JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT
Let them plot, let them plan, the island thought with pleasure. The island took in this group’s shape, took its measure. With a few measly exceptions, this entire lot was under the island’s thumb. It made for a perfect picture of the island’s now. No other human would be called, and no one would leave, not for the next three days.
And in three days, the carnage would be glorious.
In three days, the crescent moon would rise. In three days, all the humans here would perish. For the island had plans of its own, and these humans were no match.
But for now, the island rested. Waited. Prepared.
It inhaled deeply, reveling in the sweet scent of fear and the unprecedented surge of electria to come.
* * *
Molly tensed.
“Did you feel that?” she whispered to Davey.
“What?” He rubbed his eyes.
“A rumble. Like a laugh. I don’t know.” Molly sat wide awake, cross-legged on her bed. “It was weird.” She gave a little laugh. “This whole place—this whole thing—is weird. My life has turned weird.”
Davey got up to sit beside her. She was all shadows and angles and bare legs, her hair as wild as the island now, her blue streak swallowed by the night.
“It’s all weird,” he agreed. “But there is no one stronger than you, Molly. No one. You can handle anything this place throws at you, and then some. Okay?”
She tilted her face toward his. Her gaze swept over his eyes, his cheekbones, his lips, all in a slow, liquid way that set his blood on fire. “If it was always me,” she whispered, “why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because JT told me he’d kill me if I ever touched you. Big-brother bro code and all that. And you told Lauren that you thought of me like a brother.”
“I lied,” she said, her voice husky. “And JT isn’t here.”
Davey leaned forward, but stopped short of her lips. This moment was everything. “I wouldn’t care if he were,” Davey whispered. He reached up to brush her jaw with his thumb. “If he were, I’d tell him the truth. That I’m so in love with you it would be worth any punch he could throw, and I was a bloody fool for not telling you sooner.”
With that, she kissed him. Fiercely, deeply, without holding back, as if this one kiss had to make up for years of waiting.
It is everything, Davey realized. The chance to be with Molly, back in Oz, away from here.
And he’d bloody well fight for it.