‘Cassie! I only just remembered. Brigitte. Katerina!’
‘Yes, but we’re going to figure out how to—’
‘Cassie, no. Did you … did you say you …’ He seized her again, shook her. ‘Tell me you didn’t give them the artefacts!’
Her silence must have told him everything.
He went entirely still, searching her face as if even now she could tell him she was kidding. ‘Oh, God, Cassie. No. This is a catastrophe.’
‘Hey,’ interrupted Richard indignantly. ‘She gave them up for you!’
‘I know. I know.’ Ranjit rubbed his temples hard. Impulsively, he reached out and put his hands on her shoulders, then pulled her into a hesitant embrace.
Cassie closed her eyes, leaning the side of her head against his shoulder, revelling in the closeness even as they both stiffened, trying to hold back. Eventually she pulled away.
‘We’re going to get them back,’ she told him, more confidently than she felt.
‘There may not be time for that,’ said Ranjit dully. ‘It may already have happened.’
‘What might have happened?’ She frowned, staring at Ranjit quizzically, but feeling a growing sense of dread. ‘What do you know?’
‘They had the Urn once they’d kidnapped me, of course. But they needed the Knife and the Pendant to complete their plan. They explained it to me, the whole damn thing. Gloating, of course. They assumed I’d be dead by now.’
‘And?’ prompted Richard impatiently.
‘They need to get a spirit out of the Urn.’
Cassie swallowed nervously. ‘So it does still contain a spirit? One the Eldest trapped there?’
‘Worse. Much worse.’ Ranjit leaned both hands against the panes of the French windows and stared bleakly out towards the ocean. ‘The spirit in the Urn? It’s the Eldest himself.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cassie pulled her hair off her face and took great gulps of oxygen into her lungs, trying to swerve her mind away from the consequences she might already have brought about.
‘I don’t get it. I thought the Eldest was driven away by the Council? And without the artefacts he couldn’t feed on other Few. That’s why they hid the Urn, isn’t it, as well as all the other artefacts?’
‘That’s the story they put about,’ said Ranjit darkly. ‘Apparently what really happened was that they lured him to his own Urn and imprisoned him there. They didn’t want the true story to get out, because inevitably the Eldest’s followers would seek him out and try to free him. And now they have found him.’
They’d risked venturing on to the balcony because they all needed air, though Ranjit looked downright dizzy with it. He needed to feed – properly – Cassie thought vaguely, but they hadn’t even got to that yet, with all the revelations that were happening. She, Ranjit and Richard stood watching the glitter and roll of the turquoise waves, listening to the birdsong and the screech of monkeys and the clatter from the dining room far below on the ground floor.
‘But to free the Eldest? Surely even our Katerina isn’t that stupid,’ remarked Richard hopefully.
‘They’re bound to free him, or try to,’ said Cassie dully. ‘The Svenssons are nuts.’
‘And … and if they do it’ll be chaos. Carnage.’ Ranjit put an arm round her shoulders as if that could soften his words. ‘He’ll start with the Few, but he won’t stop there. The whole world will be his feeding trough. But he’ll need a very strong host … I wonder what they’re planning exactly regarding that? Maybe one of them, even?’ He shook his head incredulously. ‘Can you imagine the Eldest in a position of power? Congress, maybe, or even the Presidency?’
‘I can’t. I don’t want to.’ Cassie ground her teeth. ‘We have to stop them.’
‘Listen, you’re not to blame, Cassie. You couldn’t know.’
‘Uh-huh. And remember how you reacted when I told you the same thing? Well, multiply that by a hundred.’
‘Aren’t we rather wasting time with a mutual blame society?’ drawled Richard. ‘Try Sir Alric again.’
Cassie pulled out her phone and thumbed in his number yet again. She glanced from Ranjit to Richard as she held it to her ear. ‘Still going to voicemail. Dammit.’
‘Try the lodge,’ suggested Richard.
‘I didn’t want to bring Isabella and Jake into this, but—’ Reluctantly Cassie pressed the entry for Sir Alric’s safari lodge, then raised her eyebrows. ‘It’s dead.’
‘That doesn’t sound good,’ said Ranjit, frowning with concern.
Cassie hesitated, not wanting to think the worst. ‘The phone system isn’t that reliable …’
‘I’ll tell you what is reliable,’ said Richard. ‘My favourite toy. Come on. Let’s stop wasting time. We’re going to the airstrip.’
Cassie was out of her seat before the Cessna had even bumped to a halt on the long flat strip of savannah. Ranjit was right behind her as she wrestled the door open to the dry, dusty heat of the day and had begun lowering the steps before Richard had taken off his headset. She couldn’t explain the terrible urgency that had filled her since they’d snapped out of their inertia and decided to sneak out of the Academy and fly straight to Mount Kenya, but she knew she wanted to see Jake and Isabella with her own eyes: alive, well, and loved-up.