Reunited (11 page)

“I think we ought to just turn around,” Alice said, her usual self-assured tone betrayed by only the slightest quaver.

Summer looked out the window into the blackness. Next to her, Toad was shaking his head back and forth, as if to say,
Not good, not good at all.

“Hey, Michael,” Tiernan said, trying desperately to keep her voice light and airy. “You’re not, like, taking us out to the woods to, like, kill us or anything, are you?” Then she gave a short chuckle just to show everyone that she wasn’t genuinely scared or anything, that she was just being her usual brash, irreverent self.

Michael spun around to the back, his mouth stretched in a wide skeletal smile. “I ain’t gonna kill ya.” He laughed, his sharp collarbones heaving up and down under his tank top. “In fact, I’m probably the safest guy you could be out here with.”

He twisted his torso some more, pointing to the tattoo on his right bicep. “You see that?” Summer leaned in to see an image of a winged man with a sword in his hand hovering over the devil. “I got it when I was in jail. That’s me—Michael the Archangel. Prince of Light.”

Well,
Summer thought to herself,
that makes me feel so much better.
As if the nasty prison tattoo wasn’t bad enough, it was
now obvious to everyone that the man was certifiably insane.

Summer was in the midst of trying to figure out if it were possible to lean over, open the passenger’s side door, and push Michael out of the van while it was still moving when the swimming hole came into view.

“Look!” Summer shouted, even though they were all within three feet of each other. “There it is!”

A wave of relief flooded through her body as she noticed the silhouettes of at least a dozen other cars parked along the road, and further on down the hill the glimmer of their headlights in the water. Summer had no clue where they were, but in all of her life, she couldn’t recall a moment she’d been happier to arrive at a place that she’d never wanted to be.

“TIME, TRAVEL”

WE WENT TO ANCIENT ROME AND 3018

IN MY BROKEN TIME MACHINE.

THE LANDSCAPE CHANGES

BUT THE PAST STAYS THE PAST

THE FUTURE’S MECHANICS

SAY MY PROBLEMS WON’T LAST.

BUT I KNOW MY TIME MACHINE IS BROKEN

’CAUSE I SEEM TO BE STUCK IN RIGHT NOW.

—from Level3’s second CD,
Rough & Tumble

ALICE JAMMED ON THE BRAKES, FLUNG OPEN HER DOOR, AND
leaped out of the Pea Pod, landing smack in the middle of a pricker bush. Compared to the heart attack she’d been having for the past ten minutes, a few minor scrapes were nothing. Her brain screamed directions at her body like it was shouting through a megaphone:
Keep moving forward. Get away from the archangel. There’s nothing to see here, people. Just go! Go! Go!

How had she let this happen? How had she ended up in Lord Knows Where, West Virginia, with a man who at best was a known criminal, and at worst—well, she didn’t want to go there.

She took off down the hill after Summer, Tiernan, Toad, and Phred—all of whom had bolted from the van before it was even in park.
Gee, guys, thanks for waiting up.
But Alice was too scared to bother staying mad. She just wanted to get to the swimming hole.
Alive
.

“It’s only me,” Alice whispered, the sound of her footsteps joining Summer’s and Tiernan’s in the darkness. She could just make out Toad’s and Phred’s bodies running away in the shadows ahead.

“Hurry up,” Summer hissed.

“No need to rush!” Michael’s voice made Alice jump. “That swimming hole ain’t goin’ nowhere.” From the sound of it, Michael wasn’t right behind them, but he was getting close.

“We’ll meet you there!” Summer called back. She sounded polite, even cheerful. It was a strange gift she had—making everything seem fine no matter how un-fine things actually were.

Without a word, all three of them quickened their stride, entering a dark, thickly wooded area where the treetops blocked all the moonlight.

“Shoot!” Alice cried out, stumbling over something on the trail—a rock or a root.
Prince of Light.
What they needed was a Prince of Flashlight. That, and an exit strategy.

“Here’s my plan,” she whispered. “I say we go down to the swimming hole, grab Toad and Phred, then, when Michael’s not looking, the five of us hop in the Pea Pod and cruise on out of here.”

“I’m down with that,” Tiernan agreed.

Summer was about to answer when Michael’s voice leaped out of the darkness. “Last one in’s a rotten egg!”

Alice didn’t turn to look, but she could
feel
Michael gaining on them—his towering frame looming behind her, those stringy, muscular arms of his swinging apelike at his side. The guy gave off so much crazy energy, Alice wouldn’t be surprised to hear a sizzle when he touched the water.

“Darn it.” Tiernan slowed her pace as she spoke. “We forgot
our bathing suits. We’re just gonna run back and get—”

But there was no point in finishing her sentence. The swimming hole emerged out of the darkness like a silvery oasis. And from the looks of things, the only suit you needed to wear here was the one you’d been born in.

“Water’s nice and warm tonight,” a completely nude man called out from a rock in the middle of the pond. He was in his sixties, white hair, full white beard, and a twinkle in his eye. It was Naked Santa Claus, and his stocking was most definitely hung.
Well, that just ruined Christmas forever,
Alice thought to herself as Naked Santa did a swan dive into the water.

Alice looked at Tiernan and Summer.
Must flee now
, she said telepathically. She was pretty sure they’d understood her message but she kept her eyes on theirs, the one view in the entire place guaranteed to be free of saggy man butt.

Michael didn’t seem to notice or care that it appeared to be Senior’s Day at the swimming hole, happily undressing not two feet from them, without even the slightest bit of self-consciousness.

Alice pretended to pick at a hangnail as she listened to the clink of his belt buckle, then his jeans crumpling to the grass. She didn’t dare look up again until she heard the sloshing noise of Michael’s legs hitting the water.

“Water’s nice and warm, ladies,” Michael called out when he was up to his knees (it was just a quick peek, but the guy was definitely no Santa). Then he was gone.

“Let’s get out of here,” Summer whispered, turning back toward the van.

“Wait.” Alice pulled Summer’s arm. “What about Phred and Toad?”

“They’re way over there.” Tiernan pointed to the opposite side of the pond. “By the time we go get them, Michael could come back.”

Summer nodded. “I say we bolt without them. They’re big boys.”

“And personally”—Tiernan leveled Alice with a look—“I think you can do better.”

“What are you talking about?” Alice asked. “Phred and I are only friends, and we—”

Alice was about to list the many reasons why saving Toad and Phred was the right thing to do (none of which had anything to do with the fact that Phred had been hanging all over her) when Michael emerged from underwater, howling like a coyote and pounding his chest. That was all the convincing it took for her to turn tail and run—across the wet spongy grass, through the low brush, then back inside the dark cover of the woods. Man, was she out of shape. But she kept on running, even as Summer and Tiernan overtook her, trying her best to ignore the burning feeling in her hamstrings and focus on the noise of her shoes against the slippery gravel, the rhythm of her own labored breath, the blood whooshing through her veins. And then the one sound she was hoping never to hear again.

“Wait up!” Michael called out. Or was she imagining it? There was no way Alice could have heard him from all the way back at the water. But that would mean—could it even be possible?—that Michael the Archangel was chasing them through the woods.
Naked?

Alice’s heart pounded in her chest, in her throat.
Don’t turn around. You’re just imagining it.
Why were Summer and Tiernan so much faster than she was?
She
did power yoga three times a week. Okay, maybe two.
Don’t think about that. Just concentrate on running
. Alice reached into her pocket, digging her keys into the palm of her hand.

The Pea Pod was finally in sight. Alice’s lungs were on fire, her eyes blurry with sweat. They were so close she could almost touch it.

Summer got there first, opening the back door and flinging herself inside in one seamless motion. Tiernan was right behind her. Alice ran around the front of the Pea Pod—straight through the pricker bush, again,
duh
—scrambling in through the driver’s side door. She was breathing too hard to speak.

“Headlights!” Summer shouted as Alice threw the Pea Pod in reverse.

When she turned on the lights, Alice half expected to see Michael in front of them, wild-eyed and naked and holding a bloody butcher knife. But the woods were empty and still. She could kill MJ for dragging her to all those stupid horror flicks. Not that she ever watched the really scary parts. Now that
she was actually
living
a horror movie, she still wanted to hide behind her hands.

It was hard to steer in the darkness with only the dim rear lights, but backing out was definitely faster than making a twelve-point turn. She could only imagine what her father would say if he saw the Pea Pod doing thirty, backward, up the bumpy dirt road, but the wider the distance grew between the van and Michael, the safer Alice felt. Finally, at a bend in the road, she stopped to shift it into drive.

Up until this moment, Alice’s sole mission had been getting them away from the swimming hole. Now they were finally away. The only question was—
where?

“We came in on that road, didn’t we?” Alice pointed left.

“I don’t remember taking a turn there,” Summer sounded uncertain.

“Don’t ask me.” Tiernan shrugged. “I couldn’t see crap.”

Nothing looked familiar, yet everything looked the same.

“Turn on Coach Quigley!” Alice commanded, taking the left.

Tiernan, the de facto copilot, sprang into action. “Still no signal,” she said, holding the GPS up to the windshield.

“Damn it.” Alice thought she knew where she was going. But the road she’d chosen quickly dwindled away into nothing more than a hiking trail. She backed out, continuing in the opposite direction.

“Aren’t you supposed to just stop?” Summer asked. “If
you’re . . . you know, lost?” There it was. She’d gone and said the
L
word.

They’d been driving for at least ten minutes. They had to be close to the main road by now, didn’t they? Up ahead, Alice saw another crossroad and she took it. She was just starting to get a good feeling that this way their way out, when she saw the enormous pine tree lying across the road and jammed on the brakes.

“Why me?” Alice yelled, lifting her hands to the sky. Just then, the sky answered back as a curtain of rain pelted the Pea Pod’s roof like an audience bursting into sudden applause. It was a summertime downpour.
Point one for Mother Nature.

Alice put the van into park. The rain was coming down so heavily, the droplets on the windshield had merged into a single, thick sheet of water.

“Why aren’t we moving?” Summer asked.

Um, maybe because I can’t see anything
, Alice wanted to say. Instead, she took a long deep breath, determined not to let stress get the better of her. “I think it’s probably safer to wait out the storm here.”

Summer and Tiernan were quiet as they took this in, the rain drumming against the rooftop. All Alice wanted was one trouble-free minute in this godforsaken day. Just one tiny moment where they could all get along.

“We could play Scrabble!” Tiernan said, her eyes all lit up. She sounded more enthusiastic than anyone should ever sound
about a board game. And Alice
liked
board games. But considering that they’d just cheated death at the hands of a delusional maniac, her next thought hadn’t necessarily been
Q
words that didn’t require the letter
U
.

“Come on,” Tiernan whined. “It’ll be a good distraction.”

“Yeah, the last distraction you had for us turned out great.” Summer glared.

Alice bit her lip. She needed to find something they could all agree on, something with the potential to be a bonding experience (and that didn’t involve burying live animals or fleeing through the woods from a deranged maniac).