02 Seekers (29 page)

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s cool,” he replied. “Just don’t stare.”

“All right.”

He came over and sat next to me feeling a bit nervous. He was uncomfortable with the

strangeness I had brought to the group, and the way Spider had committed himself to my mission of finding Daniel. A part of him wondered what con I was pulling and how it would affect the others. I didn’t take offense; it was simply the way he thought after years of being on the street.

For the thousandth time he contemplated asking me what we all did at night, but stopped just shy of the question.

“I’ll tell you, if you honestly want to know,” I said around his unasked question.

“Huh?” he asked.

“What we do at night…why Spider is helping me. I’ll tell you, but you’d better be ready for the answer.”

“Why would you trust me with that?”

“You have a code of honor I respect. I know you won’t tell my secret.”

“You can tell all that?” he asked even more nervously.

“Yep. I can also tell that you have a burning crazy crush on Cora,” I said.

“Sh!” he hissed looking over at the sleeping kids nervously, particularly Cora.

I leaned closer. “She likes you too,” I said.

His slow grin was the best thing I’d seen in days. As slow as the grin had spread across his face, the frown was twice as fast. His thoughts returned to what Spider, Alex, and I did at night.

“You’re doing dangerous stuff, right? Things that involve Eli’s strangeness?”

“And my strangeness,” I agreed.

“Spider knows, but he won’t say, and I don’t ask. I can’t tell if it’s because he likes feeling important, or because he thinks it’s best not to know.” He thought about it. “I don’t gotta know. I trust Spider…” He looked me over. “Spider said you saved his life, is that true?”

“Well, I don’t know…”

“As true as I am sitting here,” Spider said from the stage.

Ethan jumped, not having noticed anyone was awake. Spider had his shirt off, because of the heat, and I saw dark scars across his arms and chest; scars where he had been hit repeatedly. He pulled his dirty shirt on as he spoke, indifferent to the scars, though I couldn’t help but stare at them.

“Did you find anything out last night?” Spider asked me.

“Serenity wasn’t lying,” I said.

“My fiancée would never lie,” he said grinning at me crookedly.

“She didn’t say ‘yes,’” I reminded him.

“She didn’t say ‘no’ either,” he pointed out. He hopped off the stage and sat next to Ethan. “And, believe me bro, you don’t want to know this one’s story.”

“I can help with whatever you’re doing, though,” Ethan volunteered. “The way you guys are

carrying on…it feels important.”

Spider and I shared a questioning look. His eyes were asking my opinion, while I was asking his.

Before we could answer, Twitch started thrashing in his sleep, kicking out and punching. His yells were surprising and terrifying after the silence I had come to expect from him. I rushed to his side, Spider and Ethan not far behind. Twitch’s eyes were wide with terror as he yelled and fought against whatever unseen enemy he saw. The others woke at the sound.

“What’s wrong?!” Alex said jerking awake.

“He does this sometimes,” Spider said. “It’s like he’s awake, but he’s not.”

“Night terrors,” I said. “Ellen told me she used to get them when she was a kid.” I took hold of Twitch’s shoulders and shook him hard. “Wake up!” I yelled at him.

He blinked at me, reason returning to his eyes, and immediately started crying. I pulled him into my arms and started rocking him instinctively. The others watched in concerned silence.

I was grateful they weren’t seeing the things I was. Twitch’s mind was full of the past, and the reasons he had been so painfully scared in his dreams. The things he had lived through went beyond words. I held him to my chest harder as he tried to clear his mind of the thoughts with the poems he loved so much. His first thought was of Poe and the poem he had read before bed.
By
a route obscure and lonely haunted by ill angels only where an E…eid
He hesitated at the unfamiliar word, struggling over it.

“Eidolon,” I said helpfully, “named night, on a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly…”

He took over the poem again, totally focused on the words. As I rocked him, saying the poem along with his quiet thoughts, he calmed down. The others watched, their thoughts undergoing a silent, but profound shift. In that moment I was no longer an outsider there to disrupt their world with my strange past: I was one of them.

When Twitch had calmed considerably Spider touched him on the shoulder. “You okay?”

Twitch blinked away the remaining tears from his eyes and nodded. He was embarrassed at the attention.
I’m better now
, his thoughts told me.

I let him crawl from my arms. Alex’s blue eyes met mine as I searched for an ally to the pain I had witnessed. She had tears of sympathy in her eyes. I wondered how much of Twitch’s agony she had seen to the core of. I stood and dusted off my increasingly ragged clothes, trying to brush off the enormity of those emotions with the dust. Alex came over and hugged me silently. When she pulled away, the others were still watching me.

“What?” I asked them.

“I want breakfast,” Sprint said moving beyond the moment.

“Bagels!” Cora said. “I want bagels.”

“The bagel place knows I lifted some the last time we were in there,” Sprint said heading for the door. She spun around and walked backwards, facing the others. “What about pizza?”

“You want pizza with everything,” Ethan said. “You want pizza on your pizza on top of your pizza.”

“What’s wrong with that?” she asked.

“Pizza is not a breakfast food,” Spider said.

“Food is a breakfast food,” she corrected.

Twitch remained surrounded by his friends, his family, as they left in search of food. He kept his eyes on the floor, his mind wrapped around the poems, his source of comfort in the darkness. I didn’t follow the group. My long night, and the experience with Twitch, was too raw and too draining. I sat down on the old stage and let my feet hang over the edge. I swung my feet slowly, letting them create a low sound as they brushed the moldy carpet.

Alex plopped down next to me and took my hand. “Clare, I totally love you.”

I laughed and put my head on her shoulder. “Aw, shucks Alex, I love you, too, but I’m already in a relationship with someone.”

She flicked my ear with her finger, and I winced. She took my hand again. “Tell me what

happened last night,” she commanded.

“Not much. We watched for a long time…nothing happened,” I said.

“Oh.”

“It’s definitely a place where Watchers are hanging out, though.”

“Well, that’s good…sort of.”

“I guess…sort of.” I pulled Alex up at the sound of her rumbling stomach, and we followed the kids outside. They were long gone, getting whatever breakfast food they had settled on. Alex frowned as we walked the narrow streets. “I know that look,” I said. “What have you suddenly discovered about the world?”

“Something happened with Eli, didn’t it?” she asked.

“You sure you can’t read minds?” I asked.

She smiled and waited for me to answer.

“He opened up a little. As much as possible with him. He said…well, he said he killed his

sister,” I said.

“Killed her? Like physically killed her?” she asked.

“I don’t know. He went all quiet and walked off. You know how he is,” I said.

Alex thought about my words for a long minute. “That would explain why he’s so protective of the kids. He’s trying to atone for things in his past.”

“If you say so, doc,” I said.

“I think that maybe he’s punishing himself for more than what he’s actually guilty of,” she added.

We stopped at the convenience store and picked out muffins and coffee. I counted out dollar bills for the young guy behind the counter, imagining what it would feel like if I were responsible for Ellen’s death or Alex’s. I would never forgive myself. It was another reason I was so terrified of losing my temper. I didn’t want to hurt them accidently.

“Could you imagine killing your own sister?” I asked her. The guy at the counter stared at me.

“Hypothetically,” I added as he handed me my change.

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

“I can’t even begin to imagine…” Alex said in response to my question.

“He knew his mom, too,” I said as we walked back outside. “He said she died, like he knew her when she was alive.”

“She was his Ellen?” Alex asked.

“I guess…” I said slowly.

The mention of Ellen was a reminder we hadn’t been able to get in contact with her; a reminder that I had something else to worry about. I wanted to talk to her and be sure she was okay. I wanted to hear her voice and see her chocolaty eyes again. Her laughter always helped me see things in a different light. If I had her laugh now, maybe I could see answers to all the questions I had.

“Clare, I have to tell you something…something about Eli…”

Spider’s unexpected presence as we turned a corner interrupted her words. Alex shifted

uncomfortably as he spoke to us, annoyed her admission had been cut short.

“I am awesome beyond awesome. Tell me how awesome I am,” Spider said.

“Is awesome now a synonym for annoying?” I asked Alex.

“I believe it is,” Alex agreed lightly. Her blue eyes weren’t as playful as her light tone suggested.

“Then, yes, you are awesome,” I said.

“Very funny,” he said. “If you don’t want to know what I just saw, I won’t tell you.”

I listened to his openly excited thoughts and was serious in an instant. He’d seen Daniel with another man, a red-haired man whose face scared Spider more than he was willing to admit.

“Where’d you see him?” I asked.

“Where’d he see who?” Alex asked.

“Daniel. He just saw Daniel,” I explained.

“It’s not fair when you cheat,” Spider complained.

“Spider, this is serious,” I said. “Tell me where you saw him.”

“He was coming out of a hotel. He got in the car with the red-haired dude and they drove off.

There was a driver and two others who kind of looked like bodyguards.”

“Which hotel?” I asked.

“I’ll show you.” He turned and took us down a familiar road in search of the hotel.

“Where are you going?” Eli matched his pace with ours on Alex’s side, appearing in his sudden way. Had he been watching or was our meeting chance?

“Spider,” I said imitating Eli’s terse way of using Spider as his translator. I wasn’t in the mood for a conversation with Eli. It was too frustrating, and I was too focused on Daniel.

“Here it is. Look,” Spider finally said around his explanation.

We were in front of a different high-dollar hotel. It was larger than the one that had burned and was a chain rather than an independent hotel. It bustled with activity as people swarmed around the open doors.

“I wonder what he was doing here,” I wondered.

“Probably hooking up with someone,” Spider said.

Alex wacked him on the back of the head in response. He grabbed his head with an indignant

‘hey!’ “Or he could be interested in that…” Alex said pointing at a sign. It welcomed scientists from across the nation and was an explanation for the crowd milling around the outside.

“Spider?” Eli mumbled to Spider, squinting at the sign.

“It’s for scientists,” Spider explained. “Some kind of meeting.”

“You can’t read?” I asked Eli.

“Do you think they were here for that?” Alex asked, saving Eli from answering.

Eli coughed and kicked at the sidewalk, his face tight with embarrassment. It was obvious he didn’t like his illiteracy, even more than the hated me knowing about it. “They could have been here for anything. I’m going to keep lookout at the club and see if they turn up.”

“I’ll come with,” Alex said.

Eli shrugged in silent agreement, and they walked off.

“Bye…” I said as they walked off. Alex hopped and skipped to keep up with Eli’s relentless pace. Neither noticed my goodbye.

“I guess we should go beg,” I said quietly. I looked at the front of the hotel sadly. Another near-miss in being reunited with him; another moment where minutes mattered, and I had been too late.

“Let’s do something else,” Spider said.

“Something else?” I asked. “I thought you have rules about everyone pulling their own weight?”

“All good rules are meant to be broken,” Spider said. “And it’s only a couple of hours.”

“I don’t know…I think I’ll go to the club with the others. Daniel might show up, and I don’t want to miss him again.”

“You need to turn off the worry, or you’ll go mad,” Spider said. “Alex won’t let him get away if he shows up. You trust her that much.”

“Yes.”

“So, let’s do something fun.”

“Fun…”

“Trust me?” he asked, his green eyes shining with the question.

I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and pulled him in close. “Sure.”

He smiled at my affirmation and started to direct us down the street. He kept up a constant stream of dialogue, distracting me with ridiculous things he didn’t mean and funny stories of his time on streets, until we reached our destination. Spider’s idea of ‘fun’ was the movies. We snuck in to the old movie theater through a back door to avoid paying, his words not slowing with our sneaking.

Inside the theater, Spider waved at an old man in the back of the theater, and the man waved back with a toothless grin. “That’s Jimmy. He’s a friend. I fix his projector when it breaks, and he doesn’t rat me out. He’s pretty cool. Has some crazy stories. Drinks a lot,” Spider filled me in quietly.

As Spider spoke, the man took a long pull from a flask he had pulled out of his pocket. Spider slouched down low in a seat and settled in comfortably in the dark. My eyes roamed around the dark theater. There were only a few people scattered about – a woman wearing a hat, which

obscured her face, and two old men in the corner mumbling to each other incoherently.

“When was the last time Twitch got a night terror?” I asked Spider to take my mind away from Daniel.