by Tamara Berry
“Are you taking us to Barra?” I ask, a panicked waver in my voice. Considering how close Jaime and I are to hypothermia, we don’t want to delay going ashore for too long.
“That depends.”
I’m almost afraid to ask. “On what?”
He turns toward me. His face is shadowed by the hood of his rain slicker, but I can still tell that his expression isn’t a kind one. “On whether or not you give me what I want.”
There isn’t enough room on the boat for me to back away, but every instinct I have tells me to do just that. There are few things I have to offer a man like this one. Since I look like the bedraggled remains of week-old seaweed, I doubt it’s my virtue he’s after. I obviously have no money on my person, and my worldly possessions are few.
The one thing I do have in abundance, however, is information.
With a gulp, I allow my gaze to move from his face down his body. As if aware of my scrutiny, he holds himself perfectly still. I skip over his chest and his hands, work my way down his legs . . . and stop only when I reach his feet.
Oxford wing tips.
My gaze snaps back up to his face, which has gone from not kind to downright sinister.
“Harvey?” I ask, barely able to credit the sound of my own voice. “Harvey Renault?”
Either his laughter is silent, or it’s so soft that I can’t hear it over the rush of blood to my head. It’s deeply disturbing either way.
“You are good, aren’t you?” he says. “Birdie was right about that, at least.”
Since my arms are still wrapped around Jaime, he’s able to tell that my whole body has gone rigid with tension. He whimpers softly, but I tighten my hold in a way that signals reassurance. Having come this far to save him, I’m not about to let any harm come to him now.
I hope.
“Birdie was right about a lot of things,” I return, forcing my voice to remain calm. “Except, it would seem, your death.”
He returns his attention back to steering the boat with another of those soundless laughs. “Clever of me, wasn’t it? Or did you think that was her idea? I hate to disillusion you, but Bridget Wimpole-White wasn’t nearly as smart as she wanted you to think.”
Ha. As if I hadn’t known that from the start.
“She was smart enough not to trust you,” I counter.
He releases another of those grunts and turns the boat sharply to the right. I’m grateful for the distraction that the driving forces on him, as it gives me a chance to start sifting through the barrage of facts pelting me like raindrops.
Harvey didn’t die on that train. Harvey didn’t die on that train, and Birdie knew it.
“Was I supposed to be in awe of her ability to predict death? Was I supposed to think her the real deal and cower in the face of such prowess?” A thought occurs to me. “You broke the generator and stole our luggage, didn’t you? And fed her information. You wanted us to think her omniscient.”
He doesn’t answer, which I take to be as good as an assent. Besides, it makes sense. The more powerful we believed Birdie to be, the more likely we were to buy into her nonsense. It was the perfect cover for finding the gold. Not only did holding us in her thrall give her an opportunity to search the house at her leisure, but it ensured that if someone—say, Elspeth—did know where the gold was hidden, they would be more likely to give up the location in their fright to be free of the curse.
Except . . . it hadn’t worked. Elspeth has never been afraid of the curse. Otis isn’t scared of it, either, even though Harvey took pains to ensure that he’d be on the island with the rest of us. Which was why Birdie, in her desperation to get results, was forced to turn to me instead.
For all the good that did me.
“I learned my lesson the first time,” Harvey says. He cuts the engine to the boat so suddenly that Jaime and I are thrown off balance. We stumble but are so weighted down by our wet blankets that we don’t fall overboard. “So don’t think I’m going to offer you what I offered her. I’m done letting a pack of fake mediums call the shots, just like I was done letting Glenn and those stupid kids of his sit on a treasure they have no intention of spending. You’ll tell me where the gold is, or I’m throwing that boy over the side of the boat and watching him drown.”
Jaime whimpers and clings tightly to my waist, his head pressed against my side. My heart wrings to feel it. Like the child he is, he’s averting his face from the monster in hopes that it will make him go away.
“What makes you think I know where it is?” I ask in an effort to buy myself some time. A way out of here is beginning to take shape in my mind, but it’s not a pleasant one. “If you couldn’t force the location out of Glenn while he was alive, why would I be able to do it now that you’ve murdered him?”
Harvey takes a step toward us. The entire boat rocks in response, as if it, too, is quaking in fear of what comes next. “Call it a hunch. You’re a smart woman and an observant one. You haven’t spent a week on that island without learning a thing or two about its inhabitants.”
No, I haven’t. Nor have I spent a lifetime dabbling in the paranormal without learning a thing or two about myself. To the outside world, I might not be as renowned or celebrated as Birdie White, but that’s okay. I don’t need to be. My confidence will probably never match hers, and I can only dream of being as capably devious someday. For now, I only know what I can do. I only know what I have seen.
I also know that what I can do and what I can see are just one part of a much bigger picture—a much bigger plan.
“Jaime, can you swim?” I whisper, my mouth grazing the boy’s ear.
He whimpers but nods. It’s not a very reassuring response, but it’s all I have. With a silent call out to every protective power in the universe, I yank the blanket from his body. Waiting only for Harvey to halt in sudden surprise, I place my hands on Jaime’s back and push.
“Then go,” I say as he plunges into the ocean. His body falls in the exact position from my vision, his limbs immobile, his head disappearing under the waves. My every instinct tells me to jump in after him, but I stand my ground.
Turning to face my would-be rescuer, I swallow and force a smile.
“Now,” I say in what I hope is the same evil nonchalance he used to threaten the boy’s life in the first place. “What were you saying about finding that gold?”
Chapter 19
“You’re crazy.” Harvey stares at me with a look of surprise, his mouth agape and a glint of what I could almost swear is fear in his eyes. “Are you crazy? What did you do that for?”
I wish I could peek over my shoulder to see if Jaime has surfaced, but I don’t dare. To do so would ruin what little upper hand I’ve managed to gain.
I shrug. “I don’t like to be threatened.”
Harvey brushes past me and peers out over the water. He doesn’t appear to be alarmed by the sight of the boy surviving his fall, which has the effect of alarming me. Surely Jaime must have surfaced by now?
Harvey gives a short laugh. “I should have approached you at the outset. I was sure the other one would be more easily bought.”
I don’t bother telling him how correct he was in that original assumption. There’s not a dollar amount in the world that could justify the killing that’s been done in pursuit of that gold—not in my eyes and not, I think, in Birdie’s. Once she realized the true state of affairs on Airgead Island, she was quick to take steps to rectify her error, to push me toward the truth in her stead.
“How much did you offer her?” I ask, and not just because I need to draw his attention away from the water.
“Fifteen percent. For you, I’ll double it.”
“What’s the doctor’s cut?”
Harvey gives another of those silent laughs. “Fulstead? That old bleater wouldn’t know a medical emergency if it bit him on the nose. Come to think of it, he didn’t. He took one look at me clutching my chest on the floor of that train and gave me up for dead.”
“But—”
“That man hasn’t had a working medical license in twenty years, Madame Eleanor. Everyone calls him ‘doctor’ out of respect, but no one who wants their loved ones to live calls him in. Well, except for other relics like Elspeth and Glenn.”
That makes sense, too, now that I think about it. I’ve always felt that Airgead Island is a sort of time capsule—an ancient place run by ancient people who adhere to ancient superstitions and beliefs. Elspeth in her faded and timeless blue dress, McGee in a fisherman’s sweater that could have been woven and knitted three hundred years ago, the pair of them standing watch over a castle that refuses to evolve past the sixteenth century.
And for what? To serve as a stone fortress standing watch over a cursed fortune for all eternity?
In a way, I’d be doing the Stewarts a favor by telling Harvey where the gold is and letting him loose to steal it at will. It’s the easiest solution, the neatest way to free them from the curse’s power. Once the gold is gone, they can move on with their lives, happy in the knowledge that justice will be done to their father’s murderer in the form of Gloriana burdening someone else for a change.
“Forty percent,” Harvey says, as if sensing the trend of my thoughts. “That’s as high as I’m willing to go.”
As tempting as it might be to dream about all the ways I could spend that kind of money, it’s only a fleeting thought. This man has done terrible things in pursuit of that gold. He killed his friend. He killed my friend.
Do you really mean it? I had no idea you felt that way.
I grin. It’s a slow and careful grin, more for Birdie’s benefit than Harvey’s, but I have the felicity of seeing him quaver at the sight of it.
“Or what?” I counter. “You’ll poison me the way you did Glenn and Birdie? You’ll throw me over the side of this boat and watch me drown alongside that little boy?”
He’s understandably confused by this sudden turnabout. “You murdered that boy, not me. And I’ll tell everyone—see if I don’t. You pushed him as callously as if you’d been planning it all along.”
“I did,” I agree. “And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
A small head pokes up on the other side of the boat, directly behind Harvey. Jaime looks cold and wet, but he flashes me his gap-toothed smile despite everything. It had been my intention for him to swim to safety rather than around in circles, but this works, too.
“Yet you have the audacity to stand there looking at me as though I’m the bad guy?”
“Yes, I do,” I say. Jaime is reaching for one of the emergency oars on the side of the boat, but his movements are slowed by the cold and his desire to stay hidden. I do my best to keep Harvey occupied—a thing accomplished with one of the easiest and most difficult things in the world. The truth. “See, the one thing you don’t realize is that I saw a vision of you on the train that day. The red car, the spilled tea, the shoes—it was all real, and it was all coming from me. The only thing I didn’t see was your death. I just assumed that was the outcome, since I was going off what Birdie told me. That phone call Ashley received the first night from the station—it was you, wasn’t it? Informing him of your own death? You wanted to make sure everyone was good and scared before we started the search for the gold.”
“So what?” Harvey’s face is starting to turn red, his burgeoning anger at odds with his desire to placate me. Without me, he knows he has no chance of finding the treasure. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“It worked,” I say. “I was scared, but not for the reasons you think. I was mostly terrified of myself, of my newfound ability to predict death.”
His look of disbelief tells me what he thinks of that newfound ability.
I allow a smile to spread across my face. “But I was wrong. You’re alive. I didn’t see a vision of death. I saw a moment in time, a piece of the plot. That’s all.”
By this time, Jaime has managed to pull the oar all the way out and is holding it like—dare I say it?—a pirate’s sword. I have no idea what part of Harvey he plans to hit with it, but at this point, I’m not picky.
“I assumed when I had a similar vision of Jaime that I was seeing his death, too. But I’m not that good. I doubt I ever will be.” I draw a deep breath and brace myself, my feet planted firmly as Jaime prepares to thrust. “To be honest, I’m kind of glad. I don’t want to see people die. If the universe wants to give me an occasional glimpse of a lottery ticket, I’m not going to turn my nose up at it, but my ambitions stop there.”
Harvey has no idea what I’m talking about, but it doesn’t matter. With a lunge that would have done the pirates of Stewarts past proud, Jaime drives the oar into Harvey’s back. It’s not enough to knock him overboard or even to bring him to his knees, but it startles him—oh, how it startles him.
An old man with a weak heart. An old man who’s already suffered two coronaries. An old man who recently murdered his childhood friend for something as meaningless as money.
There’s nothing I can do to save him. Even if I were medically trained enough to stop a heart attack after it’s already begun, rescuing Jaime from the water takes every last bit of strength I have. I heave him the rest of the way on board before falling into a collapse, both of us clutched together, drawing what comfort and heat we can.
“You’re okay now, Jaime,” I murmur into his ear, holding him so tight that it feels as though my frozen bones will crack. “He can’t hurt you now.”
“You mean it?” he asks. “You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”
I shake my head and hold him tighter, watching as the clouds above us begin to open up. It’s the first real sign of hope I’ve seen since I got here, and I welcome it with my whole heart. Birdie White might have had a good working relationship with her old friend Death, but I know now that my job is a different one.
I’m not here to prophesy for the dead. I’m here to care for the living.
Chapter 20
Fortunately for the outcome of this tale, Jaime knows how to pilot a boat.
In addition to being unable to stop a heart attack from killing a man, I also seem to have missed the course on starting an engine and plunging a fishing boat through oceanic waves. It takes a very small, very wet, very resolute eight-year-old to do it for me.
“See, Madame Eleanor?” Jaime says through teeth that chatter so much I’m afraid he’s going to lose the whole mouthful. “I told you I could get us back.”
“So you did,” I agree, my own jaw clenched so tight that I have to force the words out. “You saved the day.”
“We saved it,” he corrects me.
Those words mean a lot more than he realizes, especially once he brings the boat up to the dock. From the looks on the faces of those gathered there, I’m not going to get much else in the way of gratitude.
“Eleanor, you perfect idiot,” Nicholas says as soon as Jaime cuts the engine. He practically pounces on me, yanking me out of the boat and propelling me into his arms. “Do you have any idea how stupid it was to go after him like that?”
“My boy! My poor boy!” cries Elspeth, doing much the same to her grandson. “You’re soaked to the bone. You’ll get pneumonia. Or hypothermia. Or both.”
“Tell them it wasn’t my fault,” Ferguson cries. He’s looking both chastised and sullen, his face drooping so much he resembles a basset hound. “Tell them I had nothing to do with it.”
These recriminations might have continued unabated, if not for a low cough from Otis. “I hate to interrupt when you’re all so busy, but can I ask why Harvey Renault’s corpse is on the bottom of this boat?”
The answer to this question doesn’t come from either me or Jaime. At just that moment, Ashley bursts out from the hidden stairwell, his hair plastered against his forehead and his velvet smoking jacket ruined from the rain. “I saw it all!” he says as he tumbles our direction. “I was watching through the telescope the entire time. Madame Eleanor pushed Jaime out of the boat. She tried to kill him. And w
hen that didn’t work, she killed Harvey Renault instead.”
I groan, but the sound is swallowed by a fresh wave of reproaches and questions. Whether because I succumb to a maidenly swoon for the first time in my life or because I, too, am about to come down with some combination of pneumonia and hypothermia, my knees give way underneath me.
“We need to get these wet clothes off them,” announces Dr. Fulstead. “Get them dry. Cover them in blankets. Hot tea. In that order.”
Even though I know about his lack of medical competence now, I’ve never heard such wise and wonderful words.
“Yes,” I manage. “Blankets. Tea.”
My one-word responses seem to awaken a sense of justice in my audience. As if only now noticing that I’m tiptoeing up to death’s door, the censure changes to concern. As much as I’d like to fall into it, embracing the hero’s welcome as my due, I turn to Otis first.
“He didn’t die on the train.”
Much to my relief, Otis understands me. “Yes, thank you. I gathered as much.”
“He killed your uncle.”
“I’m starting to realize that, as well.”
“He killed Birdie, too.”
“I’m not surprised. I was tempted once or twice myself.”
“Let’s take this inside, if you please,” Nicholas says, his voice gruff. It rumbles through me, adding to my shivers. The thought of trotting all the way up those stairs, of lifting the dead weights of my legs over and over again, almost causes me to go off in that swoon again. Sensing this, Nicholas swoops me into his arms. “This is the second time I’ve had to carry you up these stairs, you know.”
“I could make it, if I had to,” I say, my voice only partially cracking. His body is so warm, so comforting. “I could always crawl.”
