“Ugh,” I grunt, leaning back into the seat as the car slides seamlessly into a four-lane super-highway. “Seriously, are you always this—?”
“This what? Charming, witty, clever?” He smiles with his whole face, completely aware of the fact that he’s driving me insane.
“Annoying.” I can’t help but laugh.
Jonathan frowns dramatically. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good, see that you do.” I peek at him sideways, trying to keep a straight face.
Jonathan tries not to, but an easy smile creeps into place and stays there.
“Hey, are you hungry?” I ask.
“Yes, I am, but would it be crossing any boundaries if I take you to dinner?” he asks, his mischievous grin reaching his eyes.
“I’ll allow it this time.” I smile out the passenger window. I’ve never been to London, but even in the dark her glory lives up to my expectations.
I’m still smiling when the car turns down Old Park Lane. Jonathan’s reading the house numbers out loud until he finds the obscure parking garage.
The first thing I notice when I step out of the car is the sheer volume of city noise, the decibels have to be ten times greater than what I’m used to. There’s also an odd smell, like adding cinnamon to spaghetti—it’s still spaghetti, but different.
Jonathan strolls beside me for half a block down the rather chilly lamp-lit street. The boulevard is filled with cozy shops, bike racks and sidewalk tables. He stops in front of a towering white building with brown awnings. A yellow circle with red letters announces, “Hard Rock Café.” I try not to look too impressed, but I’ve always wanted to eat here. Absently, I wonder if I ever posted that online.
Inside, it’s equally loud and swamped with couples. Everywhere I turn, people are paired up and dining together. Some tables have families with kids, others have one or two couples laughing and talking like it’s the most normal thing to do. To me, it’s foreign. We weren’t allowed to date at SEEK. “It clouds the senses,” they said. But even if I’d been allowed, I wouldn’t have. Not that other people didn’t. There were always rumors about some hook-up, usually followed by someone getting transferred, or even fired.
The hostess leads us to a booth. “Your waitress will be right with you.”
“Thank you,” Jonathan and I say in unison.
Jonathan smiles at me as he opens his plastic covered menu. “You should try their Legendary Burger.”
“Oh yeah?” I shove my nose in my own menu and find the burger. Normally I’d go for it, but I decide to try something new. “It does look good, but I think I’ll go with the Grilled Mediterranean Shrimp Pasta.”
“Me too,” Jonathan agrees, sounding surprised.
From there, we slip into an effortless conversation about food, Jonathan doing most of the talking as I sip my tea. It’s easy listening to him. He’s funny and entertaining, and he even talks while he eats. I nod and laugh, twisting noodles around my fork. It feels as though I’m living someone else’s life. So much so that by the time we pay the check and leave, my face hurts from smiling. I’m out of practice I suppose.
“Looking back, I can pick out all the times I was around Khayal and literally had no idea that such a creature could exist in the world. Makes me wonder what else might be out there.” Jonathan stops at a newspaper vending machine on our way back to the car and pops a couple of coins in.
“God! I hadn’t even thought of that.” I rub my hands over the backs of my arms. “Do you think…I mean, could there really be more creatures besides Khayal out there?”
“Maybe. Are you cold, here take my jacket?”
“Why?” I glower at him.
“Because it gives me the chance to be chivalrous,” he says, draping his jacket over my shoulders.
How do I respond to that? I’ve never been in a situation like this before. I can’t tell if he’s be sarcastic or genuinely just wants to be nice. I pull on the coat and smile hesitantly.
Jonathan looks pleased as he tucks the newspaper under his arm. Down the sidewalk to the parking garage he picks up the conversation again. “I had a biology professor in college that taught me something accidently, but I’ll never forget it. This professor would open every class with a limerick. At first I thought, this is highly inappropriate, but then I realized his jokes held the keys to pass the tests. By the end of the semester I knew every question that was going to be on our final and I got every question right, accept one. I misunderstood the professor’s use of the word, booty.”
“I’m not following you,” I admit.
“I was thinking more along the lines of anatomy, you know biology. But he meant loot as in pirate booty. Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection.”
“Should I know what that means?” I tilt my head.
“Fisher’s theorem gave the formula for a change in gene frequency. But only part of it. The rest of the theory changes due to natural selection. Do you get it?”
“Not even a little.”
Jonathan rubs his chin. “Okay, say you’re an alien…”
“I’m an alien,” I say sarcastically.
“Right, you’re an alien who’s never been to earth. You get here and the first living things you find are animals. Which one do you think is the dominate species?”
I shrug. “Isn’t the lion supposed to be the king of the jungle?”
“Sure, that’s a good guess, but the lion can be captured and whipped into submission by humans right? But you, the alien, don’t know this because you haven’t encountered a human yet.”
“So you think there are more species of Khayal?”
“Not necessarily Khayal, but something more intelligent.” Jonathan opens my car door and runs around to the driver’s side. “I know you haven’t known Irkalla long, but remember how I told you that Khayal share one consciousness?”
I nod, buckling my seatbelt and hanging on every word.
“I don’t mean this in a bad way, but Khayal—and I know them pretty well after working as a Handler for over a year—aren’t that bright. Not because they lack intelligence, but because they lack common sense. I mean, and this isn’t a jab at you. But they get themselves killed all the time, as though they don’t have true cognitive reasoning. It’s like they’re the worker ants, and if that’s the case, wouldn’t there be a queen?”
My breath catches.
“It’s something to think about anyway.” Jonathan shrugs as he slips money into the automated toll booth.
I fall into silence, mulling over his theory. What could that mean for human beings? Would this queen have access to all Khayal minds, and all the souls connected to them, like mine? My mind races with questions. I glance at Jonathan.
For once he’s too quiet as the car motors along the freeway.
Shrewsbury
Three hours later we’re halfway to Shrewsbury. The silhouetted countryside welcomes us with its stone cottages peeking out from behind sloping hills and gated gardens. A colorless three-quarter moon sneaks through thin clouds, outlining clusters of trees. Out here, away from the city, England smells damp and earthy, fresh and full of new possibilities. It immediately stirs a sense of longing in me. I ask myself what I would do differently if given the chance for a re-do, but I honestly don’t know what I’d change. If I could go back to Lindy’s graduation night and drive her home, I would, but after that? How can I regret trying to help her? Even knowing what I know about the Khayal now. I couldn’t change it. I had no choice but to take the only opportunity that presented itself to get Lindy that operation.
Jonathan’s right. Our government shouldn’t be hiding their existence, they should be announcing it. But where do I fit in? I am only one girl. One homesick girl.
“You can change everything, Keira. You’re the only one who can,” the voice—the creepy, eerie voice that’s really getting on my nerves—pops into my head again.
My hand twitches, jerking noisily against the door handle. “Who are you? What i
s your name?” I plead, but like déjà vu the voice has already come and gone.
I feel Jonathan watching me. He didn’t miss my flinch. “I-I don’t have a passport! How’d we skip Customs?”
“I can’t believe you still don’t get how amazing I am. I manipulated the flight docket, as far as the air tower knew we’d only flown in from Newcastle.”
“Now you’re just bragging.” Inside, my heart is racing, my head still considering what the voice said. How can I change everything? And why is it talking to me? I’m just a girl from Florida who’s in way over her head. I only want to get my family and go hide in the mountains somewhere off the grid. Like Tibet. Where my insanity won’t bother anyone. I’ll be the girl in the corner talking to herself.
“A little. But you missed all the fun while you were sleeping. I even ordered you a new passport. It’ll be delivered via messenger at my place in London within the week. Janet is going to foreword it on to Paul’s.”
“You ordered my passport?” Janet. I grumble internally.
“Oh, sorry, I’d already done it before you invoked the new boundaries. I’ll make sure to get permission in the future.” Jonathan slumps forward.
“You’re assuming I’ve agreed to take part in this—army, or whatever.”
“Regardless if you join with Paul or not, I’m joining your quest to save Lindy.”
I turn away, biting back a host of swear words, staring at the encroaching cityscape. “Lindy is my responsibility, not yours.”
“But I can help you. I want to help you.”
“I know, and I know it’s for Lindy’s sake, but…” What do I say? That I think I’m going crazy and he should run as far away from me as possible? I still need his plane and his help getting my family out of America.
“And don’t forget I feel obligated to you.”
My blood begins to boil. I open my mouth to let him have it.
But Jonathan laughs, slapping my knee. “You should’ve seen your face!”
I reach out to shove his shoulder, but Jonathan ducks and my hand brushes the back of his neck instead. Weird sensations tickle the top of my head, blurring my thoughts, and then from nowhere I hear the voice again.
“You love him.”
I shiver, huddle back in the corner as far from him as possible, rubbing my arms. This is crazy. No, this confirms that I am crazy.
“You felt it too?” Jonathan asks enthusiastically.
And to my horror, he pries my hand free, pulls it over to the back of his neck and holds it there as his Khayal ring rises under my fingers. A tremble rumbles through my whole body. The same familiar, unmistakably-electric current, just like the one I’d shared with Irkalla, rushes up my left arm and spikes straight into my heart. My pulse zooms erratically. Unsteady breaths pant from my lips. Love, desire, pleasure, peace, and comfort tingle through every cell in my being.
“Do you feel it, Keira?” Jonathan whispers, his hand trembling against mine.
“Jonathan,” I whimper. Unable to control myself, I cling to his neck.
“I know,” he answers throatily. Gently, he lowers our joined hands, drawing me away from the only place I suddenly want to be.
I stare blankly, sputtering. “But how did you know?”
Jonathan’s hand inches toward my neck. “May I?” he asks, avoiding the question.
But the simple request strikes a new kind of terror in me, snapping me out of the spell. I push his hand down. “How did you know it would do that? Did you do that in the Brotherhood?”
“What? No. I had a brief sample when I fell on you. But I’d like to try it again, if you’ll let me,” Jonathan says.
Frozen and trembling, my mind flashing images of Jonathan’s startled face back on the plane, but I can’t make sense of what it all means. “Try again? No-no, that’s not…”
“Never mind, you’re right, it’s not a good idea.” Jonathan clicks on the right-hand blinker and turns off the highway. “I do want to tell you that I’m sorry for what I said earlier though, about you only being seventeen? I was in shock. It was a stupid thing to say. It’s just that I like you and that scares me, more than a little.”
Jonathan admitting that he’s into me—underage or not—doesn’t come as surprise. I’m not that naïve. But his confession makes it feel too real. Besides, he’s too perfect for this to be sincere. I have to think about Lindy and my family, not about my feelings—real or imagined—for some guy, no matter how pretty, or funny, or kind he may seem.
“I know it sounds childish.” He pulls a hand through his tumbled hair. It snaps obediently back into ringlets. “Believe me, I get it, the timing couldn’t be crazier, but can you honestly tell me you didn’t feel that—that electricity too?”
“I—I,” I stutter, my hands doing a sort-of-somersault in the air before falling back into my lap.
We drive through a housing development where lot after lot of identical red brick houses roll by, all with the same flat lawn and four shrubs around their matching doorways. A pattern of every other house with their porch light on seems too coincidental to be random. Must be a Neighborhood Watch program or something, I think absently, avoiding Jonathan’s question.
“Are you not speaking to me now?” Jonathan persists, refusing to let me off without an answer.
“What do you want me to say? That I feel like I just took a Jonathan bath and I liked it? That I’m in love with you? I can’t do that. I like you, okay? I admit it. I think you’re a good guy. Too good for me in fact, but I’m leaving so what’s the point?” I whip my head to Jonathan, his breath fogging the window as his expression perks-up into a glorious smile. Victorious laughter fills the tiny car. “Great, you’re going to laugh at me again. Helpful.”
“I’m not laughing at you. Don’t you see? I’m happy. You feel exactly what I feel. You just won’t admit it…yet.” Jonathan grins, leaving his accusation hanging in the air, a bomb threatening to undo me.
As the rows of houses end, Jonathan turns the car into a grassy driveway hidden in a cluster of trees. In the dark, it appears to be an old forgotten farm. Acres of weedy pastures roll by until we reach the end of the driveway. A slanted pointy roof looms in the moonlight at the top of the hill. Jonathan cuts the engine in front of an ancient looking brick carriage house. Three orange sconces illuminate four stilted garage doors. The effect is creepy. Something from a B-rated horror flick.
Jonathan clears his throat. “I meant what I said about Lindy. I want to help.”
Warm amber light’s glinting off his radiating eyes he looks more angel than man. I believe him. “What are you doing to me? It’s too much—helping me find Irkalla, smuggling me out of the country, fancy planes, cars, people and your computer thingy-ma-jobber. Now I’m supposed to profess my love for you? Are you crazy?”
Jonathan puts his hands up in surrender, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his neck. “Sorry. I’m sorry. You’re right, this is crazy. I won’t bring it up again.”
“Thank you,” I huff, eyeing him evenly.
“I can wait until you do,” he says quietly and steps out of the car.
It’s then that I realize how stupid I really am, because I start rationalizing reasons to stay. I’m in a foreign country, with no passport—and even after it gets here—I can’t go anywhere without Jonathan and his bag of tricks. As soon as I burn through my small amount of cash and dip into my savings, Kistall will know exactly where I am. That means I’m stuck.
I gaze up at Jonathan’s serene face as he opens my door. Besides Cord, Jonathan’s the only other person to ever call me on my crap. But I won’t give up that easy. With a deep sigh I traipse up the cobbled path behind him, stuffing my hands in my pockets. It’s an effort to keep from reaching for his hand.
“Tragic,” I mutter under my breath. I will not be the kind of girl who forgets who she is because of some guy. I am responsible for putting my sister in a wheelchair. I won’t abandon her.
“Hmmm?” Jonathan gives me an inquisi
tive head-tilt.
“You didn’t say Paul lived in a castle.” I crane my neck straight up, following the bell tower. Clouds roll in behind the piercing steeple, blocking the moonlight. Shadows fall over the jagged peak. I wrap my arms over my shoulders.
“It’s not a castle. It’s the old Bridges Youth Hostel.”
“Should we call first? It’s sort of late,” I ask in a small voice.
“Paul’s phone is monitored,” he reminds me.
“That’s right, you did say that.”
The conversation we’re really having has nothing to do with Paul and everything to do with my cowardice and avoidance. We approach the entry nook. I hang back. Jonathan pulls the chain on the bell and steps back beside me. Seconds turn into a minute and my pulse picks up speed. Jonathan throws me a sideways glance. I nod, ready to run, but then the deadbolt clicks. Jonathan and I stare at the door as a young girl in baggy gray sweat pants and an oversized rock-band tee opens it just enough for her face. She looks bedraggled and sleepy.
“How can I help you?” she says in an American accent and yawns.
Sounding much older than nineteen, Jonathan asks, “Is Paul available?”
“Who’s asking?” The girl squints, eyeing me briefly before closing the door to a narrow slit. Her pallid expression sizing me up. She thinks I’m a threat.
I applaud her intuition.
“Tell him Jonathan Steed brought him a friend he wants him to meet,” Jonathan says.
The door swings open abruptly. A scruffy man—a little older than Jonathan, sporting a full beard and disheveled, muck-colored hair—stands on the threshold smiling broadly. “Jonathan!” he shouts enthusiastically embracing him in a loud, back-thumping man-hug. “How the hell are you? Get in here.”
Paul swipes my arm too, towing us both through the door. I stumble into the small shadowy room. It looks like a reception area. Only now the front desk is shoved up against the wall because the floor is littered with sleeping bodies. It smells like feet.
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