He turned abruptly, as if he'd heard someone behind him.
Lilla! His eyes shifted from side to side while he chewed on a corner of his mouth.
Lilla. No matter what anyone said, she was still alive even if she was crazy, and maybe between the two of them they could get off the island and bring back help for his mother. She probably wasn't really dead anyway, right? She and Colin were probably just under some kind of spell, and Lilla was a witch so she would know the right words to bring everyone back.
And there was that boat the chief talked about, the one he saved at the marina.
He started to walk toward the end of the road.
It might work. It would work. Lilla was his friend from the days before all the dying, and she remembered him enough to look for him at Amy's, right? She didn't hurt him then, right? Even if Gran was inside her-though he didn't know how-she wouldn't hurt him because he had been Gran's favorite, they were going to be kings. So she was really his friend. She knew he was her friend, too, like at the jail when she showed him how to bring on the fog.
And if they could get that boat and go for the police…
He began to run.
Lilla. Crazy Lilla.
He swallowed and promised his mother he'd be back before she knew it, back with the right words and the right way to move his hands and the right everything and before she knew it she wouldn't have to walk that way anymore or do what Gran said or be hurt or anything. He promised her as he sprinted off the tarmac onto the path that led to the cliffs.
He knew where Lilla was.
He wasn't the only one who liked to crawl around in the caves and hunt for buried treasure and look for pirate bones all left in little piles; he'd seen her there a lot, and if she was afraid of Gran like Colin said she was, then it was the perfect place to hide. The other
Though he didn't know why, he knew it had something to do with the salt in the water. He ran over the spongy ground, swinging the picket sword back and forth ahead of him, ducking when a spray of leaves whispered and sliced past his face, jumping over dead branches tossed to the ground by the wind. It was dark in here, but not as dark as it would be when night finally came. Dark, but not as dark as the day before when all the leaves were on the trees.
And there were darker shapes deeper in the woods that paced him and ran ahead of him. He wasn't sure who they were, or if it was only his imagination, and purpose gave way to panic as he tried to lengthen his stride.