The ground seemed to lurch under his feet, and this time it wasn’t a trick of the elements. It was the last shred of his old reality disintegrating around him.
He struggled for words. The ones he finally found were “Let’s get off this island.”
He numbly put one foot in front of the other as they made their way down the hill to the dock.
EPILOGUE
The five of them stood comfortably on a broad, flat ice raft, skimming across the bay’s surface on their way back to San Francisco. They needed to cooperate now, that much was true . . . but the boy called Brett Hernandez knew their little cluster of elementalists was a time bomb, ticking merrily toward its detonation. He eyed his fellow fugitives one by one.
Lily. Always so fearless . . . but she feared Gabe now, didn’t she?
Jackson Wright. The Ghost Boy. Brain scrambled by a century of isolation.
Gabe himself, wrecked by inescapable guilt.
Only Kaz seemed unchanged. Dependable. Generous. One to watch.
Not one of them suspected anything was different about their dear friend and brother Brett Hernandez. Good. Brett considered the ice raft he had created on Alcatraz’s shore. He’d barely even had to think about it, thanks to the power that flowed through his veins now. True power. Majestic. Inescapable.
Brett turned his gaze skyward. The storm had finally broken, and a vast swath of stars sparkled overhead. Their radiance illuminated a twisting, coiling mass deep within Brett’s eyes . . .
. . . down, down in the darkness . . .
. . . where tentacles like storm clouds curled around brilliant twin pinpoints of ravenous green light.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Tracy Jolley
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2016 by Sandara Tang
Title logo design by Jason Cook
Cover design by Michelle Taormina
COPYRIGHT
THE EMERALD TABLET. Copyright © 2016 by Working Partners, Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936320
ISBN 978-0-06-241165-5 (trade bdg.)
EPub Edition © September 2016 ISBN 9780062411723
16 17 18 19 20 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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