Earth (27 page)

She had confessed to me that Jensen hadn’t
been very happy about their move to California; they were from a
small town in New Mexico a few hours outside of Albuquerque. Ian
had been very excited to get out of the heat and into a town with a
“real population” as he called it. She’d said she was terrified
that Jensen had run away to go back to New Mexico and that maybe
Ian had followed him to bring him home. Somehow that didn’t sound
right to me.

I was so lost in my thoughts that when Jodi
opened the passenger side door I jumped in my seat. My right hand
shot to my chest, as if trying to keep my heart from bursting out
of my ribcage.

“Sorry,” Jodi said with a laugh. Steven
crawled in back. Jodi slipped in easily next to me, pulling the
door closed and adjusting the heating vents. After they were
buckled into place and I pulled out of the space and merged with
the line of cars trying to escape the parking lot, Jodi turned and
looked at me with an expectant look on her face, waiting.

“Sorry I took off like that. I just, I dunno,
when I saw Jensen was gone I just couldn’t stop myself. I think it
actually pissed me off.” I said in a rush, glaring out the
windshield.

“So? Where did you go?” Steven asked,
reaching over the seat to shake my shoulder with each word.

“To his house. I had to see him. See his
arm.” My voice was desolate, even to me.

“Let me guess,” Jodi said darkly, “He wasn’t
there, was he?”

“No, but neither was Ian.” I turned onto the
main road out of the parking lot, not totally sure where I was
going, I didn’t know if I wanted to go home yet. “But his mother
was there and she was practically hysterical.”

“Why?” Steven asked.

“I guess neither of them have been home since
Thursday.” A fresh wave of nausea hit me as I spoke. I closed my
eyes against the sickness, thankful for the red light we had come
to.

“Are you serious?” Jodi’s voice was pitched
too high and it hurt my ears. I cringed, not trusting my voice, so
I just nodded in answer. “Dude, that’s four days, almost five now,”
Jodi said and I was grateful to hear she was speaking in a hushed
voice now. I opened my eyes just in time to see the light phase to
green and I accelerated slowly into the intersection.

“Has she reported them missing?” Steven
asked, sounding genuinely worried.

“Yeah, but since they’re almost eighteen and
to the cops it looks like they left voluntarily, they say they
can’t do much.” My mood was growing darker with every word. I had
desperately wanted to see Jensen and clear his name.

Everything was completely out of control now
and I felt lost and desperate. Just to look into his eyes for one
of those stolen moments would have been enough. Now I didn’t know
what to think. I gripped the steering wheel wishing I was holding
onto him. I didn’t understand this overwhelming feeling for having
known him such a short amount of time, but there it was.

“Good to know people our age matter so much,”
Steven said sarcastically. I saw Jodi shift uncomfortably in her
seat. Her father was a local cop, but I wouldn’t hold her or her
dad responsible for the policies of the whole police
department.

“Well, it’s not like they don’t have enough
to do without chasing after two guys that are practically legal
adults. I’m sure if it were two seventeen year old girls gone for
five days they’d say something different,” I said in defense of
Jodi’s father.

“Yeah, definitely,” Jodi said
defensively.

“Oh good, so just me then,” Steven said,
folding his arms over his chest and falling back against the back
seat, brooding.

“Dude, just shut up. Can we focus for one
freaking second?” My temper was so close to the surface these days
that sometimes it was just easier to let it out in spurts rather
than hold it all in all the time. I caught Steven’s glare in the
rearview mirror and before I could stop myself I stuck my tongue
out at him, crinkling my nose and brow. Steven mimicked me, adding
a shake of his head. It was all so serious but we had totally
regressed ten years in that moment.

I turned the car then, pulling into a parking
lot and driving up to a Starbucks. I eased into a parking space and
put the car in park and waited, unbuckling my seatbelt and sighing
into the seat, trying to relax my shoulders. I looked at Jodi. Her
face was lost in thought, lines creasing her forehead, and her eyes
looked like they were focused on my hip, but really, she was just
lost.

“So, what now?” I asked no one in
particular.

“Jodi, you’re forgetting to tell her
something,” Steven said with no inflection to his voice.

“What?” Jodi asked, coming back to
reality.

“Tracy,” he said simply.

“What about Tracy?” I asked, sitting up
suddenly, looking back and forth between them. Ever since I had
saved her from Nick that horrible Friday night, I felt the desire
to keep her guarded, like my baby chick to protect.

“She wasn’t at school today, either,” Jodi
said, rejoining the conversation totally.

“So?” I asked.

“It could be nothing,” Jodi said, “but we
thought it was a little suspicious with Ian missing today.”

“But he’s been gone since Thursday and we’ve
seen Tracy since then,” I said.

“Which is why I said it could be nothing,”
Jodi said, finally undoing her seatbelt too.

“You think it was Ian in the clearing? I
thought you two loved him?” I was totally confused now.

“Isn’t the best bad guy the one you want to
be the good guy?” Steven asked a little sarcastically. But
something clicked in my memory and with that simple question I
realized why Jodi had kept pressing me to think of Jensen as the
bad guy. She thought I was too into him to think of him as anything
but a good guy.

“Do you know what Ian
feels
like?”
Jodi asked, looking me in the eye.

“Not really. He was so nervous and pent up at
the store I couldn’t get a good read on him,” I said,
disappointment leaking through every word.

“Too bad,” Jodi said simply, looking out her
window at nothing in particular.

“I need coffee.” I grabbed my purse and
opened my door, not waiting for the other two to follow, knowing
they would anyway. I almost ran to get into the store. I felt my
cheeks sting when the warm air rushed over me as I pulled the door
open and stepped inside. I felt Steven and Jodi behind me and I
walked straight to the counter, grateful the after work rush hadn’t
started. I considered all the lovely, sugar infused concoctions,
but talked myself into a healthier choice and took a strong, large
cup of drip coffee, doctoring it with raw sugar and real cream. I
sat at a corner table, waiting for Steven and Jodi to get their
drinks, cradling the warm cup between my hands, letting the heat
relax my fingers and arms. The whole coffee ritual was one that I
loved to indulge in.

Steven and Jodi came eventually, cradling
their thousand calorie drinks and sat across from me, enjoying the
first few sips before any of us broke the silence. It was more than
tempting to just revel in this moment of normalcy, but guilt tugged
at the corners of my consciousness and I sighed, knowing we had to
get back to work.

“Ok,” I said reluctantly, “so you have a bad
feeling about Tracy’s absence. But it’s totally possible it’s just
your normal teenage shenanigans and she ditched for the day with
her boyfriend.”

“Shenanigans,” Steven repeated with a low
chuckle.

“Yeah, that’s possible,” Jodi nodded at her
coffee cup.

“And it’s also possible that Ian has nothing
to do with any of this and whoever is doing all this is using the
twins as a red herring,” I continued.

“Another possibility,” Jodi nodded again, but
she was being too agreeable for me.

“And you don’t buy any of that, do you?”

“Not a bit.”

“You are so stubborn.” I didn’t sound nearly
as harsh as I meant it.

“Hey, give me a better, more concrete
alternative and I’ll consider it. Right now, this is all we
got.”

“But it could still be coincidence,” I
pressed, setting my half empty cup on the table and sitting up, I
could feel my impatience rolling off of me and saw Jodi’s face
react to its bite.

“Fine, it could be coincidence,” she
conceded, albeit reluctantly.

“Now, I won’t dismiss Tracy’s absence, I’ll
give you the benefit of the doubt on that,” I said, watching her
face relax. “Let’s see if she comes to school tomorrow. If she
doesn’t, then we’ll start to worry. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough.”

We both nodded and I felt Steven relax, he
had been waiting for us to fight. We finished our coffee in
silence, but it was a comfortable silence. There wasn’t much more
we could do right at this moment and I felt resigned to allow us a
few minutes of peace. We would need to start searching for the next
ritual spot if we wanted any hope of rescuing the next victim and
stopping whatever the ritual would release into our world.

I suddenly had an overwhelming sense of loss.
I was terribly depressed and felt my shoulders slump and the edges
of my mouth pulled down. I had the desire to cry right then and
there. I realized I really missed Jensen. I flashed on the scene in
his car and felt the rush of excitement and heat as I relived our
first kiss. Jensen was reaching out to me. I didn’t know how, but I
knew it all the same.

I reached for the chain of the necklace
hidden under my sweater and pulled it out through my collar and
grabbed the pendant, squeezing it in my right hand. I could taste
wet earth in my mouth and fallen dead leaves; I could almost feel
them crunch under my teeth. I could smell the dense foliage only an
old forest has. A breeze lifted my hair, pushing it away from my
face, and it was almost intoxicating. I blinked and couldn’t see
the coffeehouse anymore and, though I knew they were next to me, I
couldn’t even see Jodi and Steven now.

I was standing near the clearing I had seen
in the scrying bowl, but I was hidden in the shadow of the tree
line, looking out at it. It was empty, no table, no altar, no
people, just the clearing, but I’d know it from any other clearing
in any other forest for the rest of my life. The skin on my arms
prickled in goose bumps as the residual power drifted over me,
swirling around me and trying to take hold. It was so tempting;
seductive like the whispers of a longed for lover. My fingers
tingled with the desire to reach out and take hold of the power and
wrap it around me. I had never felt that much power and it wanted
me. I suddenly had an image of Eve finally plucking the apple from
the tree, breaking the red flesh of the fruit and the juices
running down her chin and the world exploding into darkness and
pain. I flared out my own energy, pushing my shields farther out
from my body. The tendrils of power snapped back as if burned by me
and recoiled back into the clearing.

I came back to myself in a rush, slumping in
my chair and gasping for breath. I held my hand at my heart and
concentrated on breathing. From a distance, I was vaguely aware of
Jodi and Steven talking to me, but it was like they were speaking
to me underwater. Slowly their words grew louder and clearer,
breaking through the pressure in my head. I blinked, trying to
force my eyes to adjust to the soft light of the coffeehouse. I
could feel Jodi and Steven’s hands on my back, a light and familiar
pressure.

“Shay? Are you ok? Can you hear me?” Steven’s
voice reached me first, but I had to remember how to talk and had a
very difficult time thinking of the response he wanted to hear.

“I’m ok,” I managed. My voice was harsh like
it would be after screaming for hours. I coughed roughly and they
both reached for my coffee cup to hand to me, nearly dropping it in
their haste. I took it with trembling hands and slowly raised it to
my lips and took a drink. “I’m ok, I’m ok,” I managed to sound
normal to my great relief. “I had a vision. He’s going back to his
original site. The power is still there, waiting for him.”

Tracy didn’t show at school the next day. All
through Home Ec I had this overwhelming sense of anxiety and
nervousness, as if I was desperate to get somewhere. I looked at
Steven and we both knew that Jodi wanted to find a reason to come
find us and tell us that Tracy wasn’t in class as soon as possible.
We found out, in the few minutes between classes, that she was so
desperate to get to us because Ian was still absent as well. I
gritted my teeth, not completely sure just what to do. I didn’t
want to sit through class all day while something might be
happening to Tracy, but I didn’t know where to find her, so we’d be
on a wild goose chase if we ditched early.

“But we have to do
something!
” Jodi
stressed when I decided we would stay for school.

“I know, and we’re going to, I promise,” I
said, laying my hand on her forearm, projecting cool and soothing
reassurance to her. I felt her fight the tide of emotions. I was
more powerful than she, but she was trying. “Look, we just have to
remember, the spell says that the victim has to come into the
circle of power willingly. If something was happening to her right
now, then he’d have to drag her into the circle and it won’t work.”
That seemed to speak to Jodi on some level I hadn’t been able to
reach yet and she visibly calmed.

“Which ‘he’ are you talking about, by the
way?” Steven asked, a strange tone coloring his words.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, who do you think has Tracy?”

I considered that for a few moments. It was
difficult for me to assume that either twin was responsible for
whatever was going on right now. Jensen, although obviously
talented to some degree, just didn’t strike me as malevolent. I
wasn’t sure what to think of Ian. If he was innocent, why did he
run away from me at the store? But his arm wasn’t burned. I
couldn’t think straight.