Van Bender and the Burning Emblems (The Van Bender Archives #1)

by S. James Nelson

  Worried at the question, I scratched my head. “Not sure.”

  Both Kurt’s and Sandra’s eyes widened as they looked at me. They stood near the foot of the bed.

  “What?” I said.

  Kurt pointed at me. Sandra shook her head.

  “Is it bad,” she said, “to get brink all over you?”

  The brink! I’d forgotten that I’d left it on my hand and now I’d smeared it all over my face and in the air around me. It tinkled and sparkled in a set of purple scribbled lines.

  A hundred terrible scenarios passed through my mind, but nothing as bad as what happened next.

  Dad pounded on my door.

  “Richie, I smell burned brink. What are you doing?”

  Sandra and Kurt darted toward the closet. I leaped across the room, toward the bedroom door—careful to duck under Marti’s zip code. The remainder of the brink on my hand smeared in a squiggly line ending near the door.

  “What are you talking about?” I said to Dad.

  “I’m sure I smell brink.”

  “It’s Mom’s candle!”

  I turned the switch on the handle, to lock it. Sandra and Kurt had entered the closet, and its door clicked shut.

  “Richie!” He pounded harder, and the handle shook as he tried it. “Richie, open this door!”

  “Richie,” Mom said. “Don’t do anything stupid. It’s more dangerous than you think.”

  The handle to the door rattled.

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “Go away.”

  Where was Marti? What was taking her so long? If my parents came in the bedroom right as she zipped in, she could kill one or both of them. Had I drawn the zip code wrong? Had the brink I’d smeared all over the air messed it up?

  “Just leave me alone,” I said.

  The handle shook, again.

  “I’m coming in,” Dad said.

  Mom had started to cry. A heavy thud sounded at the door—like a kick.

  The door held.

  The kick came again. The door still held.

  Thank heavens for sturdy doors in fancy Malibu homes. If we’d been in any of our old homes, further south in LA, certainly Dad could have kicked the door in.

  “Get the key,” Dad said. “Richie! This isn’t what you should be doing.”

  “Don’t come in here! I’m in my underwear!”

  “We’re not stupid,” Dad said. “Let us in. Don’t do anything you’ll regret. You don’t know everything that’s going on here.”

  “Why won’t you tell me?”

  “Richie, it’s bigger than you know. I’m—”

  The zip code flared bright, casting a purple glow through the entire room. It lasted only an instant, like a camera flash, accompanied by a loud pop like popcorn popping.

  Marti stood in the middle of the floor, between the bed and the door, next to the smear of purple I’d drawn. She had a black purse slung over one shoulder.

  She smiled and came toward me, her face relieved. She threw her arms around me and I stood there with wide eyes, arms down by my side, watching over Marti’s shoulder as Sandra and Kurt emerged from the closet. If Sandra hadn’t been there, I’d have returned the embrace with more enthusiasm. It felt good to see Marti. A relief. Aside from Kurt and Sandra, she felt like my only ally in the world.

  Amazing, since I’d only first met her a few hours before.

  Dad’s voice raised an octave. “Did someone just zip in there?”

  He kicked the door again.

  Marti disengaged from me and turned around. She started at seeing Sandra and Kurt, and looked back at me as she whispered, “I came just in time, didn’t I?”

  “I appreciate that.” To Dad, I shouted, “What are you talking about?”

  Marti looked at the purple squiggles in the air, and pointed at the long line toward the door. “That’s not any emblem I know of.”

  “It was an accident,” I said.

  She nodded and started to draw a zip-door. She’d already had brink in her closed fist. “Where are we going?”

  “Anywhere we can talk,” I said. “We need to make a plan.”

  “And they’re coming?” she said, pointing with her chin at my friends.

  Kurt curled his lips in a sneer. “Yes, we are.”

  “Come around here,” she said to them. “Hold hands.”

  Dad continued to pound on the door as Sandra and Kurt crossed the room and stepped around Marti. Sandra stood between me and Kurt, and took our hands. We watched in silence as Marti drew the door and spikes at each corner. About the time she finished, Dad fell silent as a key clicked as it slid into the doorknob.

  “Don’t let him in!” Marti whispered.

  I threw my body backward, into the door. Kurt and Sandra joined me.

  “Are there people in there with you?” Mom shouted.

  “How would there be people in here with me!”

  The door handle turned, and it pushed against my back. I leaned harder. So did my friends.

  Marti muttered something under her breath and struck her Hello Kitty lighter. In rapid succession, she lit all four spikes. The fire spread up and around the emblem. It seemed to take forever, but in a moment the white sheet of humming light appeared.

  Marti reached her hand out to me. I extended my free hand to her, and she pulled me forward.

  My weight left the door, followed by Sandra’s and Kurt’s. The door flew open. My parents rushed in.

  Chapter 32: We really only have one option

  I love it when the boy I have a crush on zips away with me. The problem is when the other girl who likes him comes with us.

  -Marti Walker

  Marti yanked me into the zip-door. I drew Sandra after me. She dragged Kurt along.

  As we stepped into the light, my parents dove for Kurt.

  But missed.

  They disappeared.

  Or rather, I disappeared.

  Once again, I was free.

  Although, I must admit, I was also in a lot of pain from the zipping.

  We stepped out of the zip-door into cool darkness. I stumbled forward as the soft ground gave beneath my feet, and caught myself with one hand—which sunk a few inches into dirt.

  Sandra landed on top of me, flattening me to the soil. Kurt collapsed on top of her, pushing my face into the dirt.

  “Holy freaking mother of everything holy!” he said. “What the freaking crapola was that? It hurt like a bugger!”

  Struggling, I spit dirt out of my mouth and managed to say, “I can’t breathe.”

  They scrambled off of me. Kurt continued to moan at the pain of zipping.

  Cautious in the dark, spitting dirt out of my mouth, I stood.

  “Where are we?” I whispered.

  “The safest place on earth,” Marti said, speaking in a normal voice. “I’ll go get the lights. Don’t move.”

  I widened my eyes, hoping to see something. Off in the distance, a green “EXIT” sign glowed. It made me feel better, as if only a civilized place would tell you how to get out.

  “That really freaking hurt,” Kurt said. “Almost as much as listening to one of Marti Walker’s songs.”

  “I heard that,” Marti said from a little ways off.

  “Ugh,” Sandra said. She was right next to me in the darkness. “Yeah. Teleporting sucks.”

  “It’s not teleporting,” Marti said, her voice distant.

  “You get used to it,” I said. “So I hear.”

  “What’s it called?” Kurt said. “Zipping?”

  “That’s the technical term,” I said.

  From a further distance, Marti said, “This is where I used to practice.” Her voice echoed as it grew further and further away, and she spoke louder and louder. “My parents are away on the circuit, so there isn’t anyone around. It’s where I come when I want to be alone.”

  There was a loud click, and lights went on. Forty feet above us, the lights hummed. Loose dirt covered the ground inside a shoulder-high, recta
ngular fence about seventy-five yards long and fifty yards wide. On one side, outside of the ring, bleachers rose in several rows, and on the opposite side, Marti stood by two wide doors and a garage door.

  It took me a moment to understand where we were, then I remembered Marti’s history before she became a country star. Sandra got it an instant before me.

  “Are we in a rodeo ring?” she said.

  Marti climbed back over the fence with such ease, she must have done it a thousand times or more. She wore cowboy boots, tight jeans, and a red button-up shirt with blue triangles on the front.

  She spread her arms wide and smiled. “This is my personal arena. After my first single went big, I had it built for me and my parents.”

  “No one will find us here?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Maybe, but I’m supposed to be at home, and this is just a few miles away.” She must have seen the question in my eyes, because she added, “We’re in Oklahoma.”

  She reached me and my friends, and we headed for the bleachers.

  “So,” Marti said, “what’s going on? Where did you get brink and where did you learn to cast the spell to contact me?”

  Such a change had come over her since we’d parted two hours before that I’d forgotten how violent she could be. I remembered quickly, however, when I confessed that I’d actually seen Nick back in his cabin. Her face darkened, and she hit me on the shoulder. Hard. When I told her I’d seen her in the security camera, she shoved me so I stumbled in the thick dirt and whacked my jaw on the fence. She didn’t even say she was sorry.

  I’d like to say her anger passed quickly, but it lingered. I sat on the third row of the bleachers—well out of her reach as she perched atop the fence, the heels of her boots locked over the lower bar. Sandra and Kurt sat next to me. Marti glared at us from across the way as we talked. Well, as I confessed everything and rubbed my jaw.

  Even though Sandra and Kurt had gotten some of the story, they listened closely. I filled in more details for them.

  “Well,” Marti said when I was done. Her eyes narrowed. “At least you being at the cabin kept me safe. Otherwise I’d say you were a complete loss.”

  “Glad to be of service.”

  “So what’s your plan, now?”

  “Well,” I said, “I figure we can do one of two things. Actually, three—but one isn’t really an option.”

  She arched her eyebrows. “Let’s hear your ideas, rookie.”

  “Yeah,” Sandra said. “I’m interested in hearing what you’ve come up with. I’m still not convinced that leaving your house was the best idea, ever.”

  “Of course it was,” Kurt said. “How could he possibly stay there, locked away?”

  Sandra just shrugged, as if they’d had the discussion a hundred times and she knew it wouldn’t do any good to argue with him. How had they talked about me, my parents, and my career when I wasn’t around?

  Kurt kept going. “If he stayed, he might have his memory wiped again.”

  “You’ve had your memory wiped?” Marti said.

  I nodded. “Apparently, at least six times.

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Wow. I would leave, too. That’s brutal. Let’s hear these genius plans of yours.”

  I cleared my throat, trying to decide which to tell first. May as well start with the stupidest.

  “We can tell Agent Maynerd and my parents everything.”

  “I hate that idea,” Marti said. “I’m on probation. If we went to them, they’d just take over and we’d never have a chance to prove ourselves.”

  “Plus,” Kurt said, “you just fled from your parents. You can’t really go back to them. They might erase your memory again.”

  I nodded. He was right. I’d moved forward. I’d put myself on this path of making my own decisions. I certainly couldn’t go back to them for help, now. I already dreaded the next time I would see them. Only success would do any good toward helping me feel better about the entire affair.

  “That,” I said, “is why I said we really only have two options. We can either get the multiplier and take it to Nick, or we can try to capture him for SOaP.”

  She shook her head. “You’re crazy if you think we can give him the multiplier.”

  “He talks a lot of sense to me,” I said. I felt more inclined to trust him than my parents or Agent Maynerd or anyone else—except Marti. He at least seemed open. “He said he’s changed. He’s not like he was, before.”

  “Of course he says that. He wants you to think he’s good.”

  “Maybe he is.”

  “He’s not. His history proves it.”

  “Maybe he’s changed.”

  “Listen, Richie, he hasn’t changed. He’s lying to you. Don’t fall for it.”

  If he was lying, he was really good at it. He’d maintained the same story through multiple encounters, and had acted quite worried about the entire thing. In fact, I felt a little fear for him because he seemed to be putting himself in harm’s way if everything he said was true.

  “Look,” Marti said, “I may be a rogue agent, but I’m still SOaP, and I can still access information you can’t. I know things about him that would make you cringe.”

  “Have you ever actually talked with him? Or are you just trusting the ‘intelligence’ SOaP has provided you?”

  “Don’t be a moron. We’re not helping him. He’s bad news any way you slice him. I know the wrong thing to do when I see it.”

  “Yeah, like going to get my emotion earlier tonight.”

  Her face twisted in anger, and she hopped down from the fence, her fists balled. “You’re ticking me off.”

  I jumped to my feet and leaped backward, up onto the fourth row. I wasn’t about to brawl with a girl. Especially Marti Walker. She would kick my trash.

  Sandra and Kurt, however, were willing to take that task for me—which I attribute to their ignorance. They’d spent much less time with Marti, and didn’t entirely understand what they were fooling with. They stepped between Marti and I.

  “Easy, cowgirl,” Kurt said.

  Sandra said, “Put another hand on him and I’ll break your neck.”

  “Get down here, you coward,” Marti said.

  “Just calm down,” Kurt said. “If you can.”

  “Listen,” I said. “Our other option is to try and redeem ourselves. We can set a trap, capture Nick, and take him in.”

  She shook her head. “One second you want to help him, and the next you want to capture him.”

  Still standing well away from her, I raised my hands in confusion.

  “If my parents had their way, they’d wipe my memory of everything that’s happened tonight. They don’t want me to be involved, but I’m sick of being sequestered from everyone and everything.”

  She shook her head and sat on the lowest bench, facing away from us. The rest of us settled down, not too close to her.

  “I always wondered why you were such a hermit,” she said. “I thought you just thought you were better than everyone else.”

  “Nah,” Kurt said. “Turns out the bloggers are right—his mom is just a paranoid lunatic.”

  “Stop it,” Sandra said. “She is not.”

  Kurt raised his forefingers and twirled them around his ears, tilting his head back and forth. “Plum loco.”

  I didn’t know he thought that way about Mom—of course we’d never had a chance to talk about it. It rather bothered me. She wasn’t crazy. Not exactly. Just over-protective.

  Sandra hit him with the back of her hand, and looked at me as if to gauge my reaction. I shrugged.

  “It’s true?” Marti said. “Your mom has kept you locked away?”

  I grunted. “Isn’t that what the bloggers say?”

  “Yeah. I just didn’t believe them. Of course, they’ve gotten everything right about me.”

  “Really?” Sandra said.

  Marti nodded.

  Back during the month when I’d had that iPad, I’d studied up on Marti a lot—as part of
my research on the competition. People talked a lot about how her father continued to ride the rodeo circuit and couldn’t ever go to her concerts. He’d even missed an important awards ceremony the winter before.

  Her mother was apparently torn between her little girl and her husband. The bloggers said she vacillated between Marti and Marti’s dad, trying to be supportive of both.

  And Marti said they were right.

  “Well,” I said, “at least your parents are still together.”

  She grunted and rolled her eyes. I didn’t know whether or not to acknowledge the tears gathering in her eyes. It was always awkward when someone started to cry.

  “Let’s not talk about that,” she said. “They’d just better be at the awards ceremony Sunday night. So they can watch me win.”

  “I’m going to win.”

  “That award is as good as mine.”

  I raised my hands defensively. “Only if it automatically goes to the craziest nominee. Look, let’s just worry about Nick. What to do about Nick.”

  Kurt raised his hand, as if he had a glass in it. “Here, here!”

  “There’s only one thing we can do,” Marti said. “We try to trap him and take him in to SOaP.”

  “Right,” I said. “No problem. Uh—can we do that?”

  “We’ll get the multiplier, and then you’ll contact him and tell him to come get it. I’ll set traps so when he comes we can nab him.”

  “What if he wants me to zip to him?”

  She squinted. “He would have to tell you his zip code for that, and he won’t. When people know your zip code, it’s too easy to trap you. People don’t share it often.”

  “You shared it with him,” Sandra said, pointing at me..

  Marti shrugged and gave Sandra a sly look. “That’s because not only is he harmless and clueless, but he’s also interesting to me.”

  Sandra raised her eyebrows and cocked her head to one side. “Oh, really? That so?”

  “Yeah.” Marti stood back up and turned to face us, hands on her hips. “I’m rather intrigued by the hermit rock star.”

  Sandra stood, her face burning up.

  My face was on fire too.

  How to handle this? It was awesome, yes—if I was reading it properly. And maybe I wasn’t. I mean, you know. Girls. Who can understand them? But it sure seemed like a fight was brewing over me between the girl I’d had a crush on for years, and the biggest country star around—who was obsessed with me. How could it get any better? How could it get any worse?