FIVETHE WATER seemed to change, to take on a blue-steel sheen. It’d been scenery seconds before, and now it’d become tons of elemental force hammering on the shore’s battlement of wet, glistening, sullenly crouching rocks.
Tough babies, these rocks, armored with barnacles, but the thought crossed my mind they were losing their war—being slugged and smashed faceless, ground into sand by the sea. The sea always wins; give it time—that thought crossed my mind, too.
I bent over and broke a shoelace trying to get out of my boots fast.
“It does sound like Steve’s voice,” Ava Gage said in what seemed a queerly unconcerned tone.
She’d clambered up onto the nearest slab to strike a teetering, tiptoe balance, and her face seemed only mildly interested.
“Don’t stand there!” I yelled at her. “Run
