I chuckled. “I love you, Billy.”
His gray eyes misted. “I love you, too.” Then he was gone.
“Don’t even think of saying goodbye to me,” Gavin said, grinning.
“I won’t, and it’s not like we won’t talk each day. I’ve gotten a lot better at projecting.”
He nodded. “I’ll be right here when you get back.”
I clung to him for several minutes, his kiss burning into my memory. When I finally let go, he held a familiar necklace. “I found it in your box, but I think it’s due for a change.”
The tiny gold bird swirled and transformed into a Celtic Knot—two triquetras intertwined, Gavin and me. He put it over my head, kissed me again, and then shifted forms. I followed him until he passed out of my range. So, this is it. I scanned the Weald one last time, committing it to memory, unsure whether I’d ever see it again, and climbed into the Green Shelby I’d given my father. It snarled to life and I pulled up the hill. At the gate, Candace and Ronnie blocked my exit.
“I’ve had all the goodbyes I can handle for one day.”
“Girl, this isn’t a goodbye,” Ronnie said, yanking open the passenger door.
“You’re not going with me.”
“Oh, whatever,” Candace said, crawling in the backseat with her bag.
“I’m serious, Candace, you can’t go with me.”
Ronnie slid in the passenger seat and fastened his seatbelt, slinging his bag into the backseat. He donned a pair of dark glasses and spiked his blond hair in the vanity mirror. “Maggie, you need us, and deep down you know it.”
“Guys, I don’t have any idea where I’m going yet.”
“Exactly, Mags. You absolutely need us. Well, me, at least,” Candace said, thumping Ronnie in the back of the head, a devilish smile plastered on her face.
“Well, Ozark Barbie, thanks for the vote of confidence,” Ronnie quipped, poking fun at her blonde hair once again.
“Shove it, Draco.”
I tried not to laugh, but snorted anyway.
Ronnie cocked his jaw to the side. Without looking down, he grabbed a pen out of the console and waved it over his shoulder at Candace. “Stupefy.”
Candace and I both cackled. I thought about ordering them out of the car, or taking them back to Candace’s house and blowing them out, but I really wanted company all of a sudden. I could protect them as well as the Ohanzee could, and with Clóca, I could protect them better than most.
Candace stopped chuckling. “Ahem. We’re going. The debate is over, Mags. We’ve already told our parents we’re off to Europe for a few weeks, your treat. Punch it.”
“Where’s Doug?” I asked.
Ronnie stammered, “He’s…he dropped us off…and left…sorry.”
“No, that’s best.”
“So, you’re waiting for what, exactly?” Candace asked.
My brain was telling me to let them out, but my gut wanted them to stay. Tse-xo-be did say to listen to my intuition. “Nothing.”
TWELVE
EXODUS
Mom and Mitch were on my mind when we parked the Shelby at the St. Louis airport. Using the identification cards Gavin gave us, we boarded a flight for Ireland with a connection in New York. Curiosity and fear got the best of me, so halfway into the flight I projected. It was a mistake. As soon as I made the connection, Mara began moving. What did I just do?
I didn’t know whether to drop the connection and hope she couldn’t find me, or watch her as she closed. I chose the latter. She took physical form in a moonlit valley between two mountains and began moving quickly away into the air. In the darkness of night, I couldn’t tell what direction she was moving—whether she was closing on us or not—but fist forming in the pit of my stomach was impossible to ignore.
For forty-five minutes I tracked her as she streaked across the darkened landscape, slowly spiraling, then gaining altitude. Somewhere in the distance, my heart raced when the silhouette of a jet appeared below her reflecting moonlight on the fuselage and wings. She closed on the craft with such speed, it appeared as if it was parked on a runway. I watched as she descended until she hovered just over the tail. Panic tugged at my mind. It occurred to me that Mara wasn’t hidden behind Clóca, so I knew I’d be able to sense her from my seat. Candace was staring at me, wild-eyed, when I snapped back to my body. Extending my mind, I expected to find Mara on top of us. Nothing. She wasn’t anywhere I could sense her. Without hesitation, I projected again, just in time to see her slice a hole through the aluminum craft. I popped back into my body and spun around in my seat, ready to fight back. The cabin lights were dimmed over all but two passengers. One looked up from his book and smiled. There was no hole in the roof, no Mara.
“What is it?” Candace asked.
Slowly, I sank back into my seat. “Mara’s out of the ground. She’s looking for us—how long before we land?”
“Thirty minutes. Will we make it?” she asked in a breathless voice.
I nodded and smiled.
Candace studied my face, like she always did. She bit her lip and pushed her head back into the seat, unconvinced.
“Candace,” I whispered, “I don’t know where she is, except that she isn’t here.”
“Please check again.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. Somehow she can see me when I track her.”
She stared at me, nodding slightly.
“Okay, give me a minute,” I said.
The instant I made the connection with Mara, I felt disoriented. There were flames in the darkness, screeching, tearing sounds and things flying past her in a rush of buffeting wind. She clawed at something in the darkness, flinging it out of her way. It was man, a young man, and she was tossing him out of a gaping hole in the plane’s fuselage. She tore at another, then another. My tether pulled harder than it ever had and snapped me back.
“How long?” I asked.
“Fifteen minutes, we’re descending. Will we make it?”
“Yes, we will. She’s…busy.”
Candace’s pale face turned completely white, her brows pressed together. “It was that bad?”
Blinking threatened to bring the images back, so I fought to keep my eyes open well past the point of burning. “Yes. Horrible.”
Our plane landed, and gradually the groggy passengers filled the aisle to await disembarking. Mara still hadn’t found us, but I began feeling claustrophobic from being stuck on the plane at the terminal. When we finally made it past the gangway and into the terminal, the muscles in my chest relaxed.
Ronnie had been sitting two rows ahead of us and remained completely oblivious. “What do you want to do? Our next flight isn’t for four hours.”
“Are you guys hungry?” I asked, still trying to relax.
Ronnie looked over my shoulder and nodded. “There’s a restaurant over there.”
After sliding into a dark booth and ordering food, I tried to focus on what to do next. Ronnie studied Candace and me, shifting his gaze back and forth. “What’s going on? Did I miss something?”
“You were asleep, I didn’t want to wake you...”
He sat up a little straighter, twisting his head slightly to look around the green glass lamp shade between us. “Something bad happened, didn’t it?”
“Mara came out of hiding. She tried to find me—saw that we were flying.”
He sat back in the booth and looked down at his shaking hands. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she do that?” he asked, pointing to the television.
Everyone in the restaurant watched the program. Lost in my thoughts, I hadn’t noticed.
CNN reported breaking news live from the scene of a disaster. I lowered the Air barrier and we all listened to the reporter discussing the wreckage from the second plane crash in an hour. The reporter said something about terrorism and no survivors.
Candace’s voice was excited, much higher pitched than normal, when she whispered, “Did she do t
hat…both of them?”
“I…I only saw one, but yes, I think she did. Clearly, we can’t fly to Ireland.”
Saint Louis to New York was a short flight, but the one to Ireland wasn’t. If she figured out where we were going, even noticed that we were flying over the ocean, she’d have enough time to find us. We were too vulnerable in the air.
Candace looked off into the distance. “That’s not an option anyway—look at the board. All flights are cancelled. The feds must think it’s terrorism.”
I looked at her, “That’s exactly what it is, only her target is me, not them.”
“We can go by boat, can’t we?” Ronnie asked.
I shook my head. “What’s to stop her from sinking all the ships?”
Ronnie looked at me and hunched his shoulders. “Nothing, I guess.”
Candace whispered, “They’re talking about a third plane, now.”
My throat felt dry and sweat began to bead on my forehead. I drained a Diet Coke and switched to water. Neither helped. I couldn’t seem to keep moisture in my mouth. Ronnie pushed his water across the table to me, and I started in on it.
“You plan to face her, don’t you?” he asked.
I nodded. “If I don’t, she’ll keep killing. She’s sending me a message. It’s time I send her one.”
“If there’s a bright side,” Candace started, “Mara wasn’t able to find us. Her connection to you isn’t like a homing beacon.”
I thought about it, and she was right. Mara searched for me and destroyed everything in her path. When I connected with her, she only knew I was flying. It was some comfort, but not much.
“Maybe she only sees me when I connect to her. But if she’d been watching me all along, she saw us buy tickets to Ireland—I just don’t know. She sent two Arustari to the house in Washington the last night—she knew.”
Candace shook her head. “She may have figured it out, but she had nine days to find you in Washington. Nine days, and not until the last day did she send them? Think about it, she’s not as good at it as you are.”
I smiled. She was right again, but one fact remained: Mara did find me. “I need to find a big empty place, but that’s not going to be easy—this is New York.”
“Give me a minute.” Candace pulled an iPad out of her bag. “We’re here,” she said to herself, pointing to LaGuardia Airport on a map. “Big empty spaces…warehouse, commercial space…” she muttered. In five minutes, she had a list of warehouse spaces for lease. “No, no,” she said as she scanned each one. She pointed to an ad. “Let’s look at this one...where are you?” she muttered to herself, tapping the screen. “There, it’s a few miles from here…looks like a harbor of some kind. Two hundred and twelve thousand square feet.” She looked up, chewing on her lower lip. “I’m terrified. It looks…so creepy. Are you sure about this?”
Doubt clawed its way into my mind, but I focused on the television for a second—CNN was showing the third crash site from the air—it was just a long strip of small fires and debris in the night, surrounded by flashing red and blue lights. People are dying. “I have no choice.”
We booked a room in a boutique hotel a few miles from the airport, hoping to blend into the masses by avoiding one of the major chains. I dropped my bags on the bed and stared at the amazing view of Manhattan—all lit up at night, it was breathtaking. It was yet another place I had always wanted to visit, but like everywhere I’d been in the past three years, I didn’t have time to explore or enjoy it. I felt like a walking omen—like Cassandra in Greek mythology, I was a harbinger of death and destruction. Oh shut the freak up, my inner voice scolded. You killed that cow, remember?
My courage returned and I noticed a smile appear in my reflection. “Yes. Yes I did.”
THIRTEEN
LESSONS
Ronnie and Candace wanted to go with me, but I wouldn’t let them. With instructions to disappear into Manhattan if I wasn’t back by sunrise, they reluctantly let me leave. Clad in black leather pants, black boots, and a matching jacket, I felt stupid crossing the lounge on the first floor of the hotel. The night air was cool but smelled of diesel exhaust—not a smell I was used to. The sounds of buses and cars stopping and starting, of tires on uneven pavement, and a distant siren filled my ears.
After thirty minutes of waiting, the valet appeared with the car we’d rented. I plugged the address into the navigation system and waited for the route to confirm, dryness filling my mouth again. This part of the city was nothing but an expanse of pavement and buildings that all looked the same, block after block. I crossed a bridge that was tall enough to see Manhattan gleaming to my right, and then descended back into a concrete and brick valley, with views of nothing but grimy streets. The computerized voice led me through a nicer residential area of row houses, lined up side by side for blocks, punctuated by corner stores. At four in the morning, there were only a few people milling about on the sidewalks.
The bright voice told me to turn left on Third. I passed under an elevated road and followed Third Avenue south to an area of anonymous four and five story buildings and large vacant parking lots. The happy voice directed me to turn right, away from the light traffic on Third Street and into an area with a handful of parked cars. The building on my left looked abandoned—a massive, filthy concrete facade, seven or eight stories tall, with rows of large broken windows all set behind a chain link fence. My mouth felt as dry as baked dirt. “Oh my gosh, what a freaking nightmare. I can’t do this.” You have no choice. You can do it.
When my eyes closed, I started shaking. “Breathe,” I commanded. My chest tightened around my lungs and my stomach folded. “Oh god…” I moaned. Each breath came a little harder, and I couldn’t seem to calm down enough to project. Move. I need to move.
Gingerly, I opened the car door and forced my feet onto the pavement. Spreading my mind, I felt a few cars passing on the elevated road behind me, and fewer on Third Avenue. A ship of some kind churned south in the dark harbor, and beyond it, there were cars navigating some distant street. I closed my eyes and managed to project just a few feet above my body. I concentrated on the building, floating through the shadowy space from one dark room to the next. There were rats, garbage, and pieces of broken and abandoned equipment, but no people.
Then I did it—I concentrated on Mara. I found her, uncloaked, standing atop a building, staring at the Manhattan skyline. She smiled and cloaked herself. Just a few miles away from me, she was closer than I thought she’d be. My heart skipped a beat. I dropped the connection and sprinted toward the building, blowing a hole in the fence before I got to it. My invisible fingers tore a wide gap in a large window, and I leapt inside. My eyes slowly adjusted to the large room while my heart continued to race. I sat down and projected again. She lingered a thousand yards from where I waited. Then she turned and began moving north, away from me.
She headed back the way I’d just come. Candace, Ronnie…my mind cried.
With my mind cruising along beside her, I concentrated on a few words. “Afraid to face me. Coward. Just like that leech, Naji.”
I heard her screech with my physical ears, and made it back to my body just before she drifted onto the top floor. What is she waiting on? She’s wondering if I’m really alone, isn’t she. I screamed at the top of my lungs, “I’m here, all alone. Come get me!”
I channeled the essence of all four elements, and spread my mind again. She was cloaked. Two can play at that game. I wrapped Clóca around myself, and moved to the center of the space. My gut told me to move, quickly, out of the room. I sprinted away toward a broad opening and into another room as the ceiling began to crumble above where I’d just been. Huge pieces of concrete fell behind me, whipping up a cloud of dust. A strip of electric conduit spun wildly, missing my barrier by a few inches. I concentrated and felt the source of the energy, just like Wakinyan had. My legs trembled.
All grew quiet again and she disappeared. Across the massive room, several hundred feet away, I pushed debris
across the floor. I felt her again, only two floors above me. Deafened by a crashing sound, a huge steel I-beam sliced through the ceiling and sank several feet into the concrete through the middle of an old folding chair I’d just moved. The “whoosh” sound of blood pumping in my ears replaced the noise of rubble clattering across the concrete.
Still further away, next to the window I’d flown through, I scooted a pile of loose paper with my mind. From just a floor above me, I felt her connect with the glass panes. Razor-sharp shards swirled in an expanding balloon, then shot across the room in all directions, snapping and exploding into dust on every surface.
For several seconds, all I could hear was my breathing. Her cold voice cut through the darkness. “Hülye gyerek, you did come by yourself after all.”
I said nothing.
“Afraid to answer me? Ha-ha, you should be. You are szegény kis halott kislány—a poor little dead girl. I wonder, will you pray for death before I give it to you?”
My entire body quaked, but I still didn’t utter a sound.
The air around me swirled, blowing the dust into a vortex. It cascaded off my barrier, but the floor buckled beneath me, thrusting me several feet into the air. I landed on my back, staring at the ceiling some thirty feet above. I deflected huge chunks of concrete that rained down on top of me. My mind reached to where she stood, and I grasped her body and yanked her toward the opening. She spun out of my grip and cloaked. That didn’t work.
I blew the debris across the room, and stood. A piece of steel shot in my direction, I didn’t see it, but I felt it. Instinctively, I tried to deflect, but she forced it past my barrier. It glanced off my left arm, as I hurled myself in the opposite direction, splaying out on chunks of concrete. The snap in my arm echoed in my head, but I didn’t feel pain at first. My entire arm felt numb and wet. I rolled over and tried to stand, but I couldn’t. She pinned me back, forcing the air out of my chest.
Panic heightened my senses to the point I was seeing things that weren’t really there.
She released her grip on my chest and I swallowed gulps of air. The numbness in my arm quickly turned to throbbing pain when she pressed down on the break, twisting it. As I screamed, I managed to focus just enough to create Clóca, severing her hold on me, but I struggled to maintain it. In fact, I was fighting to main control of any of the elements—I’d never fought through this kind of pain before. Don’t pass out.