Page of Swords (The Demon's Apprentice Book 2) (22 page)

Almost immediately, the crystal started spinning in slow circles. I took a breath, held it, then let it out through my mouth to center myself. I started to concentrate on finding Mr. Chomsky’s trail, but every time I tried to get my mind on the subject, the pendulum stopped spinning. I knew better than to fight it. Instead, I went from specific to general.

“Show me where I need to go,” I said after a few seconds.

The words had barely come out of my mouth before it started swinging back and forth, almost in a straight line in front of me. But when I started forward, it started swinging side to side. My eyebrows collided as I turned around and walked the other way. That took me back toward the Range Rover. When I got to the driver’s side window, I stopped and gestured at Dr. C to roll it down.

“Which direction am I facing?” I asked.

He pulled a black compass from his pocket and opened it, then looked back at me.

“Northwest. That’s a lot more specific than what I got.”

“That’s funny, because I didn’t get anything when I asked about Mr. Chomsky. I asked where I needed to go, and it started pointing this way. Can I see your map?” I asked.

He handed it to me as he got out.

Shade followed him as I laid the map on the hood of the Range Rover and held the pendulum over it.

Again, I focused my chakras, this time aligning the map in my head as the symbolic world to the pendulum, so that instead of trying to point to what I wanted in the world around me, it would show me where the right symbol on the map was for where I needed to be. Almost as soon as I set it to spinning above the map, it pulled tight against the chain. I let it draw my hand along, until the pull was straight down. Right over New Essex.

“Crap,” I muttered. “We’re missing something, sir. Whatever we need is back in New Essex.” I tossed the pendulum down on the hood of the truck and took a step back. Between the slow headache that was creeping in behind my eyes and the dull ache of my busted ribs, I was feeling pretty cranky. It didn’t help that I’d been feeling like this place was familiar, like I’d been in the woods recently.

“The trip isn’t completely wasted, Chance. You had no way of knowing this was going to happen. Let’s just stop someplace, get some lunch and make a day of it. We’ll figure the rest out when we get back home.”

Lunch ended up being at a place with wooden floors and bench seats in the lobby. License plates and state flags were all over, next to retro magazine covers, fishing tackle and antique tools. Shade and I let Dr. C talk us into getting the country-fried steak.

When they brought our food to us, I thought they were going to serve it straight from the frying pan on to our plates. Then it turned out the frying pans
were
our plates. And these weren’t your normal skillets, either. Each pan had to be more than a foot wide, and the steak took up more than half of it. Between the full pound of batter-and-gravy covered steak, the baked potato and the bowl of corn, I barely finished the whole thing.

“I’m not gonna eat for a week,” I moaned melodramatically on the way back to the truck.

Shade leaned against me. “Me, either,” she said contentedly.

“I shouldn’t have had the potatoes and onions they brought.”

“Or the other three rolls,” Dr. C added.

“They threw them at me, I swear.”

“So, I’ve been giving some thought to what we’re looking for,” Dr. C said once we were in the Range Rover and Shade had snuggled back under my arm. “Maybe you should do some more general divination when we get home. Yours was the only good read we got today.”

“Guess I should. It’s my wyrd and all anyway, right? I just keep feeling like I’m missing something, and I don’t know what it is. I should be closer to finding this damn thing.”

“Don’t let it bog you down, Chance. Remember, your emotions affect your magick. So do your doubts. You’re an apprentice mage, and your words and your thoughts have power. Be gentle with yourself.”

“Be gentle with myself?” I hissed. “I don’t know if you missed this news flash or not, sir, but I’m not exactly battin’ a thousand here. Hells, I’m not even a very good apprentice.”

“Why do you think that?” he asked.

I wished I could believe the concern I heard in his voice, but there was just too much telling me it was so much bullshit.

“It only took you three days to make your first touchstone. Draeden only took a month. It took me more than two months to get one to hold. And I know exactly how far behind I am in the rest of my studies, too. I’m never going to catch up.”

“Chance, being a mage isn’t about what you know. It’s about what you
do
. Your magick is in the way you talk, the way you live your life, in the way you treat other people. It isn’t what’s in your head that makes you a good mage. It’s what lives in your heart. You’re the best damn apprentice I could hope for.”

“Then why does it take me so long to learn stuff?” I asked around the tightness in my throat.

“That’s simple. I had a better teacher than you do.”

“Now who’s being hard on himself?” I asked, unable to resist the comeback.

“Sydney was a terrific teacher. I’m not so bad, but he was a lot better. So, you two relax, enjoy the ride back, and try not to steam up the windows, okay?”

“We’ll behave,” Shade said. She put her mouth close to my ear and whispered, “Mostly.”

When we got back to Dr. C’s place, Lucas and Wanda were waiting by the side door with Collins. Dr. C pulled into the garage at the back, and Shade and I tried to make it look like we hadn’t been making out the whole way back while Dr. C grabbed his staff from the back. Technically, it was true. We’d only been making out
most
of the way back. My mom would have probably gone off on him if she knew about it, but I didn’t think he was going to talk.

“Any luck?” Wanda asked as we opened the door.

“We narrowed it down to only a few thousand acres of forest, if you call that luck,” Dr. C said. He set his staff by the door, then grabbed one of his Coke bottles from beside the refrigerator and slumped into the heavy wooden chair at the end of the kitchen table. Collins sat at the other end, and Lucas and Wanda took the pair of chairs next to the kitchen window, on the other side of the table from me after they grabbed their own sodas from the fridge. Shade sat down beside me, and sat a bottle between us.

“Demetrius, I could put on a pot of coffee if you’d like some,” Dr. C said.

“Nah, I’m good. And you can call me Tré,” he replied. “We been through too much shit to be all formal.”

“So, what’s next?” Lucas asked.

“Chance found out today that specific divinations are probably not working because we’re looking for the wrong thing. So he’s going to do some more general scrying to see what he can find.”

“What about your visions?” Wanda asked me.

“You didn’t mention any visions, Chance,” Dr. C said.

“I forgot all about them. I’ve had a lot on my mind. I saw the first one in the alley with Dani, then I had one Saturday morning at the house. The last one I had was at Dani’s house.”

“What did you see?”

“A building, trees, and a sword. And there was a bell the last time.”

“So, this girl was there when you had two of these visions,” Dr. C said. “How is she connected, I wonder?”

“She said she was an empath, and she got really freaked out when she touched Chance. She almost fell out of her chair,” Wanda added.

“Exposure to your psyche can be pretty jarring,” Dr. C remarked. “Perhaps contact with her unlocks a latent talent in you, Chance. Why don’t you do some general scrying, then go see her and try again, to see if you get better results.”

“What about us?” Lucas asked with a gesture that included Wanda.

“Find Dani and Donovan,” I told him. “Make sure she’s free this afternoon.”

“I need to make an appearance at home,” Shade said. “And I need to make nice with Deek and check on the boys. I’ll meet you back here after you talk to Dani.” She took a drink from the Coke bottle, then leaned over and kissed me.

My lips were still tingling by the time she closed the door behind her.

“As for you, Tré, make yourself comfortable for a little bit. Once we do a few basic divinations, I have something that should make your visit to see Thraxus tonight a little easier.” Dr. C gestured toward the front room as he stood up.

I followed him into the library, and grabbed my backpack from the hallway as we went. Once we were inside, I pulled my own pendulum from the outside pocket. Mine was an amethyst crystal wrapped in copper wire on a silver necklace. I’d used it to find Mr. Chomsky’s killer, and it made sense to me to use it to find what he’d hidden. Since my last divination pointed us back to New Essex, I pulled a map of the city from the drawer of the reading table and spread it out on it. Almost as soon as I held the purple stone over the table, it started spinning.

“Where do I need to go now?” I asked. It was almost the same thing I’d asked back in the woods. The chain went tight as the pendulum swung from the center. I let my hand follow the pull until it was straight down, then let it drop down until the point touched the map.

“All right, either someone I need to meet is there, or the Universe thinks I really need cheesy bacon fries,” I quipped.

“Where is that?” Dr. C asked.

“Dante’s.”

“So, you’re sure that Dani is the next link here?” Lucas asked as we walked across the parking lot at Dante’s.

The parking lot was pretty full, with school being out today. No one knew if we were going to have class tomorrow, but no one seemed to be betting on it. Lucas had found a space near the farthest reaches of parking Siberia, and now we were hiking in.

“Well, I asked where I needed to go next, and got led here. She’s here. You do the math,” I told Lucas.

“Remember what Dr. C said about spells, dude. Correlation doesn’t always mean causality,” Lucas reminded me as we got close to the door.

“I remember, man,” I told him. “Keep my mind and my eyes open, because fortune favors the prepared mind.”

“I thought he said that in his physics class,” Wanda said.

I opened the door for her and let her and Lucas go in before me. The thump of the sound system hit us as we stepped into the darkened room. The switch from the cool spring air to the packed heat of Dante’s was like a warm blanket on my skin.

“He says that in every class, but there’s a lot of physics in magick,” I called over the sound of the music. As packed as it was, it would have been hard for anyone to hear us over the music.

We made our way toward the back, jostling and squeezing until we hit the edge of the dance floor and the crowd opened up. Across the pool tables, I could see Donovan. He’d staked a claim on our regular table, and damn if people didn’t give him a wider berth than they did me. Dani was dwarfed behind him, almost invisible in the back of our booth.

I grabbed a chair from the closest table and spun it around so the back was between me and the table, then straddled it.

“Are you the girl who reads minds?” I asked with a feeling of coming full circle.

Wanda and Lucas slid in to the seat across from them.

“I don’t read minds,” Dani snapped at me. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she had a haunted look to her face.

“Chill, Dani,” Donovan said. “He’s trying to help out.”

“Since when did you become a fan?” she asked.

“Since I saw what he fights. Chance and I are on the same team, we just do things differently.”

I gave Donovan an appraising glance, trying to see if he looked any different on the outside. The easy confidence seemed to have cracked a little, and the smug grin looked like it wasn’t going to be making a showing any time soon.

“Great, while you boys were bonding, I haven’t slept since Saturday night!” Dani barked. “While you’ve been putting on your capes and tights, or whatever, I’ve been dreaming about the things they do to Crystal!”

“Dani, I’m sorry,” I told her. “I didn’t know. Maybe your dreams can help me find her. That’s what I came here for. When I’ve been around you, I’ve had these visions, and I think they can help me find Crystal.”

She shoved against Donovan’s side. “Let me out. I’ve had all the help from you I can take.”

He slid out and held his hand out to her to help her to her feet.

As she pulled herself up against his arm, I felt my last chance at finding Crystal and the Maxilla walking out with her.

In desperation, I did the only thing I could. I reached out and grabbed her wrist.

My brain was instantly flooded with feelings and images that weren’t mine. Kissing a dark-haired beauty in a darkened bedroom, trying to stay quiet so my parents wouldn’t come in; listening to my father rant over dinner about people like me; hearing people talk about me behind my back; the way my heart raced when Crystal first told me she loved me; the way it broke when she freaked out; and the certain belief that she still loved me. Finally, I saw the dreams. Fear, pain, darkness. They were too raw and fresh to make much more than a fleeting, muddled impression.