Auracle (17 page)

Taylor winks and smiles salaciously. Lots more giggles.

Rei walks fast to his parents’ SUV, jingling the keys hard against his thigh. Before he gets in the car, he calls my mom to let her know the change in driving plans. Once he shuts the door, he closes his eyes and rubs that spot in the middle of his forehead. I pull from deep within space to get the energy I need to surge into view, but he doesn’t notice me. I reach over toward his forehead and let some of my energy trickle into him.

He opens his eyes and looks over at me.

“Hi.” His voice is worn thin. He closes his eyes again and leans his head back against the headrest. “Well, that really sucked.”

I hover over the seat, feeling helpless as I watch him brood.

“Okay,” he tells me without opening his eyes, “this is where we stand tonight. We already know Taylor has a vendetta against Seth, and she’s willing to perjure herself to get Seth convicted of killing her.”

Well, not really. She’s willing to perjure
me
, but I have no voice without the computer, so I let Rei finish.

“She’s reestablished contact with her parents,” Rei continues, “your mom actually seems to
like
her, and tonight she’s rallied her old friends around her again. She doesn’t have any interest in staying friends with me unless I want to
date
her, which I don’t, but I need some way to keep tabs on her.” He opens his eyes and looks at me, curled up over the passenger seat.

He sighs and his voice softens. “I’m sorry, I’m just frustrated.”

I nod and mouth the words,
It’s okay
to him.

“Well,” he says hopefully, “at least my headache’s gone now.”

He starts the car and turns back to me with a short, ironic laugh.

“I guess I don’t have to remind you to buckle your seat belt.”

I guess not.

CHAPTER 19

Rei’s cell phone rings just as he pulls into his driveway.

“Hello.” As he shifts the car into park, his face lights up. “SETH! Where…” and just as quickly, all goes dark. He jabs at the steering wheel with his index finger as he listens, then he leans his head back against the headrest and closes his eyes. “Okay. Find somewhere safe to wait. I should get there in about two hours. Call me back then and let me know exactly where you are.” He listens again, rubbing that spot on his forehead. “Just sit tight, okay? Bye.” His hand makes a fist so tight when he closes the phone, for a second I wonder if the phone may shatter.

“The cops were staking out Matt’s dorm when Seth got there, so he made a run for it,” he tells me. “He got away, but they confiscated my bike. He thinks they pulled Matt in for questioning. Now I have to figure out what to tell my mother.”

I point to his bedroom window and pretend to type, indicating I need to talk to him. He nods, pulls the keys out of the ignition, and opens the car door with all the enthusiasm of a convict heading to the electric chair.

Yumi and Robert are sitting on the sofa, each with a different section of the newspaper.

“Rei?” Yumi calls out from behind the front page. “Why didn’t you tell me Seth was involved with this girl who died?”

The red aura surrounding Rei flares brighter. “Where does it say he’s involved with her? What are you reading?” Rei’s been reading the newspaper every morning, and there’s been no mention of Seth’s name.

Yumi folds the paper closed and looks at him over her reading glasses. “I didn’t read it. I heard some talk in the store today, and Seth’s father called tonight and asked if we’ve heard from him.”

“Well, you shouldn’t believe everything you hear at the store,” Rei snaps and starts up the stairs.

“Hold on, I’m not finished with you.” Yumi puts the paper on the end table and gets up. “Come here and sit.” She pulls a chair away from the table for him on her way to the kitchen. Rei inflates his lungs to full capacity and turns around slowly, his poker face in place. By the time he gets to the kitchen, Yumi is already at the sink, filling up the teakettle. “Have you talked with him? Do you know where he is?” She takes three cups out of the cupboard and sets them on the counter and reaches for the glass canister that holds the teabags. Rei takes one cup and returns it to the cupboard.

“He just called me. He was heading to Matt’s college and the police were there, so he took off. I want to go see if Matt and I can talk Seth into turning himself in.” He looks Yumi straight in the eye. “So can I take the car?”

Yumi’s eyebrows arch up a good inch. “Absolutely not!” she retorts. “
What
are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking my best friend is in trouble. I’m thinking Matt and I can find him and talk some sense into him. And I’m thinking it would be really nice if you didn’t give me a hard time about this.”

And here I was thinking
I
am his best friend!

Yumi is a full twelve inches shorter than Rei, but one narrow look from her is usually all it takes for Rei or Saya to back down. Tonight, Rei stands firm. “Look, you’ve been really good to Seth since his mother left. Please don’t let him down now. Please Mom,” he begs. “He’s in trouble for no good reason. This girl stole his phone and wouldn’t give it back unless he met her at the falls, and she fell in by accident. What did you hear—that he pushed her?”

Yumi nods, frowning.

“Well, he didn’t. He’s scared. There’s all this incriminating evidence against him, but he
didn’t
push her. Let me go get Matt and talk him into turning himself in.”

“Rei, you do
not
want to get involved with this,” Yumi implores him. “This is between Seth and the police.”

“Dad,” Rei turns toward Robert. “Can I borrow the car?”

“Oh, no you don’t!” Yumi sputters.

Robert lifts the newspaper up in front of his face. “Sorry. Talk to your mother.”

This could go on all night. I head upstairs and pull enough energy to turn on the computer. Rei’s voice is low and persuasive; Yumi’s voice is high-pitched and defensive; and Robert is silent. By the time Rei comes upstairs, I’ve already typed a message.

I can find him once we get to New York.

Rei looks about ready to burst into flames. He yanks a duffel bag off his closet shelf, shoves a change of clothes into the bag, and goes off in search of stuff from the bathroom. Once he’s packed, he reads my message and nods once, deletes the message, and shuts the computer down.

At the bottom of the stairs, he stops and looks Yumi straight in the eyes. “I’m taking the car,” he says calmly. “If you want to call the police and report it stolen, then do it. I have my phone, and I should be back early tomorrow.” Rei opens the screen door and steps out into the night.

Now it’s Yumi who looks ready to explode. “Robert Reiki Ellis! You get back here this
instant!
”

Rei keeps on walking across the yard through the darkness, opens the car door, and tosses his duffel bag into the back. “Bye, Mom. I love you,” he calls just before he shuts the door. I slide in through the passenger door and watch him back out of the driveway.

During the first half hour, I swear he looks in the rearview mirror at least a hundred times. By the time we cross over the bridge at Chimney Point, I think he realizes Yumi didn’t call the police, but he doesn’t turn on music, and he doesn’t speak, except when he stops to gas up the car and ask the man at the register for the key to the restroom.

He’s getting tired. Before he leaves the convenience store, he gets himself a cup of black coffee, and he makes a face when he sips it.

It started to rain while Rei was inside, the type of heavy, sheeting rain that comes down sideways. Rei makes a run for the car and I’m waiting for him when he gets in.

“Coffee sucks,” he informs me.

I agree. Unless it has a generous amount of cream and five packs of sugar, I really have no use for it.

“We should be there in another hour or so, although this rain might slow us down.” He frowns out the window. “Like Seth needs this on top of everything else. Can you check on him for me?”

I nod and I’m gone before he can turn the key in the ignition.

*   *   *

I’ve lost Seth. Seriously, I can’t find him. I focused on that staccato rhythm I’ve memorized as Seth’s energy pattern and followed it to a set of electrical power lines running up and down a weedy hill on an open slice of land between two pine forests. From here, his signal jumbles with other signals into an indistinguishable static which blends in with the faint buzz of power surging through the thick wires and the hiss of the light drizzle still falling here.

As soon as I get back to the car, there’s a thin layer of fog building on the windshield. I could use the fog to write with and tell him the truth, or I could just placate Rei and try again before we get there.

“Is he okay?”

I nod without looking at him. Sometimes I really hate myself.

Rei turns the radio on now, and the classic rock station Robert loves has been reduced to static. Rei fiddles with the knobs until something halfway decent comes on, but he turns the volume down low so he can hear his cell phone if it rings.

“Three more exits,” Rei’s mood is getting lighter. “He should be calling anytime.” I motion to him that I’m leaving and wave.

Once again, his signal ends at the power lines, but at least it’s stopped raining. I look to my left and right, into the pitch-blackness of the forest on this starless, moonless night, and try to imagine being in there all alone with something as vulnerable as a human body. Even without a body, I get that prickly feeling of fear just thinking about what might lurk in those woods. I skirt the perimeter of the forest, and find something even more frightening than a black bear or a full-grown bull moose.

A police car cruises slowly down the adjoining road, and the officer in the passenger side shines a floodlight into the woods.

*   *   *

Rei pulls the car in through the campus gates and parks in the first parking lot he sees. He pushes a button on his speed dial and waits.

“Matt!” he says finally. “It’s Rei Ellis.” He presses the phone closer to his ear and talks louder. “REI ELLIS. YEAH! HEY, HAVE YOU HEARD FROM SETH?” I hear a party in Rei’s phone. There’s a long pause while Rei watches the beads of drizzle gather into streams of water that trickle down the windshield. “NO, oh, okay, that’s better. No, I’m on campus right now. What dorm are you in?” Rei cranes his neck, looking around until he locates whatever it is he’s looking for. “Okay, I see it. I’ll meet you by the door.”

Matt looks like Seth, only with shorter hair and that persistent five o’clock shadow that some girls find ruggedly sexy. I think it looks like he forgot to shave.

“Rei!” Matt throws his arm around his shoulder and gives him an affectionate squeeze. “I haven’t seen you in forever. Good to see you, kid!”

“Hey, you too, Matt.”

“Sorry about the noise. It gets a little crazy here on Saturday night. Come on up.”

“Have you heard from Seth?” Rei asks on their way up the stairs before the music amplifies out of control and makes conversation impossible.

“No, I’ve been waiting for him to call since I heard from you.” Matt stops halfway up. “What the hell is going on with him? My dad called me earlier this week and told me Seth left him a note saying he was in some kind of trouble so he was heading to Canada. Then my dad called to tell me they found his car at the border. All week, there’ve been cops trolling the campus, and not the campus security. Some of them were plainclothes cops in unmarked cars, but I didn’t put two and two together until you called this morning. Then they pulled me in and asked me a million questions about Seth.” Matt starts up the stairs again, slowly. “So what the hell happened to that girl? They seriously think Seth pushed her into the falls?”

“I guess so. He didn’t, though.”

“That’s unfrickin’ believable!” Matt looks even more like Seth when he scowls. As they make their way down the hallway, the smell of beer and its aftermath becomes increasingly potent. The party is in full swing when Matt and Rei walk through the door and the room is covered in wall-to-wall people. Someone is blasting loud music, techno mostly, or as Rei calls it, the bastard child of disco. Some people are dancing. Others are standing around shouting at each other in order to be heard over the music, or swilling beer from plastic cups, or making out in the dark corners of the room. Rei shakes his head no when someone offers him a beer.

“I’ll see if I can find a bottle of water for you,” Matt shouts and disappears into the crowd.

Rei looks around impatiently, and I figure nobody will notice if I surge into view in front of him.

“Anna!” He sounds somewhere between relieved and shocked to see me. “What are you doing? Someone might see you!”

I shrug. Half of these people look too tanked to know the difference between a real person and me. He looks around to see if anyone is looking at us funny, but nobody cares.

“Where’s Seth?”

I point to his phone, which he has been holding tight to for the past several minutes, waiting for Seth to call him.

He’s in some woods near power lines. It’ll be hard to find him in the dark.

The energy in this room is classic chaos, and it’s easy to suck up enough to type effortlessly on his phone.

“I thought you knew where he was,” Rei challenges me.

I roll my eyes
. I know the general vicinity, but the power lines make it hard to pinpoint exactly where he is. And once I find him, I have to bring you there in the dark. Not impossible, but not safe.

“I’ll worry about safe. You worry about finding him. Let’s go.”

Matt makes his way back across the room with a bottle of water for Rei, so I shake off the extra energy and disappear. Matt motions for Rei to follow him to the quieter hallway.

“Sorry that took so long. I had to go back to my room. Hey, I didn’t know you brought Anna with you.”

“Anna?” Rei looks like he’s been caught cheating on a quiz. “I didn’t bring Anna.”

“Oh. I thought I saw her standing in there with you.” He shrugs. “It must have been someone who looks like her.”