calling it. She supposed it had a better ring to it than “the Isle of the Impaler,” as she’d heard James refer to it.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for this,” she said, and she kept drinking as if there was strength in the bottom of the glass, even while walking beside him back across the deck and down the steps to lower level. They moved along the narrow hallway, past closed cabin doors and into the sitting room at the end. James had cleared off an oblong, gleaming hardwood table and set it in the center of the room. They couldn’t have done this deed outside, where an errant sea breeze could blow the ashes of the great Utanapishtim away forever.
He laid the sculpture on the table and stood looking down at it, troubled. Lucy still wished she could convince him—or even herself—that this madness wasn’t necessary. But she knew she couldn’t. She’d tried. He was a man on a mission, and he believed the ends justified the means. He wouldn’t go ahead with it otherwise, and she had to respect him for that.
Right then, he was torn. She could see it and wished she could ease his mind, so she decided a change of subject might be in order.
“I wonder how things are going on the island?”
He looked up from the statue and into her eyes, then past her, through a large porthole at the glittering starlit night sky and the rippling sodalite sea. “I’m worried about that, too. It’s not that big an island, and there are a lot of vampires there.”
“So many I couldn’t keep all their names straight. Except the really unusual names, like that guy Reaper. And Briar. And Vixen.”
“Many vampires take on new names once they’ve been made over. And many, if not most, use only one.
It’s the name by which they are known among their own kind, even while having to live under one false identity after another to escape detection in the world of man. One is supposed to grow old, to age, to die, after all.” She smiled, lowering her head. “So your father’s name isn’t really Edge?”
“It’s Edgar,” he said with a slow smile.
Her eyes rounded. “Edgar Poe?”
“He says his human parents had a warped sense of humor.”
She laughed softly, sipping her drink again, knowing they were only putting off the inevitable: the moment when he would try to bring Utanapishtim, the first Noah, back to life. He was probably afraid he would fail. Just as she was afraid he would succeed. “How many do you suppose are on the island by now?”
He met her eyes again. “I don’t know. A lot. And the more there are, the more supplies are needed. And the more often they have to make a run to the mainland, the more likely they are to be discovered, or even followed.” Shaking his head slowly, he gazed out to sea again, opening the porthole to let the fresh air waft in. “They would be sitting ducks out there, if the vigilantes found them.”
“They won’t. Not with that fog trick of Rhiannon’s.”
He nodded. “I hope not. But even so, it’s not a permanent solution.”
Lucy stared out over the water, and the breeze lifted her hair from her shoulders. She turned to look at him beside her, only to find his eyes on her face, intense, searching. “What?” she asked.
“You’re very beautiful. I haven’t told you that, have I?”
Lowering her head, she said, “No.”
“I’ve been so wrapped up in…in all of this,” he said, with a wave of his hand toward the table. “I haven’t even bothered…to thank you. Or to tell you that I…well, I like having you around. With me, I mean.”
She lifted her gaze and her brows as one. “You do?”
“I’ve been thinking about how close we might be to…to finishing our work together. You’ve done everything I’ve asked you to do, and once we have Utanapishtim up and running and back on the island, with Damien to help us communicate with him, you’ll be free to go. If that’s what you want.”
She looked away. “I don’t have anywhere to go anymore, James.”
“We can fix that. It’s not even that big a challenge. We find out who did the shooting, we exercise some mind control to make him confess, we create an alibi for you, whatever it takes. We can give you back your life.”
“You have been giving this some thought,” she said, surprised to her core. “I appreciate that.”