If Zack didn‟t improve. If he didn‟t wake up.
Liz closed her eyes, sick at heart.
“That‟s quite a bump on his jaw,” Morgan remarked. Liz opened her eyes. He stood over their son‟s bedside, surveying the
damage. “Will he remember I hit him when he wakes up?”
Liz roused herself to answer. “He may. He might not. Phenobarbital can affect short-term memory.” She shuddered,
reliving the moment when she‟d stuck him with the drug. “Mommy, don’t hurt me.” “I hope he forgets,” she said passionately.
“You did what you must to deceive the demon,” Morgan said, reading her thoughts with surprising accuracy. “Tan would
have killed him and destroyed his soul in the process. You saved him. You saved our son. No one else could have done what
you did.”
Liz had stood vigil at many bedsides, comforting and reassuring. She was the doctor, the expert, the person patients and
family could turn to for guidance. For answers.
But with Morgan, she could be the one to ask. She held his gaze, sharing her deepest fear. “What if he doesn‟t make it?”
Morgan took her hand. “He will make it. We will make it.” He sat on the arm of her chair, holding their clasped hands
together on his thigh, his touch warm. Reassuring. Strong. “I love you, Elizabeth.”
His words seeped into her, rain to her parched and worried heart.
“I know,” she said. “I love you, too.”
They sat together quietly, hands joined, while the sun slowly suffused the room with gold and the machines whispered and
beeped for the child on the bed.
Coming together.
Making it through.
Believing that somehow everything would be all right.
Believing in love.
After twelve hours, Zachary began breathing strongly on his own. Morgan gagged reflexively as Elizabeth removed the
tube from their son‟s throat.
She looked up, her smile sympathetic, her eyes tired and strained. “I‟m glad I can do this while he‟s still unconscious. He‟ll
have a hell of a sore throat when he wakes up.”
“ When ,” not “ if .” Progress, Morgan thought. His Elizabeth was getting her bearings again and her confidence. He was
glad.
He nodded.
Throughout the morning, people came and went, Nancy from the front desk, the dour female mayor, the woman who sold
Elizabeth her house. Morgan listened as Elizabeth offered explanations, reassurances, lies, watching each effort deplete her
resources a little further, increasingly annoyed on her behalf.
“. . . drug usually used to treat seizures . . . didn‟t realize until he fell and cracked his jaw on the coffee table . . . Thank
you, I‟m sure he‟ll be fine.”
Dylan and Caleb pieced together a full report, augmented by their own suspicions and speculations.
“So this demon possessed Zack when he left the beach last night,” the police chief said. “Used the boy‟s energy to free
himself.”
Dylan nodded. “And used his body to get through the island‟s wards.”
The brothers exchanged a look.
“We‟ll need to run by the island and check the orb,” Caleb said. “Confirm the demon really was Tan.”
“He could have been acting as an agent of Gau,” Dylan said.
Caleb shook his head. “More likely, he saw an opportunity and took it.”
“We don‟t know how well the demons communicate. If—”
“Enough,” Morgan interrupted suddenly, roughly.
The Hunter brothers glanced at him, surprised.
“Elizabeth doesn‟t need to be bothered with this now, in our son‟s sickroom. I will speak with you tonight. Or tomorrow.
Right now, Zachary needs quiet. And Elizabeth needs a break.”