Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(83)

Astrid gaped.

Cushing froze. Strands of her hair changed from blond to white. Her skin began wrinkling. But Bo’s gaze flicked to the spot below her feet, where the floor opened up and a bright blue circle of water swirled like a waterspout, crackling with electricity.

“Bo! The yacht—”

She didn’t need to finish. Something terrible was happening. The air was breaking down around them, getting heavier. He gasped but couldn’t seem to inhale anything into his lungs.

He didn’t think, just raced to Astrid and snatched her around the waist. Cushing rose up in the air over the blue funnel as Bo dragged Astrid toward the cabin’s open doors. He didn’t care enough about what happened to the woman to look back.

There was no time to lower a lifeboat; the yacht’s floor was melting. The wind whipped up Astrid’s hair as they came to a stop on the deck. She looked at him and understanding passed between them. She grabbed his hand, they vaulted over the railing together . . .

And jumped.

For a long, suspended moment, there was nothing but cold and darkness as they plunged into the ocean. His body was too shocked to react. To move. To do anything but wonder if he’d never stop sinking. But he did, and when he regained control over his limbs and floundered in the icy water, he’d lost Astrid’s hand.

He couldn’t see. Couldn’t feel. Couldn’t call out for her. All he could do was hope.

His lungs felt as if they might burst. He despaired and pushed himself up through the water—was this up? He couldn’t tell anymore—fighting against the cold and the friction that longed to pull him back down. Up, up, until he exploded through the water’s surface and gasped for breath.

He gulped air and paddled as he called for her. “Astrid!”

It was so dark. So black. So cold. He twisted around, waves crashing over his head, until he saw the yacht silhouetted against the dark blue sky. But no Astrid. Where was she?

Out of nowhere, a bolt of white lightning streaked across the night sky and struck the yacht. The sound was explosive. Waves radiated from the boat like a bomb had been dropped. And as they reached Bo and lifted him higher in the water, he watched in awe as the yacht simply vanished.

Gone!

Captain Haig had told them at the radio station that he’d seen the same phenomenon, but to witness it with his own eyes was startling. The radiating waves lifted him, dropped him, and when he was able to ride their undulating path and look around, fresh panic turned his stomach to stone.

The yacht was gone. Where was Astrid?

Stand or fall together.

He refused to believe Cushing. Refused! Astrid was still here. Had to be. But where? Was she under? He took a deep breath and urged his muscles into action, preparing to dive, when he heard a distant shout across the water.

“Bo!”

His heart leaped. He swam toward her voice, arms cutting through the briny waves, until her shouts flooded his ears and he crushed her in her arms.

I’ve got you, he told her with his body. I’ve got you, and everything is all right.

TWENTY-NINE

Astrid couldn’t have guessed whether the swim to shore took thirty minutes or hours, but she was at times almost certain she wouldn’t make it. The water was shockingly cold, the waves rough, and she was too weak to tread water and had to rely on Bo to pull her along. The pounding surf towed them ashore toward a sandy stretch of land between a break in the cliffs, where neither of them moved for a long while. It was only because their bodies were wracked by intense shivers that they got to their feet and hiked up a trail bounded by coastal scrub, which gradually ascended until they spotted the dark lighthouse. Bo still had the keys to the cottage in his pocket—“Thank Buddha, Osiris, and Jehovah,” he exclaimed upon realizing it, though, at that point, they would have gladly broken a window to get inside—but they’d lost other things in the ocean, like his gun and the inner workings of her wristwatch.

“It’s ruined,” she said once Bo had stripped off their salty, wet clothes and wrapped them in a blanket near the wood-burning stove. She tapped the face of the watch, but it was no use.

“Maybe it can be repaired. We’re still alive, and that’s the most important thing, yes? They’re gone. All of them. They’re gone and we’re still here. That’s enough for now.”

She nestled closer, unable to get warm. Of course she was relieved to have survived that ordeal, though she worried that the taint of Max was still with her and wished Velma could confirm it was gone. But Bo was right: they’d won. Bruised and beaten, but still standing together.

At least until they’d have to telephone someone in the city to come get them. Would they slip back into their old lives? Sneaking around. Praying for a stolen moment alone when no one was watching or listening. Hiding.

“It’s not enough,” Astrid said. “I don’t want to merely survive.”

“Sometimes that’s all you can you do,” he said as he tightened his arms around her. “You survive as long as you can and wait for the right conditions to bloom.”

But what if those conditions never came? How long could they wait? She wanted an answer. Something definitive. A deadline when the waiting would end. But she knew Bo couldn’t give her that, so she just held on to him. She held on until the fire had warmed the ocean out of her bones. Until he lifted her into the small cottage bed. Until exhaustion pulled her into sleep. And when morning sun slanted over their faces, she woke with a clear head.