Dark Nebula (The Chronicles of Kerrigan) (40 page)

Devon
sat up straight.
“What’s it say?
Does it describe
how
the brainwashing technique
works
?
In detail?
H
ow to set it up or dismantle it?”

Rae
shrugged
.
“I don’t know.
I just
opened the
post
this morning and only read a few pages.
The stuff at the end though, my dad was crazy even back then.
He figured he’d be able to rule the world.”
She waited to see if
he would
react to her last words
.
She wasn’t disappointed.

Devon
jumped up, crisps flying everywhere.
Oblivious,
he
stepped on the ones on the floor, their crunching suddenly loud in the quiet room.
He walked over to the desk and opened Rae’s backpack.
“Do you have it here?”
He dumped the bag
’
s contents onto the desk.

“Slow down
!
”
Rae
was
surprised.
She
had
missed him,
and had been excited to share the news with him, but his reaction seemed a bit extreme
.
“I
don’t have it on me! Imagine if someone found it in my bag!
I
left it in my dorm.
I don’t want the entire school to know
I’ve got it.
They’d go nuts. Rumors would start flying that I’m picking up where he left off, or something equally ridiculous.
I spent
all of
last year being treated
like
a freak
.
This year,
I finally feel somewhat normal
and I don’t want to
give that up
.” She grabbed her bag, stuffing the contents back in.
“Next time, just wait till I answer your question
!
You didn’t have to empty my bag
—
you know, go through my stuff.
I
don’t have anything to hide.
”

“Sorry.”
Devon
grabbed a shirt and pulled it on.
“Let’s go to
your room and
get it
.
We
need to get it to the Privy Council right away.”

Rae hesitated.
It was one thing for
Devon
to see it, another for the Privy Council to take ownership.
If they had it, she doubted
she would
ever see it again
, and she wasn’t entirely sold on the whole “trusting the PC completely” thing yet, not like
Devon
was.
“
No
...
at least, not
yet.”
She watched him about to argue and then stop himself.
“I jus
t want to read it first, okay?
” She reached for his arm, wishing
she had
kept quiet and enjoyed his kisses instead of telling him about the
dumb
journal.

Devon
tapped
his
foot, crunching another crisp.
“
I guess
that would be okay
.
You should read it first.
Maybe we could make a copy of it.
We’ve just been having such a hard time figuring this brainwashing device out and then someone stole part of what
Carter
had
hid
den
.
It’s frustrating, like someone knows our plans
before
we make them.”
He smiled and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “I’m sorry about emptying your bag.
That was really stupid of me.”

“No worries.” Rae checked her watch
, feeling guilty for mistrusting him
.
“I’ve got about ten minutes before my next class.
Do you want to go to my room and
see
the journal?
You can read it while I’m in class
,
and then we can check it out when I’m finished at three?
”

“
Definitely
. This needs to get to the Privy Council pronto.
”

Rae held her hand up, not liking the look of determination on
Devon
’s face
. Had he heard anything she had just said? Anything at all?
“Hold up. This is
my
book. I’m not ready to hand it over yet. I haven’t even finished reading it.”

Devon
shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. It’s way more important to give it to the Privy Council. Lives could depend on it.”

She wanted to tell him to back off, to think of her instead of duty. However, he was right
—
in a small way.
“Fine.” She glanced down,
feeling drained
.
“
You can read it while I’m in class but
I get to read it before you turn it over to the PC. I’m not going to budge on that point, and
y
ou’d better get a vacuum before you start.
You made a mess and I’m not cleaning it up.” She pointed to the floor and
despite being ticked,
laughed
at the
look
on
Devon
’s face.

“Crap. How’d
that
happen?” He glanced down at his tapping foot. “
I got one of those little
Dust
-
buster
here somewhere.
I’ll clean it up when I get back.
I won’t put a drop of chip fat on the book. Come on.
Let’s go.”

They
raced
over
to
Aumbry
House without talking
.
P
ull
ing her room key out, she
realized she forgot to lock the door
in
her mad dash to class this morning.
Shaking her head, she stepped into the room with
Devon
right on
her heels.

“I
think I
stuffed it in my desk when I realized how late I was for class.”
She pulled the drawer open and reached inside.

Devon
leaned against the door frame,
arms crossed,
watching quietly.

Rae scratched her head.
“I thought I put it
in
here.”
She bent down and looked in the drawer again.
She glanced on top of the desk, lifting papers and binders as she tried to find it.
“Maybe it
fell
.” She dropped down
to the ground
and felt
Devon
crawl beside her.

“Can’t find it?”
he said.

She
caught
the worry in his voice.
“I
—
I had it this morning
,
but I was running late for class so I didn’t really pay attention to where I put it when I headed out
.” Rae
pushed
up in
to
a kneeling position.
“It’s dark brown leat
her, tied by a
n old
leather string.
”
She bit the inside of her cheek
, her heart rate accelerating.
“May
be
it’s on the bed or hiding under the sheets.”

“Or
—
”
Devon
let the statement hang in the air as he shuffled
over to
the
bed and looked underneath it.

“
No! I know what you’re thinking.
There’s no way s
omeone took it.
N
o one even knows I have it
!
I just got it and
only
told you
twenty
minutes ago
.
I
forgot
to lock my door…maybe Molly came by and saw it, thinking
I need
ed
it for class.”
Rae winced
.
T
hat sounded like a
really weak
stab in the dark.

Devon
stood.
“I doubt it.
S
omeone stole it.”

“
Who?
It’s impossible
!
”
But t
he hairs rose on the back of her neck
,
confirming
Devon
’s words
were truth. She didn’t know how she knew, and it was nearly impossible to believe, but he was right
.

Chapter 2
1

MIA

S
tolen?
It didn’t make sense.
Could someone be pulling a Lanford? Pretending to be nice but only after what Rae might have?
Carter? The dean? Julian? Or worse,
Devon
?
Rae stared at her desk and then at
Devon
in disbelief.
He could have come here looking for me after he left the Oratory and found the journal.
Then hid it—

“No one knows about the journal
except for Uncle Argyle
,” she whispered.
“No one
here
knows it even existed.”

“Some
how, someone does.
It’s gone.”
Devon
cocked his head to the side
. “Shhhh
—
” He held a finger up and paused. “Nothing…No one.” He
pulled his phone out of his back pocket, typing into it furiously
.
“
Whoever took it is long gone.
Write down everything you can rem
ember.
Actually, e
-
mail it to me
.
I’ve seen you type
. I
t’s faster than I can think.”
He pulled his car keys out of his pocket.
“
I’ve got to tell the Privy Council
.
And
check on
Ann
—
someone.
”
His last words were mumbled, as if he was talking to himself.

The bloomin’ Privy Counci
l
—
again?
Why did
Devon
feel the need to score points with them
at a time like this
?
Rae blew her bangs away from her forehead.
Of
course,
t
his was important but it irked her
the way
he always seemed to put them before
everything–
even
her.
“I doubt the Council really cares about a
journal that’s twenty years old and written
by
a teenager
.”

“You’re wrong.
T
hey’ll
care very, very much.
You said
it
yourself you
r
dad wrote in it and
mentioned brainwashing
.
There could be
more
vital information inside.
”
Rae opened her mouth to retort, but h
e held his hand up to stop
her
. “
The journal belongs to you
,
I know. But,
if it’s stolen, someone’s after its contents.” He began pacing the small room.
“I just spent the past two months going to the four corners of
Britain
to retrieve parts of a brainwashing device no one knows how to work.
Someone beat me to one corner,
replaced
the item with an exact replica
--
that doesn’t work
.
So if they took the journal, they must know more about it than we do.”
Devon
paused and pulled at his hair in frustration
, making his hair stand up at odd angles.
“
All that freakin’ work
,
a waste of time
.”
He shook his head and breathed heavily.
“You have no idea how hard this is
,
h
ow screwed up your father was.”
The stress he was throwing off got to Rae, and she couldn’t hold back anymore.
I’m so tired of being attacked just because this monster fathered me
—
.

“
My father? So it’s my fault?” She exhaled a breath, trying to keep it slow and controlled.
Relax, Rae.
H
e’s
not blaming you.
“
So t
hat’s where you’ve been?
Getting these hidden pieces?”
Rae
dropped
in
to
her chair,
pulled out her
laptop,
and punched the power button harder than necessary
.
Despite being ticked
, she still planned on typing what she could remember.
She just wished she didn’t feel so personally responsible for every horrible thing Simon had done in his life.
I could really use a photographic memory tatù about now.

“Yeah.
Me n’ Julian.
L
et me tell you, it was no picnic.
” He
shook his head and sighed.
“
Someone else is after the same stuff
,
so it’s a race against time.
Plus trying to figure out
who
it is trying to get Simon Kerrigan’s work back up and running
.
There are some seriously delusional people in this world.
”
He
raked
his fingers through his hair.
“This pile of crap just keeps getting bigger, and
now it’s like
someone’s shoveling it into
a
fan.”

“What
are you talking about
?”
Rae asked.
Devon
was tormenting her by giving her the tiniest of glimpses into the bigger picture that he was dealing with.

“It doesn’t matter.”
Devon
kissed the top of her head.
“Listen, type what you can remember and then
send
it to
my phone
.
I
gotta go
.
I’ll call
Carter
and let him know what’s going o
n as well.
No one’ll bug you about
missing classes this afternoon.”
He
turned to go.
“If you see Julian, will you tell hi
m
I’ve gone
?”

“Sure.” Rae stared at the closed door long after
Devon
left
.
Why won’t he clue me in
? I’m not stupid—
I know there’s a helluva lot more to the situation than just trying to keep this one evil tool away from the bad guys. Why won’t he tell me everything, and
w
hy
does
Devon
trust the Privy Council so blindly
?
It was a question
she had
never gotten an answer to.
She
actually
had a ton of questions
spanning a wide range of topics. She kept thinking if she could just get some answers, she might be able to help. However, it was evident that no one trusted her enough to give her any real info
. She wasn’t feeling a whole lot of trust for anyone in particular these days
herself
, especially not if
Devon
was right and the journal had been stolen. The only thing she knew with any degree of certainty was that
if she couldn’t trust
Devon
, despite his erratic behavior, she was lost
.
Slowly, she turned
to the
computer screen,
and willed
her mind
to go
blank.
She clicked on the word processing program, drummed her
nails
on the
desktop,
and willed the words to come to her
fingertips
.

She typed in a few points.
The first being that h
er
dad’s
parents
both had
tatùs
.
T
hat was something she
had
n’t know
n
,
and
she
had a hunch
the Privy Council didn’t
either
.
Her grandfather
had
set her father’s idea, maybe ideas, in motion.
Maybe more
family
history existed
that
she didn’t know of.
Someday she need
ed
to do a family tree and find out everything she could about both sides of her family and why Simon
had
chose
n
her mother.
I’m beginning to wonder if it really ever was for love.

Typing these points, she clicked on the little disc icon to save the document but didn’t send it to
Devon
.
She wanted to learn more on her own before telling anyone
.
It was a gut reaction she
couldn’t, or maybe didn’t want to explain, and
simply couldn’t deny.
Opening an e
-
mail to
let him know
there was nothing to tell
, she suddenly remembered the quote at the beginning of the journal.
She quickly entered
Devon
’s e
-
mail address and typed in the Erich Fromm comment:
“
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning.
Uncertainty is the very condition to i
mpel man to unfold his powers.
”

Rereading the weird thought, she tried to figure out why her dad thought it important.
She added her own note to
Devon
:
“
I don’t get the meaning behind this quote.
I’ll e
-
mail my uncle Argyle to see if he knows anything.
”

She sat back, chewed
on her bottom lip
and thought about her dad’s ranting
s
.
Devon
might want a summary of what I got from it.
Rae realized that she couldn’t very well keep it all from him. She had to give him something. So, s
he
e
-
mailed
her thoughts
:

“
My dad hated the Privy Council and hoped to one
day overtake them.
He’d only had his tatù a month and was cocky enough to believe he had the power to rule the world.
That’s all I remember, then I took off to class.
Sorry this isn’t much help, Rae.
”

H
it
ting the send
button
, she then
shut
down
the computer.
Waiting in her room, t
widdling her thumbs
just
drove her crazy.
She reopened the computer
and
check
ed
for a reply from
Devon
. Nothing
.
H
itting the refresh button
every five minutes
didn’t help either
.

The rest of the afternoon
passed incredibly
slow
.
M
eeting up with her friends offered no answers to the questions she sought
,
nor did it speed time up in any way
.
She didn’t see Julian at dinner and assumed
he had
gone to meet
Devon
.
Later tha
t
even
ing
, she lay in bed, arms folded with her hands tucked under her head.
Who would want the journal bad enough to steal it? No one knows about it and it’s more a collect
or’s
item
or family
memento
than
a book
of hidden secrets.
She
sat up.
Would the Privy Council do this? Carter? Nah,
she shook her head,
he’ll be getting it
eventually,
and pretty much knows that.
She punched the mattress.
This is driving me crazy
.
I don’t know what to think – or what to do.