The Eternity Key (9 page)

It takes four days to visit all eight of the dealerships before Joe is able to procure the information that we need. He calls me as I am leaving Ethan Bowman’s latest lecture on Greek art. I watch Daphne walk away, pretending she does not know me for the sake of Terresa and Calix, before I duck into a restroom to answer the phone.

“Between all the dealerships, five black Superbikes have been sold since September. Two went to a movie set, one a supermodel bought for her boyfriend, another was bought by someone replacing a bike with an insurance claim, and the fifth, get this, was sold to an overly chipper man who somehow talked the manager into a discount so mad that he later got sacked for it. Remind you of anyone we knew?”

“Simon?” I say. “However, we know for sure he wasn’t the Motorcycle Man, so that means they must have been working together.”

“Simon had the bike delivered to a luxury condo complex at the edge of Olympus Hills. I’m guessing our Motorcycle Man was the recipient.”

“Did you get a full address?”

“I had to agree to give the saleswoman—who wants to be an
actress—an audition for my new music video, but, yes, I got an address. It’s 1472, apartment 7, Icarus Court,” he says, like he’s dictating it off a piece of paper.

“Good work,” I say, heading out of the restroom to the parking lot.

“Oh, by the way, do you happen to know what Daphne’s favorite color is?” Joe asks.

“Um …” I stop at the school exit, realizing that I don’t know the answer to that unexpected question. Here I’d been wishing I could confide in her my feelings, but she hasn’t even confided in me something as simple as her favorite color. “She wears a lot of green,” I say. “Teal green.” I almost say
jade green
, but that is the same color as my eyes and that seems oddly presumptuous of me.

“Right. Have fun catching the bad guy.” Joe sighs. “But do me a favor, mate? Don’t bring Daphne with you.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t.”

I stand in front of the door of 1472, apartment 7, Icarus Court, with Dax standing behind me as backup. Three against one would normally be better odds, but Garrick is completely untrained and more likely to be a liability in a fight.

I don’t want to knock and alert the Motorcycle Man of our presence. By the will of the Fates, the lock on the door is electronic, requiring a pass code to gain entry—but I don’t need one. I cup my hand over the electronic box above the doorknob and send a pulse of crackling blue lightning into it. I can hear the circuits sizzling. The lock clicks open.

I turn the knob and shove the door, going for speed and surprise, with Dax close on my heels, as we burst through at the
ready. Lightning swirls inside my chest; a confrontation could be only seconds away.

What we find is an abandoned apartment.

A black leather couch is the only thing that sits in the front room. An empty closet stands open. An inspection of the kitchen and the bedroom yields only empty cabinets and a bed with a plush mattress, which has been stripped of its sheets. There are no pictures on the walls, no television, and nothing in the fridge but a container of Greek yogurt. If it hadn’t been for that last thing, I would have thought this apartment had never been occupied.

“This yogurt is still good,” Dax says, testing the white goop with his finger. “This apartment hasn’t been empty for long.”

“
Kopros
,” I hiss under my breath, and kick the closest thing. The trash receptacle sails across the room and slams into the oven. It falls over, and its contents topple out onto the tile floor.

“Good thinking,” Dax says, crouching to inspect the mess. It looks mostly like food waste, but he fishes a piece of paper out from under a banana peel. “Look at this.”

I take the slimy paper. It looks to be nothing but a grocery list—only it isn’t written in English. “This is Underlord writing.”

A sinking feeling grips me. The suspicion that the Motorcycle Man was another Underlord had plagued me ever since Daphne had mentioned seeing someone with fiery eyes at her audition that first day I’d met her. She’d thought I’d stalked her all the way to the auditorium, but if it wasn’t me and it wasn’t Dax or Garrick, that meant there had to be another Underlord at play in Olympus Hills. The fact that this unknown lord was also the Motorcycle Man, whom I’d seen following me on more than one occasion, made perfect sense. But it also made him all the more dangerous.

“Heads up,” Dax says, looking out the window. “Olympus Hills security just pulled up. Someone must have seen us busting in.”

“Or they knew we were coming.”

“Either way, we need to get out of here.
Now
.”

chapter nine

I sit in the far corner of Olympus Brew, the coffeehouse next to the gelato shop on Olympus Row, observing my prey from over the brim of my gingerbread spiced latte. Marta sits at her usual table—or at least where she’s usually sat for the last three days that I’ve been following her after school—near the door. Her iPad and several documents are set out in front of her. She has shiny black hair slicked into a tight bun, and she wears a dress suit that fits her like a glove. She wears high, high crocodile heels that match her purse. Under normal circumstances, I might think she was attractive in a sexy librarian sort of way, but considering she might be responsible for my sister’s disappearance, the sight of her sipping her daily 4:15 p.m. espresso makes me ill.

I haven’t actually drunk any of my own coffee, but having something to hold keeps my hands steady. For the last three days, I’ve been building up the nerve to confront her. Or building up the nerve to go against Daphne’s wishes to not let anyone know that we’re onto Olympus Hills’s deep dark secrets. If I were to say something to Marta, she most definitely would tell my mother, and then where would I be?

My mom would probably lock me in my room and throw away
the key if she knew that I’m onto her extracurricular activities—or possibly cart me off to that mathematics-and-engineering boarding school in Virginia that she threatened me with when I got into that fight with Haden back on his first day of school. Back when I thought he was the one responsible for what had happened to my sister and I’d gone in swinging.

But it’s not like I could do that with my mother—nor Joe’s personal assistant, who looks like she barely weighs 115 pounds. But as frail as she might appear, the sight of Marta may have been what sent Abbie running from the haven of Ellis Fields to a location (or fate) unknown.

Or maybe Marta had kidnapped Abbie herself
.

In that case, boarding school seems like a small price to pay for the truth.

I place my coffee cup on my table, straighten my tan fedora, and decide to make my move. But I get only two steps in her direction when Marta receives a phone call. I stop, listening in on her clipped responses, while trying to look like I’m merely getting a napkin from the condiment bar.

“Really?” she says into the phone. “Finally. I’ve been looking everywhere. Where?” She grabs her iPad and stuffs it into her crocodile purse. “I’ll leave right away.”

She hangs up and gathers her papers in an almost frantic haste. She’s out the door and getting into an Audi before I make it out onto the street. My car is parked only a couple of slots over. I should follow her. But as I stick my hand into my jacket pocket, I realize I’ve left my keys on the table next to my latte.

I’m cursing myself as she speeds out of the parking lot. I’d never make it back with my keys before she’s out of sight.

It’s for the best
, I try to tell myself as I head back into the
coffeehouse. What was I going to do anyway? Follow Marta to some clandestine location, grab her, and demand she tell me where she’s hidden my sister? She might look defenseless, but very well could be hiding some sort of supernatural power like Simon’s. Or one even more deadly. I shudder at a vision of Marta sprouting a couple of extra fire-breathing heads while I’ve got her cornered in an alley.

And if that weren’t the case, I can’t assume she’d even tell
me
anything. She seems loyal to Simon and the Underrealm, and my five-foot-five—with a hat on—stature isn’t exactly intimidating.

No, I’m not going to be able to
force
the truth out of Marta. I pull out my wallet and dig for some cash.
But everyone has a price
. Which means I’m going to have to do some more surveillance to figure out what Marta’s is.

I place a couple of bills on the table.

“See you again tomorrow, Donna Lee,” I say to the barista as I leave.

chapter ten

“ ’Ello, Daphne, come here,” Joe calls from the kitchen as I come in the house after school. I hadn’t seen Haden again since after humanities and I’m just about to text him, but Joe’s voice is filled with so much urgency, I tuck my phone in my pocket and head for the kitchen. I expect to find some sort of disaster, but instead I discover stacks of papers and notebooks lined up on the kitchen table. Each pile has its own brightly colored Post-it tab protruding from the pages.

Joe has a fluorescent yellow highlighter tucked behind his ear, and he’s sucking on the tip of a blue pen. He scribbles a note on a loose notebook page. “Hand me a green sticky tab, will ya?” he says. I pull a tab off the dispenser and hand it to him. He slaps the tab on the page and then sets it on top of its color-coded pile. The only time I’ve seen Joe this intent on anything is when he’s composing a new song, but none of this looks even remotely musically related.

“What’s all this?” I ask.

“Detective work,” he says, a buzz of manic notes flitting off him. “I’ve been going through that box of stuff Jonathan sent. I’ve read just about everything, and I’ve been sorting them by date and importance.”

“You mean the box of CeCe’s stuff?” I ask, a wave of anger seizing me. “The box that Jonathan sent me? The box that was in my room? The box that I told you I didn’t need your help going through?”

“Yes. But you’ve been so busy looking for the Key, I know you haven’t had a chance to touch any of this stuff.”

“Doesn’t mean I wanted
you
to. And what about Marta? If she sees this stuff—”

“I called and told her that Simon showed up out of the blue and wanted her to meet him at the studio in LA. She won’t be back for hours,” he says, like he thinks he’s so clever.

“And what happens when Simon isn’t there? She’ll know you lied to her, and then she’ll know that we know what happened to Simon.”

“Oh, right. Didn’t think of that.”

His manic tone picks up more excitedly, and he doesn’t even notice that I’m annoyed. “I’m just trying to be helpful. Like with the dealership. You should have seen me smooth-talking that saleswoman. She was dead set against sharing another customer’s information at first, but by the time I was done with her, I had not only the Motorcycle Man’s address but her number as well.”

“A rock star getting a woman to give him her number doesn’t exactly sound difficult.”

“Yes, but she was eight months pregnant,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows up and down. “That’s a hundred extra points, according to Bobby.”

“Um. Gross.”

“Not that I’m planning on pursuing anything, mind you …”

“I should hope not.”

“There is the audition thing after she has the baby, though.…

Anyway, I did such a good job with tracking down the bike, I wanted to show you that I can be helpful in other ways. I saw this box and thought I would help.” He picks up the stack marked with pink tabs. “I think I might be onto something.”

I am about to ask Joe why the hell he was in my room to begin with and why he thinks I’d be okay with him not only invading my privacy as well as CeCe’s, but his excited melody increases tenfold. I am genuinely terrified when he tosses the stack of papers back on the table and says, “Oh, but I almost forgot to show you your surprise! You are going to love this!”

“What are you talking about?”

He grabs my hand and pulls me toward the elevator that leads to his basement garage. “Oh, Daphne, you are going to love her so much!” he says, pushing the button that will take us down.