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Caine glanced at her, indifferent really, but hoping she wouldn’t capsize the boat.
Without a word, Jasmine toppled over the side. She hit the water with a splash.
“Hey,” Diana said wanly.
Caine kept his hand on the tiller. Jasmine did not surface. A white lace doily of disturbed water marked where she had sunk gratefully into the deep.
And then there were six, Caine thought dully.
Hank dead.
Antoine gone, lost somewhere in the madness, maybe dead too, as bad as he was hurt.
Zil sat trembling. Home in his stupid little compound, with his stupid little girlfriend, Lisa, staring at him like a cow, with stupid Turk mumbling in the corner, trying to make up some kind of explanation of how all this was really a good thing.
Sam would come for him now. Zil was sure of that. Sam would come for him. The freaks would triumph. If they could kill Hank and maybe Antoine, too, oh God, then it was just a matter of time.
Caine could just as easily have smashed Zil himself into the water that way. If Zil had been the one shooting, Caine would have killed him as easily as he did Hank. Him! The Leader!
It wasn’t in the plan. Zil was supposed to use the confusion of the fire to rally as many normals as he could and take over town hall. Make Astrid a prisoner, hold her as a hostage so Sam wouldn’t…
A stupid plan. Caine’s plan. How was he ever going to rally kids in all that chaos? In all the smoke and panic and confusion, with Sam blasting Antoine and then Hank.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
And then, attacking Caine to make it look good. Stupider, still. He couldn’t fight the freaks head-on.
Zil could still see the look on Hank’s face as he soared into the air. The scream that tore his throat as he came hurtling back down. The stretched-out quality of time as they waited for Hank to come back up, knowing he wouldn’t. Knowing that there was no way to survive that fall.
Like diving off a building into a cereal bowl of water, Lance had said. Hank was deep in the submarine mud. And it could have been Zil. It could have been him with his head buried in wet mud, maybe still alive for just long enough to try to take a breath…
“Good thing is, kids will totally believe us now,” Turk was saying as he chewed his fingernails.
“What?” Zil snapped.
“With Hank killed by Caine,” Turk explained. “I mean, no one’s going to think we had a deal with Caine.”
Zil nodded absently.
“That’s true,” Lance said. He didn’t quite grin, but almost. And for a second Zil saw something different in Lance. Something that didn’t match his handsome face and cool demeanor.
“Maybe we should just stop it.”
Lisa. Zil was surprised to hear the sound of her voice. She didn’t usually say anything. Mostly she just sat there like a bump on a log. Like a stupid cow. Mostly he hated her, and right now he hated her a lot, because she was seeing the truth, that Zil had lost.
“Just stop what?” Lance asked. He clearly didn’t like Lisa, either. Zil knew one thing for sure: Lisa wasn’t pretty enough that Lance would ever be interested in her. No, she was just the best Zil could get. At least, so far.
“I mean…,” Lisa began, but she ended with a shrug and fell silent again.
“The thing we need to do,” Turk said, “is keep telling people how it was all Caine. We keep telling people Caine burned the town.”
“Yes,” Zil said without conviction. He dropped his head and looked down at the floor, the dirty, ratty rug. “The freaks.”
“Right,” Turk said.
“It was the freaks,” Lance said. “I mean, it was. Who pushed us into it? Caine.”
“Exactly,” Turk said.
