I’m here. Oh, I am here!
His mind felt right for the first time in days. He chuckled softly. Do you have anything you’d like to say to her?
Did she ever. He let her slip into control of his body, to use his voice. This was what Durant expected after all. Cormac’s body but not Cormac. Let her think she won, just for a second.
“Hello, Isabelle.” She caused Cormac’s body to stand, the clay pot resting in her hands.
Durant’s eyes lit up. She gasped a laugh. “It worked? It worked!”
Amelia, through Cormac, said, “Look at you. In so far over your head you don’t even know you’re drowning.”
Durant put her hand to her mouth, grinning. “He’s there, he’s trapped in the jar now, just like you said—”
“Oh, my child.” Amelia shook Cormac’s head. “You’ve no idea what just happened, do you?”
Durant’s smile fell. “What. . .what happened?”
“Exactly what I wanted.”
“Who are you?” Durant’s voice pushed to the edge of a scream.
Amelia retreated, leaving Cormac back in charge of his body and his voice. The timber of his speech changed, from Amelia’s clipped aristocratic accent to his flat midwestern. “Durant? You lose.”
He let the pot fall. It tumbled, and Cormac’s—and Amelia’s—heart lifted at the sight of it, all that trouble, the terrible trap. It smashed against the asphalt. Clay shattered. A thousand pieces, a cloud of shards and powder expanding. The cracking song of it rang out.
Durant screamed. It might as well have been a baby’s skull that shattered, so much anguish filled the sound. Cormac lifted his hands, brushed his fingers in a show of dismissal. He smiled, victorious.
&
nbsp; “Put the gun down! Put down the weapon! Hands up!” Urgent, professional voices called out. From side streets Detective Nielson and what must have been every uniformed officer in the county closed in. “Put it down!”
She’d waited. Thank God and all magic she had waited.
Cormac stood very still, his hands raised and harmless. Durant looked around with the panic of a trapped animal. Then her gaze rested on Cormac, and some decision settled over her expression.
“No!” Nielson ordered. “Drop it, drop it now!”
He knew it would happen just as her finger tightened. Time slowed, and a strange confidence settled over him. Whatever was going to happen would happen, he could only do so much to stop it. But that little, he would do. He breathed out, watched her hand, saw the twitch. And he dropped, dodged, rolled to the side in a way that he hoped she would not anticipate.
The gun fired, the air exploded with the crack.
The bullet hit. Knocked back, he fell prone.
Cops shouted. Everyone shouted. Somebody wanted an ambulance. Cormac lay still. He couldn’t tell what got hit. He blinked up at sky.
Cormac? Cormac!
He passed out.
The scene was vague. Rushing water chimed nearby; birds sang. The air smelled of springtime, lilacs and warmth. He was in a boat, a small craft drifting lazily. He was unstable, but if he lay still, the soft movement lulled him, and he let himself drift. He wore a suit, something out of a Victorian movie, tailored and perfect, with a neat cravat. His mustache was trimmed. He was the dashing hero of a romantic novel. He lay with his head in someone’s lap. Gentle hands stroked his forehead. A woman, wearing diaphanous silk that frothed around her in a gown that was complicated and angelic. Her dark hair lay around her shoulders in waves. If he reached up, he could wrap a lock of it around his finger, and it would feel like satin. The woman, Amelia, pressed her hand to his face and gazed on him with such care and longing. He wanted to pull her down with him and hold her close, but it was all so impossible, and a thick haze blurred everything, and he couldn’t move, and the boat drifted on and on. Nothing here was right and yet he didn’t want to leave, this was too perfect—
“I will be here when you wake up, my heart,” the woman breathed, and she faded, until all was white silk and rocking waves and she was gone and there were other voices—
“Mr. Bennett? Cormac? Can you hear me? Open your eyes if you can hear me.”
Opening his eyes was a chore, but he did it, blinking into too much light, so that he winced and turned away. He was cold, his mouth tasted like metal, and the air smelled like a hospital.
“What. . .what happened. . .”