detached and floating away, snatched by the strong current.
“Get your pack off!” Caleb instructed the second he was beside her.
Caitlin shrugged the heavy thing off, feeling instantly more buoyant. But her body was still weary, and her water-logged clothes were weighing her down.
“We have to get to land,” Caleb said.
He scooped his arm around his wife. She could feel that he was trembling violently. He was trying to be strong for her but really his situation was just as perilous.
“Do you think you can swim that far?” he added, nodding to the crumbling Boldt Castle.
Caitlin gritted her chattering teeth.
“What if the plane hit her?” she managed to say.
Caleb shook his head. “Don’t think like that.”
“I can’t help it. She’s our daughter. What if – ”
But Caleb didn’t let her finish. He pressed his hand over Caitlin’s heart.
“If she was dead, you’d know,” he said. “Wouldn’t you? If you can sense our daughter, track her to this place, then you’d know in your heart. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Caitlin bit her lip.
“Yes,” she said, finally. “You’re right. I would know if she was dead. I would feel it.”
But even as she said the words, and even though she believed them, she couldn’t help but feel that same sense of dread. Even if Scarlet was alive, she was most certainly still in danger.
Caitlin felt her arms begin to fatigue from treading water for so long.
“What are we going to do?” she cried to Caleb. “The only land is that way.”
She pointed at Boldt Castle, at the gaping hole in its side. Caleb followed her outstretched finger.
“I know,” he said with trepidation.
Caitlin nodded. Wet tendrils of hair stuck to her face. She swiped them away and began to swim toward the castle.
Just then, a noise caught Caitlin’s attention. It sounded like a distant whining noise, mechanical in nature. Familiar. Getting louder.
Caitlin glanced over her shoulder at Caleb.
“A helicopter,” she said.
Caleb paused mid-stroke and stared up at the sky as the noise grew louder and louder.
“The police?” he said. “They can’t still be on our tails, can they? Unless they were tracking the plane.”
Caleb suddenly thumped his open palms against the water, making a huge splash. But the noise was almost completely drowned out by the whirring blades of a helicopter approaching fast.
His features dropped into resignation.
“Get ready,” he said. “This is about to get a lot more dangerous.”
It took several minutes to swim to Boldt Castle. The side closest to Caitlin and Caleb was completely destroyed where the plane had struck. Stone and rubble had tumbled into the ocean, creating a sort of slope that they could now climb up. It was precarious going but they made it, finally, into Boldt Castle.
The smell of airplane fuel was strong in the air, mixed with the smells of dust, smoke, and sea salt. Caitlin heard a clamoring of noise in the distance, of people shouting, arguing, and crying out in pain. She knew at once that the building had been full before the plane hit, and that thanks to her, many people had been hurt. She shivered, her frozen body racked with guilt.
Caitlin was in a state, her hair a mess, the jump from the airplane and force of the waves having turned it into soggy dreadlocks. Her clothes were torn in places. Caleb looked just as bedraggled.
“Well?” he said. “Can you sense her?”
Caitlin put a finger to her lips to quiet him. She tried to get a feel for her daughter, to let her instincts tell her where she was, but she was struggling to catch hold of anything tangible. The sound of the roaring helicopter circling above them, the heat coming from the fire, the cries coming from the injured, all were crowding her mind and messing with her abilities.
“I can’t feel her,” Caitlin whispered, feeling defeated.
Caleb rubbed his chin. Caitlin could tell he was at his wits’ end. She wished she could do more to help but her mind was too frantic to hone in on Scarlet.
“Is she in the castle somewhere?” Caleb asked.
Despite his best attempts to hide it, Caitlin could hear the exasperation in his voice. She’d led him to this place, forced him to jump from a plane, and now she couldn’t even tell him whether she’d been right or not.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to calm her mind.
“I think she is,” she said finally. “I think she’s here somewhere.”
“Then we search,” Caleb replied.
He turned to leave but Caitlin grabbed his arm.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“Of what we might find?”
She shook her head.
“No,” she said, “of seeing the damage I’ve caused.”
Caleb reached out and squeezed her hand.
They stepped further into the castle. They walked carefully as the ground underfoot seemed unstable. When Caleb suddenly stopped short, blocking Caitlin’s path with an extended arm, she assumed there was some kind of obstacle ahead. But when she craned her head to look over his shoulder, her mouth dropped open with astonishment. A little way ahead of them were hundreds upon hundreds of men and women. Some of them were flying, others hovering, and all were facing a man who stood taller than any human Caitlin had ever seen. He was at least double the size of a normal man. Half of his face was burned red raw.
“What is he?” Caitlin whispered to her husband.
Caleb just shook his head.
Caitlin shivered. Finding her daughter seemed more imperative now than ever before. These strange people were disconcerting her, especially the giant man with his disfigured face.
“This way,” Caleb said in a hushed tone to her.
They crept away, keeping as silent as possible, sticking to the shadows where the crowd would not see them. Then Caitlin placed her hand on Caleb’s arm to stop him. He looked back.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Scarlet,” Caitlin said. “I can’t feel her anymore.”
“You mean she’s not here?” Caleb challenged her.
Caitlin shrunk back from the fury in his voice.
“I think she’s gone somewhere else,” she said quietly, feeling defeated and desperate. “I could feel her before, right by the place where we came in, but the further into the castle we go, the weaker it becomes. I think she left before we got here. She got out the way we got in.”
Caleb ran his hands through his hair in exasperation.
“I don’t believe this,” he muttered under his breath.
Just then, a strong light beamed into the castle from the helicopter above. It was lowering itself through the collapsed ceiling.
“It’s attempting to land!” Caleb cried incredulously.
The crowd in the great hall began to disperse, with people running and flying all over the place.
“We have to leave,” Caitlin said to her husband.
“I know,” he replied. “But how?”
“This way,” Caitlin said, tugging on his arm.
She led him across the great hall. Thanks to the descending helicopter, none of the strange people in the hall seemed