Then, finally, “You don’t really think you’re going to find him up here, do you?”
“Maybe. No. I don’t know.” I continued to stare out the windows at the passing trees, some bare and cold-looking, like the winter-naked cottonwoods and sycamores, the pines and junipers still dense, dark green. It was easier to watch them than try to pick apart the tangled jumble of emotions inside me. “But I need my laptop back no matter what. My whole life is on that thing.”
She didn’t reply, but gave a little nod. I think we both knew I was using the laptop as a crutch, an object I could focus my mental energies on so I wouldn’t have to think about Martin’s apparent abandonment. All my files were backed up to the cloud, and I had the money to buy a new laptop if necessary, but that wasn’t the point. I needed to have something solid to hang on to right then. Martin was gone and my apartment was destroyed, and now I had less than thirty-six hours before all hell broke loose, but dammit, I was going to get that MacBook Pro back.
Obviously not as familiar with the turn-off as Martin, Kara almost drove past it. She hit the brakes — luckily, there was no one behind us — and did a not-quite U-turn into the driveway. By then it was almost three, so while the sun was still up, it was already behind the high cliffs to the west, and the parking area blanketed in shadow.
I opened the door and got out, and Kara did the same. Since Martin had arranged for the cabin, I didn’t have a clear idea of where the Forest Houses office was located, but luckily there was a sign, so I went in the direction it pointed, my sister following a pace or two behind me.
The man sitting in the chair behind the old oak desk looked up as I entered the office. He raised an eyebrow. Of course he probably had no idea who I was, since Martin and I had come and gone to the cabin directly and hadn’t had any interactions with the people running the place. It probably wasn’t going to be a lot of fun trying to convince him to let me into the Bridge House so I could reclaim my belongings.
But I’d barely opened my mouth to say, “Hi, I’m Kirsten, and — ” before he interrupted me.
“He said you might be back for your things.”
My mouth somehow refused to shut. “He — what?”
His eyebrow remained lifted, even as he pushed a key across the desk toward me. “Mr. Jones. Told me you might be coming by. So here’s the key.”
Feeling at right angles with reality, I nonetheless reached out and picked up the key. “Did he — did he say anything else?”
A head shake, accompanied by a look that might have been one of pity. “Nope. Seemed to be in a hurry.”
I’d bet. Since I really didn’t want to reveal anything more of my private life than I already had, I said only, “Thanks.”
He gave a sort of affirmative grunt and turned back to his copy of the Red Rock News.
Still not sure exactly what was going on, I left the office, Kara in my wake. She waited until we were a few steps away from the building before asking, “How did Martin know you were coming back here?”
I shrugged. Precognition? Uncanny awareness of my attachment to my laptop? Who knew.
We got to the Bridge House and climbed the steps to the porch. Every other time I’d come to this door, Martin had been with me, and I hated that he wasn’t here now. Nothing to do but unlock the door and go in, though.
At least we’d left the place clean and tidy, dishes washed and put in the drainer next to the sink, bed made, toiletries lined up neatly on the counter in the bathroom. I went to the closet and retrieved my suitcase as Kara looked around while trying not to appear as if she was looking around. But as I moved to gather up my shampoo and toothbrush and makeup bag from the bathroom, I paused.
Kara glanced over at me, clearly noting my hesitation. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. It’s just…” I let the words drift away, trying to figure out how to articulate what I was thinking. “That is, Martin brought me here in the first place because he said it was safe, that here the energies of the creek protected me from psychic attacks by the aliens. I won’t have that at your place.” I crossed my arms. “Maybe I should just stay here.”
Her response was immediate. “Oh, hell, no. Alone? With no car? You’re miles away. What if something happened?”
All those were very valid concerns. Maybe I’d made the suggestion because somewhere in the back of my mind I’d hoped that Martin would come back here, would seek me out to make his explanations. And Kara was right about the car.
“I don’t know,” I replied, and my tone sounded wild even to myself. “I just — I’m scared, Kara. Martin showed me how to protect myself, and maybe that will be enough, but you don’t know what it’s like — they come to you in your sleep, worm into your dreams…do terrible things.”
Her eyes widened as I said this. Of course she had no real idea what had been going on with me for the past few days, and I didn’t want to give her the gory details. Whatever else, though, she needed to know that the stakes had gotten higher, and were only going to get worse over the next day.
When she spoke, I could tell she was shaken. “All the more reason for you to be with your family. I’ll be there, and Lance — I know you and Lance have had your issues, but you can’t tell me he wouldn’t be there to help you if something happened.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Whatever else you might say about him, Lance was a warrior, and he’d do whatever it took to keep Kara and Grace and me safe. When I thought about it like that, I knew my sister was right. Sitting here alone in the cabin was only inviting disaster. Besides, with the final confrontation looming ever closer, it made more sense for me to be with everyone. Martin had been vague about exactly what he expected me to do when the time came, and he apparently wasn’t going to be around to share his wisdom. We’d have to do this the way we always did, by pooling our resources and making a stand together.
“Okay,” I said, and went ahead into the bathroom to collect my things. “You’re right. It was just a thought.”
She waited until I had dumped the various toiletries, et al. in my suitcase before coming to me and giving me a brief, fierce hug. “We’re all here for you, Keeks. Never forget that.”
I wouldn’t. They were all I had right now.
* * *
Much as I would have liked to crawl into Kara’s spare bedroom and hide there for the next seven or eight years, I didn’t have that luxury. On the way back to the house, I told her to call everyone to gather at Michael’s for what might be our last council of war, then added,
“Just make sure Jeff and I are seated on opposite sides of the room. That way we won’t kill each other.”
She shot me a sideways glance, and I gave her a brief summary of what had happened the previous morning between Jeff and me.
“And don’t say ‘I told you so,’” I warned her. “I’m about at my limit right now.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, but there was something about the way her mouth quirked that told me she’d been thinking that very thing.
I hated it when she was right.
When we got back to the house, Lance was in the living room watching a football game, with Grace gurgling contentedly in his arms. Despite everything that was going on, I had to smother a smile at seeing Lance, the hard-ass ex-Special Forces guy, being the very picture of domesticity.
But since I knew better than to say anything, I gave him a half-hearted wave with my free hand and went on into the guest room, where I unpacked my meager belongings and set up the laptop on the desk. After all the drama of retrieving it, maybe it was a little anticlimactic for me to boot it up and find that the only email I’d missed out on was some more correspondence from my clients, and a bunch of junk mail from the various retail sites I’d signed up with so I could get coupons and sale offers and other things that seemed spectacularly unimportant at the moment.
I sighed and shut the MacBook, and wondered if I’d been leading myself to hope that maybe Martin would have sent me an email
explaining what exactly he was up to. Did highly advanced multidimensional beings even have email?
Probably not.
It took a supreme effort of will to push myself back out to the living room, where Lance silently handed Grace to me, as if knowing I needed the kind of comfort that holding your one and only niece would bring. So I held her close, and inhaled her sweet baby scent, and let her tug on my hair. She cooed and batted her amazingly long, dark lashes — her father’s lashes — and in that moment I knew I would do whatever it took to protect her…to protect everyone.
Kara was on the phone, making her calls to Persephone and Paul, and to Michael, which meant Jeff by extension. I was so not looking forward to that encounter, but this was no time to be acting like a couple of feuding high school kids.
Outside, the sky was turning bloody, onrushing clouds seeming to shadow the city. I hoped that wasn’t a harbinger of things to come.
* * *
Paul and Persephone were already at Michael’s when we got there. I recalled what she’d told me, about learning she was going to have a baby, and I sent her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. I noticed how her gaze lingered on Grace almost hungrily, as if she wasn’t quite sure she’d be around to hold her own child in her arms, the way Kara was now.
Oh, yes, you will, I thought. Even if it’s the last thing I ever do.
Not that I really wanted to admit it, but it very well might be the last thing I ever did.
I wondered if Kara knew about Persephone’s condition as well, since they seemed to exchange significant glance before Kara sat down on one of Michael’s rickety chairs. Jeff was already slumped down in the easy chair by the couch, refusing to meet my eyes. I pretended that I didn’t care, and took a seat on a folding chair that looked as if it had been left outside all summer. You could barely see the gray-beige paint because of all the rust.
At least Jeff had his laptop with him, which meant (I hoped) that he’d made some progress and had some sort of intel that could help us. Without that, I didn’t know what the hell we were going to do.
Lance had apparently measured my mental state and decided that I wasn’t in any shape to lead the meeting. Once we were all more or less settled, he said, “Looks like we’re flying solo on this one, so we need to figure out a plan of attack now. Kirsten, what’s your latest intel?”
I almost wanted to laugh. Guess you could take the guy out of Special Forces, but you obviously couldn’t take the Special Forces out of the guy. “Probably not much more than you all know already. The solstice is less than thirty-six hours away, and the aliens are going to make their move then. They’re going to tap into the upflow energies in the Boynton vortex to harness the power they need to…well, you know. Destroy mankind and take the planet for themselves. All that fun stuff.”
Kara frowned at my brittle attempt at humor, but she didn’t take me to task for it. “Anything else?”
“Well, Mar — that is, I’ve been training to tap into the powers I got from my father, and it’s been going better than expected. I may have a shot at shutting them down, if we can get everything else to line up.”
“That’s where we all come in,” Lance said, his sharp gray eyes roving over the assembled company. “Jeff, what’s your progress on cracking that code?”
Jeff had his laptop open and didn’t look up from it as he replied, “Getting there.”
“‘Getting there’?” Lance repeated, frowning. “You’re going to have to do a little better than that.”
Those words obviously wounded, because Jeff lifted his eyes from the laptop long enough to shoot daggers with them at Lance. “You’re welcome to try hacking through these algorithms if you want. I guarantee you won’t have any better luck.”
“Arguing isn’t the solution,” Michael put in mildly. “I’ve seen him working — barely sleeps two hours a night, if that. Give the boy a break.”
Lance’s scowl only deepened. “Well, I’d love to be all relaxed and forgiving about this, but the aliens aren’t going to give me that opportunity.”
Since no one could really argue with that, an uneasy silence fell. Persephone cleared her throat and ventured, “How much can we do without better information on their plans?”
“Enough,” Paul said. I noticed that he had his left hand on her right, holding it tightly. I didn’t even want to think about how he must be feeling, with so much to look forward to, and no way of knowing whether he’d be around the day after tomorrow to enjoy it. He appeared to gather himself and went on, “We have a rough idea of where they are, and we already know the time. It’s just a matter of getting Kirsten there when she needs to be in place.”
“Oh, is that all?” I said, but then regretted the sarcasm in my tone. “I mean, I have a feeling they’re not going to let us just waltz in there.”
“No, probably not,” Paul said mildly. “But how close can we get?”
Lance appeared to consider. “Fairly close. The resort is a good cover. We can stage from there. The aliens are used to people coming and going from that location all the time. Not to say that they haven’t been surveilling us, but I have an idea about that.”
“You do?” Kara asked. She shifted Grace to her other shoulder; the baby didn’t stir, her eyes shut in slumber.
“Yes.” He paused and gazed around the circle, the silver-bright eyes resting on me for a few seconds before he continued, “The Jeep tours go out to the Enchantment Resort all the time. I’ve already booked us a room there. We’ll drive uptown, leave our cars in one of the parking structures, then take a Jeep tour to the resort. Hard to trace, and they won’t be looking for us that way. We’ll stay at Enchantment until the witching hour, then head out into the canyon on foot. Since the aliens are going to be tapping into the vortex, they won’t be in their base, and we won’t have to infiltrate it.”
That was true; I hadn’t even stopped to consider that we’d be meeting on semi-neutral ground. Their base was back in Secret Canyon, well hidden from the world, but the vortex itself was in Boynton, and well-traveled by hikers and tourists and those seeking inner vision. Not that there would be many of those out tromping around at 4 a.m. on an icy December morning.
“That could work,” I said cautiously. “So who’s the ‘we’ you’re referring to?”
The barest of hesitations, and then he replied, “You, of course, and me, and Michael.”
That announcement was met with an eruption of voices, with Persephone protesting that she should be coming, too, since we might need her psychic powers as well, and Paul telling her that Lance knew what he was talking about, and Jeff breaking in to say that just because he hadn’t cracked the code yet didn’t mean he wouldn’t, and we were going to need him, and —
Only Kara remained silent. Her eyes, watching Lance, then me, were frightened but calm. She knew he was vital to our mission succeeding, and of course there wouldn’t be a mission if I didn’t go. Two of the people she cared most about in the world going to confront the aliens with nothing more to protect us than those few skills Martin had taught me before he disappeared.
I raised my voice. “Persephone, I appreciate the offer, but I really wouldn’t be able to concentrate with you there. I’d be too worried about something happening to you. Please.”
She subsided at my words, although I could tell by the set of her mouth that she wasn’t happy about it.
Looking over at Jeff, I said, “Jeff, Lance and Michael have abilities you don’t. This isn’t going to be like last time, when you hacked the aliens’ computer systems to get everybody out of the base. I appreciate you wanting to be there, but I think you’d be much more help here.”
He didn’t quite meet my gaze, but he sounded a little less sulky as he said, “I’m just trying to help.”
“I know you are. We all know that. I just think you’ll help us more by staying off the front lines and continuing to work on those codes.”
It was obvious he didn’t like the sound of that. I held my breath, wait
ing for more arguments. To my surprise, he lifted his shoulders and said, “Okay, then.”
That was almost too easy. Maybe even Jeff realized that arguing with me in front of the others had the potential to let slip more truths than he really wanted to reveal.
I shifted my attention to Lance. “Sounds like we’ve got that part worked out. Anything else?”
He seemed surprised that I was willing to ask his advice. “For the moment, no.” A bit of a smile touched his mouth. “Well, except ordering dinner. Any requests? Remember, this could be one of your last meals.”
The joke fell flat, of course — everyone exchanged uneasy glances. I looked over at Persephone, wondering if she was starting to experience any nausea or food cravings, but as she didn’t volunteer anything, I went ahead and said,
“Anything but pizza. I’ve had Italian for the past two nights. Why don’t we get Indian? I wouldn’t mind going out with the taste of lamb korma on my tongue.”
Kara shook her head at my comment about “going out,” but she only asked, “That okay with everyone?”
Since no one disagreed, she handed off Grace to Lance and went into the kitchen, where she kept all the takeout menus, and made the call. The rest of us sat in the living room, no one wanting to say what we were probably all thinking, that our chances weren’t that great, and we were all fooling ourselves to think that any sort of planning would help us when push came to shove tomorrow night.
At least, that was what I was thinking. I swallowed, wondering if I would be able to do it — face the aliens with only my powers to help us. Michael and Lance had their talents, but they were only human.
Only human. How I wished I could be that again.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Everyone ended up staying at Michael’s until around ten or so, as we were all clinging to these few moments when we could still be together. Lance had said that the next day we needed to keep to our normal patterns as much as possible so as not to attract attention, and that meant Persephone and Paul back at their house, and Michael at his with the unhappy Jeff in tow. And with my apartment trashed, the obvious thing would be for me to stay with my sister, so even the aliens shouldn’t see anything untoward in that.
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