Nicole quickly dialed Tiffany on the phone. “Mother, we need to complete the legal process of getting this money into accessible accounts.”
“Yes, I know.” Tiffany hesitated on the other end. “Why the need for it now?”
Nicole took a breath. “I’m joining the local Tarian group. The initiation they need me to perform will cost money. Rebecca told me to use it for—”
“Yes, for anything. I know. And I’m not to question you.” Tiffany snorted. “It’s not like you could possibly spend all of it in your lifetime, anyway. You lack the creativity.”
Nicole rolled her eyes. She knew what Tiffany was actually saying—in the next year, Nicole would be dead, and her mother would have the rest of the money.
Tiffany didn’t wait for a response. “Let me talk to your father. We’ll have our accountant manage the funds. We’ll need you to fly down here to sign things.”
“Or you could fax everything to me and I could overnight the signed documents back. I really do need access to the funds soon, and I can’t take time off school right now. Not with the upcoming trip to—the initiation.”
Tiffany noticed Nicole’s hesitation. “I’m sure you’ll tell me all about whatever it is they’re having you do. Send my love to Andrew and Shana.”
Nicole ended the call and stared at her phone. It suddenly occurred to her that what she’d seen on Shana’s phone wouldn’t shock Tiffany. In fact, Tiffany’s presidency probably had a similar way to deal with people who failed to complete assigned tasks. Nicole felt sick to her stomach, thinking about her mother pulling a gun on someone who simply wasn’t able to perform well on the first try.
Regardless of what happened over the coming months, Nicole vowed to herself that she would never become that calloused. That she would never lose the sense of humanity that was swelling in her chest now.
***
Nicole and Toby went on several dates over the two weeks while Nicole prepared for her trip to Pennsylvania. She liked Toby—she definitely enjoyed spending time with him—but she knew she still wasn’t able to be completely open with him. She’d already told far too many people about her situation.
Toby must have realized there were important things Nicole was withholding from him, but true to his word, he was patiently waiting until Nicole was ready to share them. In fact, he was patiently waiting for a lot of things. He hadn’t even held her hand yet, and they’d gone on at least four dates.
Was he waiting for her? And if so, how did Nicole feel about that? Would she be able to cross the more-physical-contact line? Was she attracted to him enough for that to happen?
She didn’t have answers to these questions yet. And she knew part of it was because she was still hung up over Austin. She probably always would be.
Nicole and Coolidge spent several hours studying the information on the house in Pennsylvania that Andrew forwarded to her. It was an ordinary place and not too big. Standard for a middle-class family. Old—built in the eighteen hundreds, possibly the seventeen hundreds. Nicole found herself excited to explore it, though she knew that probably wouldn’t happen to the extent that she wanted.
Nicole told Coolidge everything about the initiation, and it turned out Coolidge actually knew the guy. They wouldn’t even exactly be breaking in, due to the circumstances surrounding the Alerter.
She didn’t feel guilty talking to Coolidge about everything—she had never promised Andrew and Shana she wouldn’t, she’d only said he wouldn’t need to know, and they hadn’t asked her to promise it. Perhaps they figured she’d keep the information to herself. Or maybe they knew she’d tell him. Either way, it helped that he fully understood the task they were about to undertake.
Coolidge spent as much of his spare time as possible researching the Alerter. He figured out who had created it and contacted that woman. She told him the process she’d gone through and what materials she’d used. Coolidge was sure having as much info as possible would help them in breaking through the traps and locks that held the Alerter in place. Nicole was surprised to learn that even though he knew the man, those traps would still be there, and they’d still be expected to get through them.
Nicole focused on midterms while Coolidge arranged to buy the equipment they’d need, which wasn’t much. Nicole insisted on paying for it, and Coolidge seemed to be fine with that.
Lizzie drove them to the airport, with Nicole munching on the homemade blueberry muffins that Hayla, Coolidge’s wife, had sent with them.
Coolidge leaned forward from where he was sitting in the backseat. “I got an email from Jerry, the Arete who has the Alerter, last night.”
“What did he say?” Nicole asked.
Coolidge shrugged. “He’s not terribly happy about us coming, even though he knows me. But he did say he’d make sure he and his wife are out of the house for twelve hours. He says that’s all we’ll have, and if we haven’t figured out a way through the traps by then, we’re out of luck. If we do make it through the traps, we can take the Alerter.”
Nicole shook her head. “I know it’s you, but I can’t believe he actually agreed to us practically stealing the thing.”
“Like I said, he wasn’t happy about it. But I did get the impression that he’s tired of protecting it. In his mind, if we get it, we deserve to keep it.”
Lizzie glanced over at Nicole. “Too bad you’re handing it off to the very group he’s protecting it from.”
“Oh,” Coolidge said, “he also mentioned that Tarians have tried to steal it every month since he put it in his basement years ago. Apparently, he offers the deal to everyone who tries, Arete or Tarian. Every time, without fail, when he comes back, he has bodies to deal with.”
Lizzie cringed. “In his basement? That’s horrible.”
Nicole smiled. “And clichéd. Bodies in his basement . . . I wonder what he tells the authorities.”
“If he tells them,” Lizzie said.
Nicole and Coolidge chuckled, and for a moment, they discussed the different ways Jerry could tell the cops why he was calling yet again to report dead bodies.
Soon, Lizzie dropped them off at the airport, making them promise to contact her regularly. Nicole and Coolidge boarded their plane. Several hours and one stop later, they landed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where they rented a car and checked in to a hotel near the airport.
Since it was only four in the afternoon, they decided to drive to York, where Jerry lived, so they could get an idea of the house and neighborhood.
The area was quiet and quaint—probably a pleasant place to live. Nicole admired the nicely manicured yards and pretty, box-like houses that were just a little too close to each other for comfort. Despite that, the overall feeling was one of contentment. She could understand why someone would settle down there.
After driving past the house a couple of times and picking up food from Arby’s, Coolidge and Nicole headed back to their hotel.
They ate while poring over plans for how to handle the traps. Coolidge urged Nicole to continue memorizing the order in which the traps would appear just in case anything happened.
At nine o’clock, realizing they had to get up early the next morning, Nicole retreated to her own room. She gave Lizzie a call, wishing she could talk to Austin too, then felt guilty for wanting to, especially now that she and Toby were technically dating. She had a hard time swallowing that concept.
Toby sent her a text, wishing her luck. She hadn’t told him a lot about what she and Coolidge were doing, and he didn’t ask. She was amazed at his patience and hoped it would last for a while yet.
Finally, Nicole got into bed and forced her brain to calm down enough to sleep.
Chapter Five
Coolidge knocked on Nicole’s door earlier than planned the next morning. She opened up, almost ready to go. She pushed her nervousness aside and exclaimed in surprise when Coolidge handed her a box of food.
“Eat up. You’ll need the protein.”
Nicole thanked her professor
. The egg and cheese biscuits were still warm. And there were four of them—she’d really have to work hard to pack them in. She finished pulling her hair back, then followed Coolidge to the car while munching on her breakfast.
Coolidge glanced over at Nicole after he got on the highway heading toward York. “Something occurred to me last night that we’ll want to talk about.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll need to take care of the traps that fall naturally under your ability. I know I’m more experienced, but we both need to be ready to expend a lot of magic at once, and it would be better if we pace ourselves. If I’m working on all the traps, I won’t be able to help if a trap appears that we don’t know about.”
“Good point.” Nicole had been expecting—and hoping—to have the opportunity to do something, but she realized Coolidge would be better at most everything. Now, though, she had permission to help. That would make her more comfortable. She glanced down at her papers with the knowledge that she’d need to use her powers too. “Which ones will you take on for sure?”
“The wall, the sand, and the acid mists. You’ll do the sound one.”
Nicole raised an eyebrow. “I could do the acid mists. I can control wood, remember?”
“Oh, yes, you’re right. Okay, I’ll be backup on that trap, just in case.”
Nicole nodded.
The rest of the trip was silent, and soon enough, Coolidge stopped in front of Jerry’s house.
“Ready?” he asked.
Nicole took a deep breath. “Yup.”
They got out of the car and Coolidge pulled a duffel bag from the trunk. The front door was unlocked and they entered hesitantly. True to Jerry’s word, he and his wife weren’t home.
Nicole was surprised to see a baggie of homemade cookies on a table by the door, along with a friendly note from Jerry’s wife. She said the energy in the cookies would help.
“Can we trust them?” Nicole asked.
Coolidge opened the bag and stared at the cookies, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Yes. Nothing dangerous here—unless she used way too much salt or something. But they should be fine.”
Nicole pulled one out and took a bite, grateful Coolidge was an Earth Arete, since it gave him the ability to sense different food properties. “Oh, delicious. Now I feel even worse about stealing from them.”
“Don’t—it’s your initiation and your future.”
She agreed. “Have I even told you why I’m ‘joining’ the Tarians?”
“I figured it had to do with that.” He pointed at the elixir hanging around her neck. “And your grandma. I didn’t want to pressure you.”
“I’m supposed to lead the Tarians to destroy the embryonic manipulator.”
“Why do you have to lead them to do that?”
Nicole hesitated. That was a good question. “Well, I’m Rebecca’s descendant and she wants the group she and her husband created to have a change of heart . . .” She let her voice trail off. “And that just seems like a really stupid reason now.” She leaned against the wall and looked up at the ceiling. “I really shouldn’t trust her. I mean, her intentions seem to be good, but I can’t ever tell if she’s lying. And what if she really is leading me to my death?”
Coolidge studied her for a moment, his brown eyes serious. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
“You’ll help?”
“Of course, Nicole. I take care of my students.”
“Even when they’re involved in something that doesn’t concern you?”
“Austin is in love with you. And he has quickly become one of my best friends. I promised him I’d do whatever I needed to make sure you were safe through all this.”
Nicole put a hand to her head and sank to the floor, the sudden nausea and headache almost making her lose her breakfast and the cookie she’d just finished. “No . . . please . . . don’t talk about him.”
“Still having a hard time with that?”
She took a breath. “I don’t know that I’ll ever get over it.”
Neither said anything for a moment, and Nicole found herself grateful that no one would come barging in on them while she recovered on the floor.
Coolidge finished off two cookies while waiting, then said, “Aren’t you dating Toby?”
She looked up at him. “Did I tell you that?”
“You let something slip a week ago. He also stopped by my office, concerned about you.”
Nicole unsteadily got to her feet, glad to find that the nausea was dissipating. She was surprised Toby had talked to Coolidge and not her about the situation, but it didn’t upset her.
“Yes, we’re dating, I guess. I mean, he hasn’t kissed me or anything . . .” Nicole’s face flushed. Should she really be having this sort of conversation with her professor? It felt unprofessional. Informal. Weird.
“Have you told him it’s okay to make that sort of move? He’s probably waiting for the go ahead from you.”
“No, I haven’t.” She sighed. “I’m such a mess.”
“And understandably so.” Coolidge popped another cookie in his mouth, then took a swig of the lemonade the woman had left on the little table. “It’s your business, but he seems like a nice young man.”
“He is.”
They fell into a comfortable silence and munched on cookies. Once they’d finished off the treats and Nicole had written a thank-you note to the man’s wife, they found the steps leading to the basement and descended.
Coolidge pulled out the house plans. “They’ve changed things around here.”
The plans showed a big room at the foot of the stairs, but instead, they were in a small cellar lined with shelves of food and wine. A door led off of the room, and they went through it into a larger area, though not as big as that initial one should have been.
Coolidge flipped a switch and the room was bathed in light.
“Maybe they converted the room into two,” Nicole said.
“It’s a possibility.” He put the map in his pocket. “Either way, I don’t want to follow this too closely, just in case other things have changed too. For all we know, that’s one of the traps. The man rearranges the basement after every visit.”
“That would be expensive and time-consuming.”
“Indeed.”
Coolidge walked around the parameter of the room, stopping in front of a wall with faint scorch marks all over it. “I’d bet this is where the traps begin.” He pointed at the scorches. “It’s obvious the Tarians really did blow their way through.”
“And that’s what we’ll be doing, right?”
Coolidge tilted his head. He didn’t answer at first, then he glanced back at Nicole. “No, it’s not. We have to be flexible, especially when faced with new information.” He stepped to the wall and put his hand on it. “The Tarians blew up the wall, not realizing there’s actually a door here. And explosives.”
Nicole blinked. “Interesting. Can you sense the door?”
“I feel its print. I feel where the molecules long to be—what their state was when he purchased the materials. This was originally a cement wall with a wooden door in the center. Like the cabinet in my office that I used to lock up your leather journal, the wood, cement, and explosive molecules have been forced to blend with each other until they’ve become one unit without seams.”
“So, if we’d followed what the Tarians said to do, we’d have blown ourselves to pieces.”
He nodded. “No wonder the Tarians don’t get very far with these traps.”
“But many have gone almost all the way.”
“Yes. Probably due to luck.” He looked at her. “You might want to stand back anyway. I won’t know how sensitive the explosive is until I start moving things around.”
She did as he suggested and watched as Coolidge put his hands on the cement. He shut his eyes and concentrated for several moments. Nicole felt the magical pulses building around him, then suddenly, the surface of the wall turned to liquid.
>
At first, it looked like it was shimmering until Nicole realized that the wood and cement were separating and joining with like molecules. Pretty soon, several large chunks of cement and wood were drifting toward each other.
Five minutes after Coolidge started, a door formed in the middle of the wall, and liquid dripped down the surface of the cement that surrounded that door. Nicole smelled gasoline and wondered how the owner had masked its smell earlier. Maybe he’d pulled the molecules apart enough for them not to really be considered gasoline.
Coolidge stepped back, breathing hard. “That was . . . difficult.”
“Worse than the cabinet?”
He gave a short nod, and Nicole waited for him to catch his breath. She wasn’t impatient—they had just over eleven hours, after all.
After a moment, Coolidge looked back at her. “Thanks.” Then he opened the door and stepped away so they both could see inside.
The light switch Coolidge had flipped earlier probably controlled the lighting throughout the entire basement because this room was also bright. The air just inside the door shimmered, and Nicole and Coolidge met eyes. They both knew what trap this was.
She stepped up alongside him. “Should I use the door?”
Coolidge glanced around the room. “And that one too,” he said, pointing to the other door. “It’s the only wood easily accessible down here.”
Nicole nodded. What they hoped for was that the acidic mists would have enough of a proton exchange with the wood to render them harmless to humans. Nicole wasn’t sure what she’d do if they ran out of wood. Either of them could possibly go upstairs to get more, but running around carrying heavy wood would tire them quickly.
“I haven’t controlled wood since Arches,” she said. At Coolidge’s worried expression, she rushed to continue. “But I’ve almost completely mastered Wind so I don’t think it’ll be so much of a stretch.”
Observe, Mosaic Chronicles Book Four Page 6
