“Thanks, Weston. We appreciate your help,” Hackett said. He shook the boy’s hand and then looked at the lovely young girl there with him. “And you too, miss. Thanks.”
Hackett reached for the girl’s delicate hand, but she was momentarily distracted, glancing out the back window of the station, where Blipton was standing on the steps of the mobile lab, talking on his cell phone.
It was only for an instant, though, and then the girl’s sharp eyes flicked back to Hackett. She took his hand and squeezed it and her strength surprised him.
“I’m Li, nice to meet you,” she said and smiled.
* * *
Saturday morning Zhai was in the basement of the Shao house. He had just run through some attack sequences on his Mook Jong in preparation for his battle with Rick that night and had finished his cool down. Now he was anxious to get to his violin. Master Chin would have advised him to spend the day of a fight in silent, relaxed meditation—or better yet, trying to find a way to avert the battle. He missed his sifu’s wise counsel, and as the appointed time of the confrontation drew nearer, Zhai felt increasingly nervous. It wasn’t his own abilities that worried him. He was confident that he could, if not defeat Rick outright, at least survive the fight and teach his former second-in-command a lesson in humility. He wasn’t worried that his honor or his body would receive injury today. He was concerned that the feeling with which Shen was filling him—a jittery, buzzing sensation of uncontainable electricity—meant what it did when he’d felt it before: major events would soon come to pass in Middleburg. Last time he’d felt this way, his sidai Raphael had disappeared. Zhai wondered if tonight it might be his turn.
There was another possibility, too. What if Rick didn’t show? He and Bran had been suspended from school for the last three days, and no one had seen them outside of school, either. But Rick never missed an opportunity for a fight. Zhai was sure that, wherever he was, he would make it back in time for their face-off.
He picked up his violin, took a few deep, relaxing breaths and began to play, eager to lose himself in the music. He’d only managed a few bars when his father entered.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Zhai,” he said, and Zhai noticed that he was more subdued than ever. “I heard you playing. Would you be so kind as to honor a request? Brahms concerto in D major?”
Zhai eyed his father warily. “It’s such a sad piece. Are you sure?”
“If you please.”
“Of course, Father.”
He began, the bow slithering across the strings as smoothly as a feather moving across a tabletop. It was a gentle, serene melody, and Zhai felt his apprehension, his anger, and his nervousness drifting away on the wings of the glorious, soaring strains.
When he was finished, he let the violin slip from beneath his chin. His father was smiling warmly at him, and in the simplicity of his happiness, he almost seemed childlike. The sight gave Zhai pause. He’d never once seen his father shrug off the black mantle of tension and rectitude he wrapped himself in day and night. Now, he seemed utterly fallible, flawed, human, and Zhai wondered if the fact that he knew about the tattoo over his father’s heart, and hence his mortality, had made the revelation possible.
“Lovely,” his father pronounced. “Such a sweet, calming piece. Thank you. It was just what I needed.”
Zhai smiled. “I’m glad, Father.” He started putting the instrument away.
“And . . . I have another request,” his father said. “Li wants to go down to Macomb Lake this afternoon, to meet with some friends from school. Something about selecting a site for the spring break party. Bob is driving Lotus today. Will you take her?”
“Sure,” Zhai said. “But I can’t stay too long. I have plans later.”
“Ah . . . Kate?” his father asked. The inflection of his words betrayed interest, but his face remained passive.
“No,” Zhai said truthfully. “With Rick.”
His father nodded. “Well, I’ll tell Li you’ll take her.” He turned to leave but paused in the doorway and turned back. “It has come to my attention that there are people staying in the guesthouse. Some of your friends, I believe.”
Zhai felt as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. He’d known it was only a matter of time before his father and Lotus found out.
“Yes,” Zhai said, facing his father squarely, a hint of accusation in his tone. “They were thrown out of their home by Jack Banfield’s redevelopment project. They have nowhere to go.”
Cheung nodded slowly. “You have your mother’s heart,” he said. “A giving heart. Still, that guesthouse belongs to me, Zhai, and to Lotus. It is not yours to give. You should have asked me first. Lotus will not be pleased.”
Zhai sighed heavily. “Yes, sir.”
“So—please do not tell her,” his father finished, and Zhai saw the hint of a smile.
Zhai gaped at him. “They can stay?”
“For a while,” Cheung Shao said, and he left the room.
* * *
When Aimee had slipped out of Orias’s grasp, she’d teleported to the top of the tunnel mountain, to a spot that overlooked the town. It was peaceful up there, and beautiful. The storm that had blown through during the wedding had dissipated as fast as it had come, sweeping the sky clear except for a few crisp, fast-moving clouds set against a pale-blue firmament. She sat there for a while, collecting her thoughts and making a plan.
Orias was right, of course. She shouldn’t go slipping in and out of public places just because she could or because it was easier than asking for a ride or dealing with a situation. All that would do was complicate her life. He was right about something else, too. She shouldn’t go after her mother alone, but she couldn’t ask him to go with her again, either—he would just try to talk her out of it. Her dad was on his honeymoon and, like Rick, he would be no help anyway. She didn’t want a confrontation with her brother so she decided against going home.
She didn’t need much—just a couple of bottles of water, a flashlight, matches, and some food, and she could get all that from Dalton. And she knew that she should tell someone—a grownup, like Lily Rose—where she was going. She had one shard from the crystal ring, and she thought Dalton would give her the one she carried. And maybe, just maybe, those two pieces, combined with her ability, would be enough to get the Wheel of Illusion working again, so she could teleport back to Middleburg in 1877.
Before the ring had shattered, the Wheel had taken her—and someone—to other realms, other times. As she made her way to Lily Rose’s house, she tried to remember who it was.
Dalton answered the door and led her into the living room where Lily Rose, Maggie, and Miss Pembrook were waiting—like they were having a meeting or something, Aimee thought.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Well,” Dalton began. “We were just—”
“Praying for you,” Lily Rose finished, a serene smile wrinkling her features. “So good to see you here, my dear. And it’s good to see you walking on the two good legs God gave you.”
Aimee glanced from one face to the other. “What do you mean?”
Dalton hesitated and then confessed. “We were sort of talking about you, Aimee. We’ve been worried about you. You’ve been kind of out of it since you hooked up with Orias.”
“And there’s that little matter of how you just up and disappeared from the courthouse today,” Lily Rose put in. “We decided to get together and try to figure it out.”
“So this is some kind of intervention?” Aimee asked.
“I guess you could call it that,” said Lily Rose. Dalton and Miss Pembrook nodded in agreement. “So . . . what’s been going on, little girl?”
Aimee was confused—and touched—by their concern. “I don’t know,” she said. “Okay—I guess I have been spending a lot of time with Orias an
d not enough with my friends.” She knew they all thought him cold and unapproachable. How could she make them understand that he was a kind, loving, patient guy who had helped her more than all the shrinks at Mountain High Academy? “Orias is good for me,” she said, louder than she’d intended. “All he’s done is care for me when no one else has.”
“We all care about you,” Miss Pembrook said gently.
Aimee had a sudden feeling of panic, like the world would collapse around her at any moment. Lily Rose moved quickly to her side and put one age-gnarled hand on her arm.
“Sit a spell with us, child, and have some of my lemonade.”
Looking into the old woman’s two different colored eyes, Aimee saw in them what she was longing for: peace. But she still felt afraid—not for herself, but for Orias. What if something happened to him when she wasn’t there to help him? What if he couldn’t get away from Azaziel?
Not that she could protect a mighty Nephilim from the wrath of an even mightier fallen angel, of course, but she still felt a need to be with him. It hit her suddenly and hard that she could lose him, and it felt like a thorn lodged deep in her lungs, pricking her with every breath.
She couldn’t lose him.
She wanted to pull away, to slip back to Orias, into his arms, his house, his bed. But Lily Rose’s hand was on her arm like an anchor, gently tethering her to the earth. Those kind bright eyes were still upon her.
“Orias can take care of himself, Aimee,” she said calmly. “It’s time for you to go find your mama. And you know what? I betcha we can find a way.”
Lily Rose led her into the kitchen and sat her down at the table. Dalton and the others followed. Aimee was so moved by the love surrounding her that she couldn’t speak, and her vision was blurred by tears. When she blinked them away, she saw a glass of lemonade sitting in front of her, the white, flowered pattern on it bristling with water droplets.
The fear, sadness, and loss she felt threatened to dislodge her, to break her tenuous grip on time and space. In the beginning, it had been hard to slip. Now, it was almost too easy—and she could escape any situation, any fear, any moment of sadness with a single twist of her thoughts. She almost did it now, almost slipped out of Lily Rose’s kitchen, but when she wrapped her hand around the cool glass, it seemed to hold her in place. And when she took that first sip of lemonade, it was like a blast of sunlight shining into the darkened recesses of her brain, chasing the shadows away.
“It’s fresh-squeezed,” Lily Rose said. “Grew the lemons myself in a tree out back. You drink deep now, my dear.”
And Aimee did.
Chapter 19
It was the first really nice day they’d had in weeks, now that the rain had cleared up. The temperature was climbing toward sixty and Zhai was standing at the edge of the inky-dark waters of Macomb Lake, holding Kate’s hand. It had been a tradition among Middleburg High students to congregate on this sad little patch of beach on the first nice day of the year for as long as anyone could remember. Of course, not everyone was there since the “first nice day” was a pretty subjective thing.
Li, Weston, and Li’s friend Amanda sat on the end of an ancient, rickety dock that jutted out into the reed-choked water. A few kids were sitting on blankets and looking out at the water while others walked along the shoreline, trying to skip stones on the lake’s surface. Zhai glanced down at Kate, and she smiled at him and moved closer. He put his arm around her, and she snuggled against him.
“’Tis a beautiful spot they’ve chosen for the party,” Kate said.
Zhai nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed.
“You’re worried,” Kate observed. “About your fight with Rick, is it?”
Zhai shrugged. “Not . . . worried exactly,” he hedged. “Okay, maybe I’m a little worried. Josh wants to fight Rick, too. And the way Rick has been acting lately, I’m afraid someone might get killed.”
Kate gazed at the water pensively. It shone with little glints, like bright light reflecting off a diamond set in black onyx. “So why fight?” she asked.
“Because, if I don’t, he’ll be the leader of the Toppers. And then the feud with the Flatliners will never end. Plus, we’ll never get enough of the ring shards together to bring Raphael back.”
A piercing scream made them look around. Some of the kids had found the knotted old rope that was attached to a massive willow tree that rose from one edge of the lake and they were taking turns swinging on it, out over the water and back again.
As Zhai watched, Li’s friend Amanda flew out over the water in a high arc before swinging gracefully back to shore. Li would be next.
“You want to try it?” Kate asked. “It looks like fun.”
Zhai looked at her. “And what if I fell in? The water is freezing!”
“But you only live once!” Kate laughed and tugged at his hand, leading him toward the tree.
“That’s not what the Buddhists think . . .”
“Sometimes, we should dive in first and think about the water later,” she said. “Otherwise, what is life but an endless bit of drudgery?” Zhai’s eyes locked on Kate’s and the magnetism between them was so strong he couldn’t look away. She leaned closer to him. “It’s easy,” she whispered. “You take the rope, you hold on tight, and you just go.”
As she pronounced this last word, her lips brushed against his. A shiver of desire rustled through Zhai and he closed his eyes, ready for her kiss, but a shout from Weston broke the spell.
“Be careful, Li!”
Li was standing next to the tree holding the rope. “Watch this!” she yelled.
She backed all the way up the grassy incline that sloped uphill next to the tree, and Zhai saw what she was going to do. If she got a running start, she could launch herself from there and gain more thrust, which would take her farther out over the water than any of them had gone. From the dock below Amanda was cheering her on, while Weston looked worried. She gave them a big smile.
“Woooo!” she yelled.
She raced downward toward the dark, glistening water, gripping the rope as she swung out over it, speeding through the air in a broad arc. Just as she reached the apex of her swing, there was a loud cracking sound, and the huge branch above her—the branch the rope was tied to—broke off the tree and fell. Li hit the water first, landing flat on her back with a huge splash and a loud smack. Then the two-foot thick bough hit the water, on top of her.
Zhai was already leaving Kate behind, sprinting across the beach and down the dock, shoving past Weston and Amanda, and diving into the water.
The chill hit him instantly, causing all his muscles to convulse at once in a massive spasm. He felt his heart pounding. As he thrashed his way to the spot where Li had gone in, his limbs ached with the cold. There was an uncomfortable tingling sensation, as if they were about to go numb.
Still, Li had not surfaced.
At last he reached the spot where she’d disappeared. Ripples still radiated out from where the branch had hit. His only consolation came when his feet found the mucky, sucking bottom waiting for him about five feet down—at least the water wasn’t too deep. He took a huge gulp of air and went under, and the rushing white noise of the water in his ears swallowed up the shouts of alarm from the shore.
He opened his eyes but could see nothing at all through the thick, drifting silt, so he closed them again, relying on his sense of touch as he groped around the muddy lake bottom for any trace of his sister. He found the smooth surface of the dead willow limb, and moved along its length, groping in the blackness for any sign of Li. There was none.
Out of air, he returned to the surface, took a huge breath, and then shot back to the bottom again. This time, he felt his sister’s small, smooth leg almost immediately. His fingers traced blindly up it, to her arm. He yanked, pulling her toward the surface, but she didn’t move. She wa
s stuck, pinned somehow. His hands traced up her arm now, to her shoulder and down to her back. Thrashing wildly, she almost knocked out one of his teeth before he could find the problem. The sleeve of her sweater was caught on one of the branches of the willow bough that was jammed into the muck. Quickly, he pulled her out of the sweater and an instant later he broke the surface, hauling his gasping, thrashing sister up with him.
Everyone on the beach cheered as Zhai and Li swam over to the dock and pulled themselves up onto the warped wooden planks. Then they both flopped down on their backs, gasping up at the sapphire spring sky.
Kate was at Zhai’s side, throwing a blanket around his shoulders, and Weston was with Li. Everyone else gathered around, too. They were all talking excitedly, but between his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, the shock of the cold water, and the oxygen deprivation, Zhai had trouble picking out one person’s words from another’s. Finally, he sat up and tilted his head to get the water out of his ears. Kate had also found a blanket for Li and was about to put it around her.
“Wait,” he said, and everyone went quiet. Under her sweater, Li had worn a pink cotton tank top and beneath the right strap Zhai spotted a dark discoloration on her skin. He came up on his knees and pulled the strap aside. It was a tattoo—of a Chinese symbol.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, squirming out of his grasp.
“What is that?” he asked.
“What is what?”
“The tattoo, on your back?”
Li’s eyes met his, and there was an instant of hesitation where he could see the wheels of thought turning in her mind. There were several thoughts moving through his, too.
Could the Snakes have somehow captured his sister and marked her, just as they’d marked him to enslave him, and as they’d marked his father so many years before? The possibility filled him with a chill much worse than Macomb Lake’s icy waters. But it couldn’t be—Li hadn’t disappeared, as he had. She hadn’t been acting strangely at all.
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