Chapter 54
What I wish for you, my curious little monkey, is adventure, freedom, love. All these things and more. I want the stars for you.
—Elenise Luna to her daughter, Kaia (3)
NAUSEA THREATENED TO steal Kaia’s faltering courage as she stepped out of the boat Armand had coasted all the way to shore. Her boots sank into the sand, the water close enough that she could cling to the illusion that she wasn’t leaving the blue.
“You have everything?” her cousin asked, but what he was actually asking was: You really want to do this, Cookie?
She nodded and tightened the straps of the little pack that held two changes of clothing, a few toiletries, and a first-aid kit packed with the anti-anxiety medication Ryūjin’s healer had prescribed her. “Yes,” she said simply, because if she turned back now, she’d never again be able to look at herself in the mirror. “Go.”
Bowen took her hand into the rough warmth of his. “I’ll take care of her,” he said. “I’ll bring her home.”
Kaia could’ve told all four males she was quite capable of getting home—that wasn’t the problem—but Bowen’s words made her cousins’ shoulders ease, the strain disappear from their faces, so she left it.
“Good luck,” Armand said before the three of them pushed out the lightweight craft, then jumped in and started up the engine.
They headed off into an ocean still shrouded in the dark gray of early morning.
While she stood on land.
Far from the safe cocoon of Ryūjin.
Swallowing hard, Kaia looked at Bowen. “Our ride will be waiting.”
He nodded but took a moment to touch his fingers to her jaw. “Just hold on to me. Whatever it is that’s put that look in your eyes, I’ll fight it beside you every step of the way.”
Kaia squeezed his hand tight.
He never let go of her as she took another step onto land, then another, and another. The thread that tied her to the ocean stretched tauter and tauter and tauter. Her stomach, it threatened to lurch. And her mind, it wanted to drown her in the horror of the last time she’d set foot on land.
It had been beside her parents’ dying bodies, Kaia running to the jet-chopper as BlackSea paramedics carried her mother and father to the same gleaming machine while a healer worked frantically on them. Dust had swirled in the air, her hand locked safely in Aunt Geraldine’s and her dirty summer dress twisting around her knees.
The medication stopped the nausea from becoming sickening reality, but the healer had been very strict in saying she could only take that medication for just over twenty-four hours before her system would begin to violently reject it. “It’s powerful stuff, Kaia.” Concern in the soft blue of eyes that had known her since she was an infant. “You shouldn’t be using it to suppress your emotional hurt. You have a phobia and you need to work through it with counseling and—”
“I don’t have the time.” Kaia accepted the truth of the healer’s words; she also knew that once Bowen left her, she’d have no more reason to ever again step on land or venture beyond the safe seas around Ryūjin and Lantia. “I just need to be able to function until we find George.”
Adding to the strain on her already stretched psyche was the countdown that continued to tick in the back of her mind.
Twenty-eight hours.
But though it was his life on the line, Bowen kept on going, his concentration a laser.
So would she, Kaia vowed. Never would she give up. Never would she surrender. And never ever would she permit fear to steal her time with Bowen.
THE BlackSea changeling who waited for them beside a beat-up truck had skin the color of strong black coffee and nearly as many wrinkles as Bebe. He also drove like a bat out of hell, rocketing them down the potholed road that looked as if it had come straight out of the nineteenth century.
A surprisingly gleeful Kaia held on to the side of the open-topped vehicle, while Bowen fought his instinct to reach over and grab the steering wheel. The cool air whipped across his face, the weather here not exactly tropical despite the palm trees zipping past the truck.
He was almost startled to discover they were still alive when they skidded into the parking lot of an airport so tiny, it didn’t even have an air traffic control tower. From what he could see, all it had was a tin-roofed shed that functioned as the administration building, snug up against a large hangar.
Bo was certain the place had far more tech than was visible to the naked eye. Teizo had let it drop that this was Lantia’s preferred airfield. “Too much wear and tear on the city with the heat from the jets,” the younger male had said. “Lantia’s strip can accommodate all aircraft, but mostly everyone uses the island.”
“Safe journey,” the driver said after Bo jumped out.
“I think I’ve survived the most dangerous part already,” Bo pointed out as he swung Kaia down to solid ground.
The driver was still cackling at Bo’s response when he drove off in a whirl of dust.
Glancing at Kaia, Bowen raised an eyebrow. “He’s Bebe’s boyfriend, isn’t he?”
Her eyes sparkled as she looked around, her face full of color once more and the stiffness gone from her spine. “It’s been a long time since I was on this island. I’d forgotten how beautiful it is.”
“Oh?” From what Armand had said at the start of the journey, BlackSea visitors and residents powered the island’s entire economy. The only reason the roads were potholed was that repairs hadn’t yet been completed after a storm a week earlier.
Lifting her face to the sky just kissed by the edge of dawn, Kaia said, “I tend to stay in the black.” She took a long breath of the island air. “But I think I’ll come up more often now. Sit at the bar my cousins talk about, have a cocktail or five.” A kind of taut desperation in her.
And Bo wondered if she was thinking about the hours racing past.
“I’ll buy you those cocktails.” He kept his tone deliberately light. “And when you’re drunk, I’ll carry you home and tuck you in.”
“Deal,” she said huskily, her eyes no longer human brown but an inky black.
“I see you,” he murmured.
Convulsively squeezing the hand she once more held, she nodded to the runway. “Is that our ride?”
Bowen crushed his own desperation under the weight of grim determination and took in the sleek black jet that looked as out of place on the two-lane runway as a tuxedo would in a village where everyone else dressed in shorts and Hawaiian shirts. “Fits Armand’s description,” he said as they entered the administration building.
A man and a woman Bo immediately tagged as pilots were hanging out inside, shooting the breeze. Another woman, this one round-faced and matronly, stood behind the counter. “Kaia!” Her hands flew to her mouth. “Girl, you could’ve warned me!”
Grinning in delight, Kaia dropped his hand to run over and hug the other woman.
A scruffy-jawed male leaning up against the counter a few feet from the pilots grinned along with the two of them. Dressed in grease-stained blue coveralls, he might as well have had “mechanic” painted on his forehead.
The final occupant was a good-looking young male who stood in a large doorway that had to lead to the hangar. For some reason, he made the back of Bo’s neck prickle, agitated his instincts.
Dressed in blue coveralls identical to the mechanic’s, he was currently frowning at a piece of metal in his hand. “Hey, Rick,” he called out, his rich auburn hair streaked with grease. “I can see a crack in this. On the underside, hidden by the charring.”
“Well, thank bloody Poseidon I finally have a competent apprentice. You’re the first one who’s passed the bloomin’ test!”
Smile sharp and brilliant, the young man turned to walk back into the hangar. There was something about the way he moved that told Bo he was a changeling—but not BlackSea. No one in BlackSea moved with such distinctly feline grace.
His eyes narrowed. But the unknown male wasn’t his concern right now. “We ready to go?” he asked the pilots.
“Just waiting for an update on the winds,” the older of the two replied. “They can be a touch unpredictable here.”
Kaia’s friend handed over a thin organizer a bare two seconds later. “You’re good to go. Clear skies.”
Twenty-seven hours and twenty-eight minutes until it was too late.