The Eighth Day (15 page)

Jax groaned. Of course, he'd been taught not to use the same username and password for everything. He'd ignored the advice. Everybody did.

Terrance held the Taser in his right hand, but Jax was more interested in his left hand. When the van made a turn to the right, Terrance's left hand arced upward, and Jax got a look at his wrist.

He had no tattoo. He was a Normal.

Jax hung his head and tried to think. Had he been snatched by a nut job who knew nothing about Grunsday? No, there was too much stuff on that website that matched what he'd been told. This guy knew
something
. What Jax wouldn't have given for Riley's voice of command right now! But of course, Jax had his own talent. He started muttering one of Melinda's chants.

Terrance swung the Taser toward him again, and the van lurched sideways. “No spells, Jax.”

He knew what Jax was doing. That couldn't be good. “I'm praying,” Jax snarled. “Praying you drive into a ditch because I'd rather die in a car accident than be chopped into pieces by a psycho killer!”

“I'm not going to chop you into pieces,” Terrance shot back. “You're my golden ticket, kid. Do what you're told, and you won't get hurt. But if you ask me a question—any question at all—I'll Taser you till you pass out.”

Jax sagged against the rolled-up carpet. Terrance knew his talent.

“Cheer up, Jax. You didn't like living there anyway, did you?” Terrance's voice rose an octave. “
Naomi, I don't like it here. Riley is mean, and the only person who's nice to me is Mrs. Unger
.” He dropped into his normal register. “Only Naomi didn't come, did she? She dropped you like a hot potato.”

So Terrance had read his email and chats. Crap, even Riley's address had been in an old email Jax sent to Naomi back when he first moved there. And this guy knew about magic, even if he didn't have his own. But he was also giving Jax information, practically volunteering it. Was Jax's talent working for him even when he didn't ask a direct question? Melinda said he was stronger when he really needed to know.

Jax prodded him, but made sure not to phrase it as a question. “You don't know anything about me.”

“I know you were left alone this week.” Terrance smirked in the mirror. “Nobody's going to miss you for days.”

Melinda would miss him. She was expecting him for his lesson tomorrow, and when he didn't show up, she'd contact Mrs. Crandall, and they'd . . . do what? A Normal wouldn't have activated Melinda's security net, and he already knew that she wouldn't detect Jax's leaving. She'd have no idea what happened.

Sitting for hours with hands cuffed behind his back was a torture that started small and grew steadily unbearable. Jax squirmed, trying to ease the pressure on his arms. He also managed to survey the vehicle. Besides the rolled rug Terrance had used to lure him in, there was a large toolbox in the back of the van and what appeared to be garbage bags.

The bags worried him. Bodies were disposed of in garbage bags.

Jax watched the clock face on the outdated dashboard. When midnight came, Terrance would vanish. But Jax was worried about what would happen to the van. He remembered the car he'd seen frozen on the highway because it had been moving with velocity on Wednesday at midnight. Would that happen in this case? Would Jax be trapped inside the van, unable to get out? Or would Jax's presence
in the vehicle be enough to send it hurtling seventy miles per hour into Grunsday—minus the driver?

At eleven thirty p.m., Terrance left the interstate and headed into a town over the border of Ohio. Rain pattered against the windshield, and Terrance flicked on the windshield wipers. He drove quickly, and as near as Jax could tell from the mirror, kept his eye on the clock. Finally, with less than ten minutes to spare, Terrance drove the vehicle into a strip shopping mall. He cut the engine and exited through the driver's door. He walked around the van, opened the passenger door, and thrust the Taser into Jax's face. “Get out. Slowly.”

Slowly was the only way Jax could move. He had no arms to help him. He fell trying to step out of the vehicle, and the pavement smacked his knees. Then Terrance planted a hand on the back of Jax's head and shoved. “Get your head down.”

This was it. Terrance was going to kill him. Jax filled his lungs with breath to yell and plead . . . when suddenly his left hand fell forward. A second later, pain tore through the tortured muscles of his arm.

“Get up,” Terrance ordered, jerking on his other arm. Those muscles screamed, too. And then Jax realized his right hand was cuffed to Terrance's left one.

“What the—”

Terrance laughed. He held up their connected hands and shook the cuffs. His other hand still held the Taser.
“It's a piggy-back ride,” he explained. “In a couple minutes, either you're going to drag me into the other world, or . . .” He grinned. “Or one of us is going to get a hand cut off.”

Jax looked at the metal rings joining their hands. If he transitioned to Grunsday with everything on his body—and meanwhile, Terrance went to Thursday with everything on
his
body—they couldn't both take the cuffs with them. It took Jax about one second to picture the possible result. Then he started screaming. He grabbed the handcuff and yanked on it, trying to wriggle his hand loose. Terrance let him do it. In fact, he threw back his head and laughed.

At the instant Jax had planned to meet Evangeline, he transitioned into Grunsday handcuffed to a madman.

When Terrance was tired of laughing, he grabbed Jax and shook him into silence. “That's enough, kid.”

Terrance led Jax away from the van to a shopping-cart return. He didn't seem to care that the rain had turned to mist, hanging in the air. He didn't look at the sports car frozen in transit on the street. Jax realized Terrance had been to Grunsday before and already knew the handcuff trick would work.

He'd frightened Jax for fun.

Terrance removed the key from his shirt pocket and
unlocked his own cuff and closed it around a railing in the shopping cart return. “Wait here, kid.”

When Terrance climbed into the van and drove across the parking lot, Jax thought it was over. Terrance was going to leave him now that he'd gotten what he wanted. Then Jax saw the reverse lights come on, and the van hurtled backward, tires squealing on the wet pavement—straight into the glass windows of one of the stores.

“Holy crap!”

Jax looked up at the building front. It wasn't a store. It was a bank. Terrance was a freaking bank robber.

Terrance drove the van out of the broken glass and off the sidewalk, then emerged from the driver's seat whistling happily. He went around to the back of the vehicle and opened the rear door. Jax couldn't see what he did next but assumed he was unloading the toolbox and the garbage bags.

When Terrance vanished inside the bank, Jax turned his attention to the shopping-cart return. It was rusted and, with any luck, flimsily made. He grabbed the railing with both hands, braced his feet, and wailed on it. The handcuffs clanged against the steel, and the shopping carts rattled, and Jax never heard footsteps behind him until Terrance pressed the Taser into his back.

Jax flinched. “Trying to leave me, kid?” Terrance asked pleasantly.

“Let me go,” Jax begged. “You got what you wanted.
Go rob your bank and let me go. It's not like I can call the police.”

“Our partnership's not over yet. Take the key and unlock that other cuff. I don't have to tell you not to run, do I?”

He didn't.

Inside the bank, emergency lights dimly illuminated the main room, and glass crunched underfoot. “Do you know what I do for a living?” Terrance asked. “I build vault locks. Do you know what I think about while I build 'em? How to break into them.”

He nudged Jax with the Taser, steering him toward the teller windows. Jax understood what Terrance wanted and fastened the open cuff to the steel security grate.

“Nobody knows how to beat a lock better than a lock maker. The only problem is the alarms and the sensors and the pesky police.” Terrance nodded toward the ceiling. “And the cameras.”

Jax looked at the security cameras on the ceiling. He could see dim red lights, but he knew they weren't working.

Terrance dismantled the lock on the steel door beyond the teller windows, and, cackling with self-satisfaction, disappeared, presumably to crack the vault. As soon as he was out of sight, Jax grabbed the security grate and shook it in frustration, ashamed of himself for being so afraid of the Taser that he cuffed himself wherever he was told to.

He was painfully aware that Evangeline would've reappeared a few minutes ago. Was she okay? Terrance didn't seem to know anything about her. That was the only good thing in this situation at all. Terrance had wanted a way into Grunsday; he didn't know he'd blundered into the business of Riley Pendare and his vassals. Jax forgot for the moment that he wasn't one of those vassals and imagined Riley and the gang coming for him. He wished Terrance and his Taser could come face to face with Mr. Crandall and Deidre's really big gun.
That would wipe the grin off Terrance's face
.

Jax spent a few seconds picturing that scene, unlikely as it was, and when he saw movement outside the broken glass front of the building, his heart leaped with hope. Somehow, they'd tracked him here. They were going to bust in here, just like in the movies, and rescue him.

A figure slipped through the broken window. It was too small to be Riley or any of the Crandalls, and when the person pulled down the hood of his sweatshirt, Jax gasped out loud.

Thomas Donovan put a finger to his lips.
Shhhh
.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

JAX'S KNEES WOBBLED.
His perception of the world as he knew it had taken another blow. Thomas Donovan. Here. On a Grunsday. Which meant . . .

From the back of the bank, Terrance cackled loudly, and then Jax heard the sound of a drill. Thomas pointed toward the open doorway and made a gun with his hand—sticking his forefinger straight out and his thumb up. He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

Jax wondered how to answer that. He copied the gesture and shook his head. Then he curled two joints of his forefinger to make a snub-nosed weapon, touched his own chest with it, and mimed a convulsion.

Thomas nodded and darted outside.

“Wait,” Jax whispered desperately. Had Thomas just stopped by to take a survey of bank robbers' weapons?

Finally, to Jax's relief, he reappeared. He entered the building and crept around the edge of the room. Terrance's
drill stopped, and Thomas hastened his steps. When he reached the corner of the room closest to the steel door, he sank down beneath an ornamental potted tree and disappeared from sight.

Movement in the bank entrance caught Jax's attention, and somebody else walked in. This time it was a grown man with the same carroty shade of hair as Thomas. The man nodded a greeting at Jax, swung a baseball bat onto his shoulder, then looked back at the entrance and made a “come here” gesture.

Tegan darted in through the broken window. She spared Jax only a brief glance before pulling the hood of her sweatshirt over her head and taking position behind the man who must've been her father.

The senior Donovan faced the open steel door. He positioned the bat like a baseball player—even took a couple of practice swings—then called out loudly, “Terrance Hodd, are you havin' a bank party without your good friend, Michael?”

At the word
friend
, Jax's heart sank. The Donovans knew Terrance. They were probably his accomplices.

Terrance's voice from the back room confirmed it. “How'd you find me, Michael?”

“Smelled you out. I figured you were planning to strike out on your own, but you forgot—I
know
which banks carry your locks. It was just a matter of findin' the one that reeks of you casing it out.” Donovan looked at Jax. “Looks
like you got yourself another way in and out of the eighth day. Were you thinkin' of cuttin' me out of my share?”

“Your share?” Terrance appeared. He looked at Jax, then at Donovan and Tegan standing beside him—as if marking everyone's position—and held up a gun. Not a Taser. A small black revolver with a nasty, oversized hole in the barrel.

Jax's mouth went dry. Terrance had a real gun after all.

“You never earned your share, Michael,” said Terrance. “I'm the one who knows how to break into vaults. All you and your kid ever did was get me in and out of this crazy world—”

“Not to mention teachin' you about it in the first place,” Donovan murmured.

“—and as you can see, I've got somebody else to do that now.”

“Terry.” Donovan shook his head. “As a father, I don't approve of kidnappin' kids to rob banks. It's one thing when they're born to it.” He glanced at Tegan, who grinned and shrugged.

“Michael.” Terrance flashed his crazy grin, the one that made Jax shiver. “As a father, you should've known better than to bring your kid into this. Now I'm going to have to take him out, too.”

“But I never told you everything, Terry.” Donovan's smile didn't waver. “And you're so dense, you never realized my kid . . .
is twins
.”

Thomas hurtled out of hiding and plowed into Terrance's back. Terrance went down, firing the revolver as he fell. Jax ducked instinctively. The discharge echoed loudly, accompanied by breaking glass. The shot had gone wide.

Donovan swung the bat down on Terrance's hand. The bank robber howled, and his handgun spun across the floor. Thomas fished the Taser out of Terrance's back pocket, jumped up, and fired it. Terrance convulsed.

Tegan hollered at Jax, “Where's the key?”