“Spider…” Eli said.
Spider turned to us, food hanging out of his mouth. “Yeah?”
“Explain to them how we get what we want,” Eli said.
“Through whatever means necessary,” Spider replied promptly.
“So….what does that mean?” I asked.
“We could break in,” Spider suggested.
“That’s a lot of clubs,” Alex pointed out.
“Do you want to find out information?” Eli asked.
“And did you have anything else to do?” Spider added.
“Oh, you had me at ‘break in,’” I replied. “Breaking in sounds fun.”
Alex wasn’t happy about my words. “That means it’s the most dangerous, stupid thing we could possibly do.”
“That’s not stopped us yet,” I said.
“What are you guys talking about?” Ethan asked.
“They’re trying to find some people,” Spider said. “I’m going to help them, so long as it doesn’t get in the way of my day job.”
But why would he volunteer to do that? Ethan thought. “Oh…”
“I brought you a radio,” Eli said to Spider. “It’s upstairs.”
Spider wiped his greasy hands off on his pants and rushed out to find the radio. His thoughts were excited at having electronics to play with. I slumped down in the chair and, using my foot, played with the sword, as the others went back to their conversation. The silver that peeked through the fabric reflected light on to my face. I stared at the light thoughtfully.
“That thing can’t stay here,” Eli said quietly. He, too, stared at the silver blade. “It’s dangerous for the others.”
“I can’t just leave it lying around,” I said.
“No,” he agreed.
“What do you have in mind?” I asked.
“We’ll put it somewhere safe,” he said.
“Somewhere safe?” I asked.
“Yes,” he agreed.
“Just because you say it’s safe, doesn’t mean I’m going to take your word on it.”
Alex put her hand on mine. Clare…don’t piss him off. We’re just going to have to trust him…for now.
I didn’t know we could talk like this, I thought at her.
Me, either. Let’s just take the sword wherever. I’ll feel better when that thing isn’t hanging over our heads.
All right.
Eli was staring at us. He hadn’t missed our silent communication, but I sensed he didn’t
understand the full spectrum of it.
“I was tired of lugging it around anyways,” I admitted to him.
He stood and walked away without a word, trusting we would follow him. I grabbed the sword and shared an exasperated look with Alex before we trailed after him. She followed at a much slower pace.
Spider was still upstairs. He sat at the top of the stairs with a flashlight tucked under his chin and the radio in his lap, tinkering away. He didn’t try and follow us, or ask to join us…he was too busy trying to figure out how he could rework the radio. He muttered a brief goodbye as we passed him on our way out, his thoughts full of mechanical knowledge.
The streets outside were full of that same energy I had noticed the past three days. It was a dark magic I wasn’t sure was entirely healthy. Eli walked ahead of us, so he wouldn’t have to talk to us. Alex hooked her arm through mine as we took a corner and set her pace to slower than slow.
A saunter would have told her to ‘hurry up’. She smirked as he was forced to wait for us at the end of the road. He paced like a caged animal as he waited.
“So much for not making him mad,” I said.
“If you’re going to piss someone off, you have to do it un-obviously,” she said.
“Un-obvious. Right,” I said.
We walked for a long time. Just as I was starting to get annoyed, figuring he was yanking our chain, we caught up with him again. This time he didn’t pace away as soon as we reached him.
We were on a side street littered with parked cars. The clubs and restaurants were sparse now. In their place were industrial buildings and business offices. The building he stood in front of was brick and looked large in comparison to the others next to it. He pointed at a fire escape.
“What is it with fire escapes?” Alex grumbled as I went first up the narrow steps.
I helped her up and waited for Eli to join us. Without accepting my hand up, he went directly to a white door on the landing and opened it. He left the door open for us. The room was small, but open. Large windows slanted to the floor, helping the space feel bigger than it really was. Tall shelves of books, dusty from disuse, and a small bed were all that decorated the room. It was a monk’s study, rather than a home.
“Do you stay here?” I asked.
“No.” A door in the corner slid open with a reluctant squeak. “I come here to think.”
“Is it yours?” Alex asked.
“It was my father’s,” he replied.
“Look at all these books…” I said in wonder.
Eli grunted indifferently.
Alex was more on point. “You knew your father?”
“No,” he said. “I tracked him here. It was the last place he was seen. Here.”
He held his hand out for the sword. I hesitated before handing it to him. It was the one thing I had that could kill Watchers; I had seen its rival slice a man easy enough, and that was supposed to be impossible. Should I give up my only protection? Eli snapped his fingers, impatient to get this over with. Uncertain, I handed him the sword. He placed it in the room and forced the heavy door back into position.
“Do you ever read any of these books?” I asked to hide how uncomfortable I was at handing him the sword. I ran a hand over a row and thick dust came off on my fingers.
“No.”
I stopped as a title caught my eye. It was a collected book of poetry. “You should let Twitch read this one,” I said.
“Don’t act like you know him after one meeting. You don’t know any of them,” he growled.
I threw my hands up in surrender and paced back to the door.
“We’re not here to mess with your world,” Alex assured him. “Once we find our friends, we’ll be gone.”
“Whatever,” he said. “Just don’t build their hopes up that’ll you’ll stick around. They don’t need those sorts of disappointments.”
“I just thought he’d like it. I heard him quoting poetry earlier…in his thoughts,” I said.
“You can hear him?” Eli’s eyes locked with mine.
“Yeah. Course. I can hear everyone who isn’t a Watcher. Why?”
Eli pulled his hood over his greasy blond hair and didn’t answer. He made his way out and down the stairs.
“I guess that means it’s time to go,” I said.
“And that we shouldn’t ask questions,” Alex added.
“And that he doesn’t like us,” I said.
“He doesn’t like you,” Alex corrected. “You’re the one who has all the questions.”
“True,” I agreed.
We followed Eli back down to the street level. This time he didn’t wait for us like he did before.
I guessed he figured we would know the way back.
“I miss Dad,” Alex admitted when we were close to the theater. She had her arm stuck through mine again. I wasn’t sure if she was looking for comfort or trying to give comfort through the touch. Maybe it was a little of both.
“I know.”
She gave a strange laugh. “I thought I was going to go on a summer vacation that was actually fun. Dad was talking about going to L.A with you guys. That would have been cool…instead, we have this…” She hugged my arm tight. “You know what the last thing I said to him was?”
“No,” I admitted.
“I said, ‘I don’t care what you think.’ What if something happens to me down here? I can’t let that be the last thing I said to him,” she said.
“I won’t let anything happen to you, Alex
,” I promised.
“What if…what if I change again and you can’t help it?” she asked.
“Alex….”
“I feel like there is this…” she struggled with the words, “darkness inside of me waiting to get out. Every time I get angry or irritated it comes out a little. And I have these thoughts…bad thoughts that come out in my dream sometimes. When you were fighting those gang members, I just wanted to change and rip their throats out, just tear them to pieces. I wanted to so bad.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
“I got scared, I guess. Scared of killing someone else,” she said.
I hugged her closer and didn’t say anything. Not that I knew what to say anyway. It was a
reminder that the three lives I had taken in April weren’t just riding on my conscience. Alex had taken her own lives, and she was dealing with the consequences as much as I was. She
understood, better than even Daniel, what the unanswered questions and guilt could do to a person.
I let Alex walk up the stairs first, gnawing over the questions again. Where was Daniel? How could he have come down here on the suggestion of a stranger? Serenity, her gold eyes, dark skin, and perfect form as she’d walked away floated through my head. I hadn’t thought about her in weeks. Everything else that had happened, and the time separating her visit and our mission down here, had erased her from my mind. She had brought this plan to Daniel. It was her plan which was backfiring. Had she set this whole thing up in the hopes it would fail?
The kids had settled down now that the food was gone. They lounged around the space in singles and pairs, entertaining themselves. Twitch, who was the youngest, was fast asleep in the far corner. Cora and Sprint were in whispered conversation, giggles emanating from their corner.
Ethan helped Spider with the radio, their tinkering adding a counter melody to their conversation.
As we walked in, I realized that Eli, who had walked in way ahead of us, was nowhere to be seen.
“Cora fixed you a bed,” Spider said as we sat down in our chairs. He pointed to a corner of the stage that was a bit removed from the others. Two heaps of costumes and old blankets provided the best looking bed I’d seen in days.
“Thanks,” Alex said. She yawned and kicked off her shoes. “I’m beat. And my feet hurt. And my head hurts. And I’m going to bed.”
She crawled on to the stage and, still crawling, made her way to the bed. She curled up without bothering with a blanket, the heat overwhelming in the humid space, and promptly started
snoring.
I watched Ethan and Spider mess with the radio, until they got too tired to mess with it anymore.
Cora and Sprint had fallen asleep long before, their giggling slowly petering out to the soft sounds of sleep. For the first time in a couple of days, I sucked in a long, deep breath. The place was quiet; it was perfect in its quiet. The kids around me reminded me that not everything was life and death, even though they had seen plenty of both, and Alex reminded me why we were here. With the promising balance of quiet and the purpose of my mission, I sunk into the moldy chair with a roll of my shoulders.
My sighting of Daniel wouldn’t be the last time I saw him. It couldn’t be. And if there were such a thing called ‘luck’ when I saw him next I would have the person who had set fire to the hotel, and I would know for sure about Jackson and Margaret.
In the mood I was in, nothing would stop me.
Chapter 12
The kids were up at dawn the next morning. They rolled over instantaneously, as if someone had yelled in their ears. I had spent the night on my makeshift bed of costumes and blankets, which smelled of mold and water, trying to get some sleep. Tossing and turning was jealous of how often I shifted on the bed. They stretched and yawned, then silently went to sit on the edge of the stage. Alex caught my eye as they waited. Hers were sleepy and full of tired tears, but she was curious about their strange behavior. Our unasked questions didn’t last long. Eli appeared at the door. In his hands was a box of donuts. He came forward and placed them on the stage. The kids didn’t waste any time in attacking them.
“The Sister’s sweet shop again?” Spider asked.
Eli nodded. “They never lock their upstairs window.”
Spider took a large bite of a donut. “Bless them and their oblivion. They have the best donuts in town,” he added for my benefit.
Eli sat down on a chair and watched the kids eat. His expressionless face was hard to read, but his eyes were pleased. He didn’t even look at Alex or me; to him we were as important as the moldy clothes we had spent the night on.
Twitch sat apart from the others, picking his food apart while his feet dangled off the edge. I rolled out of blankets and picked up a sprinkled donut, then sat next to him. His thoughts turned nervous at my presence, but he soon calmed when he realized I wasn’t there to force him to speak. His twitching decreased at any rate.
We shared a moment then I said, “Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths enwrought with golden and silver light the blue and the dim and the dark cloths of night and light and the half-light I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams….Heard that one
before?”
Twitch shook his head in response. No.
“It’s by Yeats. I’ve always liked that poem, but then again I’m a sucker for poems about dreams being more important than wealth. Daniel, my friend, says I’m a closet romantic, but I think he’s just unaware of how much we need dreams…”
Twitch smiled at me oddly. I like the dark poems. They make me realize I’m not so alone…
“You’re not alone.” I gestured around the room at the other kids near us.
You can be alone even when you’re surrounded by people you love.
I blinked at him. “How old are you? You can’t be as old as you look. Not with thoughts like that.”
Seven.
“Give me some of that maturity, will ya?” I asked.
He giggled in the first real sound I’d heard him make.
I took my first bite of donut and saw that everyone was listening in. Eli’s face was full of jealousy, while the others were simply shocked that I was actually talking to Twitch as if he spoke words. Spider pushed Sprint playfully and made a joke to hide the fact they’d all been eavesdropping. She pushed him back, and he retaliated by stealing what was left of her donut. It was then I saw how she had earned her name. Spider hopped over chairs and ran up the length of the theater to try and escape her, holding her donut as hostage. Sprint’s lanky legs stretched out in full stride as she ran to intercept him – she caught up with him in a matter of seconds. Her tackle was not gentle. They slammed into the ground, fighting over the donut. Cora ran to help Sprint get her food back, while Ethan took another donut when no one was watching.
Alex sat down on Twitch’s other side to watch the action, and, without thinking about it, she brushed a speck of dirt from his face. He didn’t seem to mind the maternal action; he smiled and went back to picking his donut into pieces before eating them. His thoughts soothed even further, and we all sat in happy peace, watching the friendly chaos of the fight we were watching.
After Spider had paid his penance for stealing Sprint’s donut, and the food was all gone,
everyone left to do some constructive thieving and begging. The day flew by. I focused on the gullible and the generous, my story changing slightly with every person, though I avoided lies.
Around my careful half-truths, I found that I enjoyed the game and the payoff of its rewards. It was fun and interesting; more to the point, it kept me entirely distracted.
Alex collected information on different clubs we could break into and by noon had a long list.
When I was certain I had enough money for the day, we found a bench we could talk on without being noticed. Alex gave me the lowdown on the clubs as we sat, happy to have a plan again.
“Once we know where the cameras are, I think Spider and I can disable them,” I said. “I think you should focus on linking the information we find.”
“Okay.” Alex paused thoughtfully. “I tried to call Beatrice again today. She didn’t pick up. I got a really strange message, though.”
“What?”
“It said: The fox is out of the den, and the dove has taken to the morning.”
“Weird. What do you think it means?” I asked.
“That the fox is out and the dove likes to fly in the morning,” Alex said.
I frowned. “It sounds like a message.”
“To who?”
“Whom,” I corrected.
“Now is not the time to correct my grammar, Clare.”
“Sorry. I don’t know who it could be directed at. Daniel didn’t tell me anything about coded messages…”
“Great….another mystery.”
“Tell me about it.”
Putting the message off as something we couldn’t solve, she leaned forward and started making plans and plans in case our plans failed. I wasn’t sure if the plans would help anything, but they made Alex feel better, and that was worth everything.
At dusk, we went to the theater, still talking, hoping we were on the right track. Inside, we found the others already waiting for us. We repeated the giving of funds earned to the collective pile.
This time, no one held back and the pile grew respectively large. Like the previous night, Eli’s arrival wasn’t long after the division of funds. He had more food with him and even less to say.
He hunkered in the corner, away from us, only talking to the kids when they talked to him first, which they did only to tease him or get him to settle a dispute for the group.
After dinner Spider led us out into the dark. “Where first?” he asked.
“We’re going to start with the clubs closest to the water, then work our way out,” Alex said.
02 Seekers Page 17
