After what feels like a lifetime, we finally arrive at the diner. I immediately rush to Stacy, who is fortunately still alive. I try shaking her awake, but she doesn’t get up.

“Here, I got this,” Holly says. I step away.

She takes one of the two vases she’s carrying and splashes some of the water on Stacy’s face, who gasps awake in shock.

“Oh my God, what was that? Where am I?”

“Welcome back, Stacy. We have some water for you. It’s in this vase.”

Stacy, clearly not processing anything at normal speed, reaches her hands out. Holly gives her a confused face and places the vase in her arms.

“This is a weird cup.”

“That’s because it’s a vase, which I said.”

Like the two of us, Stacy wastes no time putting a dent in her water supply. She finishes half the vase in half a minute before breaking to breathe.

“Thanks, guys. Where’s Cody run off to?”

Holly’s posture changes, and she frowns. “He’s… he’s gone.”

“Oh,” Stacy simply replies. “Sorry to hear that. I wish I could’ve been there.”

“No, you don’t. It was awful. Apparently, there are multiple ghosts, and not all of them are as friendly as this one. What’s your name, by the way?”

“Julia,” the ghost answers.

Stacy stares at her for a long time. “You’re a ghost?”

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“Yeah, we’ve met. I sort of scared you off by screaming at you.”

“You’re the crying and screaming ghost!”

“In the flesh. Well, in the whatever this is.”

“She says the only way for us to leave the airship is to locate the captain’s quarters on the third floor,” Holly says, filling Stacy in. “She also says he’s dangerous.”

“And scary,” the woman chimes.

“Yeah, and scary. Not to mention, there’s some sort of force field keeping us here.”

“And who’s this little friend?”

“This is Aurora. We found her with a ghost who let us keep her. I think she lets us see them.”

“If she’s made of brass or some sort of copper alloy, she might be a conduit for whatever force caused this.”

“Well, if it makes sense to you, then we’ll go with it. Anyway, we should get hunting for the captain’s quarters now.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

“Oh no, I didn’t mean you, Stacy. You’ve gotta stay here. Your broken leg is going to do more harm than good. Tes and I will go deal with this, won’t we, Tes?”

I shrug. I want to be done with all this. I don’t even want to go to Jerusalem anymore. I wanna go home.

But if destroying some machine is the way of doing that, then that’s what’s happening.

“I’ll show you the way to the front door,” the ghost says, “but I won’t go any further. I don’t know if us phased can hurt each other, but I’m not going to test it.”

“I respect that,” Holly says. “Should we grab weapons?”

“Oh, you won’t be able to hurt him. For whatever reason, we can interact with things, but things can’t interact with us.”

“So what do we do?”

“Do whatever you’ve been doing, I guess.”

Well, that’s a reassuring strategy.

Holly and I steal one last drink from our vases and lock eyes.

“Are you up for this?” she asks.

I shake my head and point at her.

“Yeah, right. Far from it. But we need out, and waiting around won’t do it.”

I mimic laying down and sleeping.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she says. “Remember what Wesley said? We’ll be stuck here during the day, and we might as well wait for nightfall again at that point.”

Dang it. She’s right.

I look down at the rabbit, our newest and smallest companion. It returns the glance, its phased tentacles wriggling unpredictably.

Like me, the rabbit is completely silent. It’s what fascinates me most about animals. To communicate, humans use sounds. And when we can’t do that, we use our hands. And when we can’t do that, we write things down. Animals just… communicate. They just get it.

Here I am, having an aside about a mechanical rabbit I’ve already grown attached to.

I crack my neck and focus my eyes on Julia, our escort. Let’s do this.