Mr. Kim was still smiling. “How did you anticipate my kick?” he asked.
I paused for a moment and closed my eyes, replaying the sequence in my mind. I saw Mr. Kim straighten his do bak and then launch the kick. But wait. While he had straightened his uniform, his weight had shifted to his left leg as he prepared to kick with his right.
“I saw your weight shift right before you kicked. I knew something was coming, and it gave me a chance to prepare,” I said.
“Excellent. You see what I mean? You can learn to do this almost without thinking, so you are always ready.”
“Okay,” I said, “but still, you were only at about half speed. If you’d been going full out, I never would have seen that kick coming,” I said.
“Two things, Rachel. First, don’t be negative. You did something well. Accept that. Second, you are correct, my skills in Tae Kwon Do far surpass yours at this point, but not everyone you meet in battle will have my level of skill. Most attackers are clumsy and unbalanced. In time, they will pose little threat to you. With enough study, you may reach Ninth Dan yourself.”
Sure, and I also might open for Avril Lavigne. But he did have a point. Not the part about becoming Ninth Dan, but that in the last two months I had trained hard and I was getting better at this. To Alex’s shock, I’d progressed all the way to a green belt. I mean, I’m still a klutz for the most part, but I was improving.
Wait a minute. Did he say “meet in battle”? Battle? Gulp.
Mr. Kim bowed and told me that the session was over for the day.
“Not so fast, mister,” I said. “You still haven’t answered my question. How are we going to find Blankenship?”
Mr. Kim smiled. “We will find him by letting him find us,” he said. Huh?
“I’m sorry, is that some kind of Zen thing? I don’t get it.”
Mr. Kim laughed. I crack him up. (Most of the time.)
“There are two things Simon wants in this world. Since we received his e-mail swearing vengeance on you, we know that one of those things is you. Can you guess what the other thing is?”
Mr. Kim is always doing that “answer a question with a question” thing. I hate that.
“Frequent-flyer miles?”
Mr. Kim chuckled again. “No, I’m sure free air travel is the least of Simon’s worries. He needs the seven Mithrian treasures for his plan to work. If Simon can get his hands on those artifacts, he believes he will be able to summon the forces of Mithras and unleash them on the world. We have been working on the final translations in the Book of Seraphim. If we can decipher some of the riddles, we will know where to look for the relics. Then perhaps we can set a trap for Simon.”
Setting traps sounded good. As long as the trap was like totally airtight and I was a long way away from the trap when it was sprung. Several states away from the trap, maybe.
“But if he somehow gets word that we’ve found a relic, something that’s been missing for thousands of years, won’t he be suspicious? Won’t he try to set a trap for us instead?”
“Of course he will be wary. Simon is very intelligent and determined.”
“Not to mention a total freak-a-zoid,” I interrupted.
“Yes, that too. But he is also greedy and thirsting for power. That will make him careless. With the right circumstances and the right object, Simon should find himself unable to resist.”
Alex and Brent stood there with their heads moving back and forth, watching us talk, like Mr. Kim and I were playing tennis.
“But what if we can’t decipher the secrets of the book? Then what? We sit around and wait until somebody finds an artifact that we think he’ll be interested in? That could take years,” Alex said. Alex wasn’t the patient type. In that respect I guess we were a bit alike.
“Remember, Alex, we must be cautious. Simon is a dangerous and deadly man. True, understanding the secrets of the book will not be easy. Scholars in Kuzbekistan have studied the book for years. And while many of the words have been translated, the meaning is often not clear. Our advantage is that it will be just as unclear to Simon and when we have what we need…”
Yada yada yada. He said some other stuff about how we must wait until the time is right and not be hasty and all that, but by then I had tuned him out. I’m a teenager, after all.
“I hate waiting,” I said. Which was remarkably self-aware on my part, I thought. I’m absolutely no good at waiting. I open my birthday presents early. I’m first in line at the dessert table. I never wait for anything to go on sale.
“Yes, I’ve learned this about you. But perhaps something will happen sooner than you think.” Mr. Kim bowed and dismissed me. I could swear that there was a twinkle in his eye. That meant he was up to something and he was keeping it to himself. So unfair! There was a lot of stuff that Mr. Kim hadn’t explained to me yet. Each time I would start bugging him about the Book of Seraphim, he would change the subject. Or tell me that I “wasn’t ready yet.”
I couldn’t stop thinking about that night on the ship. There had been a moment when we were trapped in the cargo hold, when I thought I saw…Well, I’m not sure what I saw. Someone or something standing in the smoke that was too horrible to imagine. Even now it gives me chills just thinking about it. At the time, since I was under a lot of stress, what with a real-life Dr. Evil trying to kill us and all, I figured it was my overactive imagination.
But later, when I told Mr. Kim about what I’d seen, he kind of freaked. And that alone was upsetting, because Mr. Kim doesn’t freak about anything. It wasn’t like he was scared. I don’t think anything scares Mr. Kim, not even Simon Blankenship, who frankly scares the daylights out of me.
It was more like he got obsessed with what I thought I saw on the ship. He spent a lot of time asking me exactly what I’d seen, asking me to describe it and draw a picture of it. And he spent a lot of time running around the situation room looking at old dusty books and pulling up stuff on his computer and making all kinds of tsk, tsk sounds while he thought.
On the way back to my room, I kept running all this stuff over in my mind. Alex was trying to convince Brent that I had “just gotten lucky” in managing to knock down Mr. Kim, but as usual Brent wasn’t talking too much. I tuned them out and thought instead about Simon trying to translate the book. My mind flashed to that thing that I saw in the smoke. It made me afraid that maybe Simon was getting some extra, otherworldly help. And that was scary in a lot of ways. At least he didn’t have the real book. But I had this nagging feeling we didn’t have much time before Simon made some kind of desperate move.
We reached the section of the school that splits off into the boys’ and girls’ wings. I waved good-bye to Alex and Brent and started toward my room.
“Hey, Raych?” It was Brent. I turned back to look at him. Alex had kept walking and was out of sight around the corner.
“Yeah?”
“I just wanted to tell you—you did really well this morning. You’ve improved a lot. You know how Alex likes to give you a hard time? It’s all an act. He was impressed, and so was Mr. Kim. Just wanted you to know,” he said. He stood there in the hallway looking all cute and Colin Farrell-y and tugging at his red do bak belt. For some reason I felt like blushing.
“Uh…thanks, Brent. Thank you,” I said. As I’ve said, Brent was the shy, quiet type. But he had a way of saying the right things sometimes.
He nodded. “See you in Mic Elec,” he said. He gave me a little mock salute, turned the corner, and was gone.
I headed to my room. One of the things I liked best about Blackthorn was my roommate, Pilar. We’d had a rocky start to our friendship. Most of it was my fault. I had a bit of an attitude when I got here. (Okay, sometimes I still do, ahem.)
As it turned out, Pilar has this odd psychic ability. Like, she gets feelings about stuff and most of the time her “feelings” turn out to be right. She started having weird dreams right after I got here—the same dream that I had the first night. And because she was getting all these we
ird vibes from me, she couldn’t figure out if I could be trusted or if I was up to something. I can understand now how confusing it must have been. But since that night on the ship, she’d had no more dreams and we’d started to get along, with just a few little blips here and there.
One of those “blips” was her budding romance with Alex Scott. Pilar and Alex started dating before I got to Blackthorn. Although “dating” is not exactly the right word. Nobody ever actually goes anywhere at this school. Knowing Alex and Pilar, I bet most of their “dates” consisted of meeting at the gym so they could work out and get even more exercise. Or sitting in the school library and giving each other harder math problems.
Well, since Alex and I were like oil and water, this made things a little strained between Pilar and me sometimes. I thought Alex was a big jerk and he thought I was a troublemaker. I still wasn’t sure what Pilar saw in him. I mean, yeah, Alex is cute. He’s tall with short blond hair and cool, almost icy blue eyes. And he’s buff. I’ve got to give her that.
And he does have this way of looking at you where he gets this kind of dreamy expression on his face. I mean, when he really turns it on, his eyes sparkle and he gets this sort of a half-smirk on his face that makes it seem like he knows what you’re thinking. And he can be funny when he’s not being a jerk. He’s got a really deep voice and a nice laugh.
But aside from the eyes, the laugh, the buff-ness, and his overall cuteness, I really couldn’t stand being around him. Not that I thought about it a lot or anything. Well, not very often. Just once in a while. Maybe.
When I got back to the room, Pilar was standing at the mirror, brushing her hair. Pilar is taller than me, and very slender. She has beautiful, curly, shoulder-length brown hair. I smiled to myself, thinking about how Pilar and I had gotten to be really good friends over the last couple of months. Confronting and defeating supervillains just naturally brings people closer, I guess.
Pilar was an orphan. Her mom died when she was young and an aunt raised her. Then her aunt got sick and couldn’t care for her anymore, so Pilar ended up at Blackthorn. She had been here since she was twelve years old, and it was really the only stable home she’d ever had. In addition to her psychic “feelings,” she was incredibly smart and thoughtful and really good at figuring things out.
A facsimile copy of the Book of Seraphim was lying open on her bed.
The Book of Seraphim is an ancient book that was written by Flavius, the last Emperor of Rome and a High Priest to Mithras. Mr. Kim and Simon Blankenship discovered the book in that Mithrian temple. This whole crazy mess started when Blankenship tried to steal the book from a gallery in Washington. I tried to steal the book back, except it got dropped in the river. We couldn’t find it later, so Blankenship must have fished it out, but Mr. Kim says that because I tried so hard to get the book away from Simon, he’ll believe it’s the real one. Also, he’s really ticked off at me for wrecking it. You know, in a wants-to-kill-us-all way.
Anyway, Flavius wrote the book as the Roman Empire was about to be overrun. He had lost a big battle to forces from the Persian Empire who worshiped the goddess Etherea. (Sometimes I needed a scorecard to keep all the different empires, gods, and goddesses straight.) Mr. Kim only told us a little about what’s in the book, but it’s supposed to tell how followers of Mithras can find some hidden relics, do a bunch of chanting and dancing around, and bring Mithras back to life when the time is right. Mithras, if I forgot to mention it, was the Roman god of Darkness and the Afterlife. The Romans believed that worshiping Mithras would make their armies invincible. Unfortunately the Persians that gave the Romans a major butt-kicking didn’t know they were supposed to lose. So Mithras was banished to the underworld by Etherea, the Goddess of Light.
Mr. Kim had given Pilar a copy of the pages of the real book, and she spent all of her free time studying them. There were several hundred pages in the book, and she spent a couple of hours every night going through it. It was an obsession. It was more than an obsession. Figuring out the secrets of that book had almost become her sole reason for being. Is there a word for something beyond obsession? That is what that book was to Pilar.
I thought all of this sounded like a big load of mystical hooey. I know that people worship all kinds of stuff, but this just seemed too out there. Simon Blankenship as Mithras, and me as Etherea—talk about being a few fries short of a Happy Meal! I mean, if I really was a goddess, I’m sure I’d have better hair.
“I hate my hair,” Pilar said.
“I love your hair,” I said. Watching her run a brush through her hair every morning was agonizing to someone as hair-challenged as myself.
“You say that every morning.”
“It’s true every morning. I’d kill for hair like that.” Since Pilar and Alex had started getting closer, she spent a lot more time on her hair. Gag.
Pilar finished brushing and sat down at her desk. “How was your lesson?” she asked.
“Time passes quickly when you’re flying though the air. But I did manage one take-down on Mr. Kim.”
“No way!” Her eyes went wide in astonishment.
“Way. He was only going at about half speed, but I still managed to block his kick and bring him down with a front sweep. Went totally Power Rangers on his butt.”
Pilar looked impressed. She had just gotten her red belt with a black stripe, three ranks higher than me. She’d be testing for her black belt in a few months.
“It sounds like all the extra work is paying off,” she said.
“Yep.” I took off my do bak and threw on my robe. I needed to hit the shower before breakfast. Lately showers were taking me longer because I needed to soak the bumps and bruises out of me. But that’s the price you pay when a madman is pursuing you.
“Raych?” Pilar said. “Are you afraid?”
“Of what?”
“Mithras. Blankenship. Whatever you want to call him.”
She had a worried look on her face. Pilar is probably the smartest person I’ve ever met, next to maybe Mr. Kim, but I’ve learned that she’s also incredibly sensitive. Things tend to bother her more than other people.
“Sometimes, I guess. I try not to think about it. I figure Blankenship is just a crazy crook and those guys usually slip up and get caught. Why?” I wasn’t telling the whole truth here. I thought about it a lot. But Pilar didn’t need to know that. Although she was psychic, so she probably already knew it.
“I don’t know. I just wondered, I guess.”
She still looked troubled.
“Come on. Spill it. What’s bothering you?” I said.
“I started having dreams again,” she said. I willed the blood not to drain from my face. To be perfectly honest, her dreams kind of freaked me out a little. Okay, they freaked me out a lot.
“Go on,” I said in my most reassuring, “I’m completely unconcerned” tone.
“I keep seeing you dressed in white robes and floating in the air. Then you start falling and none of us can catch you and you keep falling toward Mithras and then he changes into a bull and just as you’re about to land on his horns, I wake up.”
“Wait a minute. Did you say that I’m wearing white robes in the dream?” I asked.
“Yes, why?”
“Well, white isn’t really my color. I’m more of an autumn. Do you think next time you could dream me in something with earth tones?”
“Stop joking, Rachel. This guy is dangerous. I don’t want anything to happen to you!”
“Pilar, look, I know that Blankenship is crazy and dangerous, probably better than anyone. But we aren’t exactly shooting blanks at him. Mr. Kim and the FBI agents are all pretty smart people. Plus, I think we’re safe here at Blackthorn. So you don’t need to worry.”
Pilar seemed relieved.
“Well, I hope not. Look, I’ve got to run. I’m meeting Alex before breakfast, so he can help me with my Cultures paper,” she said. “See you at breakfast?”
“Alex again?” I snorted.
> Her face colored slightly.
“I know how you feel about Alex, Rachel, but you don’t know him like I do. He’s really very sweet.”
Alex sweet? I think I’m nauseous now.
I didn’t feel like an argument so early in the morning, so I shrugged and she left the room. I thought it was cool that Pilar was worried about me. I still wasn’t sure how much I believed in all that psychic stuff, but after seeing so much of it firsthand, I had to think it was possible. Heck, I’d just met a guy who thought he was the living incarnation of a Roman god. If Pilar being a psychic was crazy, it was way down on the list from that. So I should take her dreams seriously.
Still, I didn’t want her to worry. Mr. Kim had my back, and so did Agent Tyler and the FBI. I felt perfectly safe as long as I was at Blackthorn. Blankenship and his bull people couldn’t touch me here.
If only I’d stayed put.
CHAPTER TWO
The Great Escape
The next night we met in THE BIG SECRET SPY ROOM THAT’S HIDDEN UNDER THE SCHOOL AND ACCESSIBLE ONLY BY SECRET PASSAGE FROM MR. KIM’S OFFICE. For weeks I had tried to come up with a really cool name for this place. All the good names like Bat Cave and Fortress of Solitude were already taken, and nothing else I could think of would do it justice. So I had started referring to it as THE BIG SECRET SPY ROOM THAT’S HIDDEN UNDER THE SCHOOL AND ACCESSIBLE ONLY BY SECRET PASSAGE FROM MR. KIM’S OFFICE. Wordy, but it would have to do for now.
Mr. Kim had us here almost every night for an hour or so to talk about the case. We were trying to figure out where Mithras might strike next. Mostly I sat there and drooled over the computers and lab equipment and other high-tech gadgets. The best part is that Mr. Kim had started to give us some really cool stuff of our own.
After our first encounter with Mithras, Mr. Kim had special electrical circuits installed in our rooms so that when he wanted to see us, the desk lamps on our desks would blink on and off. We also got panic buttons in our bedrooms that we could push to summon school security if we needed to. And these really cool watches with miniature cell-phone transmitters in them so we could communicate with one another. If Mr. Kim needed us when we were out of our rooms, the watches would silently vibrate. Then we could find a quiet place and actually speak into the watch to talk with Mr. Kim or Agent Tyler.
To Hawaii, with Love Page 2
