Trolls in the Hamptons (36 page)

“You think your talent's gotten you this far? Think again, girl. It's my tending to the nasty little habits of people like Parker that got you noticed, that got you jobs. You'll come with me. They'll want fresh blood to mother the next generation.”

“I'm an actress, not a brood mare for your ambitions!”

“Shut up. You are coming with me.”

“Or else you'll kill me like you did the nannies?”

“You are the one who shot the last woman. If you stay, you'll be charged with murder. Now that they know who and what you are they'll hunt you down like a rabid dog.”

They went out of the cabin, shouting at each other. They took the guns and the suitcase with them.

“Quick, Nicky,” I whispered. “Agent Grant usually has a knife under his pant leg. Go find it, cut him loose. No, cut me loose first. Then I can shove it in his back, the despicable, lying—”

Nicky was still crying.

Grant groaned, then said, “Save it for later, sweetheart. Don't scare the boy any worse.”

“Is your head all right?”

“Too hard to dent.” Then he uttered something that sounded like a combination of cricket chirps and bird-song and tongue clicks, and my mother's sniffs. Nicky smiled and scampered off my lap toward him.

Vinnie had taken the knife in the sheath against Grant's leg, but not the small one in the sole of his shoe. We were both free in seconds, but Grant told me to stay where I was, as if I was still tied. He lay back on the floor, so they wouldn't notice he was free.

“You're not going to kill them?”

“One knife against two people with guns? I'll save that for later, Willy, okay? I have to find out what Borsack intends to do.”

I quickly told him about the telepathy block, Fafhrd's disappearance, and Nicky's grandfather, who would not be coming.

He smiled, pleased with our deviousness, so far. “I guess that means you didn't need me to rescue you.”

“Go to hell, Lord Grantham.”

His smiled faded. “I almost did, when we lost your signal.”

How could I be mad at that?

I heard Vinnie and her father still yelling, but closer. “They are coming back. Quick, what's your plan?”

“Kill the buggers, get Nicky safe, and marry you.”

As far as proposals of marriage go, that one sucked. Otherwise, it sounded good to me.

Borsack came down and kicked Grant to see if he was awake. Grant grunted, pretending pain and befuddlement.

“On your feet. It's almost time.” He swung the gun toward Nicky and me. “You too.”

I stood up, holding Nicky's hand.

“Weren't you supposed to be tied to the table?”

“The dog chewed the rope.”

He started to kick out at Red. At which I screamed, and Grant leaped to his feet, the knife in his hand. But Borsack still had a gun, and I couldn't tell whether it had bullets or tranquilizer darts.

“Put the knife down or I shoot.”

I could see Grant measuring the odds. Not good.

Then Vinnie came down to see what was happening and Grant pulled her in front of him, the knife at her throat, her gun hand immobilized by his other arm.

Borsack held his weapon on me, but he snatched Nicky's hand from mine and dragged the boy against him.

Standoff, and all I had was a safety pin!

Borsack did not consider the situation a stalemate at all. “Go ahead and kill her. She's no use to me anyway.”

Vinnie screamed obscenities at her father and struggled in Grant's arms. He held her, reluctant to slit her throat, it seemed.

I guess I was glad he wasn't a cold-hearted killer like Borsack, who put the gun to Nicky's head and cocked the hammer. “Drop the knife.”

Grant had no choice, really. He threw the knife into the wooden tabletop, where it quivered back and forth. Maybe he had another one in his other shoe. James Bond would have.

“Now get on deck, all of you.” Borsack swung the gun around at each of us in turn, even Vinnie.

Maybe Grant knew what was coming, one more thing he hadn't told me. But I was too astounded to notice his reaction. Once we were all on the afterdeck, open to the sky, all thoughts of flight or fight disappeared—only awe remained. There it was, the rainbow, the colors, the magical surprise Borsack had promised.

I'd seen it once before, one summer years ago. My father woke me up and carried me out to Grandma's flower garden with a blanket, to lay back and watch the northern lights, the aurora borealis, the gods at play with paintbrushes, so rare on Long Island.

Usually the weathermen predicted the possibility, if all the conditions were right. I had no idea how Borsack knew of it, unless he'd somehow tinkered with the forecasts, which made him all the more dangerous.

He held up my pad with D'ref's picture on it. I had the second picture I'd drawn in my pocket, the one of Fafhrd on a barge, one of those ferro-cement ones that could hold tons of coal, or garbage, or trolls. That was the picture I'd keep in my mind.

“You are certain this is your father? No games, now, boy, or I'll throw you overboard.”

Nicky nodded.

“Call him,” he ordered, twisting the boy's thin arm. Then he turned to Grant, his gun arc swiveling, “And you tell me what he says. Remember my Royce blood and speak the truth, both of you.”

Nicky spoke, sounding like a cage full of monkeys this time.

“Slower, Nick,” Grant told him. “I have only studied, not spoken the language until tonight.”

Nick started again, and Grant translated: “ ‘Father, it is I, Nicholas, son of Tiffany Ryland, who you took in a tranced state, then left alone with child. A child who could not speak the language here, nor thrive. Mr. Turley Borsack wants you to come to get me. He is the human who killed my mother, who kept me prisoner for five years, who killed my nursemaids, all so he could use me to further his amb—”

“Hey, none of that.” Borsack shook the boy by the neck. “Just tell him you want to go with him, before you die here. Tell him to come, damn it!” He glared at me, all the moving colors of the sky reflecting in his eyes. “You focus on the image.”

“Come, Father.”

The lights stopped dancing.

Vinnie scoffed. “Nothing is happening, just like I warned you.”

Borsack seemed close to tears as the sky colors faded. Then he gave a high-pitched laugh like a nervous young punk about to steal his first car. “I forgot to shut down the psi-block, that's all.”

He dragged Nicky with him to the captain's seat and the yacht's controls, where he fiddled with an instrument near the steering wheel that might have been a ship-to-shore radio.

Suddenly I could hear the voices from the Harbor shouting advice. My grandmother was crying. What if Borsack could hear them, too?

I shouted in my head: “Don't let him know you are listening! This has to end now.”

But I tried to call Fafhrd, Fafhrd and a barge, because the water was too deep for him to stand, and he never had mastered swimming, for all his practicing.

Nothing. Borsack looked shattered.

“What now, you crazy old man?” his daughter wanted to know.

He licked his lips. “Now we wait for tomorrow and the full moon. There will still be power to draw on then. The would-be witches of this sinkhole will help.”

Something howled in my head.

“No,” Vinnie insisted, from beside me. “That's just a waste of time. They'll figure out how to get to us before then. I'm taking the outboard and getting out of here while I can. I have enough money, and enough other identities hidden away. You taught me well, Turley.”

“No, you cannot leave me!”

“You cannot keep me, not with your drugs and not with your domination dreams. I have wasted enough of my life.”

“You cannot leave me!” he raged, pointing his weapon at Vinnie. “Not like she did.”

He'd used a real gun.

Vinnie fell at my feet. Then Borsack shrieked loud enough to wake the dead, but not Vinnie. He raised his fist to the sky, which was now dark, with the clouds rolling back in to cover the stars. Even I could tell a storm was coming, without any weather talent at all.

The boat rocked on its anchor, and my stomach roiled along with the sea. The speedboat and the smaller outboard banged against the yacht's hull, the sound almost drowned out by the rising wind. Then lightning shot out of the clouds.

Great. I was on a boat, in the middle of nowhere, during an electrical storm. Maybe my worst nightmare, until you added a psychopath with a gun.
Now
it was my worst nightmare. I picked up Red.

The next bolt of lightning was closer, forking down to the water in a straight line.

“Get below,” Grant shouted, leaping at Borsack and wrestling him for the gun. It went off, out to the side where the outboard runabout rose and fell in the waves. Wood splintered.

I couldn't go without Nicky, who'd hidden under the steering column. I was ready to jump over Vinnie's body and dash across the heaving deck to his side when Vinnie pulled herself up and raised her gun.

I did not know whom she aimed at. I didn't care, either. I jabbed her with my safety pin. She fell back, the gun rolling across the deck to Grant. He lunged for it, just as another bolt of lightning struck the water.

Nicky crawled out of his niche and raised his face. “Grandfather.”

“He is coming?” Borsack dropped his gun, raised both hands to the heavens and shouted, “They came for me. I knew they would! No one believed I could do it. I always believed. Now I did it.”

He climbed the ladder to the flying bridge while thunder roared. “Welcome, Welcome!”

The next lightning bolt went right through him.
Thank you, Grandfather J'omree.

And through the boat. Uh-oh.

H
AIR REALLY DOES STAND ON end near an electric charge. And the air really does smell like ozone. Until the fire starts. Then there is smoke and flames and melting plastic and panic in the crowd.

I was the only crowd, Red and I.

Grant ran over and lifted Nicky. He held the boy on one shoulder and pulled me, still clutching the dog, with him to the opposite side of the yacht. “Quick, into the speedboat.”

Get into that small, open boat in the face of a killer storm? I wrapped my free hand around a cleat. I wasn't going. Sprinklers went off in the lower cabin, and rain started to pour down. “We'll be okay here.”

“Until the engines blow up. Or the hull burns. Or the fire reaches the gas tanks. Come on, we'll be fine. We have to put distance between us and Borsack's boat.”

Vinnie looked up. By the light of the fire, I could see blood coming from her mouth now. “No. Electronics . . . fried. Won't . . . start.”

The other boat, the much smaller runabout, was filling with water fast.

“Life jackets,” I cried. I put Red down to try to open hatches and cabinets. “We need life jackets.”

No, we didn't. Lightning flashed again and I could see Fafhrd, on his barge, my barge, using a huge pine tree as a paddle.

As soon as Fafhrd was close enough, I took Nicky from Grant and passed him to the grinning troll. I looked at Vinnie, but she was beyond help. Then I looked for my poor panicked dog. “Red! Red!”

There was Grant, handing me the dog and lifting both of us over the side of the boat onto the barge. He jumped down after us.

“Tell me your friend Fafhrd is here, and Nicky is not dangling ten feet in the air on a pole.”

My tears mixed with the rain. “It's Fafhrd! It is! I knew he'd come.” I realized I echoed Borsack's maniacal claims, so I changed that to “I hoped he'd find us.”

“And Nicky's grandfather came through for us, too.”

“And you.”

We huddled together against the wind and rain until we saw lights setting out from shore. I recognized the Coast Guard and the harbormaster, but every lobster boat and dragger, every cabin cruiser and cigarette boat from Paumanok Harbor was coming to our rescue, too. I saw a seaplane flying from Montauk to the east and a private helicopter from East Hampton to the west.

I didn't know if I heard voices in my head or shouts from the boats.

“Welcome home, Nicky.”

“We missed you.”

“So glad you're here, son.”

And one I knew well: “I am proud of you, Willow.”

Then the yacht exploded, filling the night with sparks and light.

Our barge wouldn't burn. Grant pulled me tighter and kissed both my cheeks. “My brilliant woman.”