Cape Storm

I’m so public-spirited.

“Give her this,” I said, and handed him the written instructions. “Tell her I’ll give her a raise if she manages to not kill you before you kill the bad guys. But whatever you do, wait for Lyle to give a signal to move. Got it?”

“Of course I’ve got it. I’ve got an IQ above your dress size.” He paused. “Then again, it might be the other way around. I mean, do they even makedress sizes in the hundred and fifties?”

Cherise was having a terrible influence on the kid. I decided that one of us really needed to stay focused on professional dignity, and so I settled for a rude gesture instead of a comeback.

“Score,” he said. He walked away, just another bad-attitude teen from his messy, uncombed hair to his dragging, world-weary sneakers.

It takes a special kind of courage to know your own darkness,I thought. I wished he didn’t have to be such an expert, but as long as he was, I had no choice but to take advantage of his skills.

Lewis was going to take my head off for it, too.

Chapter Six

Passengers—even me—weren’t allowed on the bridge. Apparently, that only happens in the movies, or to Cherise. I helped Lewis get through the rest of the passenger and crew interviews in neutral, nonsecure locations. No real surprises: a couple of drug smugglers, some embezzlers, and a few people who had raided the cabin steward’s closet for illegally obtained soaps and pillow mints. Other than that, we were clear of evil influences . . . except for the two we already knew about.

And me, of course. I was acutely aware that the tingles from the numb area on my back were coming with more and more frequency.

By late evening, I was feeling exhausted and even more sore than I’d anticipated. Cherise forced sandwiches on me, and then a glass of scotch, and I dozed off curled up in the corner of a sofa in the first-class-lounge area, listening to half a dozen Wardens debate the logistics of creating a clear course for us to follow. I was wishing that David would drop in, but I knew all too well that Lewis had other plans in motion—plans that specifically excluded me, thanks to the Bad Bob mark on my back. Need to know, and all that.

So I napped.

Lightning flared, startling me, and when I opened my eyes, I was somewhere else.

No . . . I realized that I wasn’tsomewhere else. My body was still huddled on the sofa, still watched over by Wardens and Dji

But I was alsostanding in a small concrete room with bare, dusty floors and a few battered old chairs held together with wire and tape, and it was nowhere near the ship that still held my physical form.

It’s not real,I thought, but it felt damned convincing.

The door opened on howling darkness, and I could feel the blast of sea-salted air that rolled through the room to stir up debris.

When the door closed, a bandy-legged old white- haired man moved into the pallid circle of overhead light.

Bad Bob, in the flesh. At least, I presumed it was flesh. I was starting to wonder how real the real world actually was, in relation to what my former boss could accomplish these days.

“Look who dropped in for a visit,” Bob said, and pulled up a rickety chair. He flopped into it—risking total collapse of the ancient wood—and sat there smiling at me as if I were a favorite niece come for the holidays. Honestly, that was the worst thing about him. You couldn’t really tell how crazy he was at a glance.

Or how vile.

I could hear the wind howling and it grated on me, and I wanted to lift my hands to cover my ears—only my ears weren’t physical. Iwasn’t physical. I was a spirit in the aetheric, and there was simply no way that Bad Bob could see me, or that my spirit could walk around like this in the real world. Surely this was a dream. No, a nightmare. Except it felt real, from the gritty concrete floor under my feet to the demented shrieking of the storm winds outside.

“I thought I’d give you guys a chance to surrender,” I said. My voice sounded distant and disembodied, and I wasn’t sure he could hear it until his smile widened. He was an evil old man, but he still had a charming smile. It went well with his apple red cheeks and blunt little nose. “I’d hate to skip the niceties. Courtesy is so important.”

“You’re playing my song, sugar,” he said. “You’re also playing my game. I wonder why?”

I smiled to match him. “Guess.”

“If I have to. Well, you found my little friend on board your ship—I felt him shuffle off this mortal coil. Good for you. Bet you can’t do that again, though.” He studied me with those fluorescent eyes—almost Dji

I waited. Bad Bob always had liked to hear his own voice more than anyone else’s.

“But you know what I think?” he continued, right on cue. “I think it’s so showy that it’s desperate. Like dressing up in neon and waving look-at-me flags while blaring Tchaikovsky’s Fifth. You really should study magicians. Misdirection, that’s the key to a good trick.”

“You think I’m tricking you?”

“You’re not that subtle,” he said, which stung because it was true, mostly. “But there’s somebody else on board that ship who is.”

We both knew that he was talking about Lewis. “You’ve still got a chance to end this peacefully,” I said. “Let Rahel go. Give up. It doesn’t have to be Armageddon: Atlantic Edition. We can find a way to make this work, Bob. Or whatever you are.”

“I’m still Bob,” he said, and winked at me, just the way Bad Bob would have back in the old days. “I’m just Bob plus. And I don’t think we’re going to come to any nice, peaceful settlement, princess. This isn’t about dividing up territory or setting boundaries. This is about me, wiping all of you off the face of the earth, and then my friends coming in to take everything else. It’s nature’s way, you know. The strong eat the weak. The many eat the few. And I am about to eat you.”

He smiled, opened his mouth, and his jaws gaped hideously wide, like a snake’s. If this was a nightmare, it was a first-class effort out of my very darkest subconscious.

I stepped back from him.

His jaws re-formed and closed. The Cheshire Cat smile remained. “Don’t look so scared,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff I can do with my tongue. Bet I could make you forget all about that wimpy little Dji

He took two steps forward, thrust out his hand, and put it all the way through my ghostly, insubstantial chest. Unsettling, and a little uncomfortable, but I actually felt a little spurt of triumph. Not as easy as you thought it would be,I was about to say, when I realized that he’d reached to a very specific place.

To the ghostly mark on my back. The black torch. His fingertips brushed against it beneath my translucent skin—I could feel it, even if I couldn’t see it happening.

All of a sudden the room was far too small, like a trap, and I wanted to leave this place, now,before something happened.

Too late.

I felt my physical body, still far away on board the ship, writhing in its sleep. I felt the hot tingle of the black torch begin to spread across my shoulder blade.