Night Sky (32 page)

And then, as I watched, I saw Garrett look at Calvin, and like the bully that he was, he attacked. He pivoted his wheelchair slightly, so that he was facing Calvin. “And what up wit you, nigga?”

I swallowed a gasp and both Dana and Milo bristled. But Cal was calm, just staring Garrett down. “I'm glad you finally bought the
Learn Ebonics
books-on-tape,” he said.

When Dana laughed, Garrett got even more petulant. “You think you're so funny, don't you, Williams, but you want to hear something really hilarious? In a week, week and a half, I'll be out of this fugly chair for good. But you'll be sitting down to piss for the rest of your life.”

There was a moment of silence—or deafening music as it were—and then Dana kind of laughed again and muttered, “Well, hell.”

She turned to look at me, and then she looked over at the stairs, and I got the message and swiftly headed up them. This situation was on the verge of escalating, big time. Because no way was Dana going to stand there and let Calvin get treated like that. Except, that kind of escalation was going to result in the four of us being asked to leave. And if we were going to get evicted from this party, I'd better finish searching the house first.

I hesitated on the top landing, but then turned to see that Milo had come upstairs with me. “This way,” he said.

And truth be told, I wouldn't have checked the second and third floors as thoroughly if he hadn't been assisting. There were a lot of shut bedroom doors that I didn't particularly want to open, but Milo just led the way, popping the locks and pushing them ajar.

I closed my eyes, stuck my head in and simultaneously took a sniff, and apologized.

“Sorry!”

“Sorry!”

“Sorry!”

“Sorry!”

The third floor held Mr. Hathaway's huge home office. Milo was laughing at me as we snuck in there. He sifted cautiously through paperwork on the top of the massive mahogany desk, while I worked on sniffing the walls and built-in cabinets.

“He's a doctor,” Milo reminded me. “A plastic surgeon.” He held up a couple of patients' charts.

I inhaled the smell of leather and cigars. No sewage.

“Doesn't that mean he might be connected to the production of Destiny?” I asked. Lucky for us, this room was far enough away from the rest of the party that we didn't have to yell over the music anymore. Still, we kept our voices barely above a whisper, just to make sure no one found us snooping in here.

“Could be,” Milo said as he looked at me. “On the other hand, if the drug catches on, cosmetic surgeons are going to be obsolete. So you'd think he'd be heavily anti-Destiny.”

“Good point,” I said, opening a closet and sniffing a collection of white lab coats.

“Anything?” Milo asked.

“Nothing. Completely sewage-smell free,” I said. I fist-pumped once more, just to drive the point home.

He smiled at that.

I wasn't as amused. “This is a total waste of time.” I sighed as I flopped down in an overstuffed leather chair. “I don't know why I thought this would be easy. But now that we're here, it's just…” I tried to explain. “It's wrong. It feels wrong.”

He took me seriously, half sitting on the edge of Dr. Hathaway's big desk as he asked, “What feels right?”

He asked, so I told him. “I feel her. Sasha. I want to try homing in on her, the way I did with Dana when she was at that diner.”

Milo looked down at his feet as he sighed, and I knew with a burst of sadness that, just like Dana, he didn't believe Sasha could possibly still be alive. “Sky,” he started.

I cut him off, pushing myself to my feet and heading for the door. It was time to leave this party. “Forget it.”

He stood up too, intercepting me, blocking my path. “Look, I've never had a vision, but if it was anything like your dreams—”

I held out my hand to him. “I'll show you what I saw.”

Milo's eyes were somber. He took my hand, and as our now-familiar contact switched on, I focused on exactly what I'd seen yesterday afternoon.

Sasha.

Asleep.

Breathing.

Alive.

But
that's what being psychic means
, Milo thought at me as he held my hand in both of his own.
You
see
what
happened
. Past tense. Whoever took Sasha kept her alive for a while. That's what you saw.

No
, I tried to tell him.
This
is
more
than
that!

I
know
that's what you want to believe
, he sent back to me as he put his arms around me and held me close. I could smell his sympathy and his own deep sorrow as he told me,
I'm so sorry, Skylar.

And then—God, what was wrong with me?—those images from that dream were back, and the Milo in my head was kissing me, and I was kissing him back.

I jerked myself free from his arms and I stared at him, wide-eyed, as he stared back at me.

“Sorry!” We both said it at once.

And then I turned and bolted for the door.

“Sky, wait!” I heard him say. I clattered down the stairs, and oh, crap, this was too weird, because Dana was sitting on Calvin's lap, right in his wheelchair, kissing the bejeezus out of him.

But I knew right away that Dana was doing it either to piss off Garrett or to allow Calvin to save face—or both.

Still, I could smell Garrett's jealousy, which probably kept me from smelling Milo's, since he was right behind me.

“Time to go, lovebirds!” I announced brightly to both Cal and Dana, and just as I expected, Dana came up first for air. Cal was no fool. As long as Dana was kissing him, he was going to milk that situation for all it was worth.

And sure enough, he kept Dana on his lap as he wheeled them both toward the door.

Leaving Garrett both slack-jawed and toothless. He tried though, saying, “You're a total loser, Williams.” Except Cal looked nothing like a loser with Dana's arms around his neck. So Garrett went for pompous and dictatorial and intoned, “I think it's time for you and your friends to leave.”

“Come on, baby,” Dana said to Calvin, kissing the side of his face. “We got places to go and far better things to do.”

I met Cal's eyes when his wheelchair launched up and over that troublesome doorjamb, and as he held tightly to Dana, I knew that his smile was one I would never forget.

He looked like he'd just hit the lottery, watched Tupac come back to life, and won the Olympics, all at the same time.

I followed them out, with Milo on my heels.

At least one of us was having a very, very good night.

I could feel Milo watching me as we drove north on the interstate.

Our destination was a club called Pretense.

Calvin was still ridiculously happy, dancing like a fool to the radio, right there in the driver's seat.

Dana was sitting up front next to him, and I watched her make a concerted attempt to not laugh. Her face contorted as she held back a smile that poked through regardless of her efforts.

“Are you seriously doing the robot?” she scoffed.

Cal nodded and sang along: “
My
anaconda
don't want none unless you got buns, hon! You can do side bends or sit-ups, but please don't lose that butt…
”

Dana scowled. “What
is
this?”

“
What?
” Calvin offered Dana a look of mock devastation. “Girl, this song's a classic. This is Sir Mix-A-Lot.” He shook his head, astonished. “You've never heard Sir Mix-A-Lot?”

“No,” Dana said.

Calvin mouthed the word “wow” exaggeratedly as he glanced back at me in the rearview. It was impossible to not smile at him, but at the same time, I couldn't shake my feelings of frustration. We were wasting time. I
knew
we were wasting time.

“Oh, before we forget,” Dana said, turning in her seat to look at Milo. “You have those IDs? We're gonna need 'em.”

“Yeah, right,” he said, digging into his jeans pocket and pulling out a thick wallet.

“The fake ones,” Calvin verified.

“The fake ones,” Milo replied, nodding. He held out one to me and handed the other to Dana.

“Wow,” I said, reading mine. “Skylar Macmilton?”

“You have to take what they give you,” Milo said with a shrug. “Trust me when I tell you that Nicolas knows what he's doing.”

I checked the birth date. “Huh. So this would make me…” I did the math in my head. “Twenty-three years old.”

“Twenty-one would look too obviously fake,” Calvin reasoned.

I scoffed. “Yeah, but twenty-
three
? I can't even get into an R-rated movie without getting the evil eye from the ticket lady. Twenty-three is pushing it.”

Calvin took his ID from Dana and glanced at it as he drove. “Whaat?” he scoffed. “I'm twenty-seven! Nuh-uh. There's no way.”

“There's a way,” Milo said quietly.

Cal answered his own question. “Dana'll use her mind-control mojo. But then why spend all that money on something we won't even need?”

“You need to show something,” Milo told him. “It's better not to push it, have Dana's
mojo
convince the bouncers to forget to read the dates.”

That made sense.

But then Dana turned to look at both Milo and me, and her eyes were somber. “My mojo might be in remission,” she said.

I sat forward. “What do you mean?”

Her lips tightened. “I mean that when I tried mind-controlling Quarterback McDouche, back at his party—it didn't work.”

I remembered her quiet “Well, hell,” before she shot me the unspoken message to go ahead and search the house's top floors.

“Maybe it was because he was drunk,” I offered.

She shot me a disgusted look. “Seriously? Alcohol makes the brain more compliant.”

“What about Percocet?” Calvin suggested. “A total wuss like Garrett was no doubt given big-gun painkillers for his ouchy boo-boos.” He snorted. “Like he knows what pain is. Still, I could tell just from looking at him. Dude was definitely stoned.”

Milo reached forward to touch Dana on the shoulder in a reassuring gesture that seemed so sweetly intimate that I had to look away. “I bet it was the painkillers,” he murmured.

“I hope so,” she whispered back.

“You want to test drive it on me?” Calvin asked. “Your mojo mind-thing?” And then, just like before, his head tilted to the side and he said, “I will take the next exit and then, because we're nearly at the club, I will turn down the volume on the radio and sit quietly while Dana discusses our strategy.” His head straightened back up. “Wow, that's so weird.” He glanced at Dana as he turned the radio down, then signaled to exit the highway. “But in an awesome way, because it worked.”

She smiled at him. “It did. Thanks.”

“So what's our strategy?” I asked as Calvin caught the off-ramp and pulled out onto an urban-looking street with buildings and lights on either side. I wanted to suggest that we shelve Dana's so-called strategy and use this time more productively—by letting me see if I couldn't home in on Sasha. I wanted to follow the pull that I felt and see where it led us. But I knew that Dana would be as frustrated by that idea as I was at hers. We each thought the other's approach was a serious waste of time.

“Why do we need a strategy?” Calvin asked. “We're going to a club to pretty much do the same thing we were doing at the party. Let Skylar sniff her way around, hope she smells the smell.”

“We're going to this club,” Dana said, shaking her head as she corrected him, “because we're trying to track down Destiny pushers and users. I'm gonna find them, and yes, Sky's gonna sniff them, and if and when she smells the funky sewage smell, I'm gonna move back in and have a little talk with them. If we get more than one stank hit, then we'll gather as much information as possible and try to figure out what they all have in common.”

“And if I don't smell anything?” I asked, my frustration giving a challenging edge to my tone. “Kinda the way I didn't smell anything at Garrett's?”

“We'll do the best we can,” Dana said.

That was my invitation to suggest a Plan B. “If we fail, can we try something else? Like let me use my homing skills to lead us to Sasha.”

Dana sighed heavily, so I added, “Or maybe you're right and she's dead, and I'll be leading us to her body—but that would be good to find too, right?”

“I'll think about it,” she gave me, then said, “While you're inside, stay close to Milo. He's going to be keeping an eye on you.”

Oh, good. Wasn't that just dandy?

“That's not a problem,” Milo said, and I bit back my
Speak
for
yourself
. It wasn't his fault that I mentally jumped him every chance I got.

Dana continued. “Calvin. Since you like to dance so much, you're going to do your surveillance from the middle of the club. Dance floor.”

Calvin's expression turned panicked for a second. He opened his mouth to protest.

But Dana interrupted him before he got a word out. “I know what you're thinking. But you won't have to worry about the wheelchair getting in the way.”

“Oh, really,” he said. “I mean, have you seen how big it actually is?”

Dana laughed. “Just trust me on this one.”

Calvin drove past bars and restaurants, the lights garish and flashing neon. He bobbed his head to the music, although he wasn't fooling me. I could tell he was nervous again.

It was then that a sports car came shooting out of a parking lot, engine roaring, tires screaming, and rubber burning. Calvin burned off a little of his own tires as he braked hard and squealed to a sudden stop.

My seat belt bit into my chest, and I heard myself shout in alarm, “Watch out!” The panic that consumed me was familiar—it took far less than a bona fide near-miss from a serious idiot to set me off. I closed my eyes and tried to slow my ragged breathing and push away the images that always, always flooded my mind when this happened.

Nicole. Her face was ivory white, rivulets of blood trailing down her temples, pink frothy bubbles of blood-stained spit rising from her lips. She was trying to breathe, gasping, and she looked at me, frantically begging for help…

Help I couldn't give her.

And then—
oh
God
—it was as if my inadvertent thoughts about Nicole had conjured up a vision of Sasha, because I saw her again. She too was covered with blood, only she was screaming and screaming and
screaming
….

“Skylar.” I heard Milo and then I felt him inside my head as he touched me.
Sky
.

Help
me
, I begged him.
Please
…

I was trying to look around, to
really
look, hoping to see where Sasha was, but it was dark and her fear was suffocating. It was hard not to give in to those feelings of panic.

And somehow Milo knew. I realized that I didn't need to form a coherent thought to make him understand—I just had to blast him with everything I was thinking and feeling.

He held tightly to me, both in the backseat of Calvin's car and inside of my head. I could feel him, steady and solid and warm. It grounded me and I was less afraid.

I strained my eyes to see what Sasha saw—to see what was making her scream like that, and although the darkness lifted enough so that I got a glimpse of the menacing outline of a man—a big man—I couldn't make out his face or where we were.

Then, as quickly as it had started, it was over, leaving me out of breath, on the verge of tears, and extremely aware that Milo was still holding me crushingly tightly in his arms.

I wanted to cry, and he knew that and told me,
It's okay if you do.

But it wasn't. It wasn't okay, and taking a moment to catch my breath and close my eyes as I leaned back and absorbed Milo's solid strength wasn't okay, either. Besides, I was more convinced than ever that Sasha was alive, but I knew that he didn't believe me. And somehow
that
was the worst thing of all.

So I sat up and pulled away, and he immediately let me go.

Dana was staring at me from the front seat, and Calvin was glancing at us in his rearview mirror. Milo quietly told them what we'd both just seen—leaving out Nicole and the accident—while I adjusted my halter top and tried to smooth down my hair.

As I looked out the car window, I saw that we'd reached our destination. A lit-up sign read
Pretense
above a striped awning. A long line of people stood outside the door, shifting their high-heeled weight and fluffing their hair.

Without Dana and her mojo, we would've had to wait for hours.

Milo removed a fresh piece of gum from his pocket and popped it into his mouth. He pointed to the right. “There's a parking lot behind the club, if you just turn down this way.”

Calvin did as he was told. The one handicapped space was, of course, vacant.

“Pays to be a cripple,” Calvin muttered under his breath as he parked and cut the engine.

“Don't get out of the car yet,” Dana said. I paused, my hand on the passenger door handle. “No,
you
can get out,” she specified, looking at me and Milo. “In fact, it'll be better if you do.”

Calvin was confused, but he played up the funny. “I'm pretty sure she wants to kiss me again,” he quipped.

I glanced back at Dana one more time before leaving Cal's car and shutting the door behind me. She looked tense—sick, almost. Her face was scrunched up just slightly, and she pursed her lips.

“Is she okay?” I asked Milo.

He dug in his jeans pockets and then stopped, as if remembering that what he was looking for was no longer there. He chewed furiously on his gum. “Yeah. She just needs to concentrate.”

“What is she doing?”

“If I told you, you wouldn't believe it.”

“Try me,” I said. I pointed to myself. “I'm the one who can read your mind—and let you read mine—by touching your hand. I think I'm likely to believe just about anything you tell me.”

Milo smiled at that, but didn't get a chance to respond.

Because before he could open his mouth, the driver-side door to Calvin's car swung open. And Cal took one leg and swung it onto the pavement.

And then, with awkwardly locked knees, my paralyzed best friend got out of his car and marched resolutely past Milo. He stopped in front of me, both feet planted firmly on the ground as he stood there, sans wheelchair, his thin legs shaking beneath the weight of his upper body.

“Holy,” he said, his voice quavering. “Effing.” He smiled down at his wobbly legs. “Shee. It.”