype hadn’t worked.
    His practical, careful Ivy apparently had an artist’s temperament.
    “I had a friend at university who looked much the same when he couldn’t find a rhyme for his poetry.”
    “Like a dying privy louse?”
    Eben barked out a laugh. “I was speaking of your expression, not your kraken.”
    She snarled. He’d never wanted to kiss her so badly. Deliberately, he added fuel to her fire.
    “It couldn’t swim?”
    “You’ve got eyes, don’t you? Do you see it swimming about?” Disgusted, she pushed to her feet and dunked her arm into the tank.
    His amusement fled. His heart jumped into his throat. Grabbing her waist, he hauled her back.
    “Damn it, woman, that squid will . . .” He trailed off, staring at her gray hand dripping water.
    The squid would do absolutely nothing to her.
    She whipped around and stared at him as if he were a lunatic. Her brows drew together. She opened her mouth, then shook her head, pushing past him. “I can’t reach the bleeding thing unless I stick my head in, anyway.”
    Eben turned to watch her. Muttering, she rummaged through shelves, pushing around Kleistian jars, tossing aside small gears and cylinders, and emerging with a coil of copper wire and an influence machine, its glass disks sealed inside a vacuum bell. Setting the machine next to the tank, she pushed up her wet sleeve and began wrapping the wire around her forearm. When she glanced at him, he saw curiosity had replaced her temper.
    “You attended a university?”
    “Yes.”
    A wistful expression softened her features. Oh, hell. Something in his chest tightened. He wanted to tell her that he’d hated every moment of society’s rigid confinement and the blasted rules, but compared to the Horde, Manhattan City had been a bastion of freedom. So he only told her, “My parents disapproved of my choice of profession—both surgery and the navy. The only tolerable ship was a passenger ship, and it was best if you owned it.”
    “And now you are neither surgeon nor aboard a naval ship. Do they approve of you now?”
    “They disowned me.” And he still wasn’t certain whether it had been because he’d remained on Trahaearn’s ship, or because he’d voluntarily infected his body with nanoagents. Belief that the bugs would spread from person to person and eventually change them all into zombies still held strong through much of the New World; his family had been no exception.
    “Disowned?” Ivy’s brow had creased.
    “They no longer claim me as their son.”
    “Oh.” With pursed lips, she looked down at her arm, wrapped from her elbow to her wrist in copper wire. “I suppose I should not like it if my child became a pirate, either.”
    He grinned. Their child wouldn’t be. “I consider myself a merchant.”
    “Do you attack other ships and steal their cargo?”
    Unfortunately often. “Yes.”
    “Do you kill people?”
    Also too often. “Yes.”
    “Then you’re a Captain Cutthroat,” she said, turning to crouch beside the influence machine. “Come and spin this.”
    His instincts bristled at the command. He squashed his first response before it left his mouth. His ankle was too stiff to crouch easily, but he sank slowly to his heels while Ivy attached two clamps to the long trailing wires coming off her arm. She fixed the connecting clamps to the nodes of the influence machine, then pointed to the handle that spun the disks, generating the static charge.
    “Spin it fast.”
    Somewhat bemused, he began. The wheel clicked, the metal plates