Atlantis Rising

by Gloria Craw

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Watching you do your weird locker stuff reminded me we still don’t know who took the pages from your notebook. They weren’t in the tiger’s things. Dad and I searched his car and the hotel room he’d been staying in, too.”

  “So someone else was messing around in my locker,” I said apprehensively.

  He nodded. “It appears so, but I haven’t felt anyone around that shouldn’t be.”

  My suspicion immediately ran to Nikki Cole. Her vibrations wouldn’t seem out of place at Fillmore. Just thinking about her made the energy under my skin start to heat up.

  Ian smiled at me. “Cool it,” he said.

  “Sorry, but it could have been Nikki. I’m telling you, something is up with her. She could have broken into my locker, taken my stuff, and then disappeared into everyone else around here.”

  “Just because Nikki has had the opportunity to take your things doesn’t mean she did. What would her motivation be? She can be mean, but why would she break into your locker?”

  “You said she hangs around Luke Stentorian a lot,” I said. “He’s the mole, so maybe she’s helping him spy on me.”

  “I really doubt Luke told her over burgers and fries that he’s helping Sebastian Truss. Their relationship isn’t that close.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know because I have eyes in my head. Luke was never comfortable around her. He wouldn’t have confided in her that he was spying for Sebastian, let alone asked her to help him.”

  “Maybe. I just feel like she’s part of something bigger.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t just jealous?” he replied, looking amused.

  “Of what?”

  “Nikki wants to spend time with me…you do, too.”

  “When we’re done with Sebastian, Nikki can have you all to herself,” I assured him.

  He laughed. “Your mouth says one thing, your eyes say the other.”

  “You are so full of yourself.”

  English class was already full when we got there. I stopped dead in my tracks a few feet inside the room. My mouth immediately went dry, and the blood drained from my hands and feet as I looked at my classmates.”

  Ian bumped into my back. “What is it?” he asked, putting a hand on my elbow.

  I shook my head. “I’ve never given a presentation,” I said. “I always figured a way out of it before. I think I’m scared to talk in front of all these people.”

  “All these people? There are only nine of them. The first time is always a little scary. You’ll be fine.”

  “I won’t. I can’t talk in front of them,” I insisted.

  “If you screw up, you can thoughtmake them into forgetting about it later.”

  Although true, it didn’t make me feel any better. When I didn’t move, Ian gave me a gentle push. Connor patted the chair next to him. Thankful for his friendly face, I made a beeline for it. “You look…not good,” he commented.

  “Do I?”

  “Take some deep breaths,” he suggested.

  Nervous or not, I follow directions well. Unfortunately, I overdid the breathing and a pins-and-needles sensation started in my fingers before moving on to the rest of my body. I grabbed Connor’s arm. He read the situation well and pulled my chair, with me sitting in it, away from the desk. “Put your head between your knees,” he ordered, “and stop breathing so fast.”

  I did as I was told. Ian’s Vans approached. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked Connor.

  “She started to hyperventilate.”

  A moment later, Ian’s face was near mine.

  “Jeez, Alison,” he whispered. “It’s just a little in-class presentation. All you have to do is read the photo in your mind.”

  “I can’t do it,” I whimpered.

  He sighed once. “Don’t push me out of your mind, okay?”

  He used the kissing approach this time, and all sorts of pleasant sensations quickly replaced the tingling in my fingers and toes. I took in a long cleansing breath as Ian’s sunshine floated over my skin. “Better?” he asked in a whisper.

  “Better,” I replied.

  “Good. Let’s get this over with.”

  Sitting up, I pulled my chair toward my desk. Connor gave me a reassuring smile, and then I felt her. Nikki was standing in the door looking in disbelief from Ian to me and back again. Ian nodded in her direction. She put a hand up in response but glanced at me again before leaving.

  “She knows,” I said.

  “She can’t understand why I’m mingling energy with a human,” Ian replied, “but she doesn’t know.”

  When class started, Mrs. Waters announced the order of our presentations. Ian and I were first.

  “Gordon Lord Byron was born on the twenty-second of January, 1788, in London, England,” I heard myself say. “He is considered the seminal poet of his time.”

  I managed to get through the rest of my part, and though my delivery sucked, I didn’t leave anything out. Ian did great. He was a talented speaker and Byron’s life provided ample material for him to joke about. The audience laughed at the appropriate times and gave us a round of applause when we finished.

  I stumbled back to my seat, relieved. Ian had taken the desk near mine. He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Physical contact on top of an overload of energy made my head spin. To top it off, when our eyes met, I couldn’t look away. From across the room, Brandy threw a pen at us. It landed loudly on the desk in front of me, breaking the spell. She shook her head and Ian pulled his hand away.

  Brandy fell in step with me after class. “You’re humming,” she remarked disapprovingly. “I don’t think Ian’s parents would approve of the type of energy floating around here.”

  “I had to do it,” Ian said, coming up behind us. “She was paralyzed with fear.”

  “Too bad the side effects will make both of you useless for the rest of the day. You didn’t think about that, did you?”

  “Useless for what?” I asked.

  “Ian won’t will be able to defend himself if someone should attack. His energy is too wrapped up in yours,” Brandy explained.

  Remembering Ian’s worried look at my locker that morning, I asked, “Why are you bringing up the possibility of an attack now? What is it the two of you aren’t telling me?”

  “She’s just worried about the missing pages of your notebook,” Ian said. “The same as me.”

  I looked at Brandy’s face and knew there was something else going on. They were keeping something from me. When we stopped at my locker, I forced the issue. “What’s really going on?” I asked. “You’re both checking your backs, and mine, too.”

  “We’ll tell you after school,” Ian said.

  “If it’s something that involves my safety, I think I have the right to know now.”

  Brandy looked from me to him. “She’s right.”

  Ian gave in. “Two dewing from the Ormolu clan were killed last night,” he said. “Sebastian ordered it.”

  “Apparently, they had information to sell to him,” Brandy added.

  “Why have them killed if they had information?” I asked.

  “We think Sebastian expected information about you,” Ian explained. “He flew into Seattle to hear it himself. When he got something else, he had the Ormolu killed.”

  “So, now we can assume he knows I really exist. I’m not a myth anymore.”

  “We think so,” Brandy admitted. “We aren’t sure how much information Luke passed along, but Sebastian is still asking questions, so he doesn’t know who you are or where you’re living…yet.”

  My worst fears were being realized. Everything I’d tried to prevent was on the verge of happening. “What am I going to do?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Brandy answered. “Spencer’s friends are already guarding your family. Until Spencer and Katherine get back, I think the best thing is to continue on like you’re a normal teen going to high school in Vegas.”

  I didn�
�t have a better suggestion, so I shrugged in agreement.

  “Brandy was right when she said I didn’t think things through,” Ian commented. “I shouldn’t have accessed your mind that way in class. It puts us both at risk. Brandy will have to protect you if something happens, so stick to her like glue.”

  “Who’s going to protect you?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. Probably because the answer was “no one.”

  “I’ll probably last five minutes defending you,” Brandy said, “but I’m a better bet than he is. Consider me your shadow.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to convince myself that a very dangerous situation wasn’t rapidly spinning out of control.

  Brandy was waiting for me outside of my fourth-period class. “Hello, shadow,” I said.

  “Hello, glue,” she replied. “Ready to eat?”

  “Good. I’m hungry.”

  Again, I felt Nikki’s vibration before I saw her. She ducked into a classroom just ahead of us. There was something familiar in the feeling of her vibration this time. Brandy noticed me tense up and correctly guessed the reason. “Nikki is harmless,” she said.

  “Why has she been spying on me, then?”

  “After feeling the energy outside of English today, she probably thinks Ian has a massive crush on you. It happens sometimes, but at a certain point in the relationship, both the human and the dewing are repelled by each other. Nikki assumes Ian will come up against a brick wall before anything serious can happen. She’s probably just curious what he sees in you.”

  “I don’t trust her. She wants to be more than friends with Luke. She might have sold me out to get close to him.”

  “Relax, Alison. Whatever she wants with Luke, she wouldn’t betray her family. They stand as firmly against Sebastian Truss as the Thanes do.”

  They kept saying that, but I’d never really believed it. Just because her family was against Sebastian didn’t mean she was. When we passed the door Nikki had gone through, I looked inside. She was sitting demurely at the front of the class. Her eyes met mine for a fraction of a second. There was no hatred in them, just a veil of inquisitiveness. I knew then that she was really up to something.

  By the time we got our food in the cafeteria, Brandy’s groupies had assembled at their usual table. Ian must have needed space from their loud laughing, because he was sitting at the next table. Without looking up, he moved his backpack from the chair next to him and waved me toward him. His blond head was bent over a book.

  “Are you planning to ignore me all lunch hour because you’re mad about what happened in class?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I just want to finish this book.”

  “How can you be absorbed in a book when Luke Stentorian is on the loose and Sebastian is on the verge of finding me? And when I say me, I mean us.”

  “Like Brandy said, the best course of action right now is to act normal. Besides, this is a great book.”

  I checked the cover. He was reading The Man in the Iron Mask. Not a light read, and he was nowhere near the end. I didn’t want to sit around twiddling my thumbs for the rest of lunch period, so I decided to practice my skills. I formed the thought I’d like to see the Eiffel Tower and wrapped it around the thoughts in Ian’s mind. The rebound made me draw a painful breath, but he looked up and into the distance.

  “What’s up?” I asked innocently.

  “It’s weird,” he said. “I was just thinking about the Eiffel Tower. I’ve seen it before—twice, actually. I wasn’t very impressed either time.”

  “I’m getting better and better at this.”

  “It was you,” he said with a grin. “Try it again.”

  When I accessed his mind next, I could tell he was watching for me, but I quickly wrapped I think I’ll have tofu lasagna for dinner around his thought strand. Expecting the rebound, I steadied myself before it hit.

  “No way!” he said.

  I’d lied when I told Brandy I was hungry. I wasn’t. I pushed my tray away. “I think we should talk business,” I suggested. “It’s time for you to tell me exactly what it is you want me to do when we confront Sebastian. I’ll be able to prepare better if I know what my role in this whole thing is supposed to be.”

  He thought about it and then nodded. “Let’s talk outside.”

  I followed him out of the cafeteria, and we sat in the shade with our backs against the school just like we’d done before. “So what impossible thing do you want me to do when we meet Sebastian Truss?”

  “It’s what we need you to do before we meet him that’s important. We need your thoughtmaking to get us close to Sebastian. Apparently, he’s moving around a bit, which isn’t a good sign. But he lives in Washington, DC, in a compound that looks like a mansion from the outside. He passes himself off in human circles as a rich eccentric, contributing to lots of philanthropic causes and political campaigns. The favors he collects for his donations allow him to place his followers in highly sensitive economic and government positions all over the world.”

  “Why do you need thoughtmaking to get close to him?”

  “DC is Sebastian’s playground,” Ian replied. “His followers are all over the city. They’re especially concentrated around his compound. If we run into one of them, Brandy and I will register as Thane clan, and we won’t be able to get anywhere near Sebastian.”

  “So you need me to thoughtmake you into a different clan?” I asked.

  “No. We need you to make them think we’re humans and then get us inside Sebastian’s house for a personal audience with him.”

  “If I manage to get you inside his house, how can I possibly arrange for you to see him alone? Won’t there be other Truss there?”

  “Fortunately, most of Sebastian’s supporters get their nights off,” Ian explained. “Whatever damage your mother did when she fought him has made him self-conscious. Most shapeshifters are vain anyway, but his injury has turned him into a recluse. Only his assistant, a cousin of his named Maxwell, stays at the mansion full time.”

  “How do you know all this?” I asked.

  “We have our own moles.”

  “What about Sebastian’s likeness? Won’t she be there?”

  “He’s never had a likeness.”

  Like Lillian, I thought. “What will you and Brandy do if I’m able to get you in to see him?”

  “We’ll fight him in the way we showed you this weekend.”

  “Two against one.”

  “Believe me, it isn’t the numbers that will put Sebastian at a disadvantage.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if it were three against one?”

  Ian gave me a warning look. “All we want you to do is get us in to see him. Then you sit tight while Brandy and I go to work. We can’t teach you enough in the time we’ve got to make you a threat to his essence.”

  “If he’s got such a strong mind, and he’s defeated so many others, what makes you think you and Brandy stand a chance against him?”

  “Jack was able to relay some impressions to Brandy before he died. It’s nothing that can be put into words, but there’s a weak point in Sebastian’s mind. It’s imperative we get to him while Brandy is still alive, so she can use what she felt to find that weakness herself. She’s our real weapon. She can’t kill him herself, but we hope she can tell me where to hit him so I can do the job.”

  The look on my face must have shown my doubt.

  “I know it seems crazy dangerous, but we’ll do it. We have to,” Ian said, helping me to my feet.

  I sat in fifth period thinking Ian’s plan depended on me. If I didn’t get us inside Sebastian’s house undetected, that would be the end of it.

  My thoughts had to be wrapped around the thought strands of each dewing. Identifying and then thoughtmaking the numbers of them I expected in DC would sap me of energy. The rebound alone would likely kill me. In order to get them in, I’d need to cloak my thoughtmaking the same way my mother had done when she walked away from Sebastian with twelve chi
ldren in tow. I had to figure out how she’d worked her shortcut in order to help my friends—and the clock was ticking.

  I was so consumed by my new responsibility that I forgot to check my locker at the end of the day.

  Chapter Twenty

  The minute I walked through the door at the Shadow Box, Lillian accessed my mind. Thankful for the opportunity to practice my defensive skills, I gathered my mental energy and tried to push her out. I couldn’t.

  “What have you been up to?” Lillian asked suspiciously.

  I checked around to make sure there was no one else in the store before answering. “I had stage fright before my presentation in school today, and Ian…helped me.”

  Lillian rolled her eyes. “That was a stupid thing to do.”

  She never disappointed when it came to speaking boldly. I put my apron on and started straightening books behind the counter.

  Her eyes practically bored a hole in my back. “There’s something else going on, isn’t there?” she asked. “Something more than an excess of energy has got your mind in a whirl.”

  I met her gaze. Of course she would pick up on my emotional turmoil. She’d accessed my mind as a reader. I put an armload of books on the counter. “I need to figure out how to cloak my thoughtmaking, so I can get Ian and Brandy into Sebastian’s mansion. The giant problem is that I have no idea how to it. It seems destiny doesn’t care, because it’s pushing the timeline up.”

  “You heard about the killings,” Lillian stated.

  My shoulders slumped. “Yes,” I admitted.

  “Have a seat by the window,” she ordered.

  Lillian disappeared somewhere in the back of the store while I sat in an overstuffed chair. I heard her moving things around and doubted she’d find whatever it was she was looking for. I hadn’t made a dent in the mess back there, but she came back carrying a thick notebook.

  She sat in the chair opposite me. “This was my sister Angela’s,” she said, laying the book open on her lap and running her veined hand over it. “She sent it to me the week before Sebastian’s people found her. It’s the only thing I have left of her.” Glittery tears filled her eyes as she continued. “It’s not really a journal. It’s more like a day planner with her thoughts written in it, but toward the end, when Angela was being hunted, she was trying to develop the kind of mind-cloaking your mother used. She wrote about some of her attempts in here. Maybe there is something in this that can help you.”