Sleight (43 page)

“It involved Junie. Your sister is in danger. Serious, serious danger. Lucian is going after her next. He doesn’t have any loyalty to you, Ash, but you must stil have loyalty to your own flesh and blood, don’t you? It’s Junie! Sweet, sweet Junie!”

“Nice try, Gems. Junie is fine. I saw her this morning, alive and kicking. In fact, she’s filing in for you, speaking of cowards, to help Ted plan Marlene’s funeral,” he said.

I paused. Marlene’s funeral…I was a coward. “Have you spoken to your sister since you left Eaglefern?”

“Umm, that would be a big no. I’ve been a little busy.”

“Please, I’m begging you,” I said. I dropped to my knees, my hands clasped as if in prayer.

With the sole of his shoe, he shoved me backward against the opposite bench seat. I winced as my burned right hand landed hard on the floor, absorbing too much of my body weight. “Save it, Gemma. You had your chance to do the right thing, and as expected, you screwed it up. Like mother, like daughter, huh?” Henry growled under his breath and opened his mouth to speak, the hatred obvious on his face, but Ash reminded him of the gun by reasserting it in Henry’s face. Henry sighed, frustration streaming from him like shimmers of heat on an Arizona road in August.

“Ash, please, just cal her. I don’t have a cel phone, and even if I did, I can’t put her at risk by caling her myself,” I pleaded.

“You mean you can’t put yourself at risk. Your cel phone…

yeah, they found it in Bradley’s car.” He tsk-tsked me with his index finger. “Besides, using a phone already got you into trouble once today. At the 7-Eleven with the homeless guy, caling Ted’s very unlucky and now very sore friend…”

“How’d you know about the homeless guy?” Henry said.

“Didn’t you wonder why the pay phones you managed to find happened to be, shal we say, out of service? It’s caled a plant, brainiac,” Ash said, chuckling at us. “Lucian caled a few friends, they put the phones along your assumed route out of commission, and voila. Like chasing chickens into the chute at the slaughterhouse. How you guys managed to get out of SeaTac with Gemma’s face plastered al over the papers is beyond me, but lucky break. Looks like your streak is over now, though, huh?” Henry shook his head and fixed his eyes on the floor. His fists clenched and unclenched.

“I’m going to ask again,” I said, moving toward Ash. I placed one hand on his knee from my position on the floor. I didn’t care about the gun; Ash didn’t have it in him to pul the trigger. At least I hoped he didn’t. “Please, cal Junie. Just let me hear her voice. Then you can have whatever you came for. I just need to hear that she’s okay.”

“Henry, if I fulfil Gemma’s stupid request, wil you do me the favor of handing over that damned book?”

“We don’t have the book! It’s not here! Your bargain is ridiculous!” I said.

Ash raised his eyebrows at me, and then looked at Henry. “Uh-oh,” he laughed, wagging a finger at Henry. “This relationship isn’t off to a very solid start if trust is already an issue.” I whipped around to face Henry, confused by Ash’s tone.

“Henry, do you think that’s fair, puling sweet, innocent, virginal Gemma into your fight without giving her al the facts, man? Even your father—oh, pardon me—I mean, Lucian, has more forethought than that.” Ash wiggled the pistol hand to emphasize his point.

“Henry…what’s he talking about?” I stood, staring at Henry. His gaze was locked on Ash. A tidbit of the conversation with Teo drifted into my head. Until the book is back in the hands of her father…

Henry spoke next. “Ash, if I give you the book, you wil cal Junie and then you wil leave. Gemma wil not be harmed.” Ash, stil seated on the bench, extended his leg and puled out his cel. “I can’t let you go, and I can’t make promises about Gemma’s safety. But—if you give me the book, or should I say, when you give me the book, Gemma can get off the train at the next stop. I’l give her a head start before I cal the cops. You, however, wil come with me. Deal?”

Henry’s jaw pulsated as he ground his teeth. “Deal.” Ash puled out his cel and dialed, snickering under his breath.

Once it began ringing on the other end, he signaled with his gun hand for Henry to move. “Get the book, Dmitri. Now.” Ash held the cel phone in his palm and clicked the button that made the cal go to speaker.

“Helo? Helo? Ash, is that you?”

“Mom, put Junie on the phone.”

“Ash, where are you?” I could hear the panic in Emelie Thomassen’s voice.

“Mom, put Junie on the phone!”

“Ash—I can’t—you need to come home. There’s been an accident…” His mother began sobbing, loud, heartbreaking cries. A muffled yelp was folowed by the sound of shuffling. Someone else on the other side took the phone.

“Ash Mattias Thomassen, where the hel are you?” Ash’s father.

“Dad, where’s Junie? I need to talk to her. Stop playing games with me!” Ash’s face was wrinkled in fury, his eyes ablaze as he spoke to his father.

“There was an accident…faulty rigging on the net…Junie slipped, somehow, I don’t know how…you weren’t here…” The line went dead.

I colapsed onto the floor. The vision, Junie in the field, it was real.

Ash shook, his body consumed by head-to-toe tremors, the prior rage in his eyes replaced with a blankness as he stared at nothing. He sat, frozen, for maybe half a minute before his eyes drifted upward and settled on Henry.

“Get. The. Book. Now, Henry, or I wil kil both of you,” he snarled.

Henry stood and opened the sliding door of the tiny cupboard that held our backpacks. He placed mine on the floor but then ruffled through his things until he came to what he was looking for.

In his hands he held a white padded envelope—the one I’d seen in Ted’s locked cupboard that day I found Delia’s letters—and from it he withdrew a smal leather and velvet pouch, about the size of an evening bag. He stepped back from the cupboard and moved toward Ash.

“Let me help Gemma get off the train, Ash. Then I’l give you the book.”

“No. No changing shit midstream.” Ash tried to sound tough and determined, but the news from home had rattled him. His voice faltered; he was in a dangerous, distracted place. As I looked at him from the floor, an overwhelming sadness washed over me. I was broken apart, but Ash was about to implode.

“Get up, Gemma.” He spoke to the wal above my head.

I heaved myself onto the bench, my legs heavy under the crushing weight of this latest blow. And then Henry had the book, the root of al of these problems, al of these lost lives, the source responsible for the wretched pain of my decimated heart. The AVRA-K had been with us al along.

And he hadn’t told me.

Upon seeing the book in its pouch, resting in Henry’s hand, I felt the amulet buzz atop my sternum, just as it had earlier when I’d gone searching in the backpacks for water. The amulet sensed the book’s presence, out in the open. It felt alive against my body. I should’ve known…it had been trying to tel me, but I hadn’t understood.

“Give it to me,” Ash said, stretching his arm in Henry’s direction, again not making eye contact. Henry watched Ash’s face with pointed concentration. I assumed he was calculating the distance between the gun and Ash’s outstretched palm. I’d seen that look before.

“Gemma, get your coat and bag,” Henry said. “You’re leaving.” I could sense the slowing of the train. We must be preparing to make another stop along the route. I couldn’t fathom that Ash, even in his cruelest state, would make me jump from a speeding locomotive. Then again, Ash had become someone I no longer recognized. He was dweling somewhere dark and scary.

I did as Henry instructed and puled on my jacket and backpack. I watched Ash; he seemed to be trying to keep his composure. As he turned his head to reach for the book, a large tear wandered down his cheek.

“This is al your fault, Henry,” he growled between clenched teeth. “If you’d just given Lucian what he wanted, none of this would’ve happened. I should kil you myself.” Ash unlocked the safety on his gun but struggled to hold it stil, his hand trembling so hard under the weight of emotion and polished steel. If he fired a round, there was no teling where it would land, whose flesh it would shred.

“Gemma, pick up my backpack,” Henry said, the cadence of his speech slow and even.

“Give me the book.” I’d never seen Ash like this, the unhinged look in his eyes. It was like watching a pinwheel spinning in slow motion, each color a different emotion as the wheel completed one ful, slothful revolution after another.

The train had come to a complete stop. At least I wouldn’t have to jump, but I had no clue as to where we were. And I was about to be out in the open again, surrounded by people who might recognize me from the newspapers.

Henry stepped closer to Ash, his eyes trained on the gun. He stretched his left arm across the body-length space between them and handed Ash the pouch containing the book. But before releasing it into Ash’s palm, Henry lunged forward and grabbed Ash’s forearm of the non-gun hand, clamping down with the ful length of his fingers. Ash began to convulse, much as Tiny did at the pool hal under similar circumstances. His jaw opened and closed involuntarily and he holered against the electricity ravaging his muscle groups. The front of his pants darkened as he lost control of his bladder. Henry’s grip didn’t lessen, despite Ash’s very uncomfortable reaction to the shock.

The book dropped to the floor just as Ash folded to his knees, his right arm raised in front of him as the unwiling conduit to Henry’s hand-delivered current. Henry kicked the book out of Ash’s reach. I scrambled to pick it up and stuffed the pouch into my backpack.

“That’s enough! We have to get off the train!” As much as I despised Ash at that moment, it kiled me to see him in so much physical pain. Watching Henry torture my former childhood playmate was beyond excruciating. If I lived a life equal in span to Thibeault or Marku, I’d never, ever forget what I saw on Ash’s face.

He continued to jerk about, stil on his knees, the fingers of his right hand stiff and white.

“Henry, enough!”

Ash was crying, his face drawn in sheer agony, mouth agape.

“Al aboard!” the conductor yeled from the platform. The engines throttled up.

“Henry! We have to GO!”

He released his grip slowly, not letting go until Ash was flat on the floor. Henry stumbled backward, disoriented by the sudden disconnection. Ash’s left arm swung around from his sprawled position across the floor, his hand stil clenched around the butt of the pistol.

Bang!

Ash’s arm kicked to the floor from the gun’s firing and his eyes roled back into his head. He was unconscious.

Henry reeled backward and slammed into the closed cabin door, almost knocking me over. He clutched his right shoulder, the fabric of his shirt growing wetter and darker as torrents of red infused the cotton of his thin jacket.

“Oh, no, oh my God, Henry!”

He looked at me, eyes wide. “Gemma, go. Open the door. We have to get off the train…”

I hitched his backpack over my left shoulder and puled him away from the door, a formidable exercise in strength and wil considering the difference in our body sizes.

I yanked open the door and with Henry leaning on my shoulders, I puled him down the remainder of the hal to the exit at the front of our train car. An alarm screeched through the speakers of the PA system, a logical response to the blast from the gun. Frightened voices flew at me from every direction, and I knew it was only a matter of seconds before a train employee found us in the hal, a bleeding man draped over me.

The side door was locked, but I forced the emergency release downward, setting off yet another series of chirps. The revving of the engines had been reversed and frantic employees ran up and down the platform on the eastern side of the train. As I shoved the door open, the lead conductor’s voice buzzed from a ceiling speaker, not far above my head. Something about an emergency, to please stay seated, porters wil check each car… It would be a while before the train moved any farther, by the sounds of it. No matter to us. This was now our stop.

I helped Henry down the stairs as fast as I could, fuly aware that he was wounded and no doubt in considerable pain, but we had to get out of there before Ash came to or before anyone caught us.

The western side of the train opened into a wooded area, the tracks and forest separated only by a short chain-link fence. I tossed Henry’s backpack and told him he had to climb over. Adrenaline had kicked in and he bounded the fence, even offering his uninjured arm to me when my pant leg snagged and I slammed into the damp ground.

I scurried to my feet and scooped up his bag, grabbing him by the elbow and puling him toward the trees. We broke into a sprint and Henry kept pace with me, shocking given the continuous stream of blood that dripped from the fingers of his right arm.

As we raced through the dark forest, under cover of a near-moonless sky, the train grew obscure through the dense undergrowth and thick, moss-covered tree trunks. We ran until the sound of sirens at the train station became a distant whine of some faraway calamity. When I felt we’d put enough space between us and the tracks, I slowed to a stop and bent over to catch my breath.

“We can’t stop here. They’l have dogs and the blood wil lead them right to us,” Henry said, pain thick in his voice. He was right.

We had to keep running, though how he was managing was a mystery. I just prayed he wouldn’t drop before we could find help.

Some sort of help.

We changed course, heading south through the trees. Just as suddenly as the wooded area had begun outside the train, it ended on the edge of a city park. Again, I stopped running. We couldn’t very wel walk into a populated area with Henry’s arm and hand bathed in blood.

I puled him back into the protective cover of the brush and seated him on a falen log. I unbuttoned his shirt, though he tried to protest.

“Gemma, leave it,” he blinked rapidly, his breathing shalow and quick.

“You can’t be seen like this. At least let me stuff some gauze into it and get a clean shirt on you.”

He either didn’t have the energy to fight me or he knew I was right. He groaned as I puled the jacket and shirt off his shoulder; some of the fabric had joined the fresh clot over the wound and as I tried to separate it, Henry flinched.