Pawn (Nightmares Trilogy #1) (17 page)

“Ah, got it!” she exclaimed, like a
fisherman who’d just reeled in the biggest bass of his
career.

“Got what, exactly?” I asked, still
playing Connect the Dots with the bits of information that had led
Devon to a year-old report.

“For the fake Asian’s independent
study last year, I wrote a paper on NDEs.”

I laughed despite myself. The “fake
Asian” was Mrs. Chan. We called her that because she was as white
as paper and the photos on her desk suggested her husband was as
well.

“I came across a study that suggests
people who have NDEs sometimes exhibit electromagnetic sensitivity.
I thought about you when I wrote the paper, but I dismissed the
idea since I didn’t know you’d had an NDE,” she
continued.

Electromagnetic sensitivity? I should
have been relieved. My freakish quirk wasn’t so freakish. It had a
scientific explanation. Other people shared my plight. All the
pieces started falling into place. If Kannon really had died when
he was sixteen, he probably experienced the same battery-draining
phenomenon that I did. That was how he guessed that I’d had an NDE,
too.

The
dawning realization and relief were short-lived, quickly
giving way
to humiliation. I’d acted like
a lunatic earlier. That poor kid just wanted to share his
experience with someone who he thought would be understanding, and
I’d just flipped my shit on him. Wow, who was crazy now?

“I bet since you’ve both died and
probably both have electromagnetic sensitivity, the sex would be
electrifying. Shockingly awesome. A whole new meaning to
pulsing–”

“How romantic,” I said dryly, cutting
her off before she could make any additional puns.

“It sort of is. Do you know
another girl who can say sparks literally fly when she touches her
lover?” Devon always said the word “lover” the way Carrie did
on
Sex and the City
when she talked about Alexander Petrovsky.

“I don’t suppose dying and being
brought back gives you the ability to read minds or see the future,
does it?” I asked without thinking.

Devon turned in her
computer chair. “You mean is
his
dying
somehow related to how he knew your
name?”

“Yeah,” I said, even though that
wasn’t what I’d been thinking at all. I was really remembering the
past week of my life and the dreams I’d been having.

“No. At least not that I found. But I
can do some more research,” Devon promised.

I groaned and collapsed backwards onto
the bed, throwing one arm dramatically over my eyes. “He must think
I’m off my rocker,” I moaned.

“I doubt that,” Devon said, the chair
creaking as she rose and joined me on the mattress. “I would have
freaked, too. And he could’ve chosen a more tactful way to break
the news to you. Dipped his toe in the water instead of plunging in
headfirst.”

“You don’t get it. I screamed at him.
Ordered him to leave my house,” I said.

“You have his number, right? Call him
and explain that it was all a misunderstanding. I throw Rick out of
my house all the time and he always forgives me. I even threw him
out of my car once. While it was moving.” Devon giggled when she
said the last part.

I laughed, too because she wasn’t
exactly joking. The car had been rolling through a stop sign the
time Devon insisted that Rick take a flying leap, and he took her
advice.

To take my mind off the
ridiculous way I’d behaved, Devon grabbed the plate of brownies her
mother had made earlier and put
Troy
on the television. Homer’s
great epic was a favorite among
my friends
and me
. Elizabeth loved Paris
because he sacrificed
everything for love. Devon loved Achilles since he was played
by Brad Pitt, and ever since
Fight
Club
she thought he could do no wrong. Me?
I liked
the rituals in the mythology.
The
way the Trojans placed gold coins in
the mouths of the deceased so they could pay the ferryman to take
them into the afterlife fascinated me.

Chapter Ten

Smoke filled my lungs and
burned my eyes, causing them to water. I used the silk skirt of my
dress as a mask, covering my mouth and nose as I moved deeper down
the corridor. Alarms blared from the speakers attached to the
walls, but I disregarded them. Devon was still in here somewhere;
she had to be.

The thick clouds of
grey-black smoke made it hard for me to see more than a couple of
feet in front of me; I pressed forward, using the wall as a guide.
While the fire hadn’t spread to this section of the building yet,
the heat was nearly unbearable. My skin felt like it was blistering
with the worst sunburn I’d ever experienced.

“DEVON!” I screamed her
name, but it came out raspy and was followed by a coughing fit that
caused me to double over.

The air was slightly
better close to the floor, reminding me that smoke rises. On hands
and knees, I crawled down the wooden floorboards, careful to keep
my mouth as close to the ground as possible.

“DEVON!” I cried
again.

This time my efforts were
rewarded. A banging sound came from somewhere at the end of the
hallway I was crawling down. Relief washed over me ― she was still
alive. Forgetting that I should stay low to the ground, I stood and
began running in the direction of the banging.

“Devon, I’m coming,” I
promised her. “Keep making noise.”

The gold heels on my feet
became an impediment as I hurried to reach my best friend. I kicked
them aside, regretting the decision as I moved deeper into the
smoke. The wood was hot beneath my feet. By the time I reached the
source of the banging, it felt like I was walking on coals. Sweat
and soot caked my face, and my lungs ached from all of the smoke
I’d inhaled.

The banging was coming
from behind a door. I wrapped the hem of my dress around my hand
and tried the door handle. It wouldn’t budge.

“DEVON!” I screamed,
pressing my face against the door. It was so hot I flinched and
pulled away instantly.

The banging stopped. “Eel?
Eel, get out of here!” came Devon’s muffled reply. Her demands were
followed by a series of choking coughs. Then a loud boom rocked the
ground beneath my feet. I fell backwards, not bothering to break my
fall with my hands. Dazed, I scrambled to my knees. The smoke
filling the hallway swam before my eyes. Bells rang. Belatedly, I
realized they were inside my head. I screamed Devon’s name over and
over again, but the sound of my voice was swallowed by a second
explosion.

“Endora! Endora!” a panicked voice
yelled in my ear.

I lashed out toward the sound of her
voice, slapping it away. Thin fingers grabbed my wrists and held
them firmly.

“Get off of me!” I
shrieked.

“Endora, wake up!” the voice ordered
me.

My eyes finally flew open. Devon’s
haggard face stared back. Yanking my wrists free, I frantically
searched my body for signs of damage. I inhaled, long and deep. The
air was fresh as it filled my lungs, nothing like the smoke-filled
breaths I’d taken in my dream. I expected to find angry red
blisters on my skin, but my arms were pale and smooth in the
moonlight seeping through Devon’s bedroom window.

“Bad dream?” she asked
tentatively. 

“Maybe we shouldn’t
watch
Troy
before
bed again,” I said, laughing uneasily. My skin burned from the
inside out, the memory of the smoke creatures still vivid in my
mind.

“Speak for yourself. Until you started
shrieking like a banshee, I was Rose Byrne in that tent with
Achilles.”

It took me a while to fall
back asleep after the nightmare. I kept sniffing my shirt,
expecting to smell smoke and campfire. My skin felt cold to the
touch,
but sweat dotted my forehead as if
I had a fever
. The last time I remembered
looking at the clock, bright red numbers glowed 5:13 am.

Nails tapping on a keyboard woke me
too soon. I groaned, tiredly rubbing my eyes with the back of my
hand. Devon was sitting at her computer desk, her back to me. A pen
protruded from the messy bun of blonde curls on top of her
head.

“Good, you’re awake,” Devon said, her
voice muffled around whatever she was eating.

“What are you doing?” I mumbled. My
body ached and it took more effort than normal to sit
up.

Devon swiveled in her computer chair
to face me. “The folder that your father left at the Moonlight,”
she tapped the manila folder sitting next to the mouse pad, “it has
an Excel spreadsheet with names, email addresses, and phone
numbers. I am Googling the names. These people probably know your
father.”

After reliving my humiliating
conversation with Kannon and learning that there was an entire
group of people in the world who shared at least some of my
idiosyncrasies, the search for my father had been temporarily put
on hold. I felt extremely guilty about it in retrospect, but at
least Devon was on top of things.

“What have you found?” I asked,
suddenly very awake.

A paper plate with a half-eaten
brownie and a glass of milk sat on the left side of the computer
desk. Devon shook her head as she popped a piece of brownie into
her mouth. She swallowed and cleared her throat.

“Since your father is a professor, I
thought maybe they are people who have been helping him with his
research. Like other professors. But as far as I can tell, none of
them work at an institute of higher learning in this country.” She
paused and ate another bite of brownie. “It’s weird. None of these
people seem to exist in the cyber world. No Facebook pages. No
articles written about them, or by them. Nothing.”

“You said there are email addresses?”
I scooted to the end of the mattress and peered over Devon’s
shoulder. She had eight separate webpages open. In addition to
Google, she appeared to be perusing various college history
department websites.

“One step ahead of you.” Devon spun
her chair around and pulled up a Gmail account with a username I
didn’t recognize. “I set up this dummy email account and sent each
one a message. This Klinefelter woman doesn’t have any additional
information, though.”

The manila folder was open and a
single sheet of white paper sat on top. Dad, I assumed, had made a
spreadsheet with ten names and corresponding contact information.
Next to Betsy Klinefelter, all the boxes were blank.

“Hopefully one of the others will
respond,” I said, reaching around Devon to take the
folder.

Besides the spreadsheet, there were
lined pages filled with Dad’s tiny, indecipherable handwriting and
several pages that had been torn from books.

“Did you look through this stuff?” I
asked.

Devon shook her head. “Not
yet.”

I split the stack in half. “I need to
get home, but I’ll take a look at this,” I held up my half, “if you
want to keep going through the rest.”

“Deal.” Devon turned to face me again.
Her smile was sympathetic. “We’ll find him, Eel.”

The emotion in my best friend’s eyes
was too much. I had to turn away. “I hope so.”

Once in my own bedroom, I
gave maximum and minimum limits the most attention I could manage.
Between flipping out on Kannon the night before and the increasing
worry over my father’s whereabouts, the desire to crawl under the
covers and not resurface for a year was strong. I contemplated
calling Kannon and explaining, like Devon had suggested. After all,
he couldn’t think me crazier than
he
already did.
And that was at least
something I could do. I had no way of getting in touch with my
father. The papers that I had taken from the folder made no sense
to me. My best guess was that they were notes on Dad’s latest
research project. But none of them held any clue as to where he
might be now.

I found Kannon’s number in my cell and
hit send. I chewed my bottom lip, half of me hoping he would answer
so I could get this over with, and half of me praying it would go
to voice mail. The latter happened. Kannon’s deep voice brought a
smile to my face as he instructed me to leave a message, saying
that he’d call back as soon as he was free.

“Hi, it’s Endora. Look, I am really
sorry about last night. You must think I am the biggest spaz. I can
explain, though. If you still want to talk, maybe you could call me
back?” Great, I sounded like a moron. “Anyway, you have my
number.”

I set the phone on the comforter next
to me, double-checking that the ringer was on high so I wouldn’t
miss Kannon’s call. I tried to focus on my homework, but ended up
doodling little balls on the end of my integral signs. Somehow I
doubted my teacher would appreciate me turning in an assignment
with no answers, even if it were aesthetically pleasing.

Before long, I gave up on the pretense
of calculus and began flipping through the manila folder for the
fifth time that day. I was trying to make sense of a poem printed
on yellowed paper with a coffee cup stain in the center when my
phone came alive. Hurriedly, I snatched it up, my heart leaping
into my throat. The excitement quickly faded when I saw Devon’s
name on the display.