“Everyone all right?” Rans called.
“Never better,” I croaked, nursing the bruise on my elbow. Cautiously, I poked my head up.
Guthrie was dusting himself off as he climbed back into the seat next to Rans. “You’re lucky I didn’t smash my damned phone.”
He craned around to look behind us, and I did the same. The Fae were slewing around to give chase, but Rans’ impromptu game of high-speed chicken had given us some breathing room while they got their vessels turned around and pointing the right direction.
“It’s a straight-up horse race now,” Rans said grimly. “If they can catch up to us within the next sixty miles, we’re screwed. If we can gain enough distance on them to ditch the boat at a port in St. John’s and disappear into the city, then we’re... well, we’re in roughly the same position we were before, I suppose. Just on a different island.”
“Great,” I said. “So, apparently this group is trying to finish the job Caspian started in California? They’re trying to kill us?”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Rans called back as he consulted Guthrie’s phone screen and altered course by a fraction, still running at full throttle. “Those were lead bullets, not silver.”
I frowned. “How on earth can you know that?”
“Because my body just expelled one of them from my left bicep,” he said.
“What?” I squeaked, scurrying forward until I could get a look at his left arm. A dark patch of blood maybe three inches across stained the sky-blue cotton of his shirtsleeve, which now sported a neat hole through the material.
“It’s fine, love,” he reassured. His expression hardened. “No permanent harm done—which makes me think they were trying to incapacitate me without killing both of us. And that, in turn, makes me think they want you alive.”
A cold lump settled in my stomach. If the Fae managed a lucky shot through Rans’ heart with silver, they’d kill me, too—not just him. They must know that he wouldn’t let me be taken without a fight, though... hence lead bullets that might put him out of commission for a few precious moments so they could snatch me, but wouldn’t be fatal.
I thought of the last time I’d been a prisoner of the Fae, and shuddered.
“That’s not going to happen,” I said in a shaky voice. “I’m not going back to Dhuinne.”
Blue eyes met mine and held for the space of a heartbeat, understanding shining in them. “I know, love. Brave heart, eh?”
“What happened with the engine back there?” Guthrie asked, breaking the moment. “I thought for a second they must have hit a fuel line or something, but it sounds all right now.”
“I’m not entirely certain,” Rans said, returning his gaze to the ocean ahead. “There are a couple of possibilities, including one I’m decidedly unhappy about—but there’s nothing to be done about it, either way.”
“Cryptic much?” I groused, still crouching between the two front seats. I looked back, and found that the Fae were once again on our heels, but lagging far enough behind for the moment that aiming with a handgun would be impractical. I watched, but couldn’t tell if they were gaining ground or not.
“Frequently, yes—though that wasn’t my intention in this case,” Rans replied. “Fae magic disrupts electronics. The effect covers a broader area when several of them are together in a group. The control panel on this boat is reassuringly analog, but I didn’t stop to think that it might have electronic fuel injection rather than a carburetor.”
Guthrie gave him another one of those oh-my-god-are-you-even-kidding-right-now looks. “So let me get this straight. If they get too close, they can just... kill our engine? With magic?”
“Our engine... your mobile phone. Suffice to say, it’s in our best interest not to let them get too close.”
I looked behind us again. Were the boats a bit nearer than they had been before? Or was that just my paranoia talking?
“And if they’re faster than we are? How are we going to stop them?” I asked, the unpleasant lump of fear in my stomach growing heavier.
Rans drew breath as though to speak and held it, but then he let it out slowly and shook his head without replying. He didn’t have to say anything.
The answer was—we couldn’t.
SEVENTEEN
THEY WERE GAINING on us. I couldn’t delude myself anymore into thinking I was imagining it. And I wasn’t the only one who’d come to that conclusion.
“We’re not going to make it,” Guthrie said, glancing from our pursuers to his phone’s GPS. “At this rate, they’ll be on us a full twenty minutes before we reach St. John’s.”
“Anything closer?” Rans asked, not even bothering to look back at the Fae. He just focused his eyes on the expanse of empty water in front of us, and kept the boat’s throttle jammed forward to its maximum.
“Not close enough to help,” Guthrie told him. “There’s a small peninsula west of the city, but it’s maybe five or ten minutes’ difference at these speeds.”
The powerboat, I’d learned, maxed out at about forty-five knots, which was apparently a bit more than fifty miles per hour. In a way, it felt crazy-fast with the wind whipping past us and the boat skimming the waves, throwing up spray in its wake. But when I looked at the emptiness surrounding us, my brain insisted we were barely crawling. Too slow, too slow, too slow—the words echoed through my head on a continuous loop.
“What do we do?” I asked, as if either of the two men could have an answer when our options were narrowing down to nothing.
“Run until we
