I threw a pom-pom at the door and returned to the project of attempting to convert the pair of shorts that came with the cheerleading outfit into suitable underwear.

“I’m feeling distinctly like a third wheel,” I commented later that day, when Mrs. P and her coterie of priestesses trooped into the room fresh from the swimming pool.

“We asked you to come swim with us, but you refused,” Mrs. P said, tossing off her swimsuit cover-up and heading into the bedroom.

“You didn’t miss much, although your friends were up there being nosy again,” Bunefer said, plopping down on the window seat.

“May and Gabriel?” I asked, wondering what they were up to.

“No, the two old ladies. Gidget and Moondoggie.”

“Ken and Barbie,” I corrected. “I think they’re just dying to be of help. They are some sort of cherubs or something from a divine place. Kind of a heaven.”

“The Court of Divine Blood?” one of the priestesses asked. Ahset, I think, although I got her and her (biological) sister Henit mixed up. She looked thoughtful. “Henny and I spent a summer being apprentices in the Court, and I don’t remember seeing them. But then, I didn’t meet everyone.”

“That’s what they said, and I don’t see why they’d lie about being cherubs. I mean, that’s kind of an odd thing to claim if it’s not true.”

She shrugged. “After they left, the captain came around and told us to stop being so loud and to stop scaring off other passengers, and all sorts of other mean-spirited things like that, which of course Ipy wasn’t going to stand for. She read him the riot act about passengers having the right to play in the pool as they see fit, and if we wanted to have music and drink shooters while we were swimming, then that was no business of his, and oh, all sorts of other things like that. All in all, you probably were better off not being with us.”

“Goodness. Sounds like you guys had quite the time of it.”

“It would have been far more fun without the captain harshing our mellow, I’ll tell you that!” Bunefer said before heading into Mrs. P’s room.

Gilly entered the cabin at that point, a large beach bag in her arms. She looked around, a faint frown ruining her normally perky expression. She marched into the Mrs. P’s room, then came out to ask me, “Is Ipy in your room, by any chance?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“She’s not here. Ipy never takes a leave without designating one of us as being in charge of Aset’s protection.”

I sat up from where I’d been slouched and looked around, just as if I’d discover the missing model hiding behind the love seat. “I haven’t seen her since you ladies went off to sunbathe and swim. That was almost two hours ago.”

“She said she wanted to get more sunblock because Khenut couldn’t find hers and she didn’t come back. I thought maybe she had too much sun and came in here to have a little rest. Last night’s Beach Blanket Bingo party got kind of intense, and she did, after all, win the tequila shooter contest. I wonder where she could be?”

“I heard she had a little argument with the captain.”

She made a face. “That man has the soul of a toad. A crusty, pus-riddled toad. Ipy gave him as good as she got, and he left with his tail between his legs.”

“Good for her.” I got to my feet. “Let me double check to make sure she’s not indulging in a hangover from hell. Literally. Ha!”

But Ipy wasn’t in my room, nor was she in any of the public rooms on the ship. Gilly and I searched them all, after she alerted the others and told them to stay with Mrs. P while we looked around.

“Right, this is a wash,” I said, emerging from the tiny shop. “The saleswoman said Ipy hasn’t been in today.”

“Where could she have gotten to?” Gilly asked, wringing her hands.

I patted her arm and started up the stairs. “I don’t know, but we’re going to get to the bottom of this. We’ll tell the captain we’re missing a passenger and let him search all the parts of the ship we can’t.”

“I don’t like him,” Gilly complained, but followed me upstairs nonetheless.

I kept the thought to myself that the captain scared the bejeepers out of me, feeling that one of us had to put on a brave front. Ten minutes later, we emerged from the room that served as the bridge—the habitual haunt of Captain Kherty—and looked at each other with despair.

“He’s not a nice man,” Gilly said, casting a dark look at the closed door to the bridge. The sound of it slamming behind us still echoed in my ears.

“No, he’s not. That doesn’t mean we have to sit around and ‘wait for Ipy to come crawling out of wherever she’s hidden to sleep off her hangover’—honestly, how that man can live with himself with that sort of attitude toward his passengers is beyond me. No sir. We’re going to find her. Come on, let’s go rile up a couple of dragons.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Gilly asked, trotting after me when I went to find Rowan.

“What’s the use of having tame dragons at your beck and call if you can’t get them to overrule a snotty captain?” I asked lightly. “Why don’t you go to May and Gabriel’s cabin and see if they are there. Ask them to meet me up on the promenade deck. I’ll drag Rowan away from whatever bit of research he’s doing, and we’ll have a confab.”

She trotted off to do that, and I proceeded to search for Rowan. We hadn’t seen him during our previous search, leading me to believe that he was closeted somewhere working on the problem of the ring. It took a while, but at last I found him on the pool deck, sitting sideways on a lounge facing Gabriel, who was seated likewise. The two men seemed to be in deep conference.

“—do you control it? All I have to do is look at her and I instantly want to take her to bed.”

Gabriel smiled, revealing dimples. “Ah, that is the curse of wyverns—our mates are precious to us, so we tend to feel emotions concerning them to a greater degree. Control, as I have said, is the key to all issues—if you can control your fire and your emotions, then you can control your sept. I find it helps to center myself in one place in time, and then use that to ease any rampant emotions that threaten to get the better of me.”