Dark Visions (39 page)

"If Mr. Z
wants
us to go to the police—" she began.

"Right," Rob said grimly.

"But we'll never convince my parents," Anna said.

"Right," Rob said again.

A feeling was stirring in Kaitlyn, part terror, part dismay, and part wild excitement.

Lewis gulped. "But that means—"

"Right," Rob said a third time. He grinned at Kait, his grin reflecting her bewildering mix of emotions.

"The search," he announced to the room at large, "is back on."

Gabriel cursed.

Lydia was looking from one of them to another in bewilderment. "I don't understand."

"It means we're going to have to run away again," Rob said. "And if you really want to help us—"

"I do."

"—you can drive us to Vancouver Island. There's a ferry, right?" He glanced at Anna, who nodded.

"I'll do it," Lydia said simply. "When do we go?"

"Right
now
," Kaitlyn said. "We've got to get out of here before Anna's parents wake up."

"Okay, everybody," Rob said. "Grab your things and let's get moving."

"It's started raining again," said Kaitlyn.

They all met a few minutes later in the front hallway. There were ominous stirring noises from the back of the house.

"Shouldn't you leave a note?" Lewis whispered.

Anna sighed. "They'll know," she said briefly.

"I'll leave them the files," Rob said. "Maybe they can do something with them."

Gabriel snorted.

Outside, the sky was cold and gray. The rain seemed to come at them horizontally as they drove to Port Angeles. If they kept the defroster on maximum, it cleared the windshield but scorched their skin; if they turned it down, the windshield immediately steamed over. If they opened the windows, it cleared everything but they froze.

At the ferry the water was navy blue with just a hint of green. They waited in a line of cars and finally drove onto a large boat. It cost twenty-five dollars, and Kaitlyn paid because Lydia only had credit cards.

On the passenger deck Kaitlyn watched the deep blue water slipping away on either side. We're on our way, she thought. To Canada. She had never been to a foreign country.

She was drinking a vending-machine Coke that Rob had brought her when Lewis rushed up, breathless.

"Trouble," he said. "I just talked to some kids in the bathroom. They said if you're under eighteen, you're supposed to have a letter of authorization to get into Canada."

"A letter. From your parents or something, I guess. Telling who you are and how long you're going to be there."

"Oh,
terrific
." Kaitlyn looked at Rob, who shrugged.

"What can we do? We'll just hope they don't ask for one."

"I'm eighteen, anyway," Lydia said. "I'll drive and maybe the rest of you can fake it."

An hour later they cruised into Victoria Harbor. Kaitlyn's breath caught. The sun had come out, and the harbor was a picture begging to be painted. There were lots of little sailboats and lots of clean-looking pink and white buildings.

But she couldn't keep staring; they had to go downstairs again and get in the car. They waited in another line at the customs checkpoint while the knot in Kaitlyn's stomach wound tighter and tighter.

"Where do you live?" a sunglassed customs officer asked Lydia.

Lydia's fingers barely tightened on the wheel. "In California," she said, smiling.

The customs officer didn't smile back. He asked to see Lydia's driver's license. He asked where they were going in Canada and how long they'd be staying. Lydia answered everything in a careless, sophisticated murmur. Then the officer bent a little at the waist to examine the inside of the car.

Look old
, Kaitlyn told the others. They all sat up straight and tried to look mature and bored.

The customs officer didn't change expression. He glanced at each of them, then straightened.

"Any of you under eighteen?" he asked Lydia.

Kaitlyn's stomach gave a final sickening twist. Their driver's licenses would show the rest of them were
all
under eighteen. And then he'd ask for a letter…

Lydia hesitated imperceptibly. Then she said "Oh, no." She said it lightly, with something like a toss of her head. Kaitlyn admired that. Although Lydia was slight, her manner was sophisticated and assured.

The customs officer hesitated. He was looking at Lewis—the one of them who looked youngest. Lydia glanced back at Lewis, too, and although her face was calm, her gaze was almost desperate. Pleading.

Lewis's jaw set, and Kaitlyn felt a ripple in the web.

The customs officer had something hanging at his belt, a pager or walkie-talkie or something. Suddenly it began to shriek.

Not beep.
Wail
. It went off with a sound like an air-raid siren, a vibrating sound that put Kaitlyn's teeth on edge. People turned to look.

The customs officer was shaking the walkie-talkie, pressing buttons. The shrieking only went up in volume.

The officer looked from the device to the car as if hesitating. Then he grimaced, trying to muffle the electronic shrilling. With an impatient hand, he waved Lydia on.

"Go, go," Lewis whispered excitedly.

Lydia put the car in gear, and they glided off at a majestic five miles an hour. When they reached a main street, Kaitlyn let out her breath. They'd made it!

"Easier than I thought," Rob said.

In the back seat Lewis was chortling. "How about that? One for the home team!"

Kaitlyn turned on him. That ripple she'd felt in the web just before the shrieking began… "Lewis—did
you
?"

Lewis's grin widened, his eyes sparkling. "I figured if those creeps could sabotage us with long distance PK, I could handle a walkie-talkie. I just made a few little adjustments to give it some feedback."

Lydia glanced back at him again, and for the first time there was something like appreciation in her gray-green eyes. "Thanks," she said. "You saved my you-know-what." Lewis beamed.

Even Gabriel seemed grudgingly impressed. But he asked Lydia smoothly, "Who are those creeps, by the way? The ones who've been trying to kill us with psychic attacks."

"I don't know. Truly, I
don't
. I know my father has been doing something with the crystal—and he may have people helping him. But I don't know who."

"I wonder if they've stopped," Anna said suddenly. "I mean, there wasn't an attack last night. Maybe they've lost track of us."

"And maybe they're relying on somebody else to keep track," Gabriel said, with a meaningful look at Lydia. She gave something very much like a flounce without interfering with her driving.

"Where am I supposed to go now?" she asked.

There was a pause. Then Rob said, "We're not sure."

"You came here without knowing where you're
going
?"

"We don't know exactly. We're looking for—"

"Something," Gabriel said, interrupting Rob. Lewis frowned and Kaitlyn gave Gabriel an impatient look.

"Then let her wait until we find it," Gabriel said aloud. "Why trust any further than we have to?"

Lydia's lips tightened, but she didn't say anything, and she didn't flounce again.

"I figure we have two choices," Rob said. "We can drive up and down the coast blindly, or we can
ask
people around here if they know where the—" He changed for an instant to silent speech:
the rock
towers are
. "If Anna's mom recognized them, people on the island should know them."

"Can't
you
remember anything, Anna?" Lewis asked. "Your mom said you were on that trip, too."

"I was five," Anna said.

They decided to ask around. A man at a tourist shop sold them a map and directed them to the Royal British Columbia Museum. But although the museum people recognized Kaitlyn's sketch of an
inuk shuk
, they had no idea where any might be found on the island. Neither did anyone at the camera shop, or the bookstore, or the British imports store, or the native crafts shop. Neither did the librarians at the Victoria Library.

"Is it time to start driving around blindly?" Gabriel asked.

Lewis pulled out the map.

"We can drive either northeast or northwest," he said. "This island's sort of like a big oval and we're at the bottom. And before you ask,
nothing
on here looks like our Griffin's Pit. There're thousands of little peninsulas and things all over the coast, and no way to tell any of them apart."

"It's probably too small to be on the map, anyway," Rob said. "Flip a coin: Heads we go east, tails we go west."

Kaitlyn flipped a coin and it came up heads.

They drove northeast, following the coastline, stopping to check the ocean every few miles. They drove until it was dark, but they found nothing resembling the place in their dream.

"But the ocean is right," Anna said, standing on a rock and looking down into the blue-gray water. Gulls were crowded thickly around her—they took off when Kaitlyn or the others came near, but tolerated Anna as if she were a bird.

"It's
almost
right," Kaitlyn temporized. "Maybe we need to go farther north, or to try going west." It was frustrating to feel she was so close to the place, but not to be able to sense where it was.

"Well, we're not going to find anything tonight," Gabriel said. "The light's gone."

Kaitlyn heard the note of tension in his voice. Not just ordinary Gabriel-tension, but a fine edge that told her he was in trouble.

All day he'd been quieter than usual, withdrawn, as if he were wrapping himself around his private pain.

His control was getting better, but his need was getting worse. It had been nearly thirty-six hours since Kaitlyn had caught him on the beach in Oregon.

And what on earth is he going to do tonight? Kaitlyn wondered.

"I beg your pardon?" Rob said, looking at her quickly.

She'd forgotten to screen her thoughts. Desperately hoping he'd only caught the last bit, she said, "I was wondering what on earth we're going to do tonight. To sleep, I mean. We're almost broke—"

"And starving," Lewis put in.

"—and we certainly can't all sleep in this car."

"We'll have to find a cheap motel," Anna said. "We can afford one room, anyway, since it's off season.

We'd better head back for Victoria."

In Victoria they found the Sitka Spruce Inn, which let them have a room with two twin beds for thirty-eight dollars and didn't ask any questions. The paint inside the room was peeling and the door to the bathroom didn't shut properly, but, as Anna pointed out, it did have beds.

At Rob's direction the girls got the beds. Lydia chose to share with Anna—clearly she hadn't forgotten the strangling. Kaitlyn curled up on the other, pulling the thin coverlet over her. The boys, sleeping on the carpet, had usurped the blankets.

She slept, but lightly. All that evening Gabriel had avoided her, refused to speak with her. Kait could tell by his cold determination that he was bent on solving his problem alone—and she didn't think that he was going to lie there and quietly endure it again tonight. By now she was closely enough attuned to him that she thought she'd wake up when he did.

It worked—mostly. Kaitlyn woke when the hotel door closed with a click. She could sense that Gabriel wasn't in the room.

Getting out of bed stealthily was almost routine now. The only shock came when Kaitlyn looked at the other bed and realized that there was only one figure in it.

Lydia was gone. Not in the bathroom, either. Just gone.

Kaitlyn crept out of the room feeling very grim.

She tracked Gabriel by his presence in the web, feeling him move away from her, following. She wondered if Lydia was with him.

Eventually she came out by the harbor.

Kaitlyn hadn't been afraid walking down the quaint, old-fashioned streets of Victoria. There were a few people out, and an atmosphere of sleepy safety blanketed the town. But here by the harbor it was very quiet, very lonely. The lights of boats and buildings reflected in the water, but it was still dark and the wharf was deserted.

She found Gabriel pacing in the shadows.

He looked something like a wild animal, a captured predator pacing out the confines of his cage. As Kaitlyn got closer, she could sense the intensity of his hunger.

"Where's Lydia?" she said.

He swung around to stare at her. "Can't you leave me alone?"

"
Are
you alone?"

There was no sound but the soft swish of water for a moment. Then Gabriel said with careful precision,

"I have no idea where Lydia is. I came out by myself."

"Was she still in bed then?"

"I didn't look."

Kaitlyn sighed. All right, then, forget about Lydia, she told herself. There's nothing you can do. "Actually, I came out here to talk about
you
," she said to Gabriel.

Gabriel gave her a searing glance. All he said was "No."

"Gabriel—"

"It can't go on, Kaitlyn. Don't you see that? Why can't you just leave me to deal with things my way?"

"Because your way means people get hurt!"

He froze. Then he said distinctly, "So does yours."

Kaitlyn didn't understand—she wasn't sure she
wanted to
understand. Gabriel seemed… vulnerable…

just now. She slapped down the strange, impossible thought that sprang to mind and said, "If you mean me, I can handle myself. If you mean Rob…"