And Phobia was … well. Phobia was Phobia.
He had never warmed to her, but then, he never seemed to warm to anyone else, either, so Nova learned even at a young age not to take his indifference personally.
Leroy approached a small, weary-looking dock. Nova could see the water foaming beneath them as they made their way over the rickety boards, damp with ocean spray. The air smelled of salt and seaweed and dead creatures washed up on the shore.
A single boat was moored at the end of the dock—twenty feet long, with nearly the full length of it taken up by an enclosed cabin. Its sides were speckled with barnacles and its flat roof was loaded with wooden travel trunks and a single rusty bicycle. A plastic chair sat on the small deck at its bow beside an empty wine bottle and a withered tomato plant sticking up from a repurposed milk jug.
There was no light coming from inside the boat and Nova wondered if they were expected.
Leroy reached over the edge of the dock and knocked on one of the dark windows.
From inside the boat, Nova heard the sounds of footsteps and the creak of old timbers. The same window that Leroy had knocked at thunked open a few inches, letting a warm yellow glow spill out onto the dock, and Nova realized that no light had gotten through before because the windows were all painted opaque black.
A pistol jutted out from the open window. “Who’s out there?”
“It’s only me, Millie,” said Leroy. “We’ve come for those papers.”
The gun shifted to the side and a woman’s eye peered out through the opening, small and surrounded by wrinkles. She scrutinized them both. “Where was I the first time I ever met Leroy Flinn?” she said, her voice dripping with suspicion.
Leroy did not hesitate. “Rummaging through the supplies in the art department at the university. Searching for precision knives and laminate, if I’m not mistaken.”
The woman grumbled under her breath and slammed the window shut.
Nova glanced at Leroy from the corner of her eye.
“She had a run-in with a face-changer a while back,” he whispered. “Almost put her out of business. She’s been a bit paranoid about it ever since.”
The door at the end of the cabin swung open and the light from inside cut across the water. “Come in, then,” the woman said. “Quick now, before anyone sees you.”
Nova glanced around. There was nothing but cliffs and empty road and the ocean in every direction. Leroy’s lone yellow car was the only sign of civilization in sight.
Leroy stepped over the rail onto the deck and slipped into the cabin of the houseboat. Nova followed, shutting the door behind her as she looked around.
The cabin was narrow and crammed so full of stuff that Leroy had to turn sideways to fit down the aisle, following the woman as she made her way to the back of the boat. Open shelving covered the walls, sporting everything from cleaning supplies to cans of food to more wine. A wood stove in the far corner was the source of the light and an encompassing warmth that tipped just slightly toward oppressive. To her left, the wall was lined with more shelving units and storage crates of all shapes and sizes, many stacked with dishes, pottery, and piles of neatly folded towels. To her right, an assembly of old printers and computer monitors, scanners and an office copy machine, a laminator, boxes of blue latex gloves, and stacks and stacks and stacks of paper of all different colors and thicknesses. A maze of string crisscrossed overhead, down the full length of the cabin, hung with drying laundry and a variety of paper documents.
“Millie,” said Leroy, pausing behind the woman as she set the gun down on top of a filing cabinet and started to remove a few sheets of paper from one of the lines, “I’d like you to meet Nova. Ace’s niece.”
“I know who she is,” said Millie, thunking the edges of the papers together to level them, then pulling an empty folder from a desk drawer and sliding them inside. “Welcome aboard, Nova McLain.”
“Um. Artino, actually.”
Millie peered around Leroy and held the packet toward her. “Not anymore.”
Taking the packet, Nova flipped open the folder and looked at the top sheet. It was a birth certificate, as simple and unembellished as those created during the Age of Anarchy tended to be. With few doctors’ offices left to perform deliveries, many women gave birth at home with the help of a midwife, who may or may not have had professional training, who may or may not have cared to complete any sort of paperwork afterward, especially when there were no governmental departments expecting such paperwork to be submitted. Nova knew that both she and Evie had been delivered at home, but as far as she knew, her parents had never gotten a certificate for either of them.