CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Night had fallen when the Reverend and Kitty finished eating and invited Angelo and Birhan to join them on the upper deck. The handful of guards now flanking the table accepted the invitation on behalf of the two men, yanking Angelo and Birhan up from their seats when they refused to move and marshaling them up the stairs. One of the guards tried to take the rod from Angelo but snatched his hand back when fingers of charged energy sparked from the wood.

The sudden change from the frigid temperatures of the air-conditioned cabin to the warmer, salty air on the open deck made Angelo feel like he was moving between worlds. A brilliant blue circle, lit by the underwater lights, blossomed out from the yacht and merged with streaks of yellow and purple from the running lights, until they disappeared into the black of the sea. With a clear night, free of the obstructions of trees or mountains or buildings, the universe spilled out over the huge sky and reminded Angelo of the nights he and Mouse had lain under such a sky in the outback, making promises with their bodies and plans with their words. An explosion of longing seared his chest, and he saw the Cheshire moon just rising up from the horizon, mocking him.

He’d lost so much, given away so much—but no more, Angelo swore. No more.

“Let Birhan go,” he said to Kitty. “I’ll do whatever you want. You don’t need him.”

“The Reverend came up with this part of the plan—it’s for him to say what happens to your boy, not me,” Kitty answered as she stepped forward to the bow. She put her pretty white clutch on one of the pretty white lounge chairs and pulled out three vials of blood.

“We’re lit up like a Christmas tree out here. Hey, Cap!” the Reverend hollered up to the wheelhouse.

Birhan jumped at the sudden noise.

The Reverend laughed and then called out again. “Cap, cut all the lights but the ones you need and a couple down here so we can see.”

The boat and the water around it went suddenly dark, as if they’d been swallowed, then a couple of lights buzzed back to life, casting a thin glow over the deck where they stood. Kitty set to work. Angelo could hear her mumbling her spell as she poured blood onto the glossy golden deck wood.

“You don’t need Mouse’s brother anymore, Kitty. I’ve got Aaron’s rod and the Book of the Just. Use them instead.”

She popped the rubber stopper out of the second vial of blood. “I’m not a fool, Angelo, and you’ve taught me so much about how all this magic works. I saw what happened to the guard just now when he tried to touch it. I’d prefer not to get fried by the power in that thing. And I’m pretty sure the rod will only work for the person who holds the Book, maybe just for the person who found it.”

“I’ll use them for you.”

“You’re a bad liar, Angelo. I suppose some might say that makes you a good man, but I know it just makes you a fool.” She shrugged. “And besides, I want to do this.”

Angelo could hear the thrill of power in her voice. Crafting spells and forcing the world to obey her whim fed all of Kitty’s desires.

“I think we’re still just a bit too visible if there’re any other folks out here,” the Reverend said to no one in particular.

Angelo kept his focus on Kitty—she was his only hope. “He’s just a little boy, Kitty.”

“Like your Mouse is just a girl?” Kitty hissed. “He’s the son of Satan. He deserves what he gets.”

Angelo shivered as a chill ran through him and lingered.

“Alright, Angel-boy,” the Reverend said as he slapped Angelo on the back. “What can that thing do?”

“Why don’t you try it out?”

“I’ll follow my wife’s lead on this one. I’m not inclined to touch it myself. But I would like you to give me a demonstration, and I won’t ask again.”

“If I say no?”

The Reverend lurched forward, pulled a gun out of the holster of the nearest guard, aimed at Birhan and fired before Angelo could even register what was happening.

Kitty screamed, and there was a sound of breaking glass. “For heaven’s sakes, Kevin! You made me drop it!” A fist-sized red blob burst like a sun outside the line of the spell she was crafting. Pieces of shattered glass jutted up like broken teeth.

Birhan dropped to his knees, clutching at his arm where a slow, thin waterfall of blood oozed out of a gash along his bicep. Angelo started to take a step toward him, but a guard grabbed him from behind.

“I just winged him,” the Reverend said. “A warning for you. When I say I’m done asking, I’m done. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir.”

“That’s enough, Kevin,” Kitty barked. “Thanks to your pissing contest, I have to use my last vial of blood for this spell. You better hope it’s enough.” She bent back over her work.

“Are you okay, Birhan?” Angelo asked.

The teenager had pushed himself back to his feet, his hand pressing against the wound to stop the bleeding. “I am . . . fit as fiddler.” He smiled weakly. “I say that right, brother?”

“Close enough.”

“It’s fit as a fiddle, boy. And you better hope your brother does what I’ve told him to do.” The Reverend was starting to sweat in the warm air, little beads lining up in the creases of his forehead and catching bits of the light.

Angelo looked at Birhan a moment longer, saw the pain and fear in his eyes, and then he opened the Book of the Just. He searched for a spell that seemed least likely to go terribly wrong.

“Shroud us in the safety of your breath. Hide us from our enemies in a cloak of your making.” As the words left his lips, Angelo felt the power build in the rod and stretch up and out and down to the sea. Gauzy wisps rose up from the water, shimmering a moment in the rising moonlight, until they billowed and grew thick like clouds and surrounded the boat, tendrils snaking around the deck, running between legs like cats.

The guards gasped and cursed. Kitty smiled. The Reverend’s lips pressed together in a hard, unreadable line.

“Finished!” Kitty said through the fog. “I’m r—”

“Ready or not, here I come.” The voice came from higher up, on the sundeck. Everyone turned to look. The thick mist obscured all but a dark silhouette looking down on them. But a dazzling joy ran through Angelo as if the sun had suddenly come out.

He knew that voice. He thought he’d never hear it again.

But Mouse had found him at last.

Her father pulled the cloak back and Mouse stepped out into a murky grayness. She felt his absence in the next breath. She was alone.

She could see little through the thick fog, but she smelled the fishy water and the wax on the boat and the Reverend and Kitty’s perfumes and someone’s blood she did not know—and lots of Luc’s blood. So Kitty had collected more. She must be crafting a spell with it even now. And then Mouse smelled Angelo.

But she needed to take care of business first.

She closed her eyes and counted—eighteen souls, plus Angelo’s. Though still bright and full, there was something different about his that Mouse couldn’t identify. Angrily, she shoved that away, too.

“Finished!” Kitty said through the fog. “I’m r—”

“Ready or not, here I come,” Mouse said.

In the moment of stunned silence, Mouse pulled her hand up sharply as she spoke to the water on the starboard side: “Rise!” A rush of sea and foam raked over the rail and across the deck.

“No!” Kitty cried as she fought to keep standing against the wave and watched her blood-soaked spell wash away.

Bullets flew at Mouse. She dropped to a crouch, her ears sifting through the cacophony for the sounds of the guards reloading. She readied herself to make for the stairs, but the whizz and ping of bullets suddenly stopped. Cautiously, she eased up and looked out over the deck. There was a shimmer, like superheated air over a stretch of hot road. It ran the length of the sundeck, and the bullets hit and ricocheted off as if it were an invisible shield.

Her eyes searched for Angelo, but through the haze and dim light she could make out little more than the shape of his body and a long staff stretching up and out from it. The rod of Aaron. And Angelo was using it. But was the shield meant to protect her or to pin her down?

Mouse reached to the small of her back where she had sheathed the bone shard, but her fingers groped empty cloth and brushed her bare skin. Frantically, she scanned the deck around her, but the shard was gone. It must have slipped out and rolled overboard. Mouse would have to do what had to be done by her own hand. She jumped off the back of the deck, down to the landing behind the wheelhouse, and kicked in the doors, dodging a spray of bullets from one of two men in the room.

“Don’t shoot!” she commanded. The man lowered his gun, his face blank and confused for a moment, and then he rushed her. Mouse was expecting it. She ducked as he swung the butt of the gun at her, swiped his legs out from under him, grabbed him by the throat as he fell, and slammed his head hard against the wood floor. “Stay down!” she whispered in his ear.

The other man had stayed beside the ship’s console, his hands up. “I’m just the captain. I drive the boat. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Stay in here.” Mouse pulled back on the power, but she could still feel a trace of it behind her words. The captain nodded and sat down. “Stairs down to the next deck?” she asked.

He pointed to the far corner beside a low wall, but as she turned toward the stairs, something outside the wheelhouse window caught her eye. A pair of shadows in the heavy fog stood at the tip point of the bow on the main deck, one tall and one very short at his side—her father and Luc.

There was no way Kitty could have cast a summoning spell that quickly. Could she? And why was Mouse’s father here? He surely wouldn’t have followed his son into the mouth of danger. Unless he’d learned regret from abandoning Luc the first time.

Mouse took to the stairs, her plan shifting. She’d bypass the upper deck where Kitty, the Reverend, Angelo, and all the shooting guards were. She’d get Luc to safety and then come back.

Another gun went off. Angelo screamed and a hail of bullets shattered the windows of the wheelhouse. The shield was gone.

Mouse’s stomach wrenched.

Angelo was already searching the Book of the Just for a spell before the guards regained their footing from the rush of water Mouse had called up. He didn’t know if the Book and rod would work this way, but he had to try.

He found the spell as the first bullets pounded the sundeck where Mouse had been. But Angelo changed the words.

“Shield her from her enemies. Let no arrow nor spear nor lance nor any weapon pierce the righteousness of her cause.” He felt the power course through the rod, feeding the air with energy and heat. It made a wall in front of Mouse. Angelo smiled at the shouted confusion among the guards—no bullet could penetrate the shield.

He got a glimpse of her face as she swung into the lighted wheelhouse and took out the gunman and spoke to the captain. She looked different. Her hair was short, her face hard and gaunt, her eyes dark. She looked like her father. Then she looked out past Angelo, toward something in the mist, and her eyes woke with worry and love. And he knew that Mouse was as she’d always ever been—good.

Angelo turned to see what she was looking at, and his fears came rushing back as he saw the silhouette—Mouse’s father was here. Why would she bring him unless they were working together? For a moment, Angelo worried that Kitty and the Reverend had been right—that Mouse belonged now to the family she had always craved. Then Angelo saw a smaller silhouette beside the larger. The fog swirled and thinned for a moment, and he could see the boy’s face more clearly. Angelo hadn’t realized until that moment that he already loved this boy—loved him for who he was and for who he might become. He loved him all the more for having eyes just like his sister.

The gun went off so close to Angelo’s head that his left eye flashed with light and his ear rang with a shrill squalling. The hulk of the Reverend moving up beside him blocked Angelo’s view of the stairs. Where was Mouse?

His eyes pivoted to find Birhan’s again. Angelo was going to signal for him to drop when Mouse made her move. But Birhan wasn’t standing where he had been. Birhan was on the floor, completely still, a river of blood running from him.

Angelo screamed and pushed forward, but the Reverend caught his arm and spun him around. Rivulets of sweat oozed down the fat face pressed cheek to cheek with Angelo’s. “He’s not dead yet. He’s got a bullet hole, clean shot, through his thigh.” The Reverend’s voice, moist and languid, filled Angelo’s ear. “I might have nicked that big artery that runs through there. He’ll bleed out unless someone gets some pressure on that wound. You got a chance to save him, but not your girl, too. Choose.” His pale blue eyes looked empty and dead as he stared into Angelo’s, which were full of fury and fear.

Defeated, Angelo lowered the rod, hoping he’d given Mouse an advantage. In the second he’d had to weigh an impossible choice, he knew that win or lose, Mouse would live, just as surely as Birhan would die if Angelo wasted any more time. The power snapped back with a jolt and bullets went flying as the shield disappeared.

“Good choice, son. Now take the girl down.”

Mouse heard the clunk of footsteps lower on the stairs. She braced herself against the handrails and swung forward, feet out, slamming her boots into the chest of the first guard, who toppled back against a second man coming up behind him. A spurt of bullets bounced against the walls, and the first guard cried out as one dug into him.

“Don’t shoot!” Mouse commanded them as she jammed her elbow into the throat of the second guard and climbed over him and out onto the deck.

Angelo stood beside the Reverend to Mouse’s right about eight feet away. Two guards flanked the Reverend. There was a body on the floor in front of her. She held her breath a moment, listening. He was still alive, but not for long, unless someone stopped the bleeding. Instinctively, she moved toward him, but guards pulled around the starboard side and started shooting.

Her shoulder recoiled as a bullet bit into her collarbone, and she fell back, crouching on the port side of the deck. Clenching her teeth against the searing pain, she put her hands down on the wood flooring and started to sway, side to side.

“Rise up,” she said to the sea.

High, rolling waves crashed against the side of the yacht. The boat swelled up over the water, leaning hard to port, and slid down the back side and up against the next mountainous wave. The Reverend fell to his knees with a loud thud. His two bodyguards tried to haul him up, but they were pitching back and forth so violently they couldn’t touch him. Mouse heard the guards on the starboard side cry out, followed by two sharp slaps of water as they fell overboard. Angelo was the only one left standing.

With a quick scan of the deck, Mouse realized she’d lost track of Kitty, and a cold dread ran through her veins. But then Angelo called out for her.

“Mouse! He’s sliding off! Help him!”

The body in front of her rolled hard to the left as another wave hit. Mouse lunged for it as it went over the side. The head lolled back, face up, as she knotted her fists into his shirt and waistband. She could see now that it was a young man, a boy really, about sixteen or seventeen years old. Blood was pouring out of a gaping hole in his thigh. His heartbeat was slow and faint. He would be dead soon.

Mouse could hear the bullet wedged into her broken collarbone grind and squeal as she tried to pull him up. He was too heavy. When another wave hit the starboard side, the boy’s weight pulled her halfway overboard.

“Be still,” she said through gritted teeth to the water, and the water went still like glass.

She looked over her shoulder toward Angelo. His face silenced all her doubts, and, even in the midst of the chaos and danger, she felt joy catch at her throat. Angelo looked at her with such faith—he still believed in her, body and soul. She’d found home again, at last.

The boat started rocking. Angelo leaned against his crutches and the rod, working to keep his balance. He looked up to see Birhan sliding overboard. Angelo couldn’t get to him in time. But Mouse could.

“Mouse! He’s sliding off! Help him!”

Mouse didn’t know Birhan, didn’t know if he was one of the Reverend’s men. But it didn’t matter. She lunged for him. She saved him. As Angelo knew she would.

“Take her now! She’s vulnerable!” the Reverend yelled.

Angelo smiled down at him as he rolled on the deck. “You have no idea what she’s capable of, but I do. If you have a way off this boat, I’d go now.”

“I’ll do it myself, then!” The Reverend lunged for Aaron’s rod, his chunky fingers wrapping greedily around the smooth wood. Thick, radiant blue branches of light shot out from the rod and into the Reverend, who buckled backward, his eyes wide and slathers of foamy spit bubbling at the corners of his mouth. The crackles of lightning were gone as quickly as they came. The Reverend’s men caught him as he pitched forward, but there was no point. Spinal fluid poured from his ears and nose as his guards dragged him down the port side, away from the shooting, his eyes fixed and staring blankly toward the heavens.

“Angelo!” Mouse cried.

His eyes snapped up to meet hers.

“I can’t hold him. Help me!”

Angelo catapulted himself forward with his crutches and let go of the rod as he dropped to his knees and threw his torso over the side, clutching at Birhan’s waistband. He swung his legs around to brace himself against the rail and pulled. Mouse rolled over into the same position, and together they hauled Birhan back up onto the deck.

Mouse balled up the edge of her cloak and pressed down against the wound to stop the bleeding. “We need something to make a tourniquet.”

“There’s no time, Mouse. He won’t make it.” Angelo put his hands on hers. “Be who you are. Command him to live.” He was begging her.

“If I tell him to live, he might do it—forever. I won’t do that to anyone, Angelo. That’s a curse no one should have to bear.”

“Choose different words then. You’re a healer, Mouse. Just heal him. Please.”

She bent to Birhan’s ear and whispered for him alone. “Heal. Heal fast. Heal sure. Heal.”

Blood bubbled out of the wound as the skin knit itself together. She could hear his heart, steady and strong. She looked up at Angelo, smiling, but the moment of relief melted away as Mouse saw the scene playing out over Angelo’s shoulder at the far end of the bow on the main deck below them.

Kitty stood between Mouse’s father and Luc. Luc wore the tattered cloak Mouse had left behind at the gardener’s cottage. He wore the mask of the kurdaitcha. He looked like a smaller version of Mouse when she had gone hunting for vengeance.

And in his hand, Luc held the glowing shaft of the bone shard sent down from the Seven Sisters.

He was pointing it at Kitty.