The wakened nappers caught his urgency and gathered around him, squatting, kneeling, so not to block anyone’s view.

“There are hundreds of them . . . and they’re headed here!”

Consternation exploded across the Lagoon. Daniel slid an arm around my back.

Tito came out of Zephyr’s wheelhouse wiping his hands, and the crowd hushed. “How’ll they get here? They got no boats.”

“They do now,” Doyle called back. “Because Revelations has joined up with them.”

“Did I hear that right?” Rousseau was at the den entrance, tugging on his leather vest while the wind tried to turn it into a sail. “Revelations?”

“Yah,” said Doyle. “The motherfuckers!”

“Why would they?”

“It’s that new girl the Stormies raised up. She’s preaching about how, between them, they can turn Manhattan into God’s Island.”

“God’s Island?” Rousseau made it sound like an insult.

“Something like that. Where everyone obeys their fundamentalist rule and no one has any fun. No surprise, Revelations took to the idea. Then they got wind of your move and saw an opportunity. Now they’re massing along Park, hyped on sermons, ready to invade!”

Massing. I didn’t like the sound of that one bit.

Daniel muttered, “Great. Someone else who wants to own Manhattan.”

“But the Stormies worship hurricanes. Where does God come into it?”

“Got me. Why is it the people you least expect turn out to be the most trouble?”

I recalled Rubio saying we hadn’t heard the last of Revelations after they’d walked out of the den caucus. “Maybe you should go blow them up, too.”

He stared at me. “Hey.”

I ducked my head. “Sorry.” Just the sort of thing Rube would’ve said, so I had to say it for him. “It’s my weather itch. Makes me jumpy.”

“Your what?”

My turn to change the subject. “I feel weather coming. Like, physically. Some kind of nerve twinge. Probably the pressure change, y’know, like a barometer? Rubio always gives me . . . gave . . .” The change of tense caught in my throat.

“Okay there?”

“Yeah.” My shoulders drooped. “It’s just . . . you forget, and then you remember and then . . . he dies all over again.”

“I know.”

Of course he did. “Anyhow, Rube gave my itch the benefit of the doubt. Knowing now that I spent most of before on the water, it makes better sense. Like those old sea dogs who hung around the marinas. They always knew when weather was coming.”

“Also called a weather eye.” Daniel snorted softly. “Hard to see you as an old sea dog.”

“Can it, willya?” Breakers complained. “I’m trying to listen.”

“Is she preaching any sort of battle plan?” Rousseau was asking, as Maxine joined him at the rail. Jake hovered in her shadow.

“Roll like a wave,” Doyle replied. “It’s all storm rhetoric, in her speeches.”

Tito, who really was an old sea dog, wanted the facts. “How many boats?”