“Then your friend will die also,” Zymon replied coolly.
“I don’t have any friends.”
“You won’t let your friend die,” his voice wavered.
Chidi pressed the blade so deep she thought she might cut through muscle. “I don’t have any friends.”
“If I order him to let go…you will give us our freedom, yes?”
“We work for Crayfish Collins,” said Lenny, picking up the gun at his feet. “And the Crayfish don’t give nobody nothin’.”
“But you can,” Zymon said. “Give us our freed—”
“We let ya go and it’s our heads.” Lenny sneered.
“What if I could give you freedom? I am a forger...I could give you all freedom,” Zymon said. He turned his head to address Chidi. “You are their translator, yes? Tell me, did they give you the notebooks to read?”
Chidi’s gaze drifted.
“Don’t answer that, Cheeds!”
“Inside are the accounts,” said Zymon. “The names of all we have worked to free together. You know I speak true if you have seen them. Tell your captain!”
Chidi licked her lips. “Lenny…What he says might be—”
“Stay outta of this, Cheeds!” Lenny snarled. He cocked the gun, aimed it at Zymon’s head. “Last chance, Gorski…tell ya pet to back off, or join him in Fiddla’s Green.”
Zymon spoke some words softly.
The Leopard Seal’s brown eyes flickered in its master’s direction. It waited for Zymon to speak the words again. The seal released Paulo. Its long tongue lolled out like it wanted to rid the taste of its former captive.
Paulo grabbed the seal by the throat. “Where’s Ellie?”
“Paulie,” Lenny yelled. “Let him go.”
“Not till they tell me where Ellie is!”
“She is locked in the hold,” Zymon said calmly.
“Alive?”
Zymon hesitated.
Paulo shoved the Leopard Seal away, and hurried off the bus with Racer trailing after.
“Cheeds,” said Lenny. “I got Gorski. Help the Lepa’ outta his suit.”
Chidi took the dagger away from Zymon’s throat. She warily approached the Leopard Seal, kept her dagger free in case it decided to lunge. Its mouth yawned wide. Chidi tried not to focus on its teeth. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the seal’s upper lip. She took hold of it quickly, and pulled up and back over its head. She stepped away the moment the changes began.
In seconds, the seal regressed into the same man she had battled at the Shedd Aquarium. Unkempt hair covered his thin face and he remained on all fours, his head bowed as he muttered.
He almost looks like he could be praying. The thought unsettled her. To what god though?
“Now you let us go,” Zymon said.
Lenny stonewalled him. “How did he find us?”
Zymon smiled. “Tracking is but one of Wotjek’s many talents.”
“He didn’t track ya all this way on foot,” Lenny said. “Highways don’t leave trails like trekkin’ through the Salt and ova the reefs. Nobody smells that good.”
Zymon grinned. “Your master has a far reach and many friends, yes, but he is not the only one. Perhaps I have others friends who helped Wotjek find me. It might be possible these same friends could help you.”
“Nobody helps in the Salt,” said Chidi. “So why does he follow you? You own him?”
A shadow crossed Zymon’s face. “I have never owned a slave. Nor do I intend to. I also have no desire to be one again. Another reason Wotjek follows me. To attend my last wishes should the need arise.”
“Speak English, Gorski,” said Lenny. “Whattaya mean attend—”
“The Leper will kill him,” Chidi said. “I’ve met others with similar deals. If they’re ever captured, Zymon wants Wotjek to kill him.”
Zymon nodded. “That is why I am hoping you will free us and allow me to help you in exchange. I wish to live and return to my family.”
Lenny kept his aim trained. “Hope all ya want. It’s not happenin’.”
“You needn’t be frightened,” said Zymon. “Your owner will never find you after I have helped you. Take this bus…take me home. I will find someone to remove your Selkie coats. A suitable place for you to hide—”
“Shuddup, Gorski.”
Chidi heard a cough at the front of the bus.
Ellie ascended the stairs unassisted, despite Paulo’s attempts to help her. Though matted against her sweaty forehead, her bangs could not conceal her half-closed right eye which had already turned a deep purple. The bruises had not dampened her spirit. Seeing Wotjek on his hands and knees, she rushed ahead to land a few well-placed kicks before Paulo pulled her away.
“Let go of me,” she yelled. “He’s mine!”
Allambee came last up the steps, his head hung low. Chidi could see no bruises on him, but he did not seem the same boy she had left behind earlier that morning. He sat in the driver’s seat, gripped the steering wheel, and pretended to drive.
What did they do to you?
“Elle, ya all right?” Lenny asked.
“Voy a estar mejor cuando me dejas matar a esta porquería!” she said.
“Whateva that means,” Lenny said. “Cheeds, check the Lepa’s pockets.”
Chidi patted Wotjek’s Selkie pocket first, then his jeans. She heard a metallic jingle. “Empty it.”
Wotjek rose to his full height to look down on her.
She glared back. “Empty it.”
“Wotjek,” said Zymon. “Zrób jak mówi.”
Wotjek reached into his pocket and took out a set of keys. A pocket-sized silver anchor dangled from the metal ring. He gave them to Chidi.
“There. You see,” Zymon said. “We can work through this without bloodshed.”
Chidi twirled the anchor between her fingers. What do these go to?
“Paulie,” said Lenny. “Get these two down in the hold. Put ’em in separate cells too. Racer, help him out.”
Paulo pulled at Wotjek’s hoodie. Again, he would not move.
“My friend goes nowhere without my command,” said Zymon.
“Oh, I dunno about that.” Lenny turned his aim on Wotjek. “I could send him to Fiddla’s Green right now. Then there’d be no one here to save ya from bein’ made a slave again.”
Chidi didn’t see the need for the threat. Death does not frighten a man like him. She looked at Wotjek. What does Zymon have to hold such power over you?
Zymon opened his arms wide. “I welcome you to shoot me as well.”
When Lenny did not, Zymon lowered his arms. “Or perhaps you keep me for another reason. You must know many would delight in my capture and pay you a handsome sum. I will triple their reward.”
Chidi glanced at Lenny. She knew his answer even before he spoke.
“It’s not happenin’.”
Zymon tsked. “A shame. Perhaps I should speak with someone else…” He turned his attention to Chidi. “Unaweza kuelewa mimi?”
Why is he talking to me?
Lenny’s brow furrowed. “Whattaya doin’, Gorski?”
Zymon studied Chidi’s face. When she said nothing in reply, he tried a different language. “Em pot entendre?”
He knows I’m a translator!
Zymon continued, undeterred. “Dívka, mluvíte česky?”
Girl, do you speak Czech? Chidi straightened.
Zymon smiled.
“Stop!” Lenny knocked Zymon to the ground. “Stop talkin’ to her!”
Chidi looked from Lenny to Zymon then back again. “Ano. Mluvím česky,” she replied. Yes…I speak Czech.
“Good,” Zymon continued to speak in Czech. “Do me a favor and shoot this fool. Then I will help to free you and your friends.”
The gun wavered in Chidi’s hand. “My-my owner will come for me.”
Zymon shook his head. “Wotjek will handle him. Then you will be free.”
Lenny clocked Zymon in his temple with the butt of his gun. “What’s he sayin’ to
ya, Cheeds?”
“He-he said…he’ll help free all of us.”
“That all?”
No. Chidi kept the thought to herself. He had been mostly kind to her in the short time they had known one another. Far better than most other captains she had been loaned to. She studied his face for an answer. But will you listen to reason?
“Cheeds…is that all?”
“Yes,” she said. “He wants to help us, but we have to free him.”
Lenny frowned. “Paulie...do ya thing.”
The attack came swiftly. Paulo wrapped Wotjek in a bear hug while Racer wrangled his feet.
“No!” Zymon sprung away.
Lenny fired and missed.
Zymon knocked Chidi out of his way. She slipped and fell into the glass, her head cracking off the same chair she had tried to hurdle. She saw Ellie spear Zymon to the ground.
“You like hitting women?” Ellie asked. “How about one who hits back?”
She slammed him again and again until Lenny pulled her away.
Chidi sat up. She heard Wotjek snarling and spitting as Paulo and Racer dragged him off the bus.
“No…” Zymon cried. He struggled to grasp anything solid to keep Ellie from pulling him down the aisle. His eyes found Chidi. “Destroy them, girl! You must destroy the accounts!”
Ellie pulled him down the steps.
I wouldn’t dare destroy such valuable information. But why does he want them gone?
“Great. Outta bullets.” Lenny threw the gun aside and turned his gaze on Chidi. “He talkin’ about those books we lifted yesta’day?”
“I-I think so.”
She slipped off her backpack, unzipped it, and spilled the notebooks on the now wobbly table.
Lenny flipped through them, only stopping on the illustrated pages. He glanced up at her. “Ya believe him?”
“Hard to say. There are names in there, sure. Whether he’s telling the truth and they’re names of other slaves he’s helped free, or not…I don’t know.”
“Could be a list of all the slaves he owns,” Lenny suggested. “Maybe even a hit list.”
“Maybe.”
Lenny hopped onto a broken couch. He flipped open a new notebook, studied its contents. He pointed to a hand drawn grid in the notebook’s middle filled with every kind of shape Chidi had ever seen, including others she had not. All varied in size and color. “All these names and markings—what do they mean?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Could be some kind of code maybe. I haven’t been able to crack it yet.”
Lenny rubbed his chin. “Why’d ya have ’em all in ya backpack?”
He knows I was going to run. Chidi stared back at him. “So I could study them while I ate. Try to figure out something that could help us catch Marisa. Like I told Paulo last night…it’s going to take some time to translate them all.”
Lenny thumbed through the rest of the notebook with an occasional pause here and there. Sighing, he tossed it aside. “Something ya wanna tell me, Cheeds?”
Why am I lying to him?
Ellie boarded the bus before Chidi could answer. “Hey, Len. Paulo wants to know—” She saw the scattered notebooks. “They are here! Which one of you had them?”
“I-I did,” Chidi said meekly.
“You took them inside the zoo today?”
Chidi nodded.
Ellie laughed. She came down the aisle and hugged Chidi so tight she thought her insides might burst. “It’s good you did. Those two would have been long gone before you all got back if these had been here.”
“Elle, whattaya talkin’ about?”
“The notebooks. That’s what they were after. It’s all Zymon kept asking me. Where are the books?” Ellie said, deepening her voice. “I know you’ve got them, what did you do with them? I told them I didn’t know anything, but his Leper kept hitting me. They finally understood I really didn’t know, or wasn’t going to tell them. That’s when they locked me and the kid down below.”
Chidi glanced to the front of the bus. “Did they hit Allambee too?”
“Not that I saw. I don’t think he talks much. He didn’t say anything down below either.”
“Ya think they planned on killin’ ya after they got the books?” Lenny asked.
Ellie’s chunky fingers danced on the table making quick clip-clop, clip-clop sounds one after the other. “Think if they wanted to kill me they’d have done it,” she said finally. “And I know they didn’t want the bus. Keys are still in the ignition. What made you come back, by the way?”
“Paulo,” Chidi said.
Ellie chuckled. “I figured he would think something off once he didn’t hear from me. That blubber-head’s nothing if not predictable.”
“Paulo saved your life,” Racer’s voice came from the front. He stood on the landing his arms draped over the front seat. “What’s the plan, Len?”
Lenny rubbed his temples. “Anyone heard from Henry or Oscar yet?”
“Just tried reaching them. Must have turned their crystals off,” Racer said. “Either that or they’re ignoring me.”
That’s not like Henry, Chidi thought.
“Hey, Len,” said Racer. “Where are your crystals?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lenny said. “Where’s Paulie?”
Racer hocked a loogie and spit out the open door. “Down by the hold. Pretty sure he’s hoping our two captives try to escape so he can knock their skulls together.”
“They’re not goin’ anywhere. Someone let Zymon out.” Lenny’s gaze drifted to the driver’s seat. “I wanna find out who.”
“Allambee couldn’t have done it,” Chidi said quickly. “There aren’t any windows back there either so it’s not like Allambee could have climbed down.”
“Chidi’s right,” said Ellie. “The Leper let him out. He’s the one who kicked the doors in. Guy jumped on me and took my earrings before I could warn any of you. Zymon came up right behind him. I watched them let the kid out of the bedroom.”
Lenny yawned and rubbed his temples. “Fine, so if the kid didn’t help, how did that Lepa’ find us?”
“Sounds like the question of the day,” Ellie said.
Lenny glared at her. “No it’s not. We got much bigga questions than that.”
“Are you talking about the Silkstealer?” Chidi asked.
“Cheeds, I got enough problems to figure without ya joke—”
“I saw him.” She found the sketch Marisa had drawn and slid the notebook across the table.
Ellie crowded over to inspect it. “Nice hat. That tooth on the end is an Elephant Seal’s. And that one,” she pointed to the opposite side. “That’s a Sea Lion’s. Geez, how many different types has this guy bumped off?”
Lenny pushed the notebook away. “It don’t mean anything.”
Chidi stopped the notebook from flying off the table. “But she wrote it down…”
“Oh, well, here then,” Lenny picked up a pen and drew a crude stick figure. He shaded in an even worse cowboy hat. Below the figure, he wrote ‘The Silkstealer’ and initialed it with the date. He held up the picture. “Tell me, Cheeds. Did ya see this man?”
Chidi’s jaw clenched. “I know what I saw.”
“I saw him too,” Racer said. “I’ve never been so cold in my life. Felt like jumping in Arctic waters with no suit.”
“You’ve never been to the Arctic,” Ellie argued.
Racer stuck his tongue out at her.
“Fine,” Lenny said. “Let’s say it is him…what’s he doing here?”
Chidi shrugged. “I saw him standing guard outside the zoo. Looked like he might be waiting on someone.”
Lenny stared at the picture. “Racer, go check out the zoo entrance. Ya there to watch. No askin’ around about what’s happenin’, no shovin’ ya way up front. Just watch.”
Chidi watched Racer disappear down the stairwell. Will he come back though?
Lenny picked up Marisa’s picture of the Silkstealer again. “Elle,
go get Oscar’s phone outta the back.”
Ellie raised her eyebrows as she passed Chidi and disappeared into the bunkroom. Chidi listened to her rummage around.
“Cheeds, ya sure ya saw this guy?” Lenny rubbed his thumb under his chin. “Ya’d bet ya life on it?”
Chidi studied the picture and thought back to the bus stop. Marisa had shaded the picture well, highlighting his high cheekbones and sharp nose. “It’s him.”
Ellie rejoined them. “Here it is. What do you want to do with it?”
“Do a search. Find me a teenager named Weava.”
“That’s pretty broad strokes...”
“Look, I dunno know what all ya do,” Lenny said. “Ya supposed to know how to work this Dryback stuff. He’s a teenager I ran into today so I’m bettin’ he lives somewhere close. Look him up!”
“Hmmpph. Whatever you say,” Ellie said. Her finger moved across the screen as she pulled up a search engine to type the name. She clicked on a social networking site and scrolled through the names with individual pictures beside them.
“There.” Lenny hit the screen. “That one. Garrett Weava.”
“Good thing he doesn’t have any privacy settings up,” Ellie said. “Okay, he’s a senior at Tiber High School and he lives in Lavere, Indiana. His birthday is January 24th, he likes women, gaming, pulling pranks, yada, yada, yada. He does not like reality TV, sports, and something called the P.J. club…whatever that is.”
“What else?”
“He’s listed a couple close friends…” Ellie scrolled through his pictures. “The fat white boy with him is named Johnny Hickey. Most of his photo albums just show the two of them making dumb faces. Aww, he’s also friends with his mom, Cristina Weaver. Isn’t that precious. The other close friend is some girl named Sydney Gao.”
“Find his home address and the school’s.”
Ellie created a new search engine and cross-referenced both Garrett’s name and Cristina’s. She found a white page ad listing his school address: 816 N. State Road 23, Lavere, Indiana, 46071.
“Anything else, oh wise and powerful master?”
Lenny grabbed a pen and scrap piece of paper to jot down Weaver’s address. “Pack those notebooks, Cheeds. Ya comin’ with me.”
“With you? Where we going?”
“To find Garrett Weava.”
Why are we going after a teenager he ran into at the zoo? Chidi reluctantly obeyed and put the notebooks in her bag.
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