Sirius awoke to a heavy weight on his chest and the sound of someone vomiting. He opened his eyes and his vision was filled with red hair. The beauty of it might have distracted him if not for the sounds. Understanding what was happening and worried she’d get vomit in her beautiful hair, he reached out and gently swept it away from her face.

  He considered stroking her back but he worried that might make her nausea worse.

  “I have regrets,” she mumbled.

  “Really?” He tired not to laugh at that. He wasn’t sure what she had expected but then yesterday had been rough. Her tone was light though, the kind that invited a little mocking. After all, humour was a better medicine than liquor. “Was that the 5th beer or the 7th?”

  She groaned.

  This time he did stroke her back.

  Gingerly, she pulled herself up into a sitting position.

  He took a look at her face. She definitely looked worse for wear. Her eyes were tired and there was no smile to be found anywhere on her face.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, losing his mocking tone somewhat. He figured she probably just needed some breakfast and then she’d be fine but he didn’t want her to think he was making fun of her.

  She didn’t answer. She just sat there looking confused. She seemed to be breathing quite heavily as well. She looked sort of how he felt when he’d just woken a bad dream.

  He started to worry a little more. Maybe the previous day was still weighing heavily on her mind. “Amanda?” he asked. His fingertips gently doing circles on her back.

  “Um.” she reached up and rubbed the sides her her head. She didn’t look alright at all.

  He pulled himself into a better position, close enough that he could pull her into a hug if she needed it, but not quite there yet so he could keep watching her expression. He got the sense that something was more wrong than usual but he wasn’t sure specifically what. “Hey?” He tried to position himself so he could look at her eyes.

  She had her face tilted down staring at the bedspread, almost with a look he would have described as horror.

  Not a single trace of playfulness left in his tone, Sirius repeated his question. “Are you okay?”

  She met his eyes finally. That seemed to spur her into action. She scrambled over him and almost fell in her rush to get out of bed. “We need to find Morgan and the others, Stinger and Ferret and co. I have to talk to them. There’s a ship coming and we need to be ready.”

  Her sudden change from tired and confused to decisive and commanding took him off guard.

  “Maybe some breakfast first?” he suggested, not sure what was happening.

  She shook her head. “No time. I mean maybe we can send someone to grab something but we need to get everyone with any wit together and plan for the day, and we need to do it now.”

  He just stared at her. He got the sense there was an urgency to do something but he didn’t understand why.

  She seemed to grasp that he needed more of an explanation because she paused in her rush to get dressed, took a deep breath, and then explained. “I’ve time travelled. Yesterday… my yesterday, is not the same as your yesterday. There is a ship called The Slicer, pirated by a captain called The Butcher, and she’s on our tail. They have no intent to negotiate and they are faster and stronger than we are. We need a plan to deal with them or by the end of this day a lot of people are going to be dead.”

  That was all it took to get Sirius moving. He believed every word she said, as crazy as it sounded. Everything pointed to the conclusion that she was telling the truth. Sure, she was good at bluffing, but for better or worse he did trust her, and even if that had been in doubt, the fact that she knew those names was more than enough to convince him.

  The pair of them were out of the room in seconds.

  “They were going to do a toast for Pinto and Miles this morning but that will have to wait. We need everyone ready. Also someone needs to fetch Abe. He’s a wallbreaker and we’re gonna need him,” Amanda explained as they walked.

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  Sirius frowned but nodded. He found two sailors, one to find Stinger and have him sent to Morgan’s room, the other to bring some breakfast for them. Neither of them questioned him, they just ran off to do what they’d been told. He hoped Morgan would be in her cabin but if she wasn’t Stinger would likely know where she was and while they waited for her they could start talking about what needed to be done.

  As they walked, he asked Amanda to take him through a summary of events of the previous day, or as it turned out, two previous days.

  Once she’d given him an overview, he asked her to go through it again. He wanted to have a good understanding by the time they went through it with Morgan. She, he knew, would not be as easy to convince. Also he was pretty sure Amanda was leaving out details. Whether or not it was on purpose or because she couldn’t remember them he wasn’t sure. He didn’t really know how time travel even worked but he knew it could be done, and if anyone was going to do it, it would probably be her.

  “So the magic was in the ring?” he confirmed.

  “Yeah.”

  “But you don’t have it anymore?”

  She was quiet for a moment. “It got used up. When I woke up this morning, the ring was gone. That last trip used everything it had including the material it was made from. I was trying to get back further but it seems like it was locked to the same time point, not even the same amount of time back but that exact point. I don’t know why.”

  “Maybe it was earlier?” he suggested. “When the clock ticked over from midnight or when the sun first cleared the horizon?”

  She went silent again and when he paused in front of Morgan’s door to look back at Amanda he could see she hadn’t thought of such things. He could also see that the suggestion frustrated her.

  “You mean I could have been sleeping while half the morning was ticking away?” she lamented.

  “Well, it’s not like you could have made yourself wake up,” Sirius replied.

  The observation didn’t appear to placate her at all.

  He knocked on the door and then entered without waiting for a reply. Morgan had never been one for shyness or excessive displays of politeness but she’d appreciate the brief warning.

  Morgan wasn’t there but Randy was. He was lying sprawled on his back in bed, a sheet covering his lower half, wearing nothing on his top half. He initially appeared asleep but it was impossible to tell given he was wearing his sunglasses. He sat up as Sirius entered.

  He groaned as if he’d just woken. “What’s all this about. If you’re looking for Morgan she’s down looking at yesterday’s haul.”

  “I’ll need to you to go fetch her then. This is important,” Sirius told him.

  Amanda had other ideas. In a hopeful tone she said, “We should go down there. There might be something that was in those crates that might be useful.”

  Sirius shook his head. “I’ve sent for Stinger to come here. It’s better we don’t all move about until we’ve got everyone briefed. We can have a look after but we can’t rely on there being something, especially given what you said about their magic capabilities.”

  Randy pulled himself out of bed. He wasn’t wearing anything on his bottom half either. Amanda spun so she was looking the other way. Sirius didn’t bother. The werewolves had never been concerned much with modesty and there were more pressing things to focus on. Although, he did find the slight blush in Amanda’s cheeks slightly distracting. The situation seemed to have pulled her back out of her own worried thoughts a bit too and that was probably a good thing.

  As Randy reached for some clothes which had been haphazardly discarded on the floor,he asked, “What’s the issue?”

  Sirius was about to tell him that they should wait for Stinger or the captain, when both people walked in through the door. They were followed by Larska and Ferret.

  “What’s going on?” Morgan demanded.

  “Close the door. Take a seat,” Sirius said. He knew time was of the essence but it was better they all had a moment to settle in and appreciate the seriousness of the situation. Getting them to feel it first would make them more likely to accept it. It would also give Amanda few seconds to get over the shock of seeing Randy naked.

  Once they were settled, Sirius nodded at Amanda to explain. It was best she was the one who did it. If he explained for her it would cost her some credibility. They needed to hear her say it, hear the way she said it. Plus, the more she told him what had happened, the more of a chance he had to pick up something that might change the outcome, and the more likely he was to think of the right questions.

  He wasn’t sure if might have been too much. What if she got tired of telling the same thing over and over or just tired in general. But she didn’t. She took her time and she explained things just as thoroughly as she had the first two times, which is to say, he was still pretty sure there were things she wasn’t saying but it was enough and he was starting to pick up on where the gaps were. While the others processed what she had said, he considered his own list of options and key things of note.

  One thing he noted, was that Amanda seemed excessively tired but considerably less hungover than he would have assumed. She was alert but obviously sleep-deprived and while she waited for everyone to process she helped herself to a glass of the dark liquor that rested on Morgan’s desk and downed a shot of it in one go.

  Morgan raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment on the act. “So, let me get this right, you want us to believe that you time travelled from a different version of this day, two of them in fact, both in which I end up dead.”

  Amanda nodded. “That’s right.”

  Morgan turned to look at Sirius. He could feel her studying him. He gave her nothing but a serious look in return. If he was reading her right, he was pretty sure she believed them but she was just making sure.

  “How did they find us?” Stinger asked the room.

  “That is a good question,” Morgan agreed. With a resolved look she commanded, “Randy, fetch me Abe. We can’t trust him. He’s probably the reason they know our location. If we take care of him, we solve our problem.”