Lies (Gone #3)(68)

“What do we do if they come here?” Virtue asked.

Sanjit had no easy answer. He stalled. “They’ll have a hard time landing. Even with no surf they’ll never get off that boat and up the cliffs.”

“Unless we help them,” Virtue said.

“What they’ll do is come around and try to get in by the yacht. If they go the right direction, they’ll come around and see it. Pretty good chance they’ll end up drowning if they try that. Crushed in between the yacht and the rocks. Even with no surf. It’s too tight.”

“If we helped them they could make it,” Virtue said cautiously. “It’ll take them a while to get here. That’s not exactly a fast boat. And they’re still a long way off.” He looked again through the binoculars. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Don’t know what?”

Virtue shrugged. “It’s not good to just decide you don’t like people, not even give them a chance.”

Sanjit felt the hairs on his neck tingle. “What are you saying, Choo?”

“I don’t know. I’m not saying anything. They’re probably fine.”

“Do they look fine?”

Virtue didn’t answer. Sanjit noticed that his jaw was tight. Brow furrowed. Lips pressed into a thin line.

“Do they look, fine, Choo?” Sanjit repeated.

“They could be like, refuges, you know?” Virtue said. “What are we going to do? Turn them away?”

“Choo. I’m asking you. Do they look fine to you? Crazy as it sounds, I kind of trust your feelings on things.”

“They don’t look anything like the men who came out of the jungle to our village,” Choo said. “But they feel like them.”



“Where are we supposed to land?” Diana asked.

The islands, which she’d been watching for what felt like days now, were finally within reach. The motorboat wallowed before bare cliffs that might have been one hundred feet high.

“There has to be something, like a dock or whatever,” Bug said. He was nervous, Diana knew. If his story about this island turned out to be a fantasy Caine would make him wish he were dead.

“We are about out of gas,” Tyrell said. “Maybe, like a gallon or whatever. I can hear it sloshing around, you know?”

“In which case the boat doesn’t matter,” Caine said. “We survive here, on the island, or we die.” He cast a reptilian look at Bug. “Some of us sooner than others.”

“Which way do we go?” Penny wondered aloud. “Right or left?”

“Anyone have a coin we can flip?” Diana asked.

Caine stood up. He shaded his eyes and looked left. Then right. “The cliffs look lower to the right.”

“Can’t you just go all magic powers and levitate us up to the top of the cliff?” Paint asked and then giggled nervously, slobbering down his red-stained lips.

“I’ve been wondering just that,” Caine said thoughtfully. “It’s a long way up. I don’t know.” He looked down at the kids in the boat. Diana knew what was coming next. She wondered idly who would get the honor.

“Let’s go, Paint,” Caine said. “You’re about useless, might as well be you.”

“What?” Paint’s alarm was comical. Diana would have felt sorry for him another time. But this was life and death and right now.

And Caine was right: Paint didn’t exactly contribute anything vital. He had no powers. He was no good in a fight. He was a druggie moron who had long since fried whatever brain he’d had.

Caine raised his hands and Paint floated up from his seat. It was as if Caine was lifting him from the middle of his body because Paint’s feet dangled and kicked and his arms waved. His long, ratty brown hair drifted and swirled as if he was in a slow-moving tornado.

“No, no, no,” he moaned.

Paint floated out over the water.

“If you lowered him a little it would be like he was walking on water,” Penny said.

Paint moved closer to the cliff, still just a few feet above the water, now twenty or thirty feet away from the boat.

“You know, Penny,” Diana said, “it’s not all that funny. If it works we’ll all be going up the same way.”

Somehow that fact had not occurred to Penny. Diana felt a distant sort of satisfaction at the way sadistic pleasure turned to worry on the girl’s face.

“Okay, now for the altitude,” Caine said. Paint began to rise again, up the cliff face. It was almost bare, hard-packed soil dotted with extrusions of rock and a few scattered bushes that looked like they’d chosen a very precarious spot to grow.

Paint rose. Diana held her breath.

“No, no, no!” Paint’s voice floated back down, ignored. He was no longer kicking. Instead he was trying to twist around to face the cliff, arms straining outward, looking for something—anything—to grab.

Halfway up, the height of a five story building, Paint’s ascent slowed noticeably. Caine took a deep breath. He didn’t seem to be straining physically. His muscles were not taut; the power he had was not about muscles. But his expression was grim and Diana knew that in some unfathomable way he was exerting all his power.

Paint rose, but more slowly.

And then he slipped. Fell.