Samuel and Tess sat across from us, staring at the closed laptop, also now resorting to doodling on their notepads. “Was there anything else in that envelope besides the riddle on the card?” Samuel asked, looking as equally frustrated as the rest of us. I peeked over to his notepad where he had resorted to drawing trees and stick men.
“Yes, there was something else, I think.” I picked up the envelope from the middle of the table and shook it again, turning it upside down. The contents spilled onto the tabletop. What fell out was a Lappell coin, and a small thin illustrated book of Peter Pan.
Tess huffed. “So we get this riddle, some random coin, and a kid’s story. I mean seriously. Are you kidding me?” She picked up the coin and flicked it towards Clint. “Have you told you Clint that your stupid little society is fucked?”
Clint half smiled at Tess’s annoyance, no doubt agreeing with her choice of words. “You also said Google is fucked too Tess.”
She tried to stifle a laugh. “Yeah well, it let me down. It is supposed to know everything. What good is it if it can’t help us with something this important?” Tess gave into her laughter, and then, so did Samuel, and like the domino effect, Clint and I started laughing too. We were all delirious at that point. Just laughing for the sake of laughing to stop the pressure from becoming too much. It did feel good to laugh though. It eased the stress from building up to psychotic levels in my head. I didn’t want to fall into another episode like Prague. I don’t think my body could handle that here and now. Too much was at stake.
“There must be another way to get you through initiation Nor,” Tess said getting up from her seat. “Hamilton must have given you another option, something else that we can do to get Josh back?”
I hadn’t told Tess and Samuel about the alternative initiation. I didn’t want to have to tell them anything more than I had to about last night. It was hard enough giving them the news that I had agreed to join the Lappell and go through initiation to get Josh. They didn’t hide their stunned and anxious faces itching to yell at me and tell me I was crazy to do such a thing. Their expressions alone were scary enough not to go into anymore details. So much had happened in the span of one evening. So many emotions that I wasn’t ready to examine or analyze. And as for that kiss with Clint...well...it was all too much. It was making me remember something I shouldn’t be remembering. Memories I shouldn’t re-visit. I had to stay focused on the one and only thing that I needed to do, and that was to get Josh back into my arms safely. I sighed, returning to my notes on my paper. I needed to figure out this riddle.
“Okay, let’s try and break this down once more. What type of things feel no pain? Let’s throw those ideas around again.” Clint continued to keep his head down, writing. “C’mon guys.”
“Things that are not human,” I pointed out. “Things that are not real.”
“Yes, that’s good Norah,” Clint encouraged, jotting everything down as he did.
“How about the supernatural?” Tess threw in. “Oh, maybe they are talking about fairies...you know, like Tinkerbell from Peter Pan. Perhaps that’s why the book is here too.”
“Ahhh, I don’t think that’s right. Tinkerbell has no problem being in the rain. And besides, she isn’t just one color,” Samuel said, picking up the Peter Pan book and flicking through the pages.
“No, the answer is not Tinkerbell.” Clint reached across the table and took the book from Samuel. “But maybe Tess is on the right track. Perhaps the book is here because it holds the answer to the riddle. It’s probably connected somehow.”
I turned to Clint as he stared at page after page of pictures. “You sure they didn’t just throw the book into the mix to mess with our heads?”
“I don’t think so,” Clint said, leaning across and showing me the book some more. “The Lappell have intent in everything they do. It will serve a purpose. It will have a meaning. I’m sure of it.”
“What, like Never Never Land has a meaning?” Samuel said, sounding even more frustrated at this new addition of pieces to an already complex puzzle.
“Man, I don’t know. I’m just trying to put it all together somehow.” Clint pushed the book away and it slid across the table back to Samuel.
“Thanks Clint. I know you are trying your hardest.” I rested my hand on his shoulder, trying to show my appreciation. He smiled at me and pulled his head down quickly to keep writing. I looked at my hand resting on his shoulder. It was still there. I hadn’t moved it yet. I just continued to look at my fingers resting on his body. He felt warm to touch. Comforting, like a sedative to my tension. He flicked his eyes across to me, knowing I was still touching him, knowing my hand didn’t retreat. I smiled back, and then I realized I was having some kind of moment with Clint, in front of Tess and Samuel. I slowly removed my hand, knowing that I was being watched, and then turned my head, their eyes piercing me with questioning looks on their faces. Samuel then picked up and then purposely dropped the Peter Pan book loudly on the table. The sound shook me and I moved quickly away from Clint.
What was I doing?
I was tired. I wasn’t thinking properly. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind.
“Maybe we should walk around for a while?” Tess said, moving out of her chair and standing up. “Get some fresh air into our lungs. It might help us...think clearer. Sound good Norah?”
I nodded and got up, walking over to Tess. She linked arms with me and we began walking to the other end of the terrace and down the stairs and onto a mowed lawn area.
She waited a few more minutes, until we were well out of earshot, before talking. “You doing alright Nor? I mean, I know this is one huge ball of fucked-up and we are all feeling a bit crazy, but right now, you seem to be acting a little...ummm...nostalgic.”
I waited a few seconds before responding, trying to think clearly about how I was feeling and what the truth was. I settled somewhere in between. “Oh that...that was nothing. I’m just moving in slow motion Tess. Am not thinking right is all. I’m just over-tired and overwhelmed. Last night really took it out of me.”
“You want to talk about what happened last night?” Her hand rubbed up and down my arm, trying to encourage me to open up.
My body tightened. How could I talk about what happened with Tess when I wasn’t sure what had happened myself? Last night felt like a dream, an alternate universe, where all my fears and all my pain were shoved in my face, and amongst it all, I had one of the most amazing out of body experiences of my life. And it was through a kiss. A kiss unlike anything I had ever known. The way Clint told me to approach it, like we were creating art, just made my heart soar. It gave kissing a new kind of meaning. It gave love a new kind of expression. It made me feel that love lost, was now found. And what was worse, was that I allowed myself to feel that kind of beauty, in front of Josh. There was so much confusion and guilt, yet a longing for something that had never left me. I wanted to be near Clint, but I also wanted to run as far away from him as my legs could take me.
“No,” I muttered.
Tess continued to pry. “Why not Nor?”
“Because it will just make me cry Tess, and I don’t want to cry anymore today.”
Tess stopped us and pulled me in for a hug. I let her. My head resting on her shoulder as she held onto my body, trying to hold onto some of the pain that was gripping my insides. I shifted my head up and looked to the sky. Big black clouds were on the horizon, a couple of those clouds rolling in our way. It looked like a storm was coming. “Do you think it’s going to rain?” I said, breaking free from Tess and staring at one of the black clouds passing over us. We watched it move over the top of our heads. It passed in front of the sun, stopping the sunlight for a few brief minutes before passing over. We both squinted as the sun came back into view, turning our bodies around so the sun emerged from behind our backs. Light into dark. Dark into light. The blackness that was over our heads was now gone, the light had returned, except for our shadows that stretched out in front of us. Then
, like a light bulb going off in my head, I saw it.
“Present in sun, but not in rain.”
I tugged at Tess’s arm, like a kid trying to get her mother’s attention. “Tess, it’s right in front of us.”
“What is?” Tess looked over to the garden beds and the trees.
I tugged at her again, and then pointed to the ground. “Our shadows.”
Tess looked at our long black shadows that stretched out from our feet in front of us. “Yeah so...” She squinted up at the sun and the clouds and back down again. “Wait...I mean...Ohhh!”
We both started running across the grass, and up the stairs, screaming like young school girls. Samuel and Clint came running towards us, waving the Peter Pan book up in the air. We all stopped running just inches before colliding.
“We figured it out!” I yelled at the boys.
“No, we figured it out!” shouted Samuel.
“The answer,” Tess breathed heavily, trying to catch her breath, “the answer is shadow.”
“Yes we know. I started reading the book out loud and got to the part where Peter Pan lost his shadow and Wendy had to reattach it to his body...and then it was like...and then Clint thought about being stuck at the bottom, but easily flies...and then I went...”
“Yay!” Tess yelled triumphantly, jumping up and down. We were all smiling and jumping up and down with Tess, giddy with excitement.
“Wait,” I said, stopping abruptly from acting like a cheerleader. “If the answer is Shadow, what does that mean? Where is he located then?”
We all raced back up the stairs and back to the table, Tess immediately going for the laptop. It was like we all had a second energetic wind as the adrenaline kicked in. “C’mon Google, don’t fail me now.” Tess picked up the laptop, kissed it and pulled it open. She punched in ‘SHADOW, LONDON’ into the search engine. A huge list of various types of businesses appeared before our eyes.
“Damn. We can’t possibly check every single one of these places in the next twelve hours.” Tess suddenly sounded deflated as we continued to look through page after page of search results. Places like Dark Shadow Tattoo Parlor, Erin Shadow Advertising and Shadow Brothers Car Wash, were listed in all different locations spread across every corner of London.
“Fuuuuuuuck!” I yelled up towards the sky at the dark ominous clouds. “Can’t we catch a fucking break!” Clint’s arms went around me. I didn’t care if it looked wrong, I needed a shoulder. His shoulder. “I just want him back Clint,” I sobbed. “And I want this to all be over.”
“We’ll find him Norah. We will get him back. Don’t give up,” he said as he tried to be soothing, but I continued to cry hard against his chest. I needed to cry. It felt good to cry.
“What about the coin?” Tess said softly making note of the other clue sitting in the middle of the table.
The coin? Yes. What about that coin? The last time I saw a coin like that was when I used it to get into Club Seil in New York. Perhaps this was a clue about the same kind of establishment.
I stopped crying, pulling away from Clint’s chest, and turned to Tess. “Try ‘Shadow, London, club’.”
We were all silent except for the sound of the keyboard as Tess typed in the words and the search results came up. At the top of the list was a nightclub called SHADOW in Soho, London. We brought up the webpage and looked at the details. It was a gothic, heavy metal-style club. Two stories high in a black building. Tess clicked on the contact details.
“There it is.” Clint pointed to the screen as we all huddled in.
“What?” Samuel asked, staring at the screen, confused.
“There, at the bottom of the screen. Look who owns it.”
At the bottom of the screen, in small italics, a message said, ‘Owned and operated by Errol Investments Inc.”
“Jackpot. This is the place,” Clint confirmed. “It has to be.”
“I agree,” I said knowing it can’t have been a coincidence. It was our best shot, especially with the name matching the answer to the riddle, and the club being owned by the Lappell.
“What time do they open?” Samuel asked, searching the screen with his eyes.
Tess clicked twice. “Ten pm tonight,” Tess said, reading out the opening hours information.
Samuel stood tall behind the laptop, like he had received the details of his mission and was now ready to move out. “Then that’s what time we will show up there together. Locked and loaded.”
We all looked at one another with a new kind of understanding. We were now Team ‘Save Josh’. Tonight we would head into London. We were going to break into a gothic nightclub called Shadow, and we weren’t coming out without Josh.
Norah had retreated to her room to get some rest after we had devised our plan of attack for club ‘Shadow’ that evening. I could tell she was exhausted and weak from the previous night. I was thankful she could get a reprieve from all the drama going on, if only for a few hours. Throughout this whole thing, Norah looked like there was a lot more going on in her head than she was letting on. She had this way of acting when she was trying to hide something that she couldn’t talk about out loud. I couldn’t imagine the levels of emotion she would be going through, with fear and love and probably anger directed at Josh. And with Clint and Samuel here, her head would be all over the place. Gosh, it must have been spinning. I wish I could do more to help her, but I figured just being her shoulder to lean on and to understand is what would help her in all this. I could already tell these extreme circumstances were causing extreme reactions. That little table moment Norah had with Clint was already worrying me.
I was walking down a hallway leading from the bedrooms in the mansion towards the kitchen. There were giant glass windows that overlooked the gardens and terrace that connected one hallway with another. I had gone up to my room to try and rest, but I couldn’t settle down to sleep. My mind kept ticking over about tonight and worrying about Norah. I stared out of the windows looking down at the beautiful lush greenery, the pathways, the massive trees, the lawns and flowerbeds. My head then looked over to the big maze. Perhaps I could kill some time exploring in that? I’d been wanting to explore since we arrived. This place felt like something for royalty. The structure alone made me feel like I was in a museum.
That was when I saw them. Clint and Samuel, walking into the maze, looking behind them to make sure they weren’t being followed. Well, well, well. What do we have here? Then I realized, there was something more I could do for Norah. I could make sure she wasn’t about to be fucked over by the sneaky twosome. I shook my head in disbelief. Just when I was starting to believe they were really being honest with Norah and myself, I see them wandering off like a couple of covert spies. I should have kept my senses on high alert and been more in tune with what I originally saw back in Prague. It was just since being here, they had been so helpful, supportive and protective of Norah. I had seen no signs of ulterior motives. I felt no misguided feelings that were being anything but sincere. It was weird because I felt...and it was all of a sudden, I felt...disappointed in them. Really fucking disappointed. Being around these two and getting to see them with Norah had changed my perception of who they were. I already knew they were not the bad guys they were originally painted to be. Josh’s reveal had squashed my original beliefs. I wanted, no, I needed to find out what they were up to. I couldn’t let Norah get hurt, and I also had to hear for myself that these two were really up to something underhanded. I could not let her experience the pain of more lies and more deception. But, I didn’t want to make any assumptions at this point. I was going into the maze and not coming out until I learned the secret of Clint and Samuel and their real reason for being here.
It didn’t take me long to find my way back through the mansion, down the stairways and back onto the terrace leading into the gardens and down to the maze. Standing at the entrance I debated which way to go. I was pretty sure I had seen them go in from the right. I wished I had paid more attention to the direct
ion they were going when I was watching them from the window rather than trying to figure out what they were up to. I began walking slowly, making sure my feet wouldn’t be heard thumping on the cobblestones. I had to be stealthy, pawing quietly like a cat, keeping my ears on full alert for any voices and sounds.
I took another right and then a left, still maintaining the silence in my steps. After a few minutes thinking that I had lost them or they had already left the maze, I heard them. Their voices were muffled at first but as I rounded another hedge corner, I could hear them more clearly. That was when I almost came to a complete stop as I was certain they were standing around the next bend.
I heard Samuel speak first. “You need to tell me what happened last night Weston. I see the bruising on your knuckles. And Len has barely said two words about it except to tell us she was joining the Lappell to get Josh back.”
“I can’t tell you what happened last night Sam. I promised her I wouldn’t. Don’t let me break that promise to her. It will hurt Norah if I do. Just know that it was a tough night. Very difficult and emotional for her.” Clint sounded stressed as he spoke.
“But you protected her right? You kept her safe? You helped her?”
“Well, you’ve seen my hand, and I think you can see Norah being more responsive to us.”
“You mean more responsive to you. But yes, she is listening more, being more of her old self, and yeah...your hand. Okay. I get it. Don’t tell me. It’s probably best I don’t know what happened.”
“It is better not to know Sam. Believe me.”
“Well, whatever you did, you must have done something right because she hasn’t left your side. She obviously feels safer being near you now. So...so...thank you Clint. Thank you for watching over her and protecting her last night. I’m glad you were there to help.”
All The Pieces (Pieces of Lies 3) Page 11