Maybe, he thought, it was because they had something in common. Kate was an outsider in Middleburg, and although he’d lived there most of his life, he felt like an outsider, too.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Kate said, smiling at him over her juice.
“I was just thinking about the game last night. It was fun.”
“Yes, it was!” she said. “What a wonderful sport—not like football back home, o’ course. And the band, and the girls dancing in the skirts with the—what were they?”
“Pom-poms,” Zhai supplied.
“It was all wonderfully spectacular.”
“Back home,” Zhai repeated, growing more serious. “Ireland, right?”
“That’s right,” but she looked away, as if she didn’t want to talk about it.
“You know you can tell me anything, right? You can trust me.”
“I know,” Kate said.
“Okay, so I want you to trust me with this. How did you get here, all the way from Ireland? And why Middlburg?”
Kate stared down at her hands, folded in her lap. “I’d rather not discuss it,” she said quietly.
“I just want to understand.”
Kate shrugged. “What’s to understand? I was there and now I’m here.” She looked up at him and smiled. “Anyway, the past is in the past. For now, let’s just enjoy the present. Because soon enough it will be the future, and who knows what the future holds?”
“I just want to know you,” Zhai said. He suddenly felt very alone. There were so many things going on in his life that he didn’t understand—he couldn’t even control his own actions anymore—and he didn’t know who he could trust.
She reached out and took his hand, as if she sensed his isolation. “You do know me,” she said. “What you’re seein’—this is me. Even if you knew the whys and wherefores of how I came to be here, I’d still be me. I’m Kate. Your . . . your friend. Nothing can change that. But some things I have to keep to myself. I’ll ask you to respect that, and promise not to ask me questions I can’t answer. If you do, I won’t be able to spend time with you. And I love spending time with you.”
“Okay,” he said with a smile. “Me, too.” He looked down to see her hand in his and it gave him a wonderful, secure feeling to see their fingers entwined—until he noticed the symbols on the back of his hand. Slave.
“Well,” he said grudgingly. “I’d better get over to Master Chin’s. I’ll see you soon, though?”
“Yes, I’d like that,” Kate said, walking him to the door. They both stood on her little makeshift stoop, and as the cold wind whipped around them, they moved a little closer together to ward off the chill. Her face was tilted up toward his, her eyes gleaming and warm, her lips soft, delicate, and inviting. Zhai let his imagination go crazy. He saw himself taking her in his arms and kissing her with all the passion he felt when he was with her, just like a scene out of a movie. But just as a rising flood of emotion threatened to carry him away, every muscle in his body tensed at once. His smile faded.
“Goodbye,” he said quickly and hurried away.
He walked along the train tracks silently cursing himself for being such a coward. He’d never wanted anything in his life more than he’d wanted to kiss her but that wall, that blockade that had stifled his emotions for as long as he could remember had risen up once again to imprison his dreams.
More than anything, he wanted to run back, take her beautiful face gently in his hands, and press his lips to hers. But it was too late. What if he went back and tried to kiss her, and then froze again? That would go over really well.
So he continued walking up the tracks, gazing up at the leaden winter sky, wondering what the hell was wrong with him.
Zhai stood nervously on the front porch of the old farmhouse, gazing out at the snow-blanketed cornfields and forests. From inside, the music blared—Jimi Hendrix—and it grew even louder when Master Chin opened the front door.
“Zhai! I’m glad you came early,” he exclaimed with a big smile. “I’m making BLTs. You’re just in time!”
Zhai followed his sifu into the living room of the quaint farmhouse while Chin grabbed a remote off the coffee table, turned the music down and then led the way into the kitchen.
“You like BLTs?” he asked. “I have plenty of bacon.”
“Thanks, but I just ate,” Zhai said. “I have something I need to talk to you about.”
“Oh?” Master Chin slathered some mayonnaise on a piece of toast. “What’s that?”
“The Order of the Black Snake.”
The toast slipped from Master Chin’s fingers, but before it could hit the floor—before it dropped even a foot—he impaled it in mid-air with the knife and slipped it back onto the plate. “The Order of the Black Snake?” he repeated slowly.
“Have you heard of them?” Zhai asked.
Master Chin’s hesitation told him a lot, but Zhai knew his sifu couldn’t lie to him. It was against the Wu-de.
Chin forked a few pieces of sizzling bacon out of the frying pan, drained them on a paper towel, and stacked them on the toast, along with the lettuce and tomato. Then he answered. “I have heard of them, a long time ago. Tell me, Zhai—how do you know of them?”
“Lotus,” Zhai said simply. At the mention of Lotus’s name, the sifu’s gaze rested on him for a moment before drifting back down to his sandwich.
“Lotus. . .” he said. “What does she know about this Order?”
“I don’t know. We had these two guys come to town to see my dad. Lotus was pretty shaken, and Li heard one of them call my father a slave. Then when I asked Lotus about them, she told me they’re from the Order of the Black Snake and I should stay away from them.”
“That sounds like good advice,” Chin said, and took a bite. Zhai had a feeling he was more concerned than he was letting on.
“What do you know about the Order?” Zhai asked.
“A lot.”
“So, tell me about them.”
“Your stepmother told you to stay away from them. Don’t you think you should respect her wishes?” He took a bite of his sandwich.
“I would, except they gave me this.” Zhai showed Chin the backs of his hands.
Chin almost choked on his BLT. He set it down, took Zhai’s hands, and looked at them. He tried to rub the marks away with his thumb.
“They’re permanent,” Zhai said. “Tattoos or something. I saw the same two guys in the woods by the train graveyard. They were scanning the ground, like they were looking for something. One of them saw me and challenged me to a fight and—oh, Sifu, you wouldn’t believe how he could fight. He smoked me. Knocked me out. When I woke up, I was lying on the tracks, and I had these marks. Then, a night or two later, I blacked out and woke up half-buried in a hole, and my knuckles were all skinned up like I’d been fighting. And these marks—they burned like crazy.”
Chin let go of Zhai’s hands and leaned back on the counter again, momentarily lost in thought. “Start at the beginning,” he said. “Why were you following these men into the woods in the first place?”
“See, that’s the thing,” Zhai said. “I’ve seen them before. I can’t remember when or where, but I’ve seen them—when I was just a kid.”
Master Chin nodded. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?” Zhai asked.
“To learn the truth. Come.”
On the way from the library to the Banfield house, Aimee sat in the passenger seat, messing around on the Internet with her cell phone. Her dad was on his Bluetooth, ignoring her as usual, and as usual, she was ignoring him back. As soon as his call ended, however, he did take the time to ruin her evening.
“We’re having an important guest over for dinner and drinks tonight, so when we get home you need to get ready and be downstairs by f
ive o’clock. Understood?”
Aimee rolled her eyes at his bad news. “Why do I have to be there?”
The car paused at the Hilltop Haven guard gate, and Jack turned to her, his expression like stone—cold and blank. After a moment he spoke. “Because your mother is not here—and that is mostly on you.”
She wanted to protest, but she was afraid he might be right. What had happened to Tyler, and to Aimee because of it, had just been too much for Emily Banfield.
“So, in her absence, you will act as hostess whenever I entertain at home.”
“You mean until you banish me to Montana?”
“Exactly.” He glanced at her with an exasperated sigh. “Have you ever considered that if you’ll just cooperate for a change, we could forget about that?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t promise she would stop seeing Raphael. She couldn’t even think about not seeing him.
“Fine.” Her father glowered at her. “But until they get a bed for you, you will cooperate. It’s time you start doing your part for the family. Is that clear?”
“Pretty much.”
“And if I were you, I’d watch my tone.”
She didn’t respond to that but as soon as the car stopped in the garage, she was out the door. She said hi to Lily Rose, who was at the stove stirring something that smelled delicious, and went straight up to her room, cranked up her stereo and hopped in the shower. All the while she thought eagerly of her coming kung fu lessons with Raphael, and when she got out, dried off and into her underwear, she did a few awkward kung fu punches in the mirror. When she’d done her hair and makeup and slipped into her little black dress and high heels, it was almost time to go down. She glanced once more at her reflection in the mirror and was amazed to find she looked pretty good. Despite all the drama that had happened since she got back from boarding school—drama with friends and family, falling in love, and an evil, winged guy abducting her into some alternate reality—she was still somehow looking a little healthier and a lot happier every day. Even the bite marks on her ear were healing nicely.
Now if only she could find her mom . . . but that was going to happen, too. Raphael was learning to use the wheel and he was going to teach her to fight so she’d be ready when they went back into the tunnels. Until then, she was determined to be the soul of cooperation so her father would get off her case and keep his attention elsewhere—even if it meant she had to be gracious and hospitable to his boring business associates. Downstairs, the doorbell rang and she took a deep breath and plastered a bright, beauty-queen smile on her face.
She took another moment to freshen her lip gloss and, in a better mood than when she got home, she almost skipped down the stairs. But when she walked into the living room, she stopped short, her smile disappearing.
“There’s my girl!” her dad said, in the phoniest voice she’d ever heard him use.
Rick was there too, in a dark blue shirt and tie, and Maggie was with him, wearing a form-fitting silver dress and staring down intently at her fingernails. But Aimee’s gaze moved from Maggie to the guest of honor, who sat in a big leather chair at the far end of the room, next to the fire crackling in the hearth.
“Hello, Aimee,” he said and rose to meet her, a warm smile spreading slowly, lazily, along his full, inviting lips, his impossibly blue eyes probing into her own.
It was Orias Morrow.
Chin dug into the top drawer of an old bureau sitting in a corner of the barn that served as his kwoon. He took out a leather bag, and from it, he fished an old, bronze Chinese coin. Zhai sat in a straight-back wooden chair in the middle of the old barn, now filled with flickering candlelight. Chin took the other chair, facing his student.
“Is it going to be painful or anything?” Zhai asked.
Chin hesitated. He’d learned to love the Wu-de with all his heart, but the most difficult part of the code was its prohibition against lying, even when it was a merciful deceit. “Not physically,” he said, and he held the coin up before Zhai, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. “Hypnosis is an ancient and natural practice.”
As Chin spoke, he expertly flipped the coin between the fingers of one hand. It travelled from his index finger to his pinky and then back again, glinting dully in the candlelight.
“You know, Zhai, I have always loved you as a son. Trust in that now, and let yourself relax, knowing I will never let any harm come to you. Keep your eyes on the coin and you will feel them grow heavy . . . so heavy you cannot keep them open . . . and finally, they will close. Good. Now you feel your mind growing heavy . . . heavier . . . heavier . . . sinking into the quiet, into yourself, into the past. You feel yourself sinking back in time, in age. See yourself at fourteen, now twelve, now ten. Imagine yourself falling back to the age you were when you first saw the men you described to me. Are you there now? Go to the moment you first see them. Are you there?”
Zhai, his eyes closed, mumbled, “Yes.”
“Good. Where are you?”
“In a box.”
“A box?” Chin was sure he’d misheard his student. “Where are you?”
“In the box,” Zhai repeated. “It’s cold.”
“Tell me about the box.”
“It’s dark in here. The walls are metal. It smells like sweat . . .”
A dark foreboding entered Chin’s heart, but he still didn’t understand what Zhai was talking about. “How did you get into the box?” he probed gently.
Zhai’s eyes snapped open, and there was terror and pain in them. Veins stood out on his forehead. Suddenly, all his muscles seemed to contract at once.
“Zhai,” Chin said. “You okay? Zhai?”
Zhai’s gaze was trained on the floor, then, when he tilted his face up, he was looking at Chin through someone else’s eyes.
“You!” Chin whispered in horror.
He barely got his hands up before Zhai attacked. He blocked the first strike, but he hadn’t been ready for the onslaught and Zhai’s second punch slipped through his defenses and sent his world spinning. If Chin had struck back at that moment, he could have regained the momentum, but it was against the Wu-de to harm his own student. Anyway, he would never deliberately try to hurt Zhai.
He stumbled backwards, trying to retreat, but Zhai—or the power possessing Zhai—didn’t let up, and Chin lost count of the blows pounding his face. When he opened his eyes again, he was lying on his back with Zhai standing over him, holding a chair over his head. The marks on both of Zhai’s hands glowed a sizzling crimson.
“Hello, Chin,” Zhai said, in a low, guttural voice that belonged to someone else.
The last thing Chin saw before blackness claimed him was the chair coming down.
Chapter Seventeen
Aimee sat at one end the long dining table and her father sat at the other, with Rick and Maggie on her left and Orias on her right. He had stood to greet her when she’d entered the living room and after he and Jack finished their cocktails, he’d offered her his arm and escorted her in to dinner. His easy, impeccable good manners seemed to have a positive effect on the Banfield men. When Rick started to give Maggie a hard time about being late, one curious glance from Orias was enough to settle him down.
Aimee had to admit, Orias had a charismatic presence, a quality of power and strength that was intoxicating. She had never seen her dad so agreeable and charming, and she wondered what he wanted from this intriguing stranger. At least she wasn’t sitting across the table from him. She could not have tolerated those arresting eyes on her for very long.
“Well, Orias, you certainly impressed my business partner at that career-day event,” her dad was saying. She forced herself to pay attention. “He came away raving about you—and Cheung Shao does not rave about anything.”
“Thank you, Mr. Banfield,” said Orias. “It’s nice to be back in Middleburg.�
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“I find it odd that Oberon never mentioned having a son. And please—call me Jack.”
“My father and I have been estranged for many years, Jack,” Orias said. “I grew up in New York, in my mother’s home, but I came here for a couple of summers. I used to love playing down by the tracks. Probably because there were all those signs telling us not to,” he added with an appealing chuckle. Jack and Rick laughed, too, and Aimee toyed with her shrimp cocktail. Her stomach was in knots again for the first time in weeks, and she had yet to take a bite.
“Well Orias, we owe you a debt of gratitude,” Jack was saying. “I’ve never heard of an ointment that can fix a broken arm.”
Orias glanced at Rick. “Perhaps it was a simple misdiagnosis.”
“The x-rays showed a break—I saw them myself,” said Jack.
“Maybe the technician accidentally switched them with another patient’s,” their guest responded politely. “I believe that happens more frequently than we know.”
Jack looked at him speculatively for a moment before he agreed. “You’re right, of course. That’s got to be it. All the same—if you hadn’t cracked that cast off and used your ointment so Rick could see it was okay, he would have been sidelined for the rest of the season.”
“And word on the street is he got a win Friday night.” Orias reached across the table and gave Rick a high five. “Good work, man.”
GHOST CROWN: THE TRACKS TRILOGY - Book Two Page 25