02 Seekers (8 page)

I stood and pulled her into my arms. Her hug was tight and said more than her thoughts.

She finally held me at arm’s length and smiled, setting aside her panic so that it wouldn’t be last thing I remembered her by. “I’m going to learn how to cook while you’re gone,” she declared.

“Poor Sam,” I laughed.

Sam actually smiled. He reached out and gave me a one armed hug, not forgiving me, but not wanting to part on bad terms. “Be careful, and call when you can,” he commanded.

“I will,” I promised.

They followed me to the door. Daniel was waiting with Jackson and Margaret on my lawn, the three looking like surreal lawn ornaments as they talked. Beyond them was a minivan. It was old, with duct tape holding the rear window in place, and had a sticker that said, “I hate bumper stickers”. I took that to be an ominous sign. So did Ellen.

“I feel better about this already,” Ellen muttered to Sam.

My grin at her words was crooked, but I didn’t let the scary looking van deter me. I waved uncertainly then turned to the van. The first step inside the van was the worst. It smelled of cigarettes and stale sweat as if someone had purposefully rubbed their sweaty body over the seats until they smelled as bad as humanly possible. I started coughing at the smell, but I didn’t back out. I crawled in the back and pretended to look comfortable around my coughing. Jackson and Margaret got in the front with Margaret at the wheel.

Daniel wrinkled his nose at the smell and joined me in the back, not pretending he was happy with the smell. “Could you have picked a smellier piece of crap?” he asked Jackson.

“I didn’t have to sign a title,” Jackson said. “Or pull on my contacts for an identity, which keeps us off the radar.”

“You should have leaned on someone,” Daniel said.

“Yeah, like someone with an air freshener,” I added.

I turned in my seat and watched as Ellen and Sam faded out of view, Margaret driving slow

down the narrow road of my dead-end street. Ellen waved once then turned and put her face in Sam’s shoulder to hide her tears from me. He held her tight, his eyes distant. I settled down into the seat, my arms crossed against the emotions in my chest, and tried not to think of the

goodbyes. It had felt so simple…so easy. How was it that easy? I watched the flickering trees pass us in a blur of dark morning, and listened to the song Margaret had turned up to prevent Jackson and Daniel from bickering about the van. Jackson pulled out the morning paper and, after a cursory glance at the headlines, turned to the Sudoku. He started filling out numbers as if we weren’t all headed toward the unknown in a minivan.

Daniel reached across the space and nudged my knee. “You okay?”

“Yeah...”

His face was skeptical, but he accepted my confirmation without argument. “Have you ever been to New Orleans?” he asked quietly.

“Ellen and I stayed there for a week once, but she felt weird there, didn’t like it. We moved to Baton Rouge instead. That lasted for about six months….what?”

He was staring at me thoughtfully. “Ellen always seems to know what places to avoid and when to move…” he said.

I shrugged. “It’s called being flighty.”

“Flighty has probably saved your life.”

“Maybe. Why?”

He turned toward me in the van, his long legs searching for a place to stretch out. “New Orleans has always been one of our cities. The fallen ones tend to congregate there for whatever reason, and that inevitably means more of us. Los Angeles is another big one – in America, at least.”

“Oh. I wonder why.”

“Because there are more people there,” Daniel said as if it were obvious. “Fallen ones have always been drawn to humanity.”

“I think certain cities have magic,” I replied, shaking my head at his logic. I’d been through enough of them to know. “Savannah had magic. There was just something there that went

beyond the people and the buildings. It was in the air, in the smells, in the way the night talked to you. New York is the same way.”

“So, you’re saying that a place isn’t just made up of the people and buildings, or important simply because of the value we give them?”

“I think that our conception of places, the conceived value we put to things, affects how we view a place, but I think places can be beautiful or important regardless of how any one person feels about them,” I said. “It’s sort of egocentric to say this place or that place is beautiful because people are there….what about all of nature? What about our lake? Does it stop having value when we leave?”

“But the idea of value is an idea that only people can put into effect. Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. If no one beholds it, how can it retain value?” Daniel said.

“You’re arguing that a place is limited by value, because of language or thought, right? That if no one is there to value it, it has no value?” I asked.

“Doesn’t it take a person to think a flower sweet smelling or a forest pretty?” Daniel countered.

“That’s assuming that people are the only ones that can appreciate life,” I said.

“I just think that life is limited by thought,” Daniel said.

“I think, therefore I am?”

“Something like that,” he agreed.

“How about I am, therefore I think?” I said.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he scoffed.

“Life usually doesn’t. I think that there are places on this earth, places you and I will probably never see, that have wonderful value – value beyond our imaging. Just because we can’t put words to it yet, or ever, doesn’t mean it’s less,” I said.

“You’re…you have whimsy!” he said in surprise.

I laughed at his surprise. “It’s realistic to be a dreamer. Your parents probably know that. Isn’t there a quote…dreamers make the best scientists…”

“I think you just made that up.” He closed the distance between us and his eyes danced with mine playfully. “But I concede to your point. Perhaps, things have meaning beyond the words we give them.”

“If this what it’s going to be like being around you two, I think I’d rather stay,” Jackson said. He filled in another number, his tongue perched thoughtfully in the corner of his mouth. Margaret gave a small grunt of agreement.

“We’re just having a discussion,” Daniel said.

“You’re going to have to explain to them what that is. I don’t think they know,” I said.

“How about we discuss what the plan is,” Jackson said. He put the paper down and turned

around in his seat.

“There’s not much of a plan. I have to contact Serenity when I get down there, and she’ll set me up with an acquaintance of hers, who is a recruiter for Marcus. I pretend to be a powerful, new Watcher with a penchant for killing. As far as you guys go…well, I can only do so many things.”

“What’s the best way to handle protecting people while we’re down there?” Jackson asked,

ignoring the implication that we were all in Daniel’s way. “We’re bound to attract notice if their Seekers start turning up dead. And I think any kind of unusual happenings would be bad for you.”

“Seekers die all the time. They’ll just figure that they crossed the wrong people. The trick is to not get seen or leave no witnesses…and to not get carried away.” Daniel tapped Jackson’s seat with his foot. “Did you hear me?”

“No witnesses…got it.”

“Once you’re in, if you can get in, will you be able to contact us?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Daniel replied. “We’ll see when I get down there. I’ll have to get a feel for this new leader first. Gaining his trust won’t be easy.”

“Trust never is,” I agreed.

The trip was tedious. Not the way I imagined a grand adventure to start. The progressive,

monotonous symphony of wheels on pavement lent a throbbing to my already throbbing head.

After a while, I lost where my headache ended and the sound began. It became engrained in my very being. While the sound was a promise of an unknown future, the conflicting emotions

raging inside were almost as bad as the circular click of rubber on asphalt. Leaving had never felt this scary. I had always kept one foot ready to hit the road, in case Ellen changed her mind about our latest town – King’s Cross wasn’t even the longest I had ever lived somewhere – but leaving had never been harder. I thought it was because I had never really had a home before. I knew I had to be crazy to give that up – crazy enough to go to New Orleans in a stinking minivan with three people who could kill as easily as I buttered bread.

The architecture of the landscape subtly shifted and moved with the passing hours, lending itself to long arcs of forever flat that was familiar, yet foreign after being in the mountains for so long.

I found myself missing the variation of height and width as we trekked ever south. Something else, beyond the oddness of the flat, permeated the very air the further from home we got. It was a feeling of history, of gentle unending time that swept forever in both directions. It was the feeling I got whenever I was in the deep south. The change had an obvious effect on the others.

Daniel’s eyes became lost in a thousand memories as we passed city after city. Margaret and Jackson were silent – not unusual for Margaret – but I could feel an awareness that wasn’t there in the mountains. It was as if a part of their history was found in the history of the place we were in. It was a past I could only ever know secondhand.

The city of New Orleans did not tremble and fall to the ground at our approach. In fact, our entrance into the city of soul, voodoo, and blues was unremarkable. I perked up from my book as the city appeared and watched as the buildings passed by.

Margaret knew the city well, so we were spared the bickering of lost tourists without a map. She drove us to the French Quarter, an area I only remembered vaguely, and let the van idle on the corner of a fancy hotel. We unpacked our stuff in front of elegant, black ironwork of the hotel then she drove off again to ditch the van and find another way back. We had all thought we would be less noticeable without the thing lingering on the corner.

As she pulled away, I settled my bag over my shoulder and breathed in the moisture of the

summer air. Droplets of rain clung to the narrow streets, and I knew we had just missed a

rainstorm. Darkness had covered the city with the night, but the smell of the storm was

invigorating and renewing. Something in the pit of my stomach responded to the flow of the city, and I, more than ever, agreed with my previous statement. A place could have power. This place was certainly working powerful magic on me.

Daniel gestured with his head for me to follow him inside the hotel. I remembered our mission, and the fact that nowhere was safe, with the gesture. In that one gesture I saw tension and a cool alertness to the fact that nowhere was really private.

The interior of the hotel was elegant, yet simple, as if the designer had known elegance wasn’t about cheap baubles meant to distract to beholder. Gold walls and a thick staircase dominated the lobby. Carefully done flower arrangements accentuated the color scheme. People moved around the lobby area, some headed to a late dinner, other the arts scene nearby. Wrapped up in their destinations, no one looked at us twice.

A man wearing the pressed uniform of the staff perked up when he saw us and quickly stopped texting on his phone. “Can I help you?” he asked, his voice thick with a southern dialect even King’s Cross couldn’t manage.

Daniel smiled, and his whole face shifted into a look I hated. It was the look that meant he was about to get his own way. It took him a while, the clerk being particularly stubborn, but a hefty tip, and many smiles later, Daniel managed to get us a room paid in cash up front, no questions asked. The man’s eyes raked over our faces carefully, cataloguing details to spread to the rest of the staff later. I just hoped it wasn’t the sort of details that got us noticed by the wrong sorts of people. I assumed it would remain fodder for the bored staff until the next big mystery came along.

Key cards finally in hand, we went to our rooms to get settled in. As Daniel shut the door to our room with his foot, checking his phone with one hand and carrying his bag with the other, I said in a low voice, “You think this place is low key? If snobby from downstairs doesn’t inform the whole French Quarter about us by the morning I’ll be shocked.”

Daniel looked up and shut his phone again with a shrug. “They have cable here…and wireless internet.”

“Most hotels do…” I said.

“Serenity suggested it,” he said reluctantly. “This area is where our kind with lots of cash stay.

Watchers with cash always have bodyguards. Starting something here is extremely foolish, so it’s safe.”

He moved past me and sat down on the large bed. I kept my place in the center of the room. “I knew you’d find a way to be all protective despite being away…” I hesitated. “It seems like we’re putting a lot of trust in this Serenity. Are Jackson and her really that good of friends?”

“Not really,” he admitted.

“Okay…” I crossed my arms. “Then why do you trust her?”

“Because we have no other choice,” he replied. His face told me he didn’t like the idea any more than I did.

“Uh-huh.” I started pacing. “When do you have to go?” I asked.

“Tomorrow morning I meet Serenity then she’s going to arrange a meeting with her contact. She has to make it look like she’s not involved, though. They know her down here.”

“It sounds so Jason Bourne-ish,” I said.

I looked at the alarm clock by the bed and realized that ‘tomorrow’ wasn’t that far off. Then, I would be stuck with only Margaret and Jackson for company. I wasn’t looking forward to it. For multiple reasons.

“It’s much more confusing than any movie,” Daniel said. “And a lot less certain the heroes are going to live.”

That was a great thing to mention on the eve of his departure…I stopped pacing and stared him down, his words scaring me. “You’re going to be careful.”

He stood and took my hands. His eyes bored into mine. “I am going to be more than careful.

Careful is going to be jealous about how cautious I will be. It’s going to look at me and go, ‘Man I wish I was that safe about things!’”