The Girl from Everywhere (The Girl from Everywhere #1)(87)

There was a chill and a stillness; then Mr. Hart released my hair. I sagged to my knees and pushed myself down to the earth, among the loam and the leaves. My palm was sticky against my face, and I smelled the tang of blood and something else, a whiff of cold earth and damp stone and dry moss, but I did not look, I did not dare. Blake had warned me about the Hu’akai Po. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t silence; it was the sound of a hundred souls holding their breath.

And I could no longer hear Mr. Hart.

I reached out blindly, tentatively, groping through the empty space beside me where he had just been, but I found nothing. I was relieved; I was appalled. I closed my fingers around a handful of dead leaves and crushed them in my fist to stop my hand from shaking.

I lay there shivering, water seeping up from the soil and into my clothes, along my forearms and elbows and knees as I pressed myself into the ground, until the mournful conch sounded once more, until I felt the rhythm of two hundred feet passing me by and fading away, until the Hu’akai Po vanished beyond all hearing and the only sound was my heart beating in my throat.

And my father’s voice.

“Nixie?”

I crawled over to him, staying low, finding my way with my hands, too scared to open my eyes. I touched his hand and he grabbed my fingers, crushing them in his own. “Are you all right?” I whispered, afraid to speak too loud, and he wrapped me in his arms.

“Oh, God, Nixie.” His breath was hot on my neck as he clutched me tight. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m still here,” I said, half to convince myself.

“And Hart?”

“Gone. They took him, Dad. The Night Marchers. They—” I couldn’t finish the sentence; Slate had tightened his embrace, squeezing the air from my lungs. But there was nothing more for me to say.

“Good,” he murmured. “He’s lucky it wasn’t me.”

I heard footsteps then, and I couldn’t help myself, my eyes flew open. It was Kashmir, and he was propping up Blake, who had blood seeping through his coat. I scrambled to my feet. “Are . . . is he—” I started, but when Kashmir stopped, Blake slumped to his knees, and I didn’t wait for an answer to the question I couldn’t bear to ask. I pulled off Blake’s jacket and groaned at the sight of the blood soaking his side.

Kashmir handed Blake over to Slate, wincing through his own pain, but he shrugged me off when I reached for the big powder burn on his stomach. “Yes, yes, my shirt will never recover,” he said, pushing my hands away and holding his side like he had a stitch. “Come, we’ve got to get him to the ship. See if we’ve got something to help him. Where’s the gold?”

I glanced back at the ground—the hollow where I’d huddled beside Mr. Hart—but the bag had disappeared too.

Slate propped Blake up with his shoulder, and I wadded his jacket and held it to his wound as we stumbled and slid down the mountain. I kept an eye out for torchlight along the way, half afraid the Night Marchers would return, but they had disappeared completely. We moved as quickly as possible, but by the time we reached the waterfall, Blake was pale as bone in the white moonlight, and despite my efforts to staunch the blood, his shirtfront was soaked with a slick like black ink. He wouldn’t make it to the ship; he wouldn’t make it down the hill. And even if he could, I had no idea if the mercury would kill him or save him.

Why had I let the caladrius go? I couldn’t take my eyes off Blake’s face, and I remembered how he’d blushed, his cheeks bright pink, when he’d first shown me this spot, this sacred place he loved so well. My heart pounded above the sound of the waterfall, roaring in my ears.

“Wait,” I said. “Stop. We have to stop.” Slate stumbled to a halt, and Blake fell to the ground. I gazed up through the pearly clouds of silver spray drifting down to the round mirror of the pool. The healing pool. “Here,” I said, desperate for hope. It had to work. There was no other option. “Bring him here. Lay him in the water.”

Slate lifted Blake and staggered to the bank. He didn’t ask the questions that were in his eyes—he was breathing too hard to speak—as he knelt down to lower Blake gently into the pond.

The white of Blake’s shirt seemed to glow in the reflected moonlight, but soon his blood clouded the pool. My heart sank. I reached in—the pond was frigid, and I pawed at the water, at his shirt, at the blood as it drifted like mist. I found the ragged hole in the cloth and reached in, gingerly, fearfully, but the skin beneath was smooth and whole.

I started laughing, crying—joyful, hysterical—and I pulled Blake from the water and clutched him close, soaking the front of my shirt. Then Kashmir’s hand, warm on my shoulder; I reached up to grab his fingers. “Come, amira. We have to go.”

We met our warriors back at the clearing, and they fell in line behind us. Blake was still unconscious, but with Slate and me supporting him, we managed to make our way through the city to the boat. We were joined halfway back by Billie, who nipped at my ankles hard enough to draw blood before Kashmir picked her up, whining and wriggling, and carried her clamped under his arm.

A few brave souls were peering out their windows as we passed through town, so I pulled Blake’s gun from his jacket pocket and fired it into the air; shutters and doors slammed as the sound of the shot echoed in the street. As we boarded the junk, I heard shouted commands from the vicinity of the palace. Had the Royal Hawaiian Guard managed to escape their barracks? We cast off as quick as we could, dumping Colonel Iaukea unceremoniously on the pier—but even under full sail, we seemed to inch toward Hana’uma as dawn began to paint the sky pink. Still there was no pursuit from the American warships in the harbor, and I wasn’t surprised. Mr. D and his friends were well connected.