"I'm not sure I can see a difference," I said.
"You wouldn't. You're an aberration," he said.
"How do I know you won't kill us all anyway?" I said.
"You're the one I need to feed to the fire," he said. "Drop the gun and you can save this girl." "Not terribly convincing," I said, stalling for time, hoping for that time to bring something.

"I don't need to be," he said. "This isn't a stalemate-there are other people on this island, and they'll be back out here soon. You can't shoot them all. And the god is still here. But since you obviously need convincing, how about if I slice your girl a few times and let the blood flow persuade you?" He reached down to his hip, found nothing, and frowned. "My knife," he said, and then his expression of puzzlement blossomed into one of great astonishment. He gaped at me without saying a thing, simply holding his mouth wide open as if he was about to sing an aria.

And then he dropped to his knees, frowned, and pitched forward onto his face, revealing a knife blade protruding from his back-and also revealing Cody, standing behind him, smiling slightly as he watched the old man fall, and then looking up at me.

"Told you I was ready," he said.
FORTY

T HE HURRICANE TURNED NORTH AT THE LAST MINUTE and ended up hitting us with nothing but a lot of rain and a little wind. The worst of the storm passed far to the north of Toro Key, and Cody, Astor, and I spent the remainder of the night locked in the elegant room with the couch in front of one door and a large overstuffed chair in front of the other. I called Deborah on the phone I found in the room, and then made a small bed out of cushions behind the bar, thinking that the thick mahogany would provide additional protection if it was needed.

It wasn't. I sat with my borrowed pistol all night, watching the doors, and watching the kids sleep. And since nobody disturbed us, that was really not enough to keep a full-grown brain alive, so I thought, too.

I thought about what I would say to Cody when he woke up. When he put the knife into the old man he had changed everything. No matter what he thought, he was not ready merely because of what he had done. He had actually made things harder for himself. The road was going to be a long tough one for him, and I didn't know if I was good enough to keep his feet on it. I was not Harry, could never be anything like Harry. Harry had run on love, and I had a completely different operating system.

And what was that now? What was Dexter without Darkness?