Relieved the box would remain intact, Jaden removed the key. But as it pulled free, he jerked back, surprised. A ball on the panel was spinning. Jaden blinked, sure he was seeing things. Effortlessly, the ball spun right off, landing on the floor at his feet.
Staring as though it might do some other unpredictable thing, Jaden waited. When he realized it would do nothing else, he gingerly grasped the sculpted, semicircular wooden disc.
Without knowing why or what it was he was doing, Jaden fiddled with the engraved stripes on the ball, shocked when they moved under his touch. Then, just as inexplicably, he knew to press the third star from the center, followed by the first, and then the fifth. A two-dimensional hologram sprang out of the disc, lighting the room with glowing, irregular lines. Jaden whistled. The map! It has to be.
Jaden rapidly ran his eyes over the lines, worried they might disappear before he’d memorized them. Will I be able to remember how I unlocked the secret of the ball? In case he couldn’t, Jaden studied the map until he was sure he’d burned the lines onto his retinas.
Then, testing whether the process would work a second time, he manipulated the various parts of the disc. Jaden was overjoyed when the map leaped to life in his room again. The lines floated all around him. Shaken, he accessed his PAL. It was time to call Kayla.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Kayla slept until breakfast the next morning. She woke, starving. Wandering down to the kitchen, she found her mother.
“Morning, sweetie. Sleep well?”
“Yes, thanks, Mom.”
“When I got home last night, you were fast asleep. I thought you’d wake up for dinner. That was an incorrect assumption. You must’ve been exhausted.”
Kayla heard the unspoken question. “I was. But good tired. We had such an amazing time.”
Kayla launched into the details she knew her mother craved. And when a smile played at the corners of her mother’s mouth, she understood her mother’s relief.
Although her mother had said nothing, Kayla knew they’d worried how this particular move might affect her because they had taken her away from Grailynn, the one exceptionally close friend she had made in all their moves. I won’t spoil the great mood I’m in by going there, Kayla thought.
Kayla had just finished updating her mother when her PAL signaled an incoming call. It was Jaden. Her heart fluttered.
“Heya! I just finished telling my mom about the fantastic time we had with your gran.”
“Heya back! Can you come over?”
Jaden’s brevity surprised her, but the underlying urgency in his tone pricked her attention. Studying him, she saw the slight stress lines around the corners of his mouth. “Jaden, are you alright?”
His gaze darted toward her mother, hovering in the background, before he answered. “I’m fine. I just wanted to see you. I found some, uh, information on that thing we were investigating.”
Understanding, Kayla said, “Sure, I can be there in about fifteen minutes. Does that work?”
“Fantastic. See you then.” Jaden nodded and cut the feed.
Exiting her PAL, Kayla couldn’t avoid her mother’s penetrating stare.
“Kayla, what’s going on?”
Her mother’s “danger radar” must’ve set off alarms, and her mother’s speculative gaze told Kayla lying now would be a mistake. She scrambled for a suitable explanation.
“Remember how Jaden and I found that old book at the library that we wanted to research?” Her mother nodded. “Well, Ruby had some useful suggestions.” As the words left her mouth, Kayla knew she had not assuaged her mother’s concerns.
“Uh-huh, and what were those?”
From bad to worse, Kayla thought. Her mother was getting more suspicious by the second. Kayla had to avoid engaging her mother’s legal mind, or she’d be in more trouble than she could handle. An idea popped into her head. “Ruby suggested studying our family histories. It relates to the medallion you passed on to me from Grammy.”
Her mother was startled. “It does?”
“Yes. That library book was on family heirlooms. It got Jaden and I thinking about what our families had that might fit the description. Finding the book the day after you gave me Grammy’s medallion meant I didn’t have to do much thinking.”
“Lucky you.”
Kayla grinned. “Anyway, I mentioned the medallion to Jaden. The possibility of discovering more about its history intrigued him. In fact, he was so enthusiastic, he set his interface to run research on the Internet. But he found absolutely nothing—unbelievable in this technological age.” Kayla realized she was rambling and talking too fast
Pacing her speech, she said, “To cut a long story short, when we mentioned all this to Ruby, she proposed the obvious—that we begin by discussing the medallion’s history with any family members who might be familiar with it.”
Mrs. Melmique frowned. “But I already told you I remember little. And your grandmother is the only other person who could’ve given you information. Who else could help?”
“I think that’s what Jaden’s found—another source of information we can tap.”
“He’s found family members we don’t know about?” Sadie asked, raising her eyebrows, showing her renewed suspicion.
“Of course not!” Kayla giggled. “But he thought there could be other people besides our family who might know something. Maybe Grammy mentioned it to her friends, or it’s possible the descendants of the person who made the medallion can help us.”
“Now why do you want to go to all that effort investigating the medallion? It’s just an old trinket. You’re supposed to be relaxing and enjoying your vacation.”
“Mom, I am enjoying myself. Jaden and I are having a blast! It’s like we’re on this big treasure hunt with no clues to point the way, and mystery shrouds the medallion. I mean, what’s more compelling than finding something that has no information about it on the internet?”
Her mother nodded, thoughtful. “Okay, but please be home and awake for dinner tonight. Your father missed you last night, and I’m sure he’d like to hear all about your trip too.”
Kayla rubbed her hands together gleefully before leaning over and giving her mother a peck on the cheek. “Yes! Thanks, Mom. I’ll do that. See you later.”
She rushed from the room, eager to escape before her mother thought of more questions. Fleeing to the ’pod, Kayla programmed it for Jaden’s home and then leaned back, wondering what could be so important.
Jaden was waiting for her on the landing pad. He stalked back and forth, his movements jerky. Something had happened. Kayla knew it as certainly as she knew her own name. Restless to be free of the ’pod’s confined environment, Kayla leaped out as soon as it landed.
“What’s up?”
Jaden grinned. “Come and see.”
It shocked Kayla when he took her hand. Warmth surged through her, pleasure soaking her senses. She hadn’t realized how much she had craved the contact. Since drawing back from his consoling embrace, he hadn’t touched her; that was, other than the brief, electric moment where their fingers sparked as he gave her the relic stone. Kayla couldn’t help wondering whether pulling away from him that night had been the final nail in the coffin.
Although I’m a fine one to talk. She’d resisted touching him since then too, telling herself keeping her distance until she’d worked it out was the best approach. Her behavior had probably done nothing to dispel any negative notions he might have had. All the same, she’d noticed—and desperately missed, if she was being honest with herself—the lack of a hug or even a hand squeeze when he’d departed the previous evening.
Now, if she was being at all consistent with her recent behavior, she should’ve pulled back. Except him taking her hand was so natural, so exuberant, so much a part of who he was, that she went with the flow. After all, isn’t this how he’d expect a partner in this venture to act? Wouldn’t it be suspicious if I pulled back now?
Kayla could almost feel his exc
itement pulsing through his fingertips. And yes, she admitted to herself—she liked the feel of his warm hand covering her own far too much to even think of letting go.
Jaden led her to his room, where he dumped her hand and told her to take a seat. Kayla felt like he’d slapped her. The abrupt loss of their physical connection was devastating. Battling her emotions, Kayla flopped disconsolately onto his bed, watching from under her lashes as he withdrew a small, semicircular wooden disc from his pocket.
Torn between anguish and exasperation, she stared as he fiddled with the disc, rubbing her prickly birthmark. What is he up to?
Abruptly, the room filled with light. Kayla gasped, her emotional turmoil forgotten. Glowing white lines danced around the room, their luminescent outlines creating a distinct, two-dimensional map.
Awed, Kayla rose and placed a cautious finger on one line, fascinated when it moved onto her finger and then passed through it as she moved forward to another line.
“The map! You found it! Where?”
Jaden grinned, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he summarized the morning’s events. “And that’s not all. My gran called my mother right after we left and told her everything, so when I arrived home last night, my mom was practically hyperventilating she was so worried. When she realized you weren’t with me, she went apoplectic, insisting I get you back here last night.”
“Why?”
“She has something she must tell us, but wouldn’t breathe a word about it until you were here to hear it too.”
“Do you think knows where the other seekers are?”
“With everything that’s happened in the last few weeks, it wouldn’t surprise me if she did.”
Kayla nodded absently, still strolling around the room and touching the lines projected by the disc. “Do you know where this is?”
“No, I was hoping you might. It’s not like any map I’ve ever seen. There are too many lines. I can’t even tell if it’s supposed to be a community, complex, sector, or quadrant. Other than that X in the middle, there are no other identifying marks.”
“I recognize nothing showing a location I’m familiar with either.”
“Do you even know what kind of map it is? All these lines must have meaning. That some form irregular shapes while others are just curves must be relevant.”
Kayla remembered something. “Do you have an atlas?”
“You mean, a map book?”
“Yup. I think I know what this is, but I can’t remember its name. If I’m right, this is the type of map they used before imaging. We have an atlas at my home if you don’t have one. I unpacked it with my mom just a few days ago.”
“We have little in the way of bound books around here. But I bet if I did a search on map types, we might find what we’re looking for.” Jaden touched his interface and brought up the holographic screen. He commanded the search, and in a split second it presented them with several sites.
“This looks promising,” Jaden murmured, pointing at a site and spreading his fingers wider over the link to open it. “Yes, here they are—political, physical, topographical . . .”
“That’s the one,” Kayla interrupted. “It’s a map that gives something like a bird’s-eye view of the landscape.”
“Or a bat’s eye view,” Jaden commented.
Skimming the site, Kayla refreshed her vague recollections. “That’s right. The lines on our map are contour lines. Each contour line represents a particular elevation. That’s why the lines form the shapes they do; they follow the contours of land with the same height. It says here that the closer together the lines are, the steeper the terrain is.”
“So this part over here must be a hill or mountain,” Jaden surmised, pointing out a set of circles within circles whose contour lines were progressively closer to one another. “But how does that help us figure out where this is?”
“Maybe we should scan the map and do a terrain overlay search?”
“Good thinking.” Jaden rattled off the required commands to his interface.
But neither teen expected the “cannot acquire target” message popping onto the screen.
“It can’t capture the lines,” Jaden said, understanding the problem. “Like the black photos and blank video of the Gaptor, the map apparently has a similar cloaking mechanism, preventing the creation of a digital copy.”
Kayla sank onto Jaden’s bed, thwarted. She flipped onto her back, her eyes roaming the lines floating overhead. Her mind went to lazy summer afternoons stretched out on a blanket on the grass, looking up at the sky and finding the pictures in the clouds.
Pictures. Her mind whirled, and the cogs fell into place. “Jaden, where’s the book?” she asked, popping up and hunting for it.
Jaden retrieved it from the closet and handed it to her. She evidently flipped through the pages far too fast for Jaden’s liking.
“Easy, Sherlock,” Jaden cautioned.
Kayla slowed her frantic paging. With a triumphant flourish, she presented the book to Jaden. “Do the lines forming the background of this page look familiar?”
Jaden studied the page, then the lines draped around his room. “You’re right—they’re the same. How did you know it was here?” Before she could reply, he said, “What’s this dark spot here? It’s not on our map.”
Kayla took the book and studied the tiny, dark splotch marring the sheet. “Maybe a bit of spilled ink?” She flipped slowly back, then forward again a few pages. “Hmm, that’s odd. No markings on any of the other pages. And it’s too small for a food stain. I wonder . . . Do you have an ultramagnifier?”
Understanding, Jaden nodded. He darted downstairs and grabbed the ultramag from the drawer in his father’s den, then raced back up to his room. “Here you go,” he said, giving Kayla the magnifier.
Peering over her shoulder, he watched as she positioned the lens over the dot. And a word sprang into sharp, magnified focus. Soquazba
“Alrighty, weird word. Ring any bells?” Jaden asked.
“Nope, no ding. ‘Losers, please exit the studio.’”
Jaden laughed at her sour expression. “We’re not quite out of the competition yet. We can stay in the game if we ask for a clue. How about we run this word on the internet?”
Kayla rolled her eyes, and he started the search. Within a split second, the interface beeped, and there it was. A single site.
Jaden grinned. “Remind you of any other recent results?”
“Yup,” Kayla whispered, “the same as when we found the library—only one result. Where is it?”
Jaden tossed the details onto a secondary screen and scanned the information. “Imagine that! It refers to the indigenous inhabitants’ name for Sunrise Rock National Park.”
“Hey, isn’t that the place with those cave dwellings in the remote part of that semi-desert southwest of here?”
“It is. We finally know where we’re going!”
“When do we leave?”
“How about now?” Jaden grabbed a backpack and tossed it onto his bed. “As soon as I’m packed, we’ll scoot over to your place and collect your things, then head straight out. Hopefully, Han and Taz will use that mind link thing of theirs and realize we need them. The time effect anomaly should take care of not alerting our parents to the fact that we’re gone. What?” he blustered, when Kayla giggled.
“Han and Taz?”
“Yeah, their names are too long. These are better.”
“Well, you’ll have to tell them. I’m so not going there.”
Jaden chuckled, slinging a sleeping shell onto the pile of items already cluttering his bed.
“Here, don’t forget the book.” Kayla reminded him, handing it over.
But the book slipped from Kayla’s hand before Jaden could get a decent hold and dropped to the floor with a loud thump, falling open to the first page.
Kayla stared at the blank paper. “Did you notice a copyright page in this book?” She picked the book up and ran through the pages, slowly this time,
attempting to answer her own question. “No ISBN number either,” she said, having searched through the entire book and checked the front and back covers.
“Alright, creepy, but all that tells us is this book probably is as old as Zareh said it was. And that lends credibility to what he said about the book being so important.”
Kayla nodded, placing the book back on the bed. Things between them seemed to have resumed their usual friendly, relaxed rhythm. That did nothing to dispel the dull ache flaring at the edges of her emotions. He hadn’t seemed as affected by their earlier contact as she had.
Well, what did I expect? Just because he took my hand doesn’t mean he has feelings for me. And wasn’t I the one taking his hand when I needed reassurance? He probably only touched me today so he could get me to his room faster.
Kayla sighed. She really had to stop with the sappy stuff. It wasn’t like her at all. And it would only be a hindrance to their mission. Besides, when did I decide these emotions are anything more than related to our mission or that I want more than friendship with him?
Jaden stuffed the items scattered across his bed into his backpack, securing the book in the center and hiding the key and the relic stone in a zippered pouch on the inside of the pack. Finished, he slung the filled pack over his shoulder. They turned to leave, and the door opened unexpectedly. Mrs. Jameson stood framed by the doorway.
Chapter Forty
“Kayla, I’m so glad you’re here. Did Jaden tell you I wanted to speak to you?”
“Hello, Mrs. Jameson. Yes, he did.”
Clara Jameson noticed the backpack. “Going somewhere?”
Jaden shrugged at Kayla. So much for their plan of sneaking off with no one noticing. “Did Gran tell you we’re supposed to find a map?” His mother nodded. “Well, we think we found it. So, yes, we’re leaving. We’re on our way to the place we think we’re supposed to go to accomplish whatever it is we have to do there.”
Destiny Series Boxed Set Page 27