“No!” Gloria rushed at him, and her hands seemed to shift into claws. “I put them in there to keep them safe. Stop!”
He braced himself for the tulpa’s attack. But before she could reach him, another form materialized in between.
Robin’s long hair floated about her, as if charged by the electricity in the air. A soft glow seemed to emanate from her skin, in stark contrast to Ullman’s black smoke. Her expression was sad, but the gentleness of her presence soothed nonetheless.
What a medium she would have been, had she lived.
“No,” she said to Gloria. Her killer. “It’s okay. It’s time for us all to finally be free.”
Whether Gloria agreed or not, Oscar didn’t know, because he didn’t take the time to find out. Seizing the moment Robin had given him, he drew back his fist and put every ounce of his weight behind smashing it through the glass.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-NINE
“Nigel!” Dr. Lawson yelled over the screaming wind and crashing waves. “Hang on, I’ll pull you up!”
Rain poured down the tilting gallery, making it impossible to get purchase. Nigel clung to the Faraday cloth, his feet inches from where Montague still hung on to the rail.
“Don’t leave me!” Montague cried. “Please, don’t let me die, Ruthie!”
Lightning crashed nearby, and Nigel felt as though his heart had lost a beat. If they didn’t fall to their deaths, they were going to end up electrocuted.
The flaming ship lit up the ocean just offshore now. He couldn’t make out details without his glasses, but even so he could feel the hungry eyes of the dead fixed on them. Did the six ghosts want company? Someone to make them a cadre of seven once again?
Or were they just looking for someone new to hunt?
Lawson and Chris had inched out as far as they dared, with Chris clinging to the doorframe with one hand, the other locked around Lawson’s belt as she leaned toward Nigel. “Can you climb up?” she called. “Use the cloth like a rope, and I’ll?—”
The crimson light from the lantern went out, plunging them into darkness.
CHAPTER
SIXTY
The thick glass of the lantern shattered.
Something in Oscar’s hand broke with it, despite the shirt wrapped around his fist. Jagged edges sliced through the cotton like butter, and warm blood joined the rainwater on his skin.
The light went out, but with the glass cage broken, his medium’s eyes saw balls of silvery radiance streak out of the lantern. Their anger vibrated in his bones, mingled with gratitude—and steely determination.
What had kept them inside? Some mineral used to dye the glass, perhaps, or maybe even something Gloria had done. It didn’t matter. They were free.
“No,” Gloria moaned. “He’ll hurt them again, he’ll?—”
“Shh.” Robin placed her hand on Gloria’s shoulder. “Just watch.”
The souls of the murdered women and boys, hidden away in the lantern so Ullman could no longer reach them, surged out. As they fed off the charge in the stormy air, their brilliance increased, brighter and brighter, until Tina let out a gasp that told him even a non-medium could perceive them now.
“How dare you,” Ullman roared. “How?—”
The orbs rushed him en masse.
CHAPTER
SIXTY-ONE
For a moment, Nigel clung to the Faraday cloth in a darkness broken only by the ghostly blaze aboard the ship far below. Rain pounded against his skin, and the wind shoved at him as if it wanted to tear his precarious grasp free and send him falling to his death. He didn’t know what had happened to the lantern, if Oscar was all right, if any of them could possibly survive this?—
