Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(54)

The fortress cracked. His eyes flashed, and she saw that she had scored a hit.

He opened his mouth to reply.

A blast of fury and terror hit Mary. It knocked her out of her mental image. In Michael’s bedroom, she fell back on her heels, disoriented, while Michael surged out of his bed and slapped the light on.

Nicholas’s presence raged in the room. Mary rose to her feet as Michael asked, “What is it?”

The ghost said, The Dark One is in my father’s house.

Chapter Nineteen

MICHAEL’S EYES FLASHED, and he swore. “Has he taken them yet?”

They are getting close to the mainland. They have no radio, or any way to reach them on the boat. My father cannot hear me unless he is asleep. Nicholas rampaged the room like a cyclone. I don’t know why I ranged ahead of them. Instinct. Habit. I backed away as soon as I sensed the Dark One’s presence in the direction of my father’s house.

“Oh, my God,” Mary said. “Oh no.”

The news hit her like a punch in the gut. That wonderful, stubborn old man, and that sweet, sexy boy. If he took them, he could torture them for information. He could use them the way he had used her ex-husband Justin. The thought made her feel physically ill.

“Is there any way to make phone calls from here?” she asked. “Do they have cell phones with them?”

“We have a couple of satellite phones,” Michael said. He reached for a black T-shirt and dragged it over his head. “But they would need one too, and they don’t have one. They won’t get cell reception out on the water.”

He strode out of the bedroom toward the outer door, but before he reached it, Astra walked in. Her face had turned sharp and drawn. “What’s happened?”

“The Deceiver is at Jerry’s house,” Michael told her. “And Jerry and Jamie are getting close to the mainland.”

Astra sucked in a breath. “They both know the coordinates for how to reach this island. We’re not ready for a confrontation. We’ve only just reunited. Both of you have been seriously injured in the last few days. You’re barely rested, and you haven’t gained back all your strength. We have to pack and leave.”

“No, wait,” Mary said. “We have to find some way to help them. Nicholas said they haven’t reached shore yet.”

Both Astra and Michael turned to look at her. Michael said, “It’s a two-hour trip to the mainland. They may not have reached shore yet, but they are a lot closer to it than we are.”

“Our boat is bigger than theirs,” Mary said. “It has to be faster, right? We could try to catch them, couldn’t we?”

He shook his head. “We wouldn’t make it in time. They’ve gotten too much of a head start.”

Astra said bitterly, “I should never have let them go. I knew better, and I did it anyway.”

Mary cupped the back of her head with both shaking hands. Jerry and Jamie were doing fine. They were traveling on the Lake on a sunny day. They both believed that she had saved Jerry’s life, and all the while, they were traveling toward the worst death imaginable.

“There has to be something that we can do,” she said. “A spirit messenger. There has to be someone we can call on the mainland to get a warning to them. Something.”

“They can’t hear spirit messages the way we can,” Astra told her. The wrinkles in her face had deepened. “Sometimes Jerry hears snatches of messages in his sweat lodge or, as Nicholas said, in his dreams.” She looked at Michael. “We need weapons, clothes, money, and it wouldn’t hurt to have some food packed just in case.”

Astra walked to the refrigerator and pulled out food containers, moving more quickly than Mary would have thought possible. She unwrapped a loaf of bread and cut it into slices.

A chill washed over Mary. She said, “Two men are traveling to their deaths, and you’ve decided to make sandwiches.”

“Don’t try to lecture me, girl,” Astra snapped. The older woman looked up from her task, her gaze hot and black. “This is about survival.”

Mary looked at Michael, who hadn’t moved. Mr. Enigmatic watched her with a hooded gaze.

“We can’t do nothing,” she said to him, near to tears.

“Even if there was anything that we could do, if we help them we put ourselves at risk,” he said. His voice was cool, calm. It belied the escalating tension that poured off his body in waves. “And then we risk losing everything.”

“Listen to him,” said Astra as she slapped pieces of meat between bread slices. “We’re too vulnerable at the moment. We have to think of the greater goal.”

“Screw the greater goal, and screw the both of you too,” Mary said. The tears filled her eyes, but she refused to shed them. She said to Michael, “You may have lived behind that wall for most of your life, but you can choose differently. Be somebody better.”

His face went blank, his gaze distant. She felt like she was talking to that wall, her words useless puffs of vibration and air.

Nicholas coalesced close beside her. His energy still raged, but he felt as if he had gained control.

She turned to the ghost and looked up into his face. “I can’t do nothing,” she said to him in a quiet voice that deliberately shut out the other two. “But I don’t know what to do. Can you think of anything that we can try?”