A thorn pierces my palm, and the pain is so sharp and stunning that tears immediately spring to my eyes. But don’t I deserve the pain? Hadn’t Amma hurt when she’d realized she couldn’t breathe, her lungs screaming for air?
Blood smears the vines as I push deeper into the jungle.
It’s darker in here, and I keep pushing myself back, back, back, away from Amma, away from the others finding out what I’ve done, away from all of it.
Light filters eerily through the trees here, casting long, strange shadows. I cradle my stinging hand, wrapping it in the hem of my T-shirt as I look around, trying to get my bearings.
Amma had said that the Susannah was on the other side of the island. Cutting through the jungle is only about two miles, and I can easily do that. If I can get to the boat, even if Nico isn’t on it, then at least I’ll have a way to get the fuck out of here. I could wait for the ship with the radios, but how will I explain to whoever shows up that there are two dead bodies on this island, and only me, all alone?
The heat in the island’s interior is always intense, where the breeze off the sea can’t reach. The vines that snake across the ground are fibrous and rough, like trying to walk over sandpaper, and it doesn’t take long for my feet to start bleeding. My hand throbs, and I take deep breaths through my nose, trying to concentrate on anything but the pain and the fear.
I feel like I’ve been walking for ages, but when I look over my shoulder, I can still see the spot where I crashed in, the branches broken and bent. I can even make out a glimpse of white sand and blue sky.
Get to the boat, get to the boat, my mind keeps telling me. I have to get the fuck off this island. Something is deadly wrong with Meroe.
Still, Amma’s words last night—the boat is on the other side of the island, but Nico isn’t on it—snap at the corners of my mind. Where the fuck did Nico go?
I stop short. The jungle seems oddly quiet: the birds are no longer calling, the wind isn’t sawing through the trees, and I become aware of another sound, a low buzzing.
And as soon as I make out the noise, I become aware of something else—a scent just underneath the saltwater and green earth scents. Something darker, sweeter, sicker.
Decay. Rot.
Amma is lying on the beach, her skin already greenish, her features distorted …
But no, she’s too far away. It’s not her corpse that I’m smelling. It’s something else, something closer.
And then I see it.
Under a clump of ferns, the bottom of one shoe.
A Teva sandal.
Even in the oppressive heat, my body goes cold as I make my way toward Nico.
He’s lying facedown, and I’m grateful for that.
I’m too numb to cry as I stare at his body, and the thick black cloud of flies hovering above his head. His hair has turned dark and tacky, matted with blood, and I can’t look any closer to see what happened to him. I’m still so cold, shivering so violently it hurts, and my mind is racing so fast, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing.
He fell. He hit his head and died here. Like Robbie. He fell, and it was an accident. A horrible accident.
Except.
A machete lies just a few feet from Nico’s body, no doubt tossed there once it had done its job.
I recognize the blue tape around the handle—I remember seeing it in Jake’s hands as he hacked a path through the jungle—that day that feels like it was years ago, a lifetime ago.
It’s Jake’s machete, and it killed Nico.
He’d had it on the beach the night of the party, too. I’d seen him use it to cut down branches for the fire.
What happened? Had they argued? Had Nico confronted Jake about me? Or had it been something else?
All it would take was one hard blow, and then it would be over. Nico never would have seen it coming.
Like so much about Nico’s life, even his death would have caught him by surprise.
I pick up the machete.
There are flies on the blade, too, Nico’s blood still staining it, and I steel myself, wiping it on a nearby tree to clean it as best I can. It may have killed Nico, but it’s going to save me.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I have to move faster.
You’re a survivor, Lux, Brittany had said after the storm on the boat, and I hope to god she’s right.
I know I’m tougher than I let myself believe. I held that knife on Robbie, and if it had come down to me or him, I know I would’ve killed him.
But I didn’t want to then, and I don’t want to now. I want to get to the Susannah and get out of here.
I want to forget that Meroe Island ever existed.