Logan watched intently as Mickey tried to mimic his frenetic onstage energy, transforming from his own dark, cool, brooding self into Logan’s passionate, boisterous, heart-on-his-sleeve persona. As Mickey made the Fender wail, Logan played along, his fingers forming the chords and picking out the solo.
But he hid his hands below the seat in front of us so his band-mates couldn’t see. Like the public, the members of Tabloid Decoys thought Logan would run offstage and Mickey would take his place in a “magic trick” made to look like a miracle. Only Megan, Logan, Mickey, and I knew that the miracle would be real.
All this so that Logan could play guitar one last time. I glanced over at his violet hands, weaving a spell on an imaginary instrument, and knew it was worth it.
The song ended, flawlessly this time. We hooted and cheered.
“Very nice!” came a voice from the back of the auditorium. Nicola Hughes strode down the aisle, clapping as she walked. She was more casually dressed than on her usual visits to rehearsal, in a pair of jeans and a tight top that showed off her skinniness. “Are we all ready for Friday?” she asked me and Megan. “Anything I can do?”
Logan beamed at her, though she couldn’t see him. “Ask her which radio stations are coming.”
We shared his question, and she replied, “The three major rock stations from Baltimore and DC, plus one each from Frederick and Harrisburg. I’ve also got calls in to the punk, indie, and alternative satellite radio stations.”
“Tell her she rocks,” Logan said to me, then faced the stage. “Let’s round out the set list. Which two songs should Mickey play after ‘Shade’?”
Josh said, “Why not play the other songs first and end with ‘Shade’? It’s our big number.”
“Yeah, but I know from experience, shit happens. If things get wild after my alleged transformation, and they shut us down, I want to make sure that song’s been played.”
“Who’ll shut us down?” Heather turned to Nicola. “The DMP? I thought you said all this was approved.”
“Of course. There’ll be plenty of security.” Nicola looked at me. “Does Logan have a concern?”
“My only concern,” he said to me, “is not screwing up that solo. Be right back.” He disappeared, then reappeared onstage.
“He’s fine,” I told Nicola. “You can go.”
Instead, she took a seat at the end of our row and pulled out her cell phone.
“She’s a hoverer, isn’t she?” Megan whispered to me.
“I’ll be glad to get rid of her, if we ever do. But she’s probably the only reason we’ve had any peace these last few months. She’s like a mother bear and we’re her cubs.”
Logan reappeared beside me. “We settled on ‘Little Lion Man’ by Mumford and Sons as an acoustic solo, then finish off with AFI’s ‘Bleed Black.’” He lowered his voice so only the two of us could hear. “That gives us a little cushion in the seventeen minutes.”
“Good,” Megan said. “It would suck if you dropped that expensive guitar when you turned back to air.” She smirked at him as she climbed over the seat to go talk to Mickey.
I watched Logan run through a series of chords, nodding his head and setting his fingers in the proper configurations.
“You’re ready, aren’t you?” I asked.
He looked up from his air guitar and gave me a serene smile. “Almost.”
I wondered how I would feel Friday night, seeing Mickey looking so much like the live Logan. If Logan failed to turn solid at the moment of the solstice, his brother would take his place onstage. He would sing the notes, play the chords, and touch the fans that were meant for Logan. Maybe Logan would still pass on, but he’d be doing it in sadness instead of triumph.
Since the band was on a break, I switched my phone back on. The screen told me I had a missed call from Eowyn.
Before I could dial my voice mail, the phone rang. Zachary. We hadn’t spoken since we’d turned in our paper almost two weeks ago, on the last day of school. We’d briefly discussed getting together before he left for the UK next Sunday. For research purposes on the Shift, I assumed. I didn’t dare to hope for anything more.
“Hey,” I said casually, as if it didn’t still hurt to hear his voice.
“Aura, Eowyn’s gone.”
Zachary and I met outside the computer and space sciences building on campus, then dashed up the stairs to Eowyn’s office.
My heart pounded from more than exertion. According to Eowyn’s hasty phone calls to me and Zachary, she’d had to leave the country quickly or risk having her research materials confiscated. The DMP was closing in.
At quarter to five, we ran into the astronomy office, where the department secretary, Madeline, was waiting for us.
“Just in time.” She opened the top drawer of her desk and pulled out a slim envelope and a set of keys. “Professor Harris said to let you alone in her office as long as you needed. But I have to lock up and leave at five. My kid’s day care charges extra if I’m late.”
“Thanks very much,” Zachary said.
Madeline gave me the envelope. Then she led us over to Eowyn’s door and unlocked it with a “Good luck.”
We turned on the light and shut the door behind us. I opened the envelope, my sweaty fingers catching on the slit.
Inside was a half sheet of notebook paper. In unusually shaky handwriting, it read,
AURA AND ZACHARY,
THE TRUTH ISN’T ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL, AND IT’S
ALMOST NEVER KIND. THE TRUTH JUST IS. BE AS STRONG AS I KNOW YOU ARE, EOWYN HARRIS
I turned the paper over, her words filling me with dread.
#1 of 3: Beneath the tree we didn’t drink.
We stared at the paper for several moments.
Finally Zachary said, “Huh?”
“It must be some kind of scavenger hunt.”
“Seems like something she’d do. It would keep the DMP from finding whatever we’re hunting for. Of course, it might keep us from finding it, too.”
I repeated the clue under my breath. We’d drunk trees?
I scanned the office, hoping some detail would trigger a memory. Her books and papers were gone, but her decor had been left behind—the midnight blue ceiling tapestry with golden stars, the blue and lavender woven rug, the low, Japanese-style tea table. The room even smelled faintly of her honeysuckle perfume.
Wait—the table.
I remembered our first meeting, less than two days after Logan had died. Eowyn had served us tea in mugs decorated with ogham letters from the old Irish alphabet, letters that each held a special meaning.
I flapped my hand. “The mugs! The symbols on them—they had something to do with trees, right?”
“They corresponded to different trees and meanings, I think. The clue says it’s the one we didn’t drink from.” He went to the table and stood next to the cushion we’d sat on together. “There were three of us that day. So there’s a fourth mug?”
“She kept them in here.” I hurried behind her desk and opened a small cabinet. Four white mugs sat upside down on a woven cloth, next to a twilight blue teapot. I yanked out the mugs, two in each hand, their ceramic clink hurting my ears. I peered inside and underneath each cup. Nothing.
Zachary knelt beside me. “The symbols appear when the mugs are filled with hot water, remember? So we can’t know which one she means until we fill them.”
An invisible clue only we could find. Eowyn Harris had just topped Zachary as the coolest and most frustrating person I’d ever met.
The astronomy department’s coffeemaker was empty, so we said goodbye to Madeline and took an all-too-long elevator ride to the vending machines in the basement.
The soles of my creepers and Zachary’s sneakers squeaked on the empty hallway’s freshly waxed floor. It seemed like we should skulk so no one would see or hear us, but maybe the adrenaline rush was just cranking up the drama in my head.
We stepped up to the tall, humming coffee machine, relieved that it gave us the
option of using our own cups.
I unzipped my bag and retrieved a mug, trying to forget that Zachary and I, once again, made a great team. Even Mrs. Richards had proclaimed it in front of our history class, giving our junior thesis the only A+. I’d been amazed, considering that during our entire joint presentation, all I could think about was jumping my partner’s bones.
“What do you want?” Zachary said in a low voice.
I twitched. “Huh?”
“To drink?” He fed a dollar bill into the vending machine slot. “No point in wasting money. Besides, our brains need caffeine to figure out these clues.”
I couldn’t argue with that, though Eowyn’s letter—and Zachary’s presence—had made me plenty jittery. “Mocha.”
The machine spat out a rancid-smelling approximation of my favorite drink. Before the mug was even full, the ogham letter quert appeared—a straight vertical line with four lines connected to it. It looked like a toothbrush facing left.
The apple tree. Signifying love.
“I had that one.” My chest tightened as I remembered how much seeing that symbol had hurt, so soon after Logan’s death.
“No, I had it,” Zachary said.
“That’s because you traded with me, the Love mug for your Strength.” The first in a long line of kindnesses.
“Aye,” he said softly. “I remember now.”
I didn’t look at him as we inserted the second mug and fed the machine more money. Sure enough, a bitter-smelling tea poured into the mug with the letter duir—the oak, signifying Strength. It was like quert, but with only two horizontal lines. A toothbrush that’s seen better days.
“Eowyn had the mug for Healing,” I said. “I don’t know the letter’s name, but I remember it looked like a telephone pole.”
The ogham letter on the third mug looked nothing like a telephone pole. It looked just like quert, except facing the other way.
“There.” I pointed to it. “The only one we didn’t use.”
“I’ll look it up.” He opened the web browser on his phone. “Good memory, that.”
I remember everything about that day, I thought as I sipped the mocha, which tasted like chocolate-flavored battery acid.
“It’s nuin,” he said, pronouncing the Gaelic like the native speaker he was. “The ash tree. Supposed to signify Connection, if that helps.”
“So the second clue must be under an ash tree. Or inside one? I don’t even know what they look like.”
He turned his phone so I could see the screen. “There’s a picture.”
“Great—big and green, like a tree. There must be a hundred of them on this campus.”
He thumbed through the text and let out a soft curse. “Says they were all but wiped out by a beetle the past few years.”
“That’s sad for the trees, but it might make our job easier.”
“Let’s see if anyone’s home in the botany department.” He called information, subduing his accent so the directory robot could understand him.
When the call went through, though, Zachary turned on his Scottish charm. “Aye, hello, lassie. Might you tell me where we could find an ash tree on the College Park campus?” He chuckled. “No, I promise it’s no’ for an exam. It’s for an article in Tree Huggers magazine, a wee independent UK publication. We’re doing a feature on universities maintaining viable populations of threatened species.” Leaning against the vending machine, he smirked at my silent laughter. Then he put the phone to his chest and spoke to me. “She says there’s none on campus, but one at the National Arboretum. Where’s that?”
“In DC. Maybe half an hour away.”
He spoke into the phone again. “Aye, I know where tha’ is. Brilliant. Cheers for the information.” He hung up. “Thank God a woman answered. American men are immune to the accent.”
I waved off his arrogant but accurate statement and dumped the rest of my drink in the water fountain. “Let’s go.”
The ash’s leaves waved their pale underbellies above my head, as if cheering on my frustration. The thick canopy allowed only glimpses of the bright early evening sky, white with the haze of Washington, DC. We’d been lucky to slip into the National Arboretum twenty minutes before closing. Any minute now they’d be kicking us out.
For the third time, I ran my hands over the ash’s smooth gray trunk, then searched the area around its roots. No secret box or compartment.
“What did you expect,” I asked myself, “Keebler elves to the rescue?”
“Who?” Several yards out, Zachary was pacing an outward spiral around the tree, shuffling his feet and examining the grass, which was begging for a good mow.
“Keebler elves. They make the cookies that taste like cardboard.”
He grunted without looking up. “I miss the packaged biscuits from home. No one makes junk food like the Brits.”
“Better than my grandmom’s cookies?”
“Does your grandmother make dark chocolate HobNobs? No. So yes, better.” He stopped. “Here we are.”
“What’d you find?” I scampered over, practically on all fours.
In front of his toes lay a small brass plaque bolted to a six-inch-long concrete frame. The plaque read WHITE ASH, fraxinus americana.
Zachary tapped the edge with his foot. Two of the plaque’s bolts had come off, and the other two were loose. I pried up one end and stuck my hand in.
Zachary grabbed my wrist. “What are you doing? There could be anything down there.”
“Like what? An angry leprechaun?”
“Like a snake or a vole.”
“What the hell’s a vole?”
“A rodent. They bite.” He tugged on my wrist. “Let me get it.”
“Your giant man-hands won’t fit.” I tried to ignore the way his touch was sending ripples of zings across my shoulders.
He wrenched the plaque off all its bolts. “Now they will.”
We leaned over to peer into the hole. It was so narrow and dark, I couldn’t see the bottom.
Zachary’s hand flashed out. “Got it.” He pulled from the hole a thin steel box the size of a TV remote control, with a piece of laminated paper attached. I ripped off the card to read the clue:
#2 of 3: Alpha and beta to the proud queen of the sky.
Zachary shook the box. Something rattled inside. “It’s locked with a combination. Six numbers.”
I flipped the clue card. On the back it read, If this note isn’t meant for you, put it back now or be forever cursed. The last two words were underlined in red. It reminded me of the warning at the beginning of Logan’s notebook.
“So this clue will help us figure out the combination,” I said.
Zachary turned the card over without taking it from my hand. “Alpha and beta. The two brightest stars in a constellation?”
“Ooh, yeah.” I pondered how a star could be numbered. “The combination could be the magnitude of the stars’ brightness. That’s three numbers each.”
“Fantastic.” He lifted his phone to open the browser. “But which constellation? Who was the proud queen of the sky? Andromeda?”
“She was a princess. Her dad tied her to a rock to sacrifice her to a sea monster, because—” I thumped the side of my head, hoping to shake a memory loose from our eighth-grade mythology segment. “Some god—Poseidon?—was pissed off because the king’s wife had said she was prettier than the nymphs.”
“The king’s wife would be the queen,” Zachary said flatly.
“No shit.” I tapped the edge of the card against my chin. “It’s the one with—oh! Oh!” I jumped to my feet and pointed at the sky. “The constellation that looks like a W.”
“Oh. Cassiopeia.”
“Cassiopeia!” I pumped both fists in the air, then put a hand to my head, suddenly dizzy. I realized I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
While time crawled, Zachary touched his phone screen to look up the stars’ magnitudes. To occupy my nervous hands, I tossed the box into the air, flipping it end over end
and catching it.
“Whatever’s inside better not be breakable,” he muttered.
“She would’ve marked it ‘fragile,’” I said, almost dropping it.
“Here’s Alpha Cassiopeia’s magnitude: two-point-two-four.”
My hands shaking, I punched in 224.
“Beta Cassiopeia is—oh, that’s interesting. Two-point-two-eight.”
I tabbed 228 onto the box’s buttons, then tried to turn the latch. It wouldn’t budge.
Zachary stood to look over my shoulder. “Try it again all at once. Maybe it didn’t like the pause.”
I steadied my hand and plugged in 224228. The latch sprung. “Yes!” I lifted the lid. The box held a small key with a tag that said “308.”
And another laminated card.
#3 of 3: The place that holds your treasure box of truth shares five digits with ruis.
“Another ogham?” Zachary brought out his phone again. “I’ve still got that page open. Ruis means ‘elder,’ which stands for Transition. So there’s a treasure chest under an elder tree? How tedious.”
“Trees don’t have digits. That key could be for an apartment. But where the hell is it?”
“It’s too small. And since when is an apartment a ‘treasure box of truth’?”
I groaned and stamped my foot. “It could be a metaphor.”
“All right. Calm down.”
“I can’t calm down!” I kicked at the grass. “What if I never find out this truth because I was too dumb to figure out the clues?”
“Eowyn wants us to know. She’s given us the hints in our work.”
“But why not just tell us where it is?” My breath started to come fast. Too fast.
Zachary reached out. “Here.” He eased me to sit. “Head between your knees.”
I stared at the shadowed ground beneath my legs, silently begging my guts not to empty.
He sat beside me. “Are you afraid we won’t find the answers about your father and the Shift? Or are you afraid we will?”
I dug my fingers into the dirt. “Yes.”
Shift Page 20