Josefine found Neirin at the docks that evening, hiding behind some crates to scope out one of the ships—a cargo vessel with large sails and Isis painting along the side toward the back in rolling script.
"Is that the ship you came in on?" Neirin jumped when she spoke from behind him, spinning around quickly to fix hazel eyes on her.
"Nefoedd Josie," he pressed a hand to his chest, "you're going to give me a heart attack." Josefine looked him over briefly but he looked to be just fine.
"Sorry," she murmured anyway. Wolf snickered, but at least it was back from hiding away from Anna.
"How'd it go with Manhattan?" Neirin broke the silence, leaning against a crate so that she could tuck into cover with him.
"She gave me thirty-six hours to find evidence it was someone else."
"Or?" The look Josefine shot him must've answered the question because he exhaled through his teeth. "Okay, okay. That's the ship we were on—" he jerked back from his gesture as a light swept across the crates.
She waited for the security guard to pass. "If we get caught, it'll be your fault," she muttered the words only to be met with Neirin's grin.
"If we get caught, neither of us speaks English." On any other day, she might've laughed. He darted out of cover across the dock to the gangplank and up to the ship, pausing to wave her up before he disappeared behind the rail. Josefine peeked around the crates to check for any other nearby security before going after him. The wood creaked under her feet, but she was gone by the time security passed again.
"Where's the crew?" She whispered after Neirin as he crossed the ship's deck.
"Probably the red light district." His lack of certainty was concerning but they were already there. "I'll check cargo if you check the captain's quarters? We can meet back here in half an hour." Josefine nodded her agreement.
"I need to see the real manifest if you find it." With a nod, Neirin disappeared below deck.
#
The captain's quarters were sparsely decorated, with papers strewn haphazardly across the desk and a map of the rough trajectories of various floating islands—Otsha included—on one of the walls. Josefine scanned over the papers on the desk, her hands deep into her coat pockets to resist the urge to straighten and organize while she looked for anything that might resemble a manifest. She found one, but upon a closer look, there was nothing in it about smuggled liquor or anything else for the Irish or Anna, so it was likely a copy of the fake shown to Customs when they came to port. Josefine did another pass over the room, pausing when she found a worn leather-bound book on the shelf. It was a captain's log when she pulled it free and opened it to the most recent pages. From the last few pages after reading through them quickly, she gathered that they detailed the most recent voyage of the Isis which seemed largely uneventful except that one sailor died of what the captain described as a curse without further details beyond that they'd dumped him over the side rather than "risk the curse spreading". At the end of the account of events was the word "delivered" and a copy of the fake manifest she'd read a moment ago with a few lines of numbers she quickly deciphered as a book code. The first few lines translated into various plants she assumed stood in for various types of liquors—roses for wines, barley for scotch, and corn for bourbon—all things that would've been difficult to steal without anyone seeing, but the last line worked out to be something simple: a black book, though it was unclear if it meant an actual 'black book' or a book that happened to be black.
"Why do humans use codes?" Wolf whispered the question at the back of her mind finally back from hiding from Anna.
"To hide things from other humans," Josefine murmured back as she closed the log and returned it to its place on the shelf with the other books she'd pulled when translating the book code. "Let's go find—" she was cut off by the rattling of a key in the door's lock and immediately ducked into the small space beneath the desk.
"Once I was in Ireland digging turf and pratties and now I'm on a Yankee ship—" the captain slurred a sea shanty as he stepped inside and she huddled into a ball, a hand pressed firmly over her mouth to muffle her breathing. Josefine's heart raced as the space grew smaller and her breathing went ragged as her fingers bit into the skin of her wrist beneath the sleeves of her coat as if to claw at fresh cuts in the hope the pain would distract her from—
"Josie," Neirin's voice cut across her panic, "Josie, it's alright," he pulled her from beneath the desk, keeping a solid grip on her wrists so that she couldn't make the scratches on them any worse. "Breathe for me, nice and even." Josefine's first breath was more gasp for air, but the second came easier as her gaze darted around the room to find the captain had gone. "You alright, little sister?" She glanced Neirin's way briefly.
"You're not my brother," she said the words because that smile of his, the one he flashed her now he knew she was alright, it wouldn't have survived that house.
"You survived," Wolf murmured the words, for once not mocking her childhood or using her traumas for ammunition in its ongoing war on her psyche.
Not all of me, Josefine told it as she pulled the sleeves of her coat down over her wrists again.
"You must be fine if you're arguing with me," Neirin's smile didn't falter even a fraction and the Welsh bled thicker in his voice as he sat back on his heels, "let's be off 'fore the rest of 'em come back." She nodded her agreement now she knew what'd been stolen and climbed to her feet. He took off ahead of her, keeping low and out of sight before he disappeared and Josefine looked down at her shaking hands and the blood beneath her fingernails for a moment.
Even without it actually making a sound this time, she could hear Wolf's amusement at her suffering.
Then she curled her fingers into white-knuckled fists and hurried after him.
#
Josefine and Neirin piled through the door into her office and apartment to find it empty and dark; Bates was out it seemed. Wolf purred from the dark, making monsters of the shadows with too many teeth and too many eyes; Josefine turned on the light. Neirin collapsed on the sofa, long legs stretched out like trip hazards. He breathed an exhausted sigh while she locked the four bolts on the door again before he pulled her down onto the cushions next to him with an arm around her shoulders.
"Are you okay?" He was careful as he rolled the sleeves of her coat up to examine where she'd scratched through her skin; he was always careful when he touched her, knowing as he did that contact still meant pain for her all these years later. Josefine still flinched when Neirin's fingers grazed faded scars where her monster—her mother had carved into her flesh so many times she'd lost track. "I'm sorry," Neirin's voice was a whisper and she looked up as he let go.
"Why?" It was an honest question, she'd dealt with them and sated any hunger she might've had for revenge a long time ago.
"I'm not your real brother," there was a humorless smile on his lips, "I couldn't protect you from them." Wolf laughed aloud at his regret, but Josefine was still trying to understand.
"We were children, no one would've expected that from you." Neirin frowned and started to speak—to argue further based on the furrow of his brows so she pulled her sleeves back down and changed the subject, "What did you find in the ship's hold?" He frowned further, hazel eyes narrowed into a glare but he still relented in the end.
"The hold where they smuggle for the Irish was hidden, none of the crew should've had access during the passage."
"So it was just you, Moller, and the captain." Realistically, the captain had more motive not to betray Anna and the Irish than he had to do it—Anna was not someone people crossed without a very good reason—so her suspicion lay with Moller. "About how far do you trust Moller?" Neirin pulled a face at the question.
"I know what you're thinking," the Welsh bled thick in his words as he answered, "but he's my partner for a reason, I trust him." She thought about pointing out how naive it was to trust a fellow con artist, but Wolf was snickering at the thought so she kept it to herself almost to spite the Monster.
"The captain then." Relief flickered across his expression. "Normally, I'd start by checking his records at the bank for a very large influx of money or I'd look for problems with his family, but I can't do that anymore so I'll need you to watch him and make note of anything out of the ordinary because the only way he'd risk betraying Anna is if he was offered a small fortune or his family was put under threat." Tomorrow, Josefine would visit the Italians because regardless of the middle man the only one she knew of who was really mad enough to steal from Otsha's Irish King was Otsha's Italian Saint.