The actual coffin didn’t come into sight until we were right on top of it because it wasn’t simply lying on the forest floor. It had been half-buried upon impact, and only the top few inches of the inner box and its lid were exposed above the dirt. More shards of shattered marble and pine lay all around it.
Orthus sniffed one edge of the inner stone box, then he dismissed it entirely with a snort, turning his attention back to the local wildlife apparently still hiding in the canopy. Cale knelt beside the casket, running his hands over the lip of the lid, presumably making sure the seal—or whatever—was still intact. As he inspected the stone, I shined my light around on the ground, staring in amazement at the damage to the forest floor.
“It’s a fucking miracle that thing survived the impact,” I said, still eyeing the scarred earth. Though the crate and the marble sarcophagus surrounding it had not.
“Yeah.” Cale’s voice sounded oddly strained. I swung my light around to find his flashlight propped against a fallen log. He stood with his feet spread on one side of the box, trying in vain to pull the lid open. His neck bulged with the effort, chords standing out starkly from his skin in the harsh light. “It certainly is.”
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, shining my light into his eyes.
He blinked against the glare, shielding his face with one hand. “What does it look like? I’m trying to get it open, and I could use a little help, if your arm feels up to it.”
My arm was fine, but that was beside the point. “Aren’t we supposed to benotopening the box?” Orthus growled on my right, but I ignored him.
“We can’t carry the whole damn thing, can we?” Cale said. “Even if we could get it down to the beach and into the boat, it would sink us in minutes. Xaphan’s in an urn inside the box. That’s all we need.”
My gaze narrowed on him. I wasn’t sure what to believe. What if he was trying to secure the wish for himself? He’d been unaffected by the djinn’s pull at Oak Island, but what if it was getting to him, now that he was this close? Now that the crate and sarcophagus were destroyed.
“Lex!” he snapped, desperation a sharp edge to his voice. “Help me!”
Spending a few days with Cale didn’t mean I reallyknewhim…
What if this had been his goal all along? Maybe he’d snuck on board the helicopter, then the plane, in order to steal the crate for himself. To steal thewishfor himself. Had heusedme for his own gain?
I pulled my gun from its holster and clicked off the safety. “Step away from the box and put yourfuckinghands where I can see them.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Cale frowned at me for a second, then he rolled his eyes in the glare from my flashlight as understanding settled into place. “Wow, seriously? I wouldn’t free Xaphan for ahundredwishes. He was buried in an urn, with the body. The urn is clearly still intact.”
“Why should I believe that?”
He stood up straight, clearly exasperated. “Whywouldn’tyou? I’ve known where Xaphan was hidden my entire life, and a pit full of water wouldn’t have stopped me from blowing the sarcophagus to bits and taking the wish for myself, if that’s what I’d wanted. But it isn’t. I’m trying to get the urn out of here, intact, before anyone else finds it.”
Okay, that made sense. “There’s really a corpse in there?” A four-hundred-year-old cadaver?
“Of course there’s a corpse. What else would you put in a coffin?”
A djinni, apparently. “Whose body is it?”
“Xaphan’s last ‘master,’ for whom he razed entire cities. My elders were into poetic justice.” Cale glanced at the box, then turned to look imploringly at me again. “You know, if you give me a hand, this’ll go much faster.”
I hesitated for a moment, then holstered my gun. Griping beneath my breath, I worked the end of my flashlight into a tight clump of ivy so that it shone on the box. Squatting in dense, crisp foliage, I brushed the end of my long coat out behind me and wrapped both hands around the lip of the lid. The stone was flawlessly smooth against my fingers, but instead of the skin-numbing cold I expected, the lid was—
“It’swarm.” Somehow, the stone was warmer than my skin, despite the below-freezing ambient temperature.
Cale nodded. “That’s Xaphan. He can’t feel me any more than I can feel him, but he can obviously senseyou, and he thinks you’re about to let him out.”
My fingers ran over the stone almost absently, and when I realized that I was stroking the box, I snatched my hands away, horrified by the compulsion. “Why can’t you feel each other?”
“Our abilities are too dissimilar.” If Cale noticed me twisting my fingers into knots, he showed no sign. “His power disguises mine, and vice versa. Makes him harder for me to find, but easier to resist. Speaking of which, how you doing?”
“Fine,” I said, even as my hand curled around the lip of the lid again. I was doing just fine. I would help Cale get the box open, then leave the urn to him. The less contact I had with it the better. “On the count of three,” I said, and he nodded. “One… Two… Three!”
I pulled. Cale pulled. For a moment, nothing happened, which didn’t surprise me in the least. The box washeavy. But then his end of the lid started to creak, so I pulled harder, and the lid lifted just a bit. Less than an inch. But that was apparently enough.
Cale stopped lifting and started pushing. The stone lid slid out of my hands and across the top of the coffin, opening a four-inch gap in the box, through which I could see and hear nothing. Not a thing. No fingers creeping out toward me, no scratching from the inside of the box, no low moan of agony. We’d opened a miniature crevasse, dark as death and just as silent.
I reached for my flashlight as Cale gave the lid another mighty shove. The stone slab slid farther off the box, its back edge dropping to the dirt on the other side of the hole, so that the lid sloped up toward us, exposing the entire inside of the coffin.
