“Darcy!?” I wailed.
I turned and my foot jammed into something hard. I flew forward again, my arms flying out to brace myself. I flipped over and scrambled back on my hands like a crab, but it wasn’t a body that had tripped me. Just a large piece of driftwood, rotted and riddled with holes. I started to crawl, tears now streaming down my face.
“Dad? Darcy?” I whispered. “Where are you?”
Silence. No laughter, no mocking, no cries. My fingers groped in the darkness, growing colder as they dug into the frigid sand, finding nothing but seaweed, shells, smaller shards of wood. The longer I searched, the more sure I was that someone had taken my family. That I was never going to see them again. The fog seemed to drag on for hours.
Whoever they are, fight them, I begged silently. Don’t let them take you to the Shadowlands.
“Rory?” Darcy shouted suddenly. “Are you there?”
“Darcy!”
At that moment, my hand came down on a shoe. I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“Rory?”
“Dad!” I shouted, jumping up.
My sister threw her arms around me, and I flung my arms around my father. But the second I touched my dad, I had a sudden flash. I saw Mr. Nell grab him from behind and whip his head to the side, snapping his neck. I heard the sound of the bones splintering. I watched my father’s limp body slump to the ground, stunned, his eyes open, his mouth hanging down on one side like he’d just been numbed at the dentist. I released him and staggered backward. Until that moment, my only memories of that night had been the things I’d actually seen, and I hadn’t seen my father die—only his body after the fact. This was new, and it was horrifying. I clutched at my stomach, swallowing over and over to keep from heaving.
I knew what this meant. My father was never going to be a Lifer. He was going to move on. And I was supposed to usher him.
“Rory?” Darcy asked, her eyes concerned. “Are you okay?”
I turned away from her and fell to my knees in the sand. At that moment, I couldn’t have been more grateful for the fog that enveloped me.
“Rory? Where are you?” my father asked.
“I’m here,” I squeaked. “I…I tripped.”
I breathed once. Then again. Struggled to stop the sobs from coming.
“Where?” he asked. His foot kicked the side of my leg. “Oh. Oops. Sorry. This fog is so thick. And my head…”
“Your head?”
“Some asshole tried to grab him,” Darcy said.
“Yeah, but we fought them off,” my dad replied, sounding proud.
“Yeah, we did,” Darcy replied.
I pushed myself up off the ground at the exact moment the fog began to lift. It pulled back across the water, the last wisps curling teasingly around my ankles until it was gone. My father was holding the back of his skull. I shoved the image of his death—and his looming ushering—from my mind.
“Are you all right?” I asked, grabbing at his arm.
He pulled his hand down and held it in front of us. His fingers were bloody.
“It’s okay,” Darcy said, checking the cut. “He’ll live.”
“Did you see who it was?” I asked her.
“No. Probably just some idiot messing around.” She leveled a look at me, and I knew it meant she didn’t want me to bring up Steven Nell.
“Losers,” I said, because I felt like I should say something as I stood there trembling from head to toe. “Come on, Dad. Let’s get you inside and clean that up.”
We fumbled our way up the stairs, him unsteady from his injury, me trembling from my desperation and fear. As soon as we got into the kitchen, I stopped cold. In all the relief of finding my family here and okay, I had forgotten what the fog really meant. Someone somewhere on this island had been ushered. Had they gone to the right destination?