Pawn (Nightmares Trilogy #1)

“What are you doing?” I asked.

  Devon shushed me. I wasn’t offended, though. When Devon got on a tangent, there was no distracting her. I crawled to the end of the mattress and watched as she Googled near-death experiences. I wanted to point out that mine wasn’t a near-death experience, that I’d actually died. But it felt like a small distinction.

  Devon’s nimble fingers flew across the keyboard, breaking stride only to move the wireless mouse and click on pertinent links. When she didn’t find whatever it was she was looking for on the web, she selected the Word icon from her task bar. She scrolled through a file folder labeled, “Junior Year Reports.” When she found a second folder named, “Independent Study,” she opened it. The title of the report was: The People Who Can’t Wear Watches.

  “Ah, got it!” she exclaimed, like a fisherman who’d just reeled in the biggest bass of his career.

  “Got what, exactly?” I asked, still playing Connect the Dots with the bits of information that had led Devon to a year-old report.

  “For the fake Asian’s independent study last year, I wrote a paper on NDEs.”

  I laughed despite myself. The “fake Asian” was Mrs. Chan. We called her that because she was as white as paper and the photos on her desk suggested her husband was as well.

  “I came across a study that suggests people who have NDEs sometimes exhibit electromagnetic sensitivity. I thought about you when I wrote the paper, but I dismissed the idea since I didn’t know you’d had an NDE,” she continued.

  Electromagnetic sensitivity? I should have been relieved. My freakish quirk wasn’t so freakish. It had a scientific explanation. Other people shared my plight. All the pieces started falling into place. If Kannon really had died when he was sixteen, he probably experienced the same battery-draining phenomenon that I did. That was how he guessed that I’d had an NDE, too.

  The dawning realization and relief were short-lived, quickly giving way to humiliation. I’d acted like a lunatic earlier. That poor kid just wanted to share his experience with someone who he thought would be understanding, and I’d just flipped my shit on him. Wow, who was crazy now?

  “I bet since you’ve both died and probably both have electromagnetic sensitivity, the sex would be electrifying. Shockingly awesome. A whole new meaning to pulsing–”

  “How romantic,” I said dryly, cutting her off before she could make any additional puns.

  “It sort of is. Do you know another girl who can say sparks literally fly when she touches her lover?” Devon always said the word “lover” the way Carrie did on Sex and the City when she talked about Alexander Petrovsky.

  “I don’t suppose dying and being brought back gives you the ability to read minds or see the future, does it?” I asked without thinking.

  Devon turned in her computer chair. “You mean is his dying somehow related to how he knew your name?”

  “Yeah,” I said, even though that wasn’t what I’d been thinking at all. I was really remembering the past week of my life and the dreams I’d been having.

  “No. At least not that I found. But I can do some more research,” Devon promised.

  I groaned and collapsed backwards onto the bed, throwing one arm dramatically over my eyes. “He must think I’m off my rocker,” I moaned.

  “I doubt that,” Devon said, the chair creaking as she rose and joined me on the mattress. “I would have freaked, too. And he could’ve chosen a more tactful way to break the news to you. Dipped his toe in the water instead of plunging in headfirst.”

  “You don’t get it. I screamed at him. Ordered him to leave my house,” I said.

  “You have his number, right? Call him and explain that it was all a misunderstanding. I throw Rick out of my house all the time and he always forgives me. I even threw him out of my car once. While it was moving.” Devon giggled when she said the last part.

  I laughed, too because she wasn’t exactly joking. The car had been rolling through a stop sign the time Devon insisted that Rick take a flying leap, and he took her advice.

  To take my mind off the ridiculous way I’d behaved, Devon grabbed the plate of brownies her mother had made earlier and put Troy on the television. Homer’s great epic was a favorite among my friends and me. Elizabeth loved Paris because he sacrificed everything for love. Devon loved Achilles since he was played by Brad Pitt, and ever since Fight Club she thought he could do no wrong. Me? I liked the rituals in the mythology. The way the Trojans placed gold coins in the mouths of the deceased so they could pay the ferryman to take them into the afterlife fascinated me.

  Chapter Ten

  Smoke filled my lungs and burned my eyes, causing them to water. I used the silk skirt of my dress as a mask, covering my mouth and nose as I moved deeper down the corridor. Alarms blared from the speakers attached to the walls, but I disregarded them. Devon was still in here somewhere; she had to be.

  The thick clouds of grey-black smoke made it hard for me to see more than a couple of feet in front of me; I pressed forward, using the wall as a guide. While the fire hadn’t spread to this section of the building yet, the heat was nearly unbearable. My skin felt like it was blistering with the worst sunburn I’d ever experienced.

  “DEVON!” I screamed her name, but it came out raspy and was followed by a coughing fit that caused me to double over.

  The air was slightly better close to the floor, reminding me that smoke rises. On hands and knees, I crawled down the wooden floorboards, careful to keep my mouth as close to the ground as possible.

  “DEVON!” I cried again.

  This time my efforts were rewarded. A banging sound came from somewhere at the end of the hallway I was crawling down. Relief washed over me ― she was still alive. Forgetting that I should stay low to the ground, I stood and began running in the direction of the banging.

  “Devon, I’m coming,” I promised her. “Keep making noise.”

  The gold heels on my feet became an impediment as I hurried to reach my best friend. I kicked them aside, regretting the decision as I moved deeper into the smoke. The wood was hot beneath my feet. By the time I reached the source of the banging, it felt like I was walking on coals. Sweat and soot caked my face, and my lungs ached from all of the smoke I’d inhaled.

  The banging was coming from behind a door. I wrapped the hem of my dress around my hand and tried the door handle. It wouldn’t budge.

  “DEVON!” I screamed, pressing my face against the door. It was so hot I flinched and pulled away instantly.

  The banging stopped. “Eel? Eel, get out of here!” came Devon’s muffled reply. Her demands were followed by a series of choking coughs. Then a loud boom rocked the ground beneath my feet. I fell backwards, not bothering to break my fall with my hands. Dazed, I scrambled to my knees. The smoke filling the hallway swam before my eyes. Bells rang. Belatedly, I realized they were inside my head. I screamed Devon’s name over and over again, but the sound of my voice was swallowed by a second explosion.

  “Endora! Endora!” a panicked voice yelled in my ear.

  I lashed out toward the sound of her voice, slapping it away. Thin fingers grabbed my wrists and held them firmly.

  “Get off of me!” I shrieked.

  “Endora, wake up!” the voice ordered me.

  My eyes finally flew open. Devon’s haggard face stared back. Yanking my wrists free, I frantically searched my body for signs of damage. I inhaled, long and deep. The air was fresh as it filled my lungs, nothing like the smoke-filled breaths I’d taken in my dream. I expected to find angry red blisters on my skin, but my arms were pale and smooth in the moonlight seeping through Devon’s bedroom window.

  “Bad dream?” she asked tentatively.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t watch Troy before bed again,” I said, laughing uneasily. My skin burned from the inside out, the memory of the smoke creatures still vivid in my mind.

  “Speak for yourself. Until you started shrieking like a banshee, I was Rose Byrne in that tent with Achilles.”

  It t
ook me a while to fall back asleep after the nightmare. I kept sniffing my shirt, expecting to smell smoke and campfire. My skin felt cold to the touch, but sweat dotted my forehead as if I had a fever. The last time I remembered looking at the clock, bright red numbers glowed 5:13 am.

  Nails tapping on a keyboard woke me too soon. I groaned, tiredly rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand. Devon was sitting at her computer desk, her back to me. A pen protruded from the messy bun of blonde curls on top of her head.

  “Good, you’re awake,” Devon said, her voice muffled around whatever she was eating.

  “What are you doing?” I mumbled. My body ached and it took more effort than normal to sit up.

  Devon swiveled in her computer chair to face me. “The folder that your father left at the Moonlight,” she tapped the manila folder sitting next to the mouse pad, “it has an Excel spreadsheet with names, email addresses, and phone numbers. I am Googling the names. These people probably know your father.”

  After reliving my humiliating conversation with Kannon and learning that there was an entire group of people in the world who shared at least some of my idiosyncrasies, the search for my father had been temporarily put on hold. I felt extremely guilty about it in retrospect, but at least Devon was on top of things.

  “What have you found?” I asked, suddenly very awake.

  A paper plate with a half-eaten brownie and a glass of milk sat on the left side of the computer desk. Devon shook her head as she popped a piece of brownie into her mouth. She swallowed and cleared her throat.

  “Since your father is a professor, I thought maybe they are people who have been helping him with his research. Like other professors. But as far as I can tell, none of them work at an institute of higher learning in this country.” She paused and ate another bite of brownie. “It’s weird. None of these people seem to exist in the cyber world. No Facebook pages. No articles written about them, or by them. Nothing.”

  “You said there are email addresses?” I scooted to the end of the mattress and peered over Devon’s shoulder. She had eight separate webpages open. In addition to Google, she appeared to be perusing various college history department websites.

  “One step ahead of you.” Devon spun her chair around and pulled up a Gmail account with a username I didn’t recognize. “I set up this dummy email account and sent each one a message. This Klinefelter woman doesn’t have any additional information, though.”

  The manila folder was open and a single sheet of white paper sat on top. Dad, I assumed, had made a spreadsheet with ten names and corresponding contact information. Next to Betsy Klinefelter, all the boxes were blank.

  “Hopefully one of the others will respond,” I said, reaching around Devon to take the folder.

  Besides the spreadsheet, there were lined pages filled with Dad’s tiny, indecipherable handwriting and several pages that had been torn from books.

  “Did you look through this stuff?” I asked.

  Devon shook her head. “Not yet.”

  I split the stack in half. “I need to get home, but I’ll take a look at this,” I held up my half, “if you want to keep going through the rest.”

  “Deal.” Devon turned to face me again. Her smile was sympathetic. “We’ll find him, Eel.”

  The emotion in my best friend’s eyes was too much. I had to turn away. “I hope so.”

  Once in my own bedroom, I gave maximum and minimum limits the most attention I could manage. Between flipping out on Kannon the night before and the increasing worry over my father’s whereabouts, the desire to crawl under the covers and not resurface for a year was strong. I contemplated calling Kannon and explaining, like Devon had suggested. After all, he couldn’t think me crazier than he already did. And that was at least something I could do. I had no way of getting in touch with my father. The papers that I had taken from the folder made no sense to me. My best guess was that they were notes on Dad’s latest research project. But none of them held any clue as to where he might be now.

  I found Kannon’s number in my cell and hit send. I chewed my bottom lip, half of me hoping he would answer so I could get this over with, and half of me praying it would go to voice mail. The latter happened. Kannon’s deep voice brought a smile to my face as he instructed me to leave a message, saying that he’d call back as soon as he was free.

  “Hi, it’s Endora. Look, I am really sorry about last night. You must think I am the biggest spaz. I can explain, though. If you still want to talk, maybe you could call me back?” Great, I sounded like a moron. “Anyway, you have my number.”

  I set the phone on the comforter next to me, double-checking that the ringer was on high so I wouldn’t miss Kannon’s call. I tried to focus on my homework, but ended up doodling little balls on the end of my integral signs. Somehow I doubted my teacher would appreciate me turning in an assignment with no answers, even if it were aesthetically pleasing.

  Before long, I gave up on the pretense of calculus and began flipping through the manila folder for the fifth time that day. I was trying to make sense of a poem printed on yellowed paper with a coffee cup stain in the center when my phone came alive. Hurriedly, I snatched it up, my heart leaping into my throat. The excitement quickly faded when I saw Devon’s name on the display.

  “Any luck?” I asked, not bothering to say hello.

  Devon sighed. “Nah. All of this research is about Greek mythology. Unless your father is in Athens, and living thousands of years in the past, it’s useless. You?”

  “Nada.” Pause. “I called Kannon,” I added to change the subject.

  “And?” she prompted.

  “Didn’t answer. I figured you were right, though. I should at least try and explain why I jumped down his throat.”

  “Good. Meeting him was the best thing that has happened to you in a while. I fully support the two of you getting to know each other.”

  “Really?” I asked doubtfully. “Why?”

  “A, he is hot. B, he is weird - but, as it turns out, weird in the same way you are, which gives you something in common. C, the look on Jamieson Wentworth’s face when she finds out will be worth every mean thing she has ever said about you. Revenge is sweet,” Devon crowed.

  “I like to think I’m a better person than that,” I said dryly.

  “You might be. I’m not.”

  “Whatever. He probably won’t even call me back,” I mused.

  “You know what you need?” Devon asked and I could imagine her eyes lighting up with some brilliant idea.

  “What?” I replied suspiciously. When Devon asked, “You know what you need?” I typically ended up with streaky highlights, getting thrown into a pool fully clothed, or eating an entire blueberry pie in one sitting.

  “A shopping trip!” she exclaimed.

  Well, that was unexpected. However, the mall held little risk, except to my wallet.

  “We’ve kinda hit a dead end in the dad search department. I say we wait a couple of days to see if we hear back from any of the people on the list. If not, we can go talk to the old guy at the Moonlight. In the meantime, though, we do have prom to think about. That means we need to go dress shopping.

  Prom, the quintessential rite of passage for every high school senior. For Devon and Elizabeth, ours wouldn’t be the first they’d attend. Both had accompanied one boy or another over the past four years, but our senior prom would be a first for me. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t looking forward to it. Although, with the sudden influx of uncertainties in my life, the allure of wearing a beautiful dress and having my hair done had worn off slightly

  “Okay,” I slowly agreed. “Why not?”

  “I’ll be there in an hour.” With that, Devon clicked off.

  An hour and a half later, Devon’s Chevy idled in the driveway, the latest overplayed song blasting from the radio. Elizabeth sat in the back, singing at the top of her lungs. My mother had been less than thrilled when I told her about the shopping trip, but my promise to bring dinner home
so we wouldn’t have to go out propitiated her.

  “Took you long enough,” Devon chided over the blaring music.

  Without thinking, I turned the dial until the words were barely audible. “Sorry, Mom wanted a rundown of all the stores we planned on going to,” I replied, only exaggerating slightly. She had asked who I was going with, what time we’d be home, which mall, and what I planned on buying. “Hey, Liz,” I called, waving at her in the review mirror.

  Elizabeth had her compact out and was reapplying a thick layer of the Dr. Pepper lip gloss she loved so much. “Missed you last night,” she said, her words garbled slightly as she attempted to speak without moving her lips.

  “What was last night?” I asked.

  “Party in the Vines,” she replied, snapping the compact shut. “I texted you.” The Vines was one of the many cookie cutter developments in Westwood. Since the houses were so close together, the cops usually broke up parties before they became interesting.

  I checked my phone. No texts from Elizabeth. “Sorry, must not have gone through.”

  “You didn’t miss much,” Elizabeth said.

  Devon floored the accelerator, peeling out of the drive. I grabbed for the door handle to steady myself.

  “Where’s Mandy?” I asked Devon.

  “Who cares?” Devon mumbled.

  “I called her,” Elizabeth chimed in, scooting to the edge of the back seat to be part of the conversation. “She’s all mopey because Kevin didn’t talk to her last night.”

  I made a mental note to call Mandy when I returned home. She had sent me several messages earlier that morning, but I’d ignored them in light of everything else going on. I really needed to be a better friend to her.

  “Poor Mandy,” I said.

  “Don’t feel too badly for her. I think she had a pretty good time with some hottie from St. Paul’s,” Elizabeth replied.

  At the mention of Kannon’s school, my stomach tightened. “Were a lot of St. Paul’s boys there?” I asked, failing to sound nonchalant. Considering the hour travel time, it always amazed me how often they crashed parties in Westwood.