G. Lippert - JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

Moments later, James helped Petra clamber over the broken railing. She collapsed against him, sodden and exhausted, and he stumbled backwards, barely able to hold himself up.

"What in the name of Neptune's ruddy trident is going on back here?" a voice bellowed. Footsteps sounded on the deck and hands grabbed at James and Petra, helping them up. James didn't recognize the sailors, but he recognized the look of annoyed alarm on their faces. The sailors hadn't seen what had happened at the rear of the ship. They only knew that lightning had struck their aft mast, breaking it off into the sea, and now, on top of everything, here were a couple of teenaged passengers mucking about on the deck during an Atlantic storm.

"Get below-decks!" one of the sailors cried out, pointing. "What, are you both totally daft? Go on!"

James nodded, and then turned to look at Petra. He still had her hand, although the strange silver cord seemed to have faded away. Or perhaps it had simply gone invisible. "Are you all right?" he asked her.

She didn't answer. Instead, she turned and looked back, toward the rolling, stormy waves beyond the stern railing.

"Goodbye father," she said in a faint voice. She shuddered and her eyes were wide, wet with exhausted tears. "Goodbye. I'm sorry."

5. NEW AMSTERDAM

"So what happened out there anyway?" Albus asked quietly.

James lay in his bunk, staring up at the ceiling. The ship still creaked ominously as it rocked, but the brunt of the storm had finally passed. The thump of footsteps could be heard from the decks above as the crew attempted to repair what was left of the stern mast.

"James?" It was Ralph this time, from the bunk across the narrow room. "You asleep over there?"

"No."

"So what gives? What really happened?"

James sighed. "Apparently you lot saw it all from the stern windows in the captain's quarters. You tell me."

"Hah," Albus laughed derisively. "We hardly got to see anything before Merlin got involved. We heard the mast fall over and saw bits of it go over the side, and then we saw Petra's feet hanging down, swinging back and forth with the ropes all tangled up in them. Mum let out a scream, and that's when Merlin came up and put the lights out."

"I don't get it," James said, rolling over and looking at Ralph in the opposite bunk. "Why did he pull the curtains?"

Ralph screwed up his face thoughtfully. "That's not what he did. He came forward and stood in front of the window, spreading out his arms, and he said something in that weird language of his. Old Celtic, I guess. Rose would probably know what it meant. Next thing we know, the windows had all gone completely dark, like they'd been covered in black paint. I guess he didn't want us to see it if Petra was going to fall. I mean, Izzy was there, after all. Petra's her sister."

"Thanks for the explanation," James said, sighing.

"So tell us!" Albus insisted. "What happened?"

James shook his head on his pillow. "She fell. That's all. Lightning struck the mast at the back of the ship, right next to us. It fell over and knocked Petra over the side. She hung onto the railing until I got over there and grabbed her."

Albus shifted on his bunk, squeaking the thin mattress. "What was she doing up on deck in the first place? Didn't she know there was a bloody hurricane going?"

"I don't know," James said. He meant to go on, to try to explain, but the words wouldn't come. Instead, he let the silence spin out, telling its own story.

"I'll tell you one thing," Albus commented, "she's been a little odd ever since she showed up at our place, earlier this summer. Whatever happened back at her grandparents' farm, I think it knocked a few owls loose in her owlery, if you know what I mean."

"Shut up, Al," James said. He felt his face heating, but he tried not to let it show in his voice. "You don't know anything about it. So just shut up."

Ralph rolled over and rested his chin on his forearm, peering across the darkened room. "Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it? Hardly anybody knows what happened there. I mean, there's Damien, Sabrina, and Ted, but they sure aren't talking. Merlin's orders. Whatever happened, it had to have been pretty ugly. Both of Petra's grandparents ended up dead."

"Phyllis wasn't Petra's grandmother," James announced darkly. "She was just the woman Petra's grandfather married, and she was perfectly horrid. Whatever happened to her, she got what she deserved."

The bed beneath James squeaked again as Albus moved around on it. A moment later, his head appeared next to James' bunk, peering up at him. "You know something, don't you? Tell!"

"I don't know anything. Shut up and go to sleep, you berk."

Albus stared at him critically.

Across the room, Ralph said, "I don't know what this Phyllis woman was supposed to have done, but she was Izzy's mum, at least. I mean, maybe there was a good reason, maybe there wasn't, but it's a pretty strong thing to say that death was what she deserved."

"Well, Petra isn't in Azkaban, is she?" James replied angrily. "Obviously whatever happened, nobody's blaming her for it."

"Or nobody can prove that she did it," Albus added, still studying James' face.

James threw off the covers and shoved Albus aside. He leapt nimbly to the floor and pulled the door open, letting in the light from the corridor.

"Hey," Ralph called, "where are you going?"

"Out," James replied, not turning back. "That's all. Don't follow me."

He pulled the door closed and stalked along the narrow corridor, fuming and confused. When he reached the stairs to the main deck, he turned toward them and climbed to the door, which was propped open, letting in the night air.

The deck was wet beneath James' bare feet. He peered back toward the stern and saw deckhands moving about by lantern-light, using their wands to repair what remained of the stern mast. Sighing, James turned toward the bow stairs and climbed up, glad that this end of the ship, at least, seemed dark and relatively deserted.

The mate seated in the brass steering chair sang jauntily to himself, clutching a pipe between his teeth. Between stanzas, the mate puffed, and the orange glow of the pipe's flame was the only light to be seen. James kept behind the mate and moved toward the railing, which he leaned on. The ocean was nearly invisible in the darkness, but for the phantom-like shapes of the whitecaps. Waves thumped against the hull as Henrietta plowed relentlessly onward.

James' thoughts were a blur. The events of the night played over and over in his head, stranger and more mysterious with each remembrance. Petra's words had been frightening enough, but they had paled in comparison to the nightmare of the falling mast and the horrors that had followed. He recalled the sad certainty of her voice as she'd told him to let her go, to let her fall into the ocean, following after the enigmatic lost brooch, as if that was something he could ever, in a million years, allow to happen. The worst part of all, however, had been that moment—that one, crystalline instant of perfect understanding—when he knew that Petra, the girl he loved, was going to die.

And then, to no one's greater shock than his own, he, James, had conjured the mysterious silver thread, the one that had connected him to her, saving her from the reaching waves. Yesterday evening, Barstow had said that the storm that was coming was not like the one in The Triumvirate . This won't be any magical storm, he had said, like what nearly overtook the fabled Treus and his crew . Now, however, James couldn't help wondering.

Footsteps sounded on the wet deck, nearby. James didn't look up. He hoped that whoever it was would simply pass him by. Instead, he heard the figure approach him, felt the warmth of the person as they leaned against the railing next to him, nearly invisible in the stormy darkness.