Reach for You

by Pat Esden

  I went back to scanning. A blue tricycle. An old trunk. The light glistened off something moderately tall and narrow. About my size and shape. Wrapped in plastic—

  Horror swept through me. I gasped. “It can’t be.”

  Selena moved in close. “What?”

  Unable to breathe, I fanned the light again until its beam fell across a plastic-wrapped figure of . . . a person. My body went cold and a sick feeling lodged in my throat. Behind the first figure were dozens more, standing up like they were frozen stiff. They’re mannequins, I reasoned. But they didn’t look plastic.

  Selena grabbed my arm. “Ohmigod. They’re people. Freaking real people.”

  Willing myself not to throw up, I took a shaky step forward and swept the beam over the closest one’s face. Black hair, dark kohled eyes, high cheekbones . . .

  Selena let out a smothered screech. “It’s—”

  “It’s Lotli, isn’t it?” I said, my voice barely audible. My whole body trembled, but I forced myself to point the flashlight at her face again. Please, Hecate, let it be anyone but Lotli.

  The light glinted off a shiny gold-and-black-striped head-cloth crowned with the likeness of a cobra. The eyes were open and as dark as Lotli’s, the nose as prominent as hers. But this face had a bold, narrow beard. Definitely not a woman.

  “It looks like a wax statue. A pharaoh,” Selena whispered. “King Tut or someone.”

  The tension uncoiled from my spine. Of course, these were what had made the plumber geek out and start thinking about Jeffrey White and his TV show. I fanned the light again, spotlighting the figure next to Tut. The vacant gaze of a Roswell-type alien stared back at me.

  I rolled my eyes. “They’re TV props.”

  Selena blew out a breath. “Creepy TV props, if you ask me.”

  I moved the flashlight beam farther into the room, past a stack of boxes. It brightened a waist-high Ark of the Covenant. Behind it, faces stared out from the darkness, their eyes black and hollow, all glaring at us. Some had bird beaks, others elongated chins, red and black, jagged teeth, fiery hair, flashes of silver metal. Masks, I told myself. But another voice deep inside me whispered for me to run. They have bodies. They are alive, the voice warned.

  “I really don’t like this place,” Selena mumbled.

  “Me neither.” I wiped my damp palms on my jeans, gritted my teeth, and inched forward.

  Finally, we reached the center of the room. Ahead, the faint shape of stairs led upward toward the first floor. When I scanned under them, the flashlight beam illuminated a doorknob.

  “I think there’s another room,” I said to Selena.

  She snuggled in closer, her whole body trembling. “Probably a dungeon.”

  I laughed, like it was a joke. But part of me worried that was exactly what it might be. I shoved that aside and lifted my chin. Enough of this bullshit. This was all fake. A Halloween funhouse that I didn’t have time to get caught up in.

  I strode the rest of the way across the room to the door. It was normal, no fancy keypad or signs of alarms. I opened it. Nothing but darkness, pitch-black and solid.

  I swallowed hard. Was an unlocked door a good sign or a bad? Probably the latter, I decided. Worse still, I was certain the smell permeating the air was not musty or stale, but fresh, a man’s cologne mixed with peanuts. That meant the room had been recently used.

  “I can’t see anything,” Selena whispered.

  “There has to be a light switch.” I stepped inside with her close behind me, located a switch, and flicked it on.

  The ceiling lights sputtered to life, slowly brightening the room. Medium size. A drop ceiling. Wall-to-wall carpet. An office.

  I shut the door and began scanning the place as quickly as I could.

  One wall was covered with blown-up satellite images of the Nazca Lines and various Stonehenge-like structures. There were also sketches of petroglyphs, a timeline with elongated skulls stationed along it, images of Maya gods, Easter Island heads, a Hindu temple, and star charts. On another wall, bookshelves rose floor to ceiling. A glass-topped desk was piled with files and framed photos that I assumed were of Jeffrey White on the set of his TV show. There was an open can of peanuts on the desk next to a half-empty bottle of water. Computers, printers, other electronic devices . . . Loads of stuff, but not one pentagram or anything that screamed witchcraft.

  “What the hell?” Selena pressed her fingers against a blown-up photo that hung next to one of the satellite images. “Newt took this. I thought . . . He sent me a copy, but it didn’t look like this.”

  I hurried over. Selena was in the photo, or rather the side of her head was. Clearly, the original had been enlarged and cropped to focus on the crowd standing behind her. I leaned in to take a closer look, but jerked back in surprise when I realized who the image now centered on.

  “That’s Lotli,” I said.

  She was playing her flute in front of a small fire, its smoke rising like a spellbound cobra. Chase and I had been in the crowd that day, watching Lotli’s performance. It was the day before we went to the campsite and Zea agreed to let her come back to Moonhill with us.

  Selena’s eyes went flinty, teeth grinding in anger. “I was so into Newt, I didn’t even notice the show. Damn bastard—apparently, the curse didn’t stop him from having other things on his mind.”

  I took out my phone and snapped a couple of shots of the image.

  “We have to go upstairs,” I said, heading for the door. Now that we’d discovered this photograph, I was feeling hopeful. We were right on track. We just had to follow the evidence to where it led. I was sure we’d discover something else. “We’ll start with Newt’s room.”

  Selena cuffed the peanut can off the desk, nuts flying everywhere. “I fucking hate Newt.”

  I glanced back. “You okay?”

  She gave me a pained look. “I don’t know. Let’s just get out of here.”

  My chest tightened as we crept up the stairs toward the first floor. I knew how she felt—betrayed, embarrassed, responsible, angry. . . . Last winter, I’d had sex with my best friend, Taj. We’d been close through years of homeschooling and even when he’d started interning at the Metropolitan Museum. It had felt wonderful. I’d thought it was the beginning of something amazing. Then I found out he had a girlfriend and the hurt had been almost unbearable. Selena’s situation wasn’t exactly the same; still, I felt horrible for her.

  At the top of the stairs, a door opened into the kitchen, as clean and modern as it had appeared through the sliding glass doors. We tiptoed down a hall, through a dining room and up a carpeted staircase to the second floor. Straight ahead was a bathroom. To the left was a short hallway with three closed doors. A hallway with just two doors jutted off to the right.

  I turned to the left. “I’ll check these rooms, if you do the other ones.”

  “Newt’s will be the one labeled jerkwad,” she said, flinging open the door closest to her.

  I tried the first door on my side. A stench of body odor and Axe cologne smacked me in the face, and the memory of dancing with Newt’s brother, of him rubbing his crotch against me, sent nausea crawling up my throat.

  I yanked the door shut. “This one belongs to Myles.”

  “This room’s their parents’, I think,” Selena called. “The next one looks like a guest room.”

  I opened another door. No reek of body odor or cologne, just a light, spicy scent. “Found it,” I announced, stepping inside.

  The room was tiny with a single twin-size bed. Its navy blue spread was tucked in with military precision, the thin pillow perfectly centered. A poster of a black Mustang hung squarely in the middle of one wall.

  I shuddered. It looked exactly like Newt’s Mustang—and exactly like the car I’d found Lotli tied up inside, during the previous kidnapping attempt. If only I’d been as certain that night of Myles and Newt’s guilt as I was now.

  Pushing my regret aside, I went to his desk. Above it photographs of Selena and
a couple of guys in lacrosse uniforms hung next to an award plaque.

  Selena came up beside me. “Look at this,” she said, waving a stiff piece of paper in front of me. It was an invitation done in a fancy cursive font. Doves and raspberry-pink ribbons were embossed across the invitation’s top edge. “At least Newt didn’t lie about everything. Apparently there is a wedding this Friday.”

  “It also means he probably is at the rehearsal right now.” I snapped a photo of the invitation, then turned back and took a shot of the plaque. It was an award for excellence, given to Newt last winter. The emblem in the center was a snake, twisted up like a pretzel.

  My mouth dried. It was an exact replica of the tattoo on Newt’s wrist, except this was surrounded by a motto written in what looked like Latin. “Selena,” I said sharply to get her attention. “You better come take a look at this.”

  She bent in, studying the image. “It’s his team logo—or at least that’s what he told me. But he never mentioned a motto.”

  “Can you translate it?”

  She nibbled her bottom lip, then began enunciating each word slowly. “Open minds with eyes on the heaven.” She straightened back up, a puzzled look coming over her face. “It’s the same motto that’s on the home page of his dad’s blog. Only it’s in English.” She hesitated. “Not that I knew about the blog before. I only looked at it earlier today, after we found out about the lies.”

  “Isn’t that kind of a weird motto for a blog? I mean, especially for a blog about snake wrestling? The whole idea is pretty strange if you ask me.”

  She laughed. “You haven’t looked at the blog, have you? It’s not about snake wrestling. It’s The Snake Wrestler.”

  A faint rumble sounded in the distance and I held up my hand to silence Selena. “Did you hear that,” I whispered.

  Her eyes went wide. “Shit. It’s a car. In the driveway.”

  “But they’re at the rehearsal dinner,” I said. Then it hit me. The police. We’d tripped a silent alarm.

  The jangle of her phone echoed in the room. Selena snatched it super fast and listened for a second. Then she crammed it in her pocket. “That was the Professor. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  We sprinted for the stairs as fast as we could. But by the time we reached the first floor, the slam of car doors sounded in the driveway. We were too late. The outlines of two SUVs were visible through the windows on either side of the front door. Crap.

  I grabbed Selena and made a dash through the dining room, shoving her along in front of me. My pulse hammered in my ears and panic gripped my throat until I could barely breathe. But I forced myself to focus. I needed to get us out of here. The front door was out of bounds, so was the backdoor, since they’d parked in front of the garage. There was the basement. But the sliding glass doors were closer. I took off, hauling Selena along. We were almost to them when a burly guy in green workclothes walked up onto the deck, followed by another man.

  Heart in my throat, I yanked Selena through the closest open door and out of sight. I shut the door behind us.

  We stood in a small half bath. Was it the one Newt used to sneak in at night? We couldn’t be that lucky, could we?

  I flew to the room’s only window, almost tripping over a sweatshirt and tool pouch that lay next to the sink. I shoved the window up, then the screen. Below was the lawn, beyond that the cedar hedge and the Land Rover.

  “Go,” I said to Selena.

  She shimmied out feetfirst, holding on to the window ledge for a heartbeat before dropping down to the ground.

  The scrape of footsteps and voices reverberated from somewhere inside the house.

  “I’ll be right there!” a man shouted. “I left my tool pouch in the bathroom.”

  Shit. I dove for the window.

  CHAPTER 4

  Even when the sun rises, the stars rule the sky.

  —Imprinted on clay tablet

  I dropped to the ground and shrank back against the house next to Selena. Even if the guy noticed the open window and screen, staying in the shadows would keep us out of his line of sight. That was as long as he didn’t stick his head out the window and really look around.

  Selena nodded toward the hedge on the far side of the lawn. I raised a finger to tell her to wait a minute. I could still hear the man shuffling around inside the bathroom, putting on the sweatshirt or doing whatever.

  After a long couple of minutes, the shuffling stopped and Selena and I catapulted across the lawn and through the gap in the hedge. The second we got into the car, I put it in gear and pulled out from the access road. As we passed the house, a sense of relief washed over me and I blew out a breath. But my throat clamped shut again when a man appeared in the open garage bay, his attention fixed on us as we drove by.

  “Do you think he saw us?” Selena said, hunkering down in the backseat.

  The Professor swiveled away from the side window, hiding his face. “This isn’t good, not good at all.”

  I stepped on the gas. “If he wasn’t suspicious before, he is now with you two hiding like that. At least they weren’t cops.”

  “Are you absolutely sure about that?” The Professor glanced toward the house.

  “Definitely. It was the plumber and some other guy. One of them was looking for a tool pouch, and there were pipes and stuff in the garage and basement.”

  Selena hung over the back of my seat. “Why would he be working this late in the day?”

  “Who knows? Maybe they’re working while the family’s gone, so they won’t disturb anyone. It doesn’t matter anyway. We weren’t supposed to be in the house. If they saw us, they’d call the cops as quick as anyone.”

  I winged out of the neighborhood and took a zigzag route back to the main road. Selena phoned Kate, told her what had happened at the campsite, and gave her an overview of what we’d done and seen at Newt’s, a move that ensured we’d get bailed out quicker if the plumber called the police. It also would give her and Olya time to cool down before we got home. Besides, it wasn’t like we could put off telling them everything. We didn’t have time to waste.

  But not a single cop car came up behind us and by the time we got back to the Moonhill, my pulse was subsiding back to normal. However, without the rush of adrenaline, every inch of my sore body began to stiffen and throb, and bone-deep exhaustion settled in.

  Tibbs loped out of the house to greet us and I gave him the Land Rover’s keys so he could take it to the garage. Tibbs was in his early twenties. He lived on the estate and did tons of things for the family, all the mechanical work, security, and weapon maintenance.... He even helped his mother, Laura, in the kitchen and with household chores. He also was the person who uncovered the information about Newt’s family by grilling his local friends, including the plumber. This initiative upgraded him in my aunt Kate’s eyes. Unfortunately, the only person Tibbs wanted to impress was Selena. Sadly, all she cared about was that he was old enough to buy liquor for her.

  He took his cap off and smoothed back his ginger hair. “Kate said you guys went to Newt’s house?”

  I nodded and lowered my voice to a whisper. “Your plumber friend was right about everything. He also might have seen us.”

  His gaze shifted toward where Selena and the Professor waited on the front steps, then retreated as if he were afraid she’d shoot daggers at him for screwing up her personal life. “How’s she taking it?”

  “Let’s just say, I wouldn’t ask her about Newt right now. But if you could find out if the plumber spotted us she’d—we all would appreciate that.”

  “No problem,” he said. He took a scuffling step toward the driver’s door and then glanced over his shoulder. “I almost forgot. Kate wanted me to tell you, she’s waiting on the terrace.”

  Leaving him behind, Selena, the Professor, and I went into the foyer and made our way past the kitchen to the terrace door. We found Kate watering the planters. She was dressed more casual than usual, in her gardening slacks and a pale green blouse. She
had a silk scarf wrapped around her neck, covering up a wound she’d gotten about a month ago during a battle with Malphic’s full-blooded genie son, Culus, who had taken possession of my dad’s body in order to gain entry to Moonhill. She shut off the hose and peered down her nose at us. “It appears that you managed to get home without incident.”

  The Professor shook his head. “That’s a wonderful thought, but we may not be in the clear yet.”

  Selena waved him off. “You worry too much. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “I think we’re all set, too,” I said.

  “Let’s hope so.” Kate’s lips pinched into a thin line. “The last thing we need is cops snooping around here.”

  I got out my phone and brought up the photo of Lotli. I was about to show it to Kate, when an eerie, surreal feeling came over me. Kate and everyone else faded into the background and I became hyperaware of the warmth of the sunlight against my skin, the buzz of a passing bee, the scent of the water evaporating off the terrace’s warm stones. It was similar to déjà vu, yet completely different. It was as if I were frozen, while the world whirled on around me. And no matter how illogical, I knew with certainty Chase was there in that moment, right then and there, with me. I couldn’t see him. But I could sense the heat of his presence. Smell and taste him, like the lingering fragrance of a candle, a touch of cinnamon and pine—

  Something needle-sharp dug into my ankle.

  Still dazed, I glanced down in time to see a gray flash of tiger-striped cat racing away. Houdini. He skittered behind the Professor’s legs, then stared back at me, tail thrashing.

  “I told you that cat was a nasty beast,” Kate said.

  I blinked at her, not wanting to say or do anything that would take me farther away from Chase, anything that would widen the gulf between us. But time had already moved on. I was back in the world, and what had seemed so real for a heartbeat, now felt impossible.

  Kate pried the phone from my grip and studied the photo of Lotli. She moved on to the shot of the invitation. “Interesting. The wedding is this Friday.”