Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(62)

Mary and Jamie joined him. She gave Jerry a hug, while Michael looked at Jamie. He said, “Look after your grandfather and your mom.”

Jamie’s young, sensual face set into uncharacteristically hard lines. “I will.”

Michael climbed into the cigarette boat first and held out a hand to help Mary. They cast off. Jamie raised a hand to them as they pulled away.

Mary looked at Michael with concern.

“You need to change into dry clothes right now,” she said.

“I know,” he said. He was shaking violently, and he couldn’t feel his fingers or toes.

He couldn’t fumble the hatch key into the lock, and she had to help him. He ducked his head to enter the small space and tore out of his wet, freezing clothes. “Be sure to keep an eye out. Let me know if any vessels approach.”

“I am,” she said from above. “I will.”

The minuscule cabin was very simple. It held a bed, with storage space underneath and shallow cabinets along the walls. He forced his shaking limbs into jeans, woolen socks and his boots, a T-shirt and a sweater and a wind-resistant jacket.

He had expended massive amounts of energy over the last two days. He hadn’t eaten since earlier that morning before he had gone to bed, and he couldn’t remember the meal he’d had before that. Desperate for some quick calories, he opened a plastic storage container that held a box of protein bars and bags of trail mix, and he didn’t stop until he had bolted down four of the protein bars.

Finally he was able to slow down. He hadn’t stopped shaking, but he felt as if the worst had passed. He climbed back onto the deck.

The afternoon had melted into evening. Golden color blazed across the western sky, while the blue toward the east had deepened. Mary sat with her makeshift poncho wrapped tightly around her torso. She looked as exhausted as he felt.

“There’s food and warm clothes down below,” he told her. He started up the boat again, compulsively calculating again how long they might have been at a standstill. He guessed not quite fifteen minutes. It could have been worse. “It’s going to be a chilly ride to the island. You should put on a few more layers.”

She nodded, her expression distant as she looked off in the direction that Jerry and Jamie had gone. She asked wistfully, “Do you think they’ll make it now?”

He wasn’t one for uttering meaningless reassurances. “I don’t know. The Deceiver hadn’t gone after Jerry’s daughter yet. You were able to heal Jamie, which frankly I didn’t think was possible when I first laid eyes on him. They’ve got a fighting chance, which is all any of us can hope for right now.”

She turned to look at him, her gaze turning grave. “That wasn’t Jamie.”

• • •

THE TRIP BACK to the island was uneventful and, thanks to their vastly improved boat, as quick as possible.

After retrieving one of his long-sleeved thermal shirts from the cabin, Mary offered only a brief explanation about what had happened, her words slow with exhaustion.

“I can’t even describe what I did. It was part of what you did when you taught me how to give energy, and part of what the dragon did when it healed my spirit wound. I . . . fused Nicholas’s spirit with Jamie’s body.”

“It’s goddamn amazing,” he said. They were traveling at such high speed, he could only spare quick glances at her. She did not look triumphant. Instead, she looked incredibly saddened.

“It was a terrible decision, of course.” She shook trail mix into one hand. “Brain stem injury. Jamie had died almost instantly, except that his body had not yet shut down. Nicholas had to decide quickly. At first, he didn’t want to, but I told him, it wasn’t fair for his dad and his sister to lose both of them. And he gave in, I think, more because he thought he should than because he really wanted to. He’s hurting pretty badly right now.”

“I knew something was different, but I didn’t even think to connect it to that.” He wiped spray off his face. “You do realize what you did, don’t you?”

She just looked at him, her gaze a tired blank.

“Not only did you give a dead man a second chance at life,” he told her, “but you might very well have thought of a way to save one of us if we get killed. If our ghosts hang on and the others can find a drone, we don’t necessarily have to pass on to another life. That potentially changes everything, Mary.”

Life came back into her expression. “You’re right. I hadn’t thought that far.”

They spent the rest of the journey in silence. The last of the daylight was fading into night when they reached close enough to the island’s coordinates that Michael had to slow down. They crept forward at a cautious pace, apparently moving toward nothing but open water, until from one moment to the next, they passed through the veil of the null space that the island projected.

Land appeared before them. The entire island lay not two hundred yards away.

“If I hadn’t just seen that for myself, I don’t know that I would believe it,” Mary said. “Of course, I’ve been saying that a lot over the last several days.”

“I know what you mean.”

He eased the boat near to the old pier and cut the motor to coast the rest of the way. Then he released the anchor, and both he and Mary worked to moor it in place.