13. weird, world.
The light pressure of fingers around his wrist startled him awake with a jolt. He lunged forward, nauseous as his stomach flipped, the sound of the wheels thumping over the runway filling the whole world. Adrenaline burning through his veins and head buzzing with the pressure changes, his hand shook as he reached up to straighten his crooked glasses.
“You were truly out of it,” Elisabeta said with a faint smile, settling back into her seat. “You never look so relaxed as when you are sleeping.”
“Have we arrived already?” He pushed open the window shade to stare out at a black skyline, dotted in the distance by multi-colored lights. The jet taxied slowly, following the breadcrumb-like trail of gleaming yellow lamps.
“You slept through the entire flight, thank God. When was the last time you even looked at a bed, Alyosha? Two days ago? You mustn’t push yourself so hard.”
“Old man that I am?” he said cynically, pushing back the blanket she must have draped over his lap.
“You will never be an old man,” she said quietly. “Older, perhaps. But never an old man. I simply meant that I need you at your best-clear-headed and focused and ready to run if the need arises. You’ll do none of us favors if you strain yourself to the limit.” She flipped a glossy page in her magazine.
“And what of you, Elisa?” he countered. “When did you last sleep properly?”
“I’ll sleep at the hotel. We have a room booked already.” The jet shuddered to a full stop, the interior lights brightening. As they unbuckled their seatbelts and stood, stretching, the cockpit door swung open and the pilot stepped out.
“The car is waiting, Ms. Volos,” he said deferentially. “May I take your bags out?”
“Yes, Wilhelm, thank you,” she replied with a brilliant smile before turning back to her phone. “…Three voicemails. Hardly reassuring. What shall we wager, Alyosha, that our people have hit yet another dead end?” Before he could respond, and without bothering to listen to the messages, Elisabeta pressed the recall button and held the phone to her ear. “...To whom am I speaking? Hello, Frank. Please, do tell me the situation.”
After a long pause, in which she simply became more statuesque, frozen and stiff and cold, she said, “We will be there shortly. Do not move from the premises,” before ending the call and dropping the phone into her bag. She pivoted on one heel and hurried to the opened door, clattering purposefully down the steps and striding to the car without a second glance back at the pursuing Alyosha.
“They slipped the net. Again,” she said quietly as the doors slammed shut. “How is one girl proving so troublesome?”
“The half-brother is Touched-a Prophetic, no less. He may have seen us coming.”
“I don’t like that book being in ignorant hands. I like it being in the hands of a Touched even less. We’ll reclaim it even if we have to chase them across Creation.” Elisabeta sighed, rubbing at her temple. “Call for Jaswinder. We’re going straight to reconnoiter with the team, and then to the hotel until the morning. Have him meet us there. We’ll plan our next step once he arrives.”
It was a quiet and tense drive from the airport, down the interstate, to the small town just a handful of miles away from the Cherokee reservation. The neighborhood was silent and dark when the driver pulled up to the curb behind the silver sedan. The door to the apartment on the second floor opened as they climbed out, a man in a blue suit standing framed in the light.
“Frank Pawson,” he introduced himself, quickly shaking Elisabeta and Alyosha’s hands as he ushered them inside, closing and locking the door behind them. He was in his early thirties, blond hair slicked down with gel, a prominent nose and focused air about him. “And my partner is Irene Nila,” he added, nodding to the middle-aged woman with the dark olive skin and glossy black bun. “We arrived around eight o’clock. No sign of the girl, or anyone else.”
“What name is on the lease?”
“Two names: Christopher Robin Beechum and Charlotte Hawthorne. The brother and his girlfriend.”
Elisabeta paused in the center of the room, turning slowly to take everything in. Her pale eyes passed over the bookcase full of graphic novel trades and paperbacks with cracked spines, the action figures on the shelves, the posters on the wall, the shabby but sturdy secondhand furniture and pile of discarded shoes beside the door. It was a clean room, with the sense that everything was in its proper place. Nothing overturned or broken, nothing left in a state of rushed dishevelment. She stepped around the island and looked at the kitchen, the dishes left soaking in water that was-she dipped a finger in to test-just going cold, the soap suds melting into a rainbow sheen across the surface. The refrigerator door clinked when she yanked it open, the shelves full of casserole dishes and bottles of beer.
“They weren’t expecting it,” she said in a calm and even voice. “Her. Us. They hadn’t prepared for anything. It must have come as a shock when she turned up on their doorstep.”
The bedroom door was open, and when she glanced at Frank he nodded. “Everything is as we found it.”
“Nice to see some people still follow protocols,” she said, as she flicked on the overhead light. The bed was unmade and there were clothes strewn across the carpet, but that hardly meant anything-these were twentysomethings, after all, an unmarried couple without children. There were empty hangers in the closet. A quick glance inside the dresser revealed telltale gaps where jeans and socks had once been. No sign of any luggage, but then how many people even bothered with traditional luggage any more? She saw so many sports bags and backpacks at airports these days.
The second bedroom had the slightly musty air of a guest room that was infrequently used, but the bed in here was mussed, too. Nothing hanging in the closet but some sweaters, a black suit, and a few nice dresses: seasonal and special occasion wear.
“This was her room,” she said when she returned to the living area. “We’ll comb it to be sure, but I’m pretty damn certain. Did your walk-through turn up anything significant?”
“It was more about the absences,” the woman, Irene, said. “No laptops. No passports. No cars. The missing spaces where clothes should be, as I’m sure you noticed. They had enough warning to pack a couple bags and get clear before we arrived.”
“What do we know about this girlfriend?”
“Not much,” Frank admitted. “She’s a mechanic. Owns a couple garages in the area-”
“Owns? The young woman must be very ambitious.”
“I believe it was a situation of an inheritance. She runs them with the help of a business partner, a man by the name of David Twelve Hawks.”
“Is he from the reservation?”
“Yes. Twelve Hawks & Hawthorne is the name of their chain; they’ve a shop here and a smaller one at the reservation. They divide their time between the two.”
“She local?”
“No. First started paying taxes in the area five years ago. Believe she’s from Maine, originally, but we’re still tracking her history.”
“…Does that strike you as odd?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Volos?”
“A girl from Maine, settling down here? A little no-name town in Oklahoma? Setting up shop with a Native man, while she has a Touched boyfriend running around the country? Could be an interesting story in that…”
“Is the girlfriend that relevant?” Irene asked.
“Ms. Nila, until we have a grip on the full picture here, everything is relevant. We’re fumbling blindly in the dark at the moment. Every detail, no matter how seemingly insignificant, could be the match that illuminates the room. Find out everything you can about this girlfriend. I want to know how she met the brother, what brought her here, her family history, who her friends are-get a team on it. I don’t want any surprises.” She paused, looking around the apartment again. “Okay, get a couple techs in here to comb the place. Pin down their phones, put traces on any emails or social networking profiles they may have. Contact either me or Mr. Kovalenko if anything concrete turns up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The driver was pulling out of the neighborhood when Alyosha finally spoke. “I don’t have a very good feeling about this.”
“I know.”
“This feels like it’s going to be another Sicily situation.”
“God, I hope not.”
“...In his darker moments, after my mother died, my father used to say we’d never find the book. He said the Prestwick Curse would always foil us.”
“Alyosha, after your mother passed your father became a depressive drunkard. I hope you didn’t take his ramblings to heart.” Elisabeta sighed and reached over to pat his knee. “I’m sorry, that was cruel of me.”
“But honest. It always saddened me, how my father lost his faith at the end. Lost sight of the cause. I’ll have Mireille start sifting through any surveillance footage of the area-traffic cams, petrol station security, anything we can get our hands on. We’ll need to narrow down the direction they took.”
Elisabeta stared out the window for a long pause. “You do have a point, though-whenever we seem to have our hands on this book, it’s as if the universe conspires against us. When it fell into Ramsey’s lap, I wanted to sing: a nebbish little bookworm like that? It should have been the simplest thing to ease it away from him. And now these children have it. A daughter who is far too resourceful and a son who’s a Touched nomad. It’s difficult to imagine a worse case scenario as bad as this.”