Speed of Light (43 page)

“But—” I protested as he left us.
Believe?

“Yeah, I think he makes that sound too easy,” Fara said with a glance at my stunned expression. “He forgets he’s been doing this for a long time. Like my baba, who could talk anyone into anything. They forget.”

I smiled. “Thanks.” Fara didn’t always say what I wanted to hear, but she often said what I needed.

Fara tried dialing Tens’s cell but got weird static. Up two flights of rusty metal steps, Fara held my braid behind me. Our seats were empty but flanked by Woodsmen in green ball caps.
Friends
.

Sparks flew off the bottoms of the cars as they zigzagged past us on the track. I knew nothing about what I
saw, and nothing prepared me for the sounds and feelings humming through me as the cars roared past.

The green flag dropped and the crowds erupted into cheers. Around and around the cars zoomed. With each turn, my anxiety heightened. I glanced at the people across from us, below us.
Who is Nocti? Who is working with them? How many people will die today?

When the leaders of the race zoomed past at full speed, it was all I could do to focus my eyes. Everyone around us lurched to their feet, cheering like one mass with many arms.

On lap twenty-five, the crowd gasped.

I leapt to my feet, watching the screen with everyone else.

A car bumped into the wall. Blew a tire. Nothing else.
Too much pepper in the recipe, but not arsenic
.

“The lead driver, but she’ll be fine,” a Woodsman declared. “Want binoculars?” He handed me a pair.

“Will she race more?” I asked, trying to see.

“Nah, these cars are so finely tuned, a spider can throw them off. No more racing after a hit like that. Here comes the pace car to slow ’em all down.”

The yellow flag waved caution and the pace car drove back out as crews cleaned up the track.

Is that it?

I loosened my grip on the chair rails as waves of screaming rushed toward us across the infield.
Now what?

I
focused on breathing past the souls, on making my body move, and on staying present while also transitioning the dead. I wanted to stop everything and announce I finally understood how Auntie worked in both places, but we didn’t have time.

The green flag waved again; the cars picked up speed as Tens tossed me over a five-foot fence. “Get safe! Get above the snakes!” He yanked a knife from his boot and slashed at one particularly brutal-looking snake as it slid by.

“What about you?” I called.

A yellow-shirted security guard began yelling at us and running. “You can’t be in there. Get out! Get out!”

Evidently he’s not one of our WoW
.

“Go toward the water. I’ll find you.” Tens disappeared back into the melee and I took off in a sprint toward the trees, nearer to the few hot-air balloons left tethered to the ground. I swung myself up into the branches of an oak to catch my breath. I listened to the announcer try to calm people down. They evacuated the Snake Pit, moving people toward the other side of the infield.

Think, Meridian. Think
.

A tainted driver who’s driving oddly and releasing snakes? What’s the end goal? Where’s the well?
Eddie Smith’s car drove around again, completely off pace, so slow I easily read the Nocti insignia on the tail of the car.

Each time crashes occurred, the cars bunched back together, lined up two by two in turn three, before they accelerated around to the pole and the flag.

This whole day felt like a giant cat playing with a tiny mouse until it died.
I hate being the mouse
. The Nocti, and Smith, must be angling for a disaster to happen at turn three. Why else would they use snakes to move people closer together in a panic?

I glanced up into the sky at the hot-air balloons hovering above us. What if the balloons weren’t the actual plan at all? What if they simply needed a vantage point to spot the well and see the track to make final arrangements?
They were scouting. It’s a leap, Meridian. You need proof!

Restarts were the only time in the race where all the cars were bunched together. A crash amid all of them would throw debris and spread carnage everywhere. I
tried the walkie-talkie and got static. I turned the dial, changed frequencies.
No, no, no, no!
We’d already seen the havoc fuel fires caused.

Drivers and teams depended on radio communications to avoid driving right into wrecks. Jammed radio signals meant no one would have any idea how to avoid the pileup.
Brilliant
.

A pack of cars raced by through turn three. Eddie didn’t dip low on the track to let them pass like I’d watched slower drivers do all day. Instead, he kept his ground and two cars went hurtling into each other, and the wall, to avoid hitting him.

“Did you see that?” I yelled. I might not be anywhere near an expert, but it seemed like he’d deliberately been in the way and made them crash.

Green became yellow again.

I looked down at the earth below me. Bunches of official-looking people milled around in trailers and tents, huddled over computers and electrical equipment. I surveyed them, looking for Nocti, even for Sergio, for answers.

Well. Water. Water. Lake. Think, think, think
.

One hundred and fifty laps from the start until the white flag of victory. We had seventy left and already yellow was the color of the day.

I needed to stop the race entirely before we found out exactly what worst-case scenario looked like.

Where’s Tens?

The announcer said, “Just a few more laps, folks,
while our safety teams make sure all the debris is off the track. I’m being told fans need to stay away from turn three. Please follow signs to the overflow area between two and three. Again, if your tickets are for the Snake Pit, please head toward the overflow. Now officials are saying they’re going to wave Eddie Smith around befo—”

A wave around meant Smith would get to catch up to the pack and be right in the middle of all the action. And people sent to a specific predetermined area?
This can’t be good
.

I needed to stop Eddie Smith from driving into the pack of cars.

I needed to stop the race completely.

I needed to find the well and finish this. Now.

I
felt drawn to my feet, toward the railing, my eyes focused on the hot-air balloons. Meridian was out there somewhere. I felt her. I knew that was the direction they’d planned to go. Are they still there?

Where are you, Meridian?

The announcer’s voice cut off mid-word. People around us were pulling off their headsets and earbuds, complaining loudly about screeching static. No one heard the radio calls. None of us could communicate.

The Woodsman next to me frowned and shook his head. “We’ve got nothing.”

A breeze kicked up and blew tendrils of my hair into my eyes. I quickly dragged them behind my ears, out of my way.
Radios not working means we’re all isolated
.

“Tell us what you know,” Fara demanded.

He dropped his voice low. “Eddie Smith is working with the Nocti. We think he’s the trigger man for explosives, but we don’t know where they are hidden.”

“In his car?” Fara frowned.

“No, not possible. He’s running slow and heavy, though, so every time there’s a crash and the yellow comes out, he is waved around to the back of the pack. If he doesn’t slow down once he gets around behind them …” He let his thought trail off.

“You think there’s a bomb somewhere near the track?” Fara asked.

“We don’t know anything for sure.”

“When did you last hear from Meridian?” I chewed my cheek.

“Tens radioed in that they were heading for the lake. Something about finding a well? The signals have been bad all day. We’re trying to figure out how to stop the race and clear the stands.”

The screens switched from showing the cars on the track to panning a running, chaotic crowd moving like a tidal wave away from the third turn. “What’s happening?” I asked.

The announcer’s voice sounded garbled and impossible to understand.

“Is that—”
That can’t be a snake, can it?

“Are those snakes?” Fara asked loudly.

Meridian’s in trouble
. I felt it.
How do I help them?
I looked above me. The roof. If I could get up there, I might see the infield better.

“Fara?” I said.

“Yep?” She didn’t take her eyes from the crowd stampeding randomly. I felt her tension radiate toward me, taking my own anxiety up a level. Her hand hovered over her boot knife.

“We need to get up there.” I pointed at the roof.
If I can see over the Pagoda, maybe I can see the lake
.

“All righty, then.” Fara nudged Timothy. “We are going up that emergency ladder and you gotta make a big distraction so no one sees, okay?”

“Now? You got it.” Without asking questions, the Woodsman glanced around and picked a drunk spectator who was several rows down to the right. He started yelling while advancing toward the bystander menacingly.

The drunk man began shouting back. We moved quickly, so by the time Timothy took a swing, security guards and yellow shirts rushed past us as we headed under the caution tape. We took the rungs two at a time to the metal roof.

It was like stepping out onto a hot cookie sheet. The
wind plastered my clothes to me and swallowed up every drop of sweat.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at an inflated pink bunny that rivaled a skyscraper for size.

A possessed pink bunny
.

It’s moving
.

Walking toward the track
.

I
f I can free the immense inflatable and get it onto the track, they have to stop the race. At least until they can remove it. I can buy us time
. The bunny’s size made the trucks and trailers parked around it look like itsy-bitsy toys my brother Sammy collected.
That’s a lot of mass to try to control
.

I needed Tens’s help, but he’d disappeared into the rioting crowd. Without much preamble, I simply started calling out to him in my mind. As much just wishful thinking as hoping our telepathy might finally work.
“Tens, where are you? Where are you?”

“Merry?”

I blinked, glanced around. I heard him. But I couldn’t see him.

“Tens? Where are you? We have to untie the bunny. Get him onto the track.”

“I found Sergio. I’m behind him. See the U-Haul by the left foot? They’re working on computers. A countdown.”

We didn’t have time to free the bunny and investigate Sergio. I ran, my feet flying across soggy grass and between vehicles. I leaned against a van, trying to see Tens in the melee.
“Tens? Tens?”

“Quit shouting. I can hear you fine.”

“Are we? Actually telepathically talking? Crazy!”

“Be excited later—focus now. Your bag has an extra knife underneath the bottom cardboard. Use that to protect yourself.”

I fumbled through the messenger bag as the wind picked up, whipping my hair. I ripped the material up and snagged the handle of the knife.
“Got it.”
Although protecting myself wasn’t quite what I had in mind.
“If I get the bunny onto the track, they’ll have to stop the race.”

“What’s your plan?”

“I’ll take care of the bunny. You get Sergio.”

“You sure?”

“Go!”

Plan B was running onto the track myself. But even if I did, nothing guaranteed Smith would stop rather than hit me. The bunny was our only option.

“I’m right behind you. Go.”

“Be safe,”
Tens replied.

“You too. Please let this work,”
I said as wind gusted from the west. The flags whipped and flapped around the perimeter of the stands. People’s hats and umbrellas went flying. The other hot-air balloons ripped from their grounding pegs. People ran to grab the tether lines and deflate the balloons as quickly as possible.

To my left, I saw a Nocti grin and stand over a girl with a snake coiled around her.
They are winning
.

“Auntie, I need your help. I need our ancestors,” I whispered, kneeling by the first peg, but instead of cutting the cords, I pried the hooks from the earth. There were twenty-plus pegs.

One down
.

I ran as fast as I could to the next. Sweat made my hands slippery and stung the sunburn on my cheeks and arms.

Two yellow shirts ran toward me.

I worked faster. Popped loose pegs two and three.

I kept moving, waiting for the yellow shirts to stop me, yell, or tackle me to the ground.

Instead, they joined me, yanking other pegs out of the ground. When I glanced over, one gave me the Woodsmen hand sign Timothy taught us two days ago.
Has it only been two days?

They might have been security but they were Woodsmen first.

The wind aided us as if it knew exactly what I needed even before I knew. Answering every fervent prayer with each gust and squall. As fewer pegged lines were loaded
with more weight, the wind heaved the bunny, making it pitch toward the track as if it were alive.

Every minute or so, the announcer would try to come onto the loudspeakers, but only high-pitched screeching came out.

State patrol officers arrived on scene, but my Woodsmen ran interference.
Faster, Meridian. Faster
.

Seventeen

Eighteen

“Go! Go! Go!” I shouted as the last peg broke free.

Groups of bystanders, Nocti or officials—who knew at this point who was who—finally noticed the bunny heading toward the track. They frantically began leaping to grab at the ropes dragging twenty feet above the ground. Just high enough to be out of reach but too low to make it over the top branches of the trees.

I glanced up at the screen. The track was okayed to race. The race could restart any moment.