The Eighth Day (16 page)

“In his shirt pocket!”

Donovan put his foot on Terrance's neck, pinning him to the floor, the bat hovering just off his head. “Should've brought a seven-iron,” Donovan remarked cheerfully. Thomas found the handcuff key and tossed it to Tegan. Then he and his father hauled Terrance to his knees and dragged him into the back of the bank.

The moment Tegan unlocked the cuff, Jax grabbed her left arm and shoved her sleeve up. He got a glimpse of a tattooed crest with what looked like hunting dogs standing on their back legs before she yanked her arm away and glared at him. “You knew about me,” he hissed. “And never said anything.”

“You were an idiot,” she sneered. “Showing people your mark and using your magic openly. Tommy wanted to pound you.” She might have said more, but shouting from the back of the bank caught their attention. “C'mon,” she
said, grabbing him by the arm. “They might need help.”

A short corridor led to the vault. Jax and Tegan arrived in time to see Terrance struggle to his knees, only to be brought down by another hit from the Taser. Jax felt sick, watching him flop around on the floor. “Gimme the cuffs,” said Thomas. His sister darted forward.

The elder Donovan knelt in front of the vault with a finger inserted into one of the drill holes. His face was pressed against the vault door, his eyes cast upwards with a look of concentration. “I think . . . Ah, there we go.” He jumped to his feet and swung the vault door open triumphantly. “And you thought I wasn't payin' attention, Terry.”

Terrance responded with a string of curse words. The twins had managed to cuff his hands behind his back, but he was still struggling. “Are you totally useless?” Thomas yelled at Jax. “Grab some electrical tape from his box and give us a hand!” Jax blinked stupidly for a moment, then fetched the tape and wrapped it around Terrance's ankles while Tegan sat on his legs.

Donovan examined the door. “It'll still lock when we're done. That's a bit of luck.”

“I'll kill you,” Terrance growled.

“Hush up, Terry, or Tommy'll zap you again.” Donovan handed a garbage bag to Tegan. “Since we're here . . .”

“Yeah, Dad.” Tegan darted into the vault and started filling the bag with bundles of cash from the bins and drawers.

Donovan picked up a fat wad of hundreds and slapped it against Jax's chest. “Here you go, kid. Your share.”

“No thanks!” Jax exclaimed.

“Suit yourself.”

“You want Terrance in the vault?” asked Thomas.

“You can't!” hollered Terrance. “I need one of you to get me out of this place!” Jax understood he didn't mean the bank.

“True.” Donovan and Thomas dragged Terrance into the vault. “You'll be stuck here till somebody rescues you. Course, nobody opens this vault on the eighth day. They'll be here on Thursday, but
you
won't be. They'll repair it and lock it. I don't expect anybody'll be lookin' in here on any day
you'll
be present . . . although eventually they're gonna wonder why the place stinks so bad . . .”

Terrance started cursing foully. Even after Donovan swung the vault door closed, they could hear him faintly through the drill holes.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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

THE TWINS PUSHED
Jax down the hall toward the front of the bank. “You can't leave him there,” Jax protested, feeling nauseous. “To starve to death slowly.”

“What do you care?” Thomas said. “That gun was for you.”

“No worries.” Michael Donovan grinned. “Terrance doesn't belong in the eighth day. He'll pop back into his own time, easy enough. The eighth day will spit out any Normal at midnight, whether he's handcuffed to one of us or not.”

“He doesn't know anything about the eighth day except what we told him. And we lied a lot.” Tegan grinned proudly.

“Couldn't have him shooting us in the back, thinking he didn't need us,” her father explained. “Likewise, he never saw Tommy and Tegan together.”

Meanwhile, Jax had stumbled over his own feet. “What do you mean,
that gun was for me
?”

Tegan shrugged. “It would've been a lot of trouble to keep you prisoner till he wanted another piggy-back ride.”

The entire world pounded in time with Jax's heart. If the Donovans hadn't shown up tonight, his life expectancy would have been no more than the duration of Grunsday.

“He'll transition back to his normal time at midnight,” Donovan said. “And minutes later, the police'll be haulin' him out of there.”

“Aren't you afraid he'll turn you in?” Jax asked.

Donovan laughed. “He don't even know our real last name, and we don't stay in one place for very long anyway. C'mon, let's take you home. Terrance left us a ride, keys in the ignition.”

Show these people where the last remaining Pendragon lived? That seemed like a very bad idea. “I'm okay,” Jax said. “I'll call someone to come get me on Thursday.”

The twins exchanged glances, and their father gave Jax a speculative look. “We're driving your way,” he said. “Why would we leave you here?”

There didn't seem to be a way to ditch them, especially after they'd saved his life. So he followed them out to the parking lot and named a town on the opposite side of the school district from where he really lived.

A dumpy-looking Toyota Tercel was parked beside Terrance's van. Michael Donovan tossed a set of keys onto the hood before opening the van and waving everyone inside. Jax wondered why the Donovans were abandoning
their car. Then it hit him. The car was stolen.

Donovan drove Terrance's van into the street. “Steers like a dump truck,” he told Thomas, who was riding shotgun. “The A-Team meets Scooby-Doo.”

“Did you know Terrance had me?” Jax asked.

“We knew he must've found
somebody
to get him into the eighth day,” Donovan said. “He stood us up for a job last week and disappeared. We had to track him down.”

“You didn't join one of his stupid websites, did you?” asked Tegan. “He's been phishing for months and months online, but no Transitioner with an ounce of brains would fall for something that obvious.”

Jax sank down in his seat, feeling his cheeks burn. Tegan and Thomas exchanged grins, as if they knew he'd done exactly that and it was no more than they would've expected from him.

The mist continued through the night, beading up on the windshield. Donovan stopped for fuel, but not at a gas station. He siphoned gas out of cars at a bus depot. Then he stopped for “the other kind of fuel,” by which he meant ransacking a convenience store. The twins stuffed the pockets of their sweatshirts with candy and bags of chips. Donovan took a shopping basket and filled it with sodas, whistling happily. There didn't seem to be any method to their looting, as if they weren't thinking more than
a few hours ahead. As far as Jax could tell, they treated the eighth-day world like it was their personal shopping mall—here solely for their own gain—just as Riley had warned him most Transitioners did. In spite of his disapproval, Jax was so parched from his ordeal that he beat down his conscience and helped himself to a single bottle of water. As he was walking out, he passed a display of pet food and paused.

I've heard that cats purr
, Evangeline had said.

“Hey, Thomas,” Jax called. “Is there such a thing as a Grunsday cat?”

“What's Grunsday?” Thomas asked.

“That's what I call the eighth day.”

“You want a cat for the eighth day?”

“I want to know if there
is
such a thing,” Jax said.

“An eighth-day cat or dog is a rare commodity.” Michael Donovan eyed him with interest over the shelves. “Expensive to acquire, but I'll bet I could find one.”

“Bound to be the pet of some Kin.” Tegan added her two cents around a mouthful of cheese doodles. “They get nasty when you steal from 'em.”

“I didn't ask you to steal one. I only asked—” Jax grunted in exasperation. “I'll wait in the car.”

The best way to avoid talking to the Donovans was to pretend to fall asleep, and to Jax's surprise, he really did doze off. Thomas had to shake him awake when they neared their destination.

“Which way, Jax?” Michael Donovan asked.

“Straight ahead.” Jax kept an eye out for likely-looking housing communities. In the seat next to him, Tegan was sound asleep, her head lolling on her shoulder and her hair fallen across her face. “Left at the next light,” he said.

In the rearview mirror, he saw Donovan frown. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

Thomas and his father exchanged glances, but Donovan made the turn. Jax continued to direct them, solely by the quality of the houses, and finally said, “Stop here.”

“Which house?” Donovan brought the van to a gentle stop and looked over his shoulder with a smile that was way too innocent for Jax's liking.

“I'd rather you stop here.” Jax made a show of looking ashamed. “I live with someone who'd kill me if he knew I was dumb enough to get myself kidnapped by a bank robber.”

“I can understand that.” Donovan's smile widened into a grin.

Jax opened the door. “I'm grateful, sir. You saved my life. Uh, see you at school, Thomas.”

Thomas eyed him over the back of his seat with a smile that eerily echoed his father's. “Bye, Jax.”

Jax glanced across the van at Tegan. She was still asleep. He hopped out of the vehicle and walked down the street.
When he realized Donovan wasn't going to pull away, he looked back and waved, then sauntered between two of the houses. As soon as he was out of sight, he crouched and waited. After a few seconds, he heard the van reverse and turn around, and when the sound of its engine could no longer be heard, he sank to the ground in relief.

First thing he did was find a bike to steal.

He tried not to compare himself to Terrance or the Donovans. Instead, he remembered what Riley had told him:
I'm not a thief, but I have stolen when I needed to
. When he finally found a house with an unlocked garage door and a bike inside, Jax wondered when Riley Pendare had suddenly become a model of acceptable morality.

He was only eight or nine miles from home, and with any luck he could make it back before his scheduled lesson with Melinda. No one would ever know he'd been gone.

Except Evangeline.

Mounting the stolen bike, Jax tried to figure out what he was going to tell her.

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HarperCollins Publishers

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

EVANGELINE LOOKED AROUND IN HORROR.

She was standing under the nighttime sky in a wet mist, alone and vulnerable. How could she have been so careless? The first thing her parents had taught her, even before she'd been able to speak in complete sentences, was the dire importance of being in a secure location at midnight
.

Evangeline bolted for the house, only to find the back door locked. For a second she panicked and looked for a rock to break the glass. Before she found one, however, reason caught up with her. Breaking the window would frighten Mrs. Unger. There was another way in. Years ago, she had stolen and hidden a key to the front door for just such an emergency
.

It took her a couple of minutes to remember the right window and even longer to tease the key out of the crack between the stucco wall of the house and the underside of the windowsill. Her fingers had been smaller then. While she worked at it, she cast angry glances next door, where Jax's bike was locked up in its usual spot. Jax had left
her outside and hadn't come back for her
.

Once she'd retrieved the key and let herself in, she slammed the door and locked it. I should be angry at myself, she thought. Jax has no idea what it's like. I let another person distract me from the time—and that was stupid
.

My life is ruled by time
.

She didn't sleep well that night, too irritated at herself, disappointed in Jax, and engulfed in overwhelming longing for her own family
.

If I had given the Taliesins a different answer five years ago, would they have let the three of us stay together?

After whisking Evangeline and her siblings through the woods and to a safe location, the Taliesin brothers had separated the children and questioned Evangeline—she being the eldest and most likely to understand the situation. “Do you know why we rescued you?” the one with the hawk-shaped nose had asked
.

At that point, she still thought they must be allies of her father. They were Kin, after all, and she'd been told that all Kin wanted the same thing. “To end the exile of the Kin and dissolve the Eighth Day Spell,” she promptly said
.

When he hit her, she felt surprise before she felt pain. The blow was hard enough to send her sprawling across the floor
.

“I told you she was too old,” he said to his brother. “We should have left this one behind. The younger two children might be reeducated.”

“I'm not certain about that,” the other mumbled, rubbing his leg. Addie had kicked him in the shins
.

Evangeline, meanwhile, thrashed on the floor, trying to make her limbs obey her. Too old? She was eleven. She didn't understand why they were angry. She didn't know what they wanted from her. I didn't mean it, she wanted to say. Tell me what answer you want me to give, and I will. But her jaws and her teeth throbbed
.

“Every misguided attempt to interfere with the Eighth Day Spell has ended in catastrophe,” the hawk-nosed man said, scowling down at her. “We have records—disaster after disaster, throughout the centuries, caused by fools like your father.”