Pawn (Nightmares Trilogy #1) (33 page)

****

“Eel, wake up!” someone
demanded.

Blindly, I tried to reach out towards
the sound of the voice. My arms were pinned. Coarse hair tickled my
nose as it swept across my face. Someone was leaning over me. I
kicked my legs, finding them untethered.

“Jesus, Eel,” the voice said as
something sharp and pointy slammed into my gut.

“Owww,” I moaned, finally opening my
eyes. Devon’s face was inches above me, huge eyes watery with
unshed tears. “What’s wrong?” I asked, afraid something had
happened to her.

“You kicked me,” she said, sitting
back on her haunches and releasing my arms.

“I did?”

“Yeah, just now. You were screaming in
your sleep and when I tried to wake you up, you
freaked.”

I scrambled to sit up.
Devon had turned on her bedside lamp, and in the dull light I could
just make out red blotches on my upper arms
where she’d held me down.
I brought
my knees to my chest and hugged myself, suddenly
freezing.

“Nightmare,” I mumbled, rocking back
and forth slightly. I repeated the word, reassuring myself as much
as Devon. My heart was racing and my side ached, and I was still
disoriented from being forcefully pulled from sleep.

“Nightmare,” I repeated a third time,
finally meeting Devon’s concerned gaze.

A fist seemed to squeeze my lungs,
cutting off my air supply. A sudden rush of panic jolted my brain
fully awake, but the panic wasn’t for me. It was for my best
friend. The glazed expression in her eyes, the way her curls were
piled on top of her head, the thin straps of her pajama top,
triggered something in my mind. Wisps of gray-and-white smoke
swirled around me at dizzying speed. Incorporeal hands reached for
me, their nails clawing at my arms and legs. Blistering heat
engulfed my entire body. I blinked rapidly, too stunned to
react.

“Definitely a nightmare,” Devon
agreed.

Her voice pulled me from the vision,
anchoring me to reality. I blinked several more times before I was
convinced that Devon and I were alone in her bedroom. I nearly wept
with relief when the ghost-like appendages didn’t
reappear.

“You started screaming bloody murder,
I thought you’d wake my parents,” Devon continued. The concern in
her eyes deepened. “Eel? Are you okay?” She placed the back of her
hand against my forehead, like my mother used to do when she
thought I might have a fever.

“You’re roasting,” she
proclaimed.

Devon leapt to her feet, disappearing
into the hallway and returning moments later with a cold washcloth.
The wet towel felt amazing against my flushed skin, cooling the
feverish flesh on contact like aloe on a bad sunburn.

“You’ve been having a lot of
nightmares lately, Eel,” Devon said quietly. “Want to talk about
it?”

I patted my chest, searching for the
dream catcher for comfort. It wasn’t there. Right, because despite
promising Kannon I wouldn’t take it off ever again, I hadn’t wanted
to see my mother and therefore failed to retrieve it from my
bedroom.

“Are they all the same?” Devon pressed
when I didn’t respond.

“I-I-I don’t know,” I stammered. “I
don’t usually remember them after I wake up.”

I hugged my knees tighter against my
chest. I’d told Devon the truth. The dreams were gone from my mind
nearly the instant I woke up. Tonight was the first time images had
bled through.

“Usually?” Devon’s attention to detail
was impressive. Even minute facts and figures were never overlooked
by my best friend. “So sometimes you do remember them.”

It wasn’t a question. I nodded
anyway.

“Talk to me, Eel.”

While the images from the dream were
gone, the ominous sensation remained. Kannon had said that in time
I would recall the dreams from the moment I awoke. As I watched the
lines between my best friend’s brows deepen, I had the awful
feeling that time might not be a luxury that I had.

“Something bad is going to happen,” I
whispered softly. I couldn’t bring myself to add that the something
bad involved her.

“When?” Devon asked.

I shook my head and bit the inside of
my cheek to keep from crying. The nightmares that had been plaguing
my sleep were important, of that I was certain. And I couldn’t
shake the increasing worry that Devon’s life might hinge on my
ability to recall the dreams before it was too late.

“How many of your dreams have come
true?” Devon’s voice was kind but intense. The urge to cry out of
frustration became harder to fight.

“Four or five,” I mumbled, “so
far.”

“And you think that the one you just
had will, too?”

“I don’t think it will. I know it
will.”

****

Both Mr. Wentworth’s Escalade and
Kannon’s Jeep were already in the Moonlight parking lot when we
arrived the next morning. Mr. Wentworth was standing between the
two vehicles talking to Kannon through the Jeep’s open
window.

Devon parked on the other
side of Kannon’s Jeep and turned off the Chevy’s engine. I made no
move to get out of the car, regretting that I’d declined Devon’s
offer to swing by
McDonald’s
drive-thru for coffee. My brain wasn’t all
systems go quite yet, and coffee would have been the pick-me-up I
desperately needed. My lackluster attitude was also due to my
conflicted emotions about the day’s mission. On the one hand, I was
excited to see Dad’s house. On the other, I was terrified of what
we might find.

“Come on let’s get this over with,”
Devon said and threw open her door.

Hesitantly, I followed her
lead.

“Good morning, Endora,” Mr.
Wentworth said
warmly. He turned
to Devon. “And you must be the infamous Devon
Holloway. Nice to put a face with a name.”

Infamous? Great, I could only imagine
what Jamieson had told him about Devon.

She could
bad-mouth
me all she
wanted; after five years I was used to it. Devon, though
― I wouldn’t stand for that.
Before I could open my mouth and dispel the awful rumors he’d
likely heard about my best friend, Mr. Wentworth said, “Why don’t
you kids all ride with me? Mark’s place isn’t far.”

“Great. Thanks, sir,”
Kannon said. He rolled up the window and got out of the
Jeep.

Devon climbed into the
front passenger seat of Mr. Wentworth’s SUV, and Kannon opened the
back door, allowing
me
to slide into the back seat.

“Where’s your necklace?” Kannon
whispered as Mr. Wentworth turned left out of the parking
lot.

“At my house,” I whispered back. “I’ll
explain later.” Even though Mr. Wentworth had been the one to give
me the necklace, I felt uncomfortable talking about it in front of
him.

Kannon ran his palm up and down my
thigh and gave my leg a light squeeze, letting me know he
understood. I smiled up at him, grateful for his
company.

No one spoke on
the ten-minute ride
from
the Moonlight to my dad’s place, which, as it turned out, was
located several miles down a winding back road. The house
was
ranch style
,
wedged between two identical structures. A red pickup truck sat in
the driveway with Dad’s “Historians Have Been Doing It For
Centuries” bumper sticker on the back window. My chest tightened;
Mom hated that bumper sticker.

“Has the truck been here this whole
time?” Devon asked the question my mouth couldn’t
formulate.

“Yes. As far as we can tell, Mark left
the house of his own accord in someone else’s car. There is no
forced entry and no evidence of a struggle. Well, at least I don’t
think there was a struggle. It’s hard to tell.”

“What do you mean?” Kannon
asked.

“Dad is not a great housekeeper,” I
said numbly. My father liked clutter. His office in our old house
had stacks of old student papers and more books than the public
library. Every spring he promised Mom he would clean out the space.
When we moved, I finally sifted through all of the junk, finding
term papers dating back to the year I was born. Over my mother’s
protests, I saved many of his treasured books from the dump
pile.

Mr. Wentworth led our group
to the front door and selected a key from his key ring. The front
door swung open, revealing a hoarder’s dream. In an ordinary home,
I imagined that the main area would be a living room, but my father
had turned it into a
humongous
office space. World maps with pushpins sticking
out of them papered the walls. Legal pads and binders covered
almost every inch of the wooden floor boards, save the pathways Dad
had left himself. A large whiteboard stood in the center of the
room, my father’s tiny handwriting scrawled in red, blue, and green
markers. The only normal living room accessory was the brown
leather sofa pushed against one wall, and even that was covered in
books.

“Shit,” Devon said, so
eloquently summing up what everyone
was
probably
thinking.

“I see what you mean,” Kannon muttered
to Mr. Wentworth. “I don’t know how you would tell if there had
been a struggle.”

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Devon said.
“Eel, use the camera on your phone to take pictures of all the
maps, particularly the places he stuck those pins. Kannon, take the
whiteboard. And I will start on the couch, I guess.”

“What do you want me to do?” Mr.
Wentworth asked.

“Why don’t you start with
that pile?” Devon said, pointing to a
waist-high
mound of legal
pads
staked against the wall.

“I am looking for any mention of the
Egrgoroi?” Mr. Wentworth asked.

“Yeah,” I said uncomfortably. I wasn’t
sure what I’d expected Jamieson’s father to do while the rest of us
searched my father’s belongings, but I hadn’t imagined he’d help.
“We’re just trying to learn everything we can from Dad’s
research.”

The four of us set off on our assigned
tasks.

Upon closer inspection, I realized
that they were all world maps, though each was from a different
point in history. One dated back to 1100 B.C. The most recent was
dated 2005. Each map had nine pins in roughly the same geographical
locations; it was hard to tell for sure since the earlier maps
designated empires instead of countries or cities.

After I finished examining the maps
without actually learning anything, I started on a stack of books
on the couch. Dad had marked various pages with neon Post-its, many
of which had indecipherable notations made in his tiny handwriting.
I poured over Dad’s work, setting aside the more heavily tabbed
books to take with me.

Hours passed in silence. My neck and
back began to ache from sitting bent over in the same position. My
stomach frequently reminded me that I had not yet eaten today and I
felt like my eyes were crossing after too much time reading faded
text. I found several references to the Egrgoroi, but learned
nothing new.

Devon had given up on the books and
legal pads and was now dissecting Dad’s digital files. I joined her
at the computer desk, every joint in my body cracking as I
stretched.

“Find anything?” I asked
her.

“Yeah, maybe,” Devon mumbled around
the pencil stuck between her teeth. “Your father has a file on here
named ‘Endora,’ but it’s password-protected.”

“Did you try my birthday?” I
asked.

Devon rolled her eyes at me over her
shoulder. “No, Eel that never occurred to me,” she said
sardonically.

“Just trying to help,” I
mumbled.

“I know. And yes I did. I also tried
your name, your initials, and Eel. No luck. What’s your parents’
anniversary?”

I rattled off my parents’ anniversary,
followed by each of their birthdays when the anniversary failed.
Feeling like a failure and wondering whether I really knew my
father at all, I shrugged my shoulders and told her I was out of
ideas.

“Why don’t we take the laptop with
us?” Mr. Wentworth suggested. “I can have one of my techs work on
it. It’s nearly noon and you guys should get back before Evelyn
realizes you’re gone, Endora.”

He had a point. My cell was still in
Devon’s car and I wasn’t looking forward to the texts and
voice-mail messages that awaited my return.

Devon packed up Dad’s
laptop while the rest of us loaded
boxes
of books
into the back of Mr. Wentworth’s
Escalade. On the ride back to the Moonlight, Devon, Kannon, and I
agreed to split up the books and continue combing through them
separately that afternoon. Mr. Wentworth promised to call the
minute his tech guys were able to crack Dad’s password.

“Think your mom will let you out
tonight?” Kannon asked me while we were saying goodbye in the
diner’s parking lot.

Mr. Wentworth had already left and
Devon was sitting in her car playing with her phone.