Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3 (61 page)

Her head rested on my shoulder. Finally, her sobs subsided. “I thought I’d lost you,” she said. “I thought he was going to wipe out your memory of us, and it would all be gone.”

“He tried,” I said. “I’ll give him that, he really tried.”

“But it didn’t work?” She raised her head to look questioningly at me. “Why didn’t it work? It worked on Mallory.”

“Mallory didn’t have any idea what was coming.” Poor Mallory. “I was prepared because you warned me.”

“Oh no,” she said. “I didn’t warn you. I mean, I tried to warn you but—”

“I was sleeping,” I finished her sentence. “On some level, what you said came through but I could only remember part of it. It bothered me all through breakfast. I kept trying to figure out what you’d said. At first, I didn’t realize you’d astral projected to me while I was sleeping. I kept thinking it was a dream or something else.” I shook my head at the memory. “But when Mr. Specter got out the Deleo and it was on my head, I finally figured it all out. I tried to take it off, but once it’s on it sort of locks onto your head and sucks all the will out of you, like the world’s most powerful vacuum cleaner. I lost the ability to do anything. I couldn’t have zapped him, even if I’d wanted to. I was numb.”

“So what did you do? I mean, how did you keep from getting your memories messed with?”

“I just listened to you.” I reached down and wiped the tears from her cheeks. For such a little thing, she had a lot of emotion. “You saved me.”

Nadia

I listened as Russ told how my words had sunk into his sleeping brain. “As soon as he called it a Deleo, everything you said came back to me,” he said. “I stood up and tried to take it off, but it was impossible. And then it sucked all my energy. I could feel it fiddling around with my brain.” He shuddered at the thought.

“So what did you do?” I asked.

“I could hear your voice in my head and I saw what Mr. Specter had done with the Deleo to Professor Neverman because you showed me the whole thing. So when he asked me to open my eyes and asked what I saw, I knew not to open my eyes. When he said to stare, I shut them as tight as I could. I answered all his questions the same way the professor did, and when he started trying to implant memories I fought it. First, I tried thinking of other things, nursery rhymes and the multiplication tables, and it helped, but I could tell I was losing ground.” He stopped to stare off in the distance like he was remembering. “I was able to pull away from him mentally, but I could tell I needed to get away emotionally for it to work so I tried to think of the most intense experience I’d ever had. The strongest rush of feeling I’ve ever felt in my entire life.” He looked deep into my eyes, and put his hand against my cheek. “And that was last night when I came into your room and you kissed me.”

Russ

With the Deleo pressed against my eyes, and my body immobile in the chair, Mr. Specter thought I was powerless against his suggestions. He wanted me to forget about my friends, to follow his commands without question, to do what the Associates told me to do. I could feel myself getting dragged into his mind control. His ideas were starting to sound more reasonable as time went on, and I was fighting it, but I knew I needed something powerful if I was going to survive with my mind intact. And so I stopped listening to him, and in my mind replayed my evening with Nadia, over and over again. How cute she looked in her pajamas when I showed up unexpected. I pictured her opening the door; I could still see the pleased-beyond-belief expression on her face.

I thought about the smell of her hair, clean and fresh. I remembered sitting on the bed and how she put her finger to her lips and said we had to be quiet. When she knelt on the bed next to me, her weight created a little valley between us on the mattress, making me sink toward her. And then when she leaned in to kiss me, I thought my heart would explode. I swear that I could replay that moment every day for the rest of my life. I’d want to experience everything. Her breath on my face and her lips against mine and me thinking that I never wanted it to end. When it was over I longed for more, but only if I could do it with her. Those feelings were stronger than anything that device could do to me.

I still heard Mr. Specter’s voice in the background. He said, “You aren’t in love with anyone. You have no romantic feelings for anyone at this time, Russ, and won’t unless you are instructed to do so, understand?”

And I’d said the word, “yes,” to placate him, but mentally I was gone, lost in last night’s reality, which was better than any dream.

Mr. Specter said, “You will use your powers to destroy the enemy when instructed by me.”

“Yes,” I said, but I didn’t let the words intrude on my memory of Nadia, her arms wrapped around me, the two of us kissing.

Nadia interrupted my story. “I can’t believe that worked.”

“It did work.” I lifted her chin so that our eyes met. “Because I was thinking of this.” I leaned in and kissed her; and she kissed me back. It was like drinking water after a long drought; we were thirsty for each other.

She put her hands on either side of my face and pulled apart to whisper breathlessly. “I feel like I could do this forever.”

“Me too,” I said, “but…” I turned to look at the road behind us. “Maybe we should start running for our lives?”

“Oh, shoot,” she sat up and put her hand over her mouth. “I kind of forgot for a minute.”

“They’re not going to forget, trust me. Especially when they notice we stole their car.”

She scrambled over the console and put her seatbelt back on, pulled onto the roadway and floored it. I watched as the needle showing our speed jumped up to the top of the dial. She was making up for lost time, I guessed.

While she drove, I did inventory and found two cans of Coke in the console between the seats, and crammed in the glove compartment, a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses, the owner’s manual (in Spanish), a pack of gum, and some receipts. I handed the sunglasses to Nadia and she put them on and smiled my way, looking like an adorable bug. “Okay,” I said, ticking off our assets on my fingers. “I have my passport and wallet,” I said.

“Me too!” she said. Mr. Specter’s speech on the plane about keeping your passport with you at all times had obviously made an impression on both of us.

I nodded and peered into my wallet. “I’ve got money and we have a full tank of gas. If we had a GPS, it would be perfect. Then we’d know where we are.”

“Oh man.” Nadia smacked her forehead, before reaching into her pocket. “I totally forgot. I’ve got a GPS.” She pulled it out of her pocket and the cord trailed behind like the long tail of a rat. “It’s Mr. Specter’s. I got it from the bus.”

“Oh Nadia, you are brilliant!” If we weren’t barreling down the highway at this moment I would have kissed her. “You know what this means, don’t you?” I plugged the GPS into the electrical portal on the dashboard. “Mr. Specter entered all three destinations in ahead of time. In theory this thing is already programmed to go to our third location, the place designated by David Hofstetter.”

“But how do we know if it’s the actual third location?” She asked. “I mean, the other two places didn’t seem to have anything to do with David. If Mr. Specter can’t be trusted, then maybe he just picked three locations at random. A cat park—what was that all about? And it was kind of a weird coincidence that his friend Professor Neverman lived in location two.”

“I know,” I said, “but I was the one that got the coordinates from Gordy Hofstetter in the first place and I checked them on my own, independent of Mr. Specter, and came up with the same three areas. The last one is the site of an Incan ruin, just as he said. I looked it up at home.” The GPS came to life, searching for satellites and finally locking onto one. I clicked on the locations that were programmed in, and found the one that correlated with the ruins.

“I heard Mr. Specter tell Professor Neverman that David Hofstetter is dead,” Nadia said. “This might be a waste of time.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But there’s a reason it was marked on the paper. Even if we don’t find him, we might find out something.”

“And if we’re heading there, isn’t there a good chance they’ll be heading that way too?” Nadia asked, worry in her voice. “What if they catch us?”

“They won’t,” I said, “not if we hurry.”

Nadia

We’d been driving in the wrong direction. The ruins were twelve hours south of us. We turned the car around. Russ set the GPS on detour mode so we wouldn’t pass the monastery again, and then there was nothing to do but drive.

After about two hours, we stopped to switch places. Russ had never driven before, except for go karts and games, but we were mostly on long stretches of country highway, no other cars in sight, so it wasn’t that tricky. “It’s all in the attitude,” he said, veering around a turn.

“Watch the attitude or you’ll put us in a ditch,” I said, teasing. Despite the worry of being found by Mr. Specter, or that we’d run into more Associates, or get arrested for car theft, this road trip was the most fun I’d ever had in my entire life. I liked being next to him, watching him as he drove, and having the opportunity to talk endlessly with no one else around. The hours went quickly. If I could have frozen time and locked us into that day, I would have. Russ, I decided, had a really nice profile. When the driving got more challenging, like when we were stopped by a herd of goats crossing the road, his forehead scrunched up in concern, like he was doing something really difficult and didn’t want to screw it up. Every now and then he’d turn to me and say, “Are you doing okay?” like I was this fragile hot house orchid that needed to be constantly monitored or I’d wilt.

“Really okay,” was my standard response.

After Russ had been driving for a while, the conversation drifted back to what had happened at the convent. “There are so many things I don’t understand,” Russ said. “Why did Mr. Specter tell us Professor Neverman had a flu bug when he was dying of cancer?”

“Maybe he thought the word cancer would put a damper on things? Spoil the trip?”

“I thought of that too,” he said. “But it still doesn’t make sense. We hardly saw the man and we didn’t know him. I mean, yeah, it’s terrible that he’s dying, but it’s not like we couldn’t handle the truth.”

“Then I don’t know.” I shrugged. This seemed like the least of our worries. I felt bad for Professor Neverman, but the truth of the matter is that people die. All the time. That’s a fact of life. And he was an old guy.

“I was wondering,” Russ said, “if maybe he kept it a secret because he didn’t want me to cure him.”

“Could you have cured him?”

“I’m not sure. I could have tried,” he said.

I was silent for a moment, thinking it through. “So I guess the question is, why would he want Professor Neverman to die?”

“Exactly.” Russ said. “If he didn’t want him cured, then he was fine with him dying.”

“What a sucky friend.”

“You’ve got that right.” Russ’s forehead scrunched again, even though the road was flat and no goats were in sight. “Which reminds me, I hope Mallory and Jameson come out of this okay.”

“Me too.” Hearing their names cast a shadow over the drive. Could I have somehow saved them? I’d acted on panic and instinct and ran, when maybe I should have stayed and fought. But I didn’t have that kind of power, and even though I tried, no one would listen to me. Besides, Mallory had already had her memories altered, and Jameson seemed eager to be the next victim. I’d tried. That was my only consolation.

Russ said, “I still don’t understand why Mr. Specter wanted to alter our memories?”

I ventured a guess. “He had a new toy and wanted to try it out?”

“But there wasn’t any reason to do it to
us
. We were on his side already.”

“Maybe he’s not on the side we think he is.”

Russ snuck a glance my way. His face told me he was impressed. “Nadia, you are really, really smart.”

“That’s what they say,” I said. “It’s my saving grace, my mother says.”

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“It means it’s the one thing I’ve got going for me.”

“Oh. Well, then I have to disagree with your mother. Being smart is only one of many things you’ve got going for you.” And then he gave me a smile I wanted to capture and keep for dreary days.

I could have lived on that compliment and that smile for the rest of the week.

At about the time we both got hungry, we came to a small village, just a stop in the road really. We noticed a scattering of houses as we approached and Russ said, “Civilization. I say we put down our flag and claim it for our own,” which made me laugh. The actual village was made up of a few shops, a church, a vegetable stand, and a gas station. I thought about how malls were so excessive. Right here was everything a person could possibly need.

We filled up the gas tank first, and I pulled out the bills I’d found in the bus. “I’ve got this,” I said to Russ. Our gas was courtesy of Mr. Specter. We got back in and drove a short way to the restaurant. The hand lettered sign above the door said, RESTAURANTE. Again, as much as was needed and no more. Outside the entrance was a chalk board listing the day’s offerings. Half a dozen wooden tables with folding chairs dotted the space between the building and the road. Two men sat, drinking cerveza, and eating sandwiches. When we walked up, they stared.

“Hola,” I said, and they nodded, before going back to their food.

We didn’t want to spend much time there, so we ate quickly, downing our food with Inca Kola. Russ paid this time, making it, I thought, our first date, although I didn’t say as much because that would have sounded cheesy. We were on delicate terrain here. Not boyfriend and girlfriend exactly. I wasn’t sure what this was, really, but the idea of us together filled me with hope and happiness, two things that had been missing from my life for a very long time.