02 Seekers

by Lynnie Purcell

  preoccupied with our own thoughts and worries to speak. I was less concerned with the run-in being a trap as I was with Jackson’s strange absenteeism. He was supposed to be following us.

  What if something happened?

  Near the street to our hotel a strange premonition of what we were about see rippled through my body. I forced Alex to slow down, my brain trying to protect me from the feeling of impending doom. But there was no stopping the feeling. We were walking into something bad – something as bad as what we had just left. We turned the corner and I saw the reason behind my gut feeling.

  Ash and a blaring heat filled the narrow streets in relentless danger. A flashing red fire truck passed us, sirens wailing, and came to a screeching stop behind another fire engine parked right in front of our hotel. The hotel was thick with boiling black fire, the source of all the chaos.

  “Holy…”

  “Shh!” I shushed Alex. The voices were so overwhelming I was having trouble standing. I

  leaned against the edge of a building to keep my balance. The slim shield I had started to develop had fled with the adrenaline and fear I was operating on. I couldn’t take it. “Go see what happened. I can’t…”

  Alex disappeared into the crowd without a word, understanding my pain. I put my hands over my ears and started humming loudly, counting on the fire to distract people from my strangeness.

  After a minute, I reopened my eyes to look for Alex and caught eyes with one person who wasn’t watching the fire. His hair was filthy, his face tan, but what I noticed most was his eyes. One was brown and the other was blue – a sharp contrast, which was freaky against his tan skin. When we connected eyes, he pulled a hood over his sandy hair and disappeared into the growing crowd.

  Seconds later, Alex was back. She pulled me away from the building and up the street to the park. “The fire is only about ten minutes old. I heard over the radio that they’d found some bodies. You think it was arson?”

  I raised an eyebrow at her in response.

  “Yeah…me too,” she agreed. “Try Jackson again.”

  I went to pull my phone out of my pocket, but was greeted with air instead. It was gone.

  Someone had stolen my phone while I had been distracted by the noises. I turned back to search for a culprit. The street was too crowded and hectic to pick out the guilty party. What was it with today and phone thieves?

  “Are you kidding me?!” I kicked at an unoffending trash can, sending it sprawling down the sidewalk.

  My ears buzzed with more sound, increasing my frustration. I could hear the firefighters from inside; I could hear them talking about a strange pile of ash, and I heard every creak as they searched through the rooms before the building was totally consumed by fire, I heard the people on the street, the talking, the laughing, the worry, places I shouldn’t have heard within normal limits.

  “What? What’s the matter?” Alex asked at my kick.

  “My phone is missing. Do you have Jackson’s number? We could go somewhere and call him.”

  “No. He had it programmed into the phones he gave us.”

  “This is a mess. Where do we go? Where…Should we wait for them or hide? Is this aimed at us?

  I can’t think.” I sat down on the curb and put my hands over my ears again.

  Alex pulled my hand away. Her face was worried, but serious. “Clare. Snap out of it. Sitting here is dangerous, if we were supposed to be in that fire. It could be a coincidence, but…”

  She was right. I valued her life more than that. I valued seeing Daniel again more than that. I stood up, urging the sounds to calm in my ears. They lowered to a dull roar as a rash plan formed from my encounter with the kid. I walked to the first vendor I saw and bought the most sedate shirt on the rack along with another bag that was bigger and had a shoulder strap. When my purchase was complete, I grabbed hold of Alex’s hand and marched her into the closest

  convenience store’s bathroom. I avoided the clerk, hoping he wouldn’t see my accessory. A

  sword bag wasn’t exactly Couture. When Alex and I were safely locked in, I retrieved the pocket knife from my boot Alex had given me as a reminder of our blood pact, insisting it was prudent to always have a knife. I poked a couple of holes in the shirt then handed it to her.

  “Put this on. Ditch the sunglasses and your bag, and think dirty,” I said.

  “Think dirty?” she asked, already changing shirts.

  “We’ve got to hide. How many ratty kids and homeless people have you seen down here?” I

  asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t notice,” she said.

  “Exactly.”

  I tried to tug her bag out of her hand, but she had a vice grip. “Do I really have to leave it?” she asked.

  “It’s a hundred dollar bag, Alex.”

  “That’s my point, Clare” she said.

  “Alex...” I warned.

  She sighed and reluctantly released her grip. “Aren’t you going to change?” she asked.

  “Does anything about my outfit scream ‘money!’?” I asked.

  Though rhetorical, she answered my question anyway, “God, no.”

  “Where do you think the best place to run into Margaret and Jackson would be?” I asked.

  “At the hotel,” she replied dryly.

  I started pacing in the tiny space. “No. They won’t hang around there. Where would they think we would go to wait for them?”

  “They’d probably think I went shopping and you went to mope.”

  “Shopping area,” I snapped my fingers. “Good idea.”

  Damn kids in there...I bet they’re tweaking. I am sick an’ tired of these young punks thinkin’ they can come in here and use my bathroom for that crap. I’ll show them!

  “We gotta go,” I told Alex. I dumped her bag, sans her wallet, into the trash. “The owner thinks we’re doing drugs and is marching over to throw us out.”

  “After you,” she said holding open the door for me.

  The man, who was half way down the aisle, glared at us as we scampered from the store. I waved as he called out for us not to come back.

  Alex squinted into the sun as we stepped outside, missing her sunglasses. “Maybe we should call Dad,” she suggested.

  “That’s a great idea. Here’s you: ‘Hey, Dad, so my hotel just caught on fire, probably set by Watchers out to get us. People died. Oh, and we can’t find Margaret or Jackson, because Clare’s phone was stolen and mine got smashed…can you send money, so we can stay alive long enough to find them? Thanks.’ He’ll love that.”

  She rolled her eyes. “The Adamses?” she asked.

  “Maybe…if we can find a phone. But if we are being watched or followed, they’ll trace the call.

  It might put them at risk.”

  “They know the risks,” Alex said. “And they’ll want to know about this.”

  We were walking as fast as we could without attracting attention, our destination the same row of shops we had originally snuck out to when Margaret had caught us, but I felt we weren’t moving nearly fast enough. My eyes roved around the streets, along the rooftops, everywhere, for a sign of someone, anyone, friend or enemy; a sign that the world of Watchers was still real and hadn’t been erased with the fire. I was grateful for one thing as we walked: Alex’s

  admonishment that we needed to be doing something had cleared my mind and all the noises of the streets had faded. The purpose of protecting her, of staying alive long enough to find help, had created the block I never could imagine for myself.

  “Clare…what if…you don’t think they’re dead, Jackson and Margaret?” Alex asked me as we

  walked.

  I remembered the firefighters talking about the pile of ashes. Daniel had explained to me how the only way to keep a Watcher’s dead tissue from reanimating in a “Dawn of the Dead” tribute was to burn the Watcher until they turned into ash. It was why fire was our biggest enemy.

  “No. They’re not dead,” I sai
d. “Come on, they’ll be here.”

  It was better to hope than to give in to the reality that two friends had been killed and we had been left alone to the brutal streets of a strange town we knew nothing about. It was better than accepting the alternative: that nothing would ever be the same again. While on most days I scorned people who trusted their whole lives to hope, instead of skill or actively pursuing their destiny, I was clinging to hope like an old friend I had spent long days with. It was the only thing that kept me from resigning me to the dark nature of our situation.

  There had to be hope somewhere…

  Chapter 8

  We circled around the shops near Bourbon Street looking for Margaret and Jackson – near the shops we had snuck out to so many weeks ago. We made a sandwich shop our base of operations and met back there every ten minutes or so. We waited there all day…until the shop closed its doors, and the hostess ushered us out of her outdoor seating with pursed lips and a stern frown.

  She thought we were freeloaders and a nuisance to decent, hardworking people. It was proof we looked the part of beggar. I eyed Alex to be sure. Some of the ash had fallen on her face from the fire. Sweat from a day full of walking in the heat smudged the dirt, aiding her appearance of dirty. She was in full vagabond disguise. I figured I always looked the part – at least, a lifetime of wandering parts of cities I probably shouldn’t have had given me the ability to always blend in.

  The sun was sinking below the horizon as we walked away – the muggy air rich with scents and sound – the slim breeze which blew around not enough to wipe away the encompassing heat. My shirt was soaked through, my hair a sieve for the sweat and dirt dripping down my neck. The city was starting to get a different feeling now that the darkness was taking over the light. In the light I hadn’t seen what people talked about as New Orleans being a city of mystery. The dark,

  though, was entirely different – I could feel the city waking up in ways no person could ever truly understand, even if they spent a lifetime living it. The very air felt alive. The feeling wasn’t all good.

  Predators circled around the partiers, searching for prey; pickpockets merged with tourists, bums begged on the street corners. Through my gift, I heard shadowed thoughts of darker doings in unseen places. I wanted to help, but I was superhero-less and limited by my inabilities. Besides, protecting Alex was the most important thing, not getting into wayward fights with people who were older, meaner, and more resigned to murder. It felt wrong, like I was fighting a war against my very nature.

  “They didn’t show up…” Alex said as we slowly walked in a direction neither of us had had

  consciously picked.

  “Maybe they didn’t know where we were. They could have been looking for us in another part of town.”

  “If they were looking for us, they would have found us,” she said slowly.

  I’d been thinking the same words all day. They always found what they were after.

  “What now? Do we call Dad? Do we leave?” Alex asked.

  “You can do whatever you want,” I said. “But I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I’d been thinking about this a lot as well, during our wait. “I’m not going to run away at the first sign of fire,” I said.

  “Choice of words…” Alex warned.

  “Sorry. Point is…I’m not leaving. I have to know if Margaret and Jackson are dead. If they are dead, I will make sure I find their murderer. Then, I’m going to find Daniel and make sure he’s okay, this stupid mission be damned.”

  “But what about money? Dad cut me off…took all my credit cards. I just have the money I took out of savings. How much do you have?”

  “About a hundred.”

  “That’s not enough to get another hotel, and it’s not enough to feed ourselves for more than a couple of weeks,” Alex pointed out.

  I breathed a sigh of relief at her words, even though they were a reminder of our bad situation.

  She was staying; I had hoped as much. I wanted her to be safe, but having a partner was a lot better than contemplating the search alone.

  “We’ll make do,” I said.

  “We’ll make do!” she hissed at me, annoyed with my blasé attitude.

  “I don’t know what we are going to do permanently for a place to stay, but I think I can find us a place for tonight,” I continued, ignoring the hiss.

  “Are you going to wave your magic wand?” she asked sarcastically.

  “Don’t be silly. I broke my magic wand ages ago,” I replied.

  My eyes turned skywards as I searched the roofline for a decent looking building. I walked away from the major thoroughfares and headed in the general direction of our once-elegant hotel. We would get caught if we stayed in tourist central…and not just by the police. There were others other who might be looking for us. Alex followed me quietly, either lost in thought or fuming over my indifference to planning. I was too busy looking to make sure.

  “There.” I pointed at a stone building, which was three stories high and had other buildings jammed up against it.

  “What’s there?” Alex asked.

  I looked both ways down the closed-in street for cops or any curious passersby. The streets were empty. “Did I ever tell you about when I lived in New York?” I asked.

  “Just vague things,” Alex replied.

  “Ellen always worked odd hours when we were living there…when she could get hours.

  Whenever I knew she would be gone at night, I would go out and find a building to climb to watch the city. You’d be surprised at how many people ignore what’s on their roofs.”

  “Did you ever get caught?” she asked.

  “Once,” I replied. “The cop let me go, though.”

  “That was nice of him,” she said.

  “Not really. I let him know about the drug dealers across the way, and he went to bust them mid-deal. I ran off before he could find me again.” I set the sword against the edge of the building.

  “See that fire escape?”

  “Yeah….” She looked up at it, then at me, her face suspicious.

  “I’m going to boost you up, and you’re going to let the ladder down for me.”

  “Why can’t I boost you up?” she asked.

  “You think you can lift me?” I asked, measuring my tall frame against her petite one.

  She tilted her head to measure the distance up. “All right, just be careful.”

  I rolled my eyes and put my hands together in a brace for her foot. She pushed down on my

  shoulders, then on my head, as she reached for the ladder. She caught it, after managing to hit me in the face more than once, and swung up. A second later, after some cursing and a hiss to be quiet from me, the ladder descended. I grabbed the sword and followed her up, my climb a lot easier than hers had been. Together, we pulled the ladder up and latched it, so no one would follow us – no one human, at least. Alex in front, we climbed the metal stairs all the way to the top of the building. The roof was littered with trash and natural debris from storms. In the corner was an old couch someone had left to rot. A heavy door in the floor was the only other access point.

  “Home, sweet home,” Alex said dryly.

  “Better than the ground,” I replied.

  She pushed on the torn fabric of the old sofa. “At least it’s dry.” She measured the distance. “It’s not big enough for the two of us.”

  “You go ahead and sleep. I’ll keep watch,” I told her, having not planned on sleep.

  I knew the kind of people that roamed the darkness. I also knew that coming up here would only stop the human kind. The fight I had witnessed was proof of that. Sleep would not only be

  impractical, but deadly.

  “You’ll wake me up when it’s your turn?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I agreed.

  She lay down, after trying to dust off the soaked through mold and dirt, and made quiet

  discontented noises. It took he
r a while, but a long day of running around, tension, and utter terror had exhausted her to the point where she could have slept anywhere. Soon, her steady breathing was another sound in the full night.

  I, on the other hand, felt more alive. The tension and the fear had awoken a part of me that had lain dormant since Ellen had brought me to King’s Cross. My body had stopped operating on

  normal wave lengths and was searching for ways to adapt to our situation, to swing back into the rhythm and spirit of the city. My brain kept urging me to think two steps ahead, to focus on surviving. It was less a symptom of being a Watcher – more a symptom of having been raised in cities just like this one.

  The ledge of the roof was wide and low, offering a perfect vantage point. I settled on it with my legs crossed and took the sword out of the bag. I put it across my legs for easy access. A Spartan breeze played with my hair, mingling the sweat and soot emanating from my body with the

  smells of the city. For the first time since the fire, I let the magnitude of what had happened settle into my brain.

  Were Jackson and Margaret really gone? Had I done nothing while they had been murdered?

  Had I been the cause of their murder? Why had they gone back to the hotel if they were

  supposed to be following us? If they weren’t the pile of ashes, who was? What good could we honestly do without the other’s help? Why the fire? Who had set it? Was it meant for me? Was it Marcus? If not, did I have someone else to worry about? Was there an answer?

  A single tear of worry and regret tracked down my dirty face; a single tear to mark the

  uncertainty I knew we faced, and the sad fear that two people I cared about had been burned from this world. I wiped away the tear in irritation, not wanting to succumb to emotional

  hysterics when I had survival to think about, and focused on the future. But somewhere in the city a trumpet player’s sad song reached toward the heaven adding music to my dark emotions. It was as if the player had somehow seen my sadness and decided to share it to the world. The music continued for a long time, reminding me of the sadness I faced. It was hard to ignore.

  I sat unmoving on my ledge for hours. The lights danced below as cars moved down the streets and lights turned on and off in the buildings. The water from the river flickered with those lights in a sporadic tempo. The moon arched over the horizon in a slow orbit across my world, marking the time. In deep thoughts about what to do next, and terror based in uncertainty, night slipped quietly back into day.