Revelations (15 page)

“Shouldn’t you be going left to get to the freeway?” Jesse asked.

“I’m dropping you at home first,” Anthony said.

“No way. I’m going,” Jesse protested, sounding more like Anthony’s littlest brother than a fourteen-year-old.

“I need you here,” Anthony answered. “I don’tknow what I’m going to find in Louisiana. I need you and Aiden to
keep digging around. Maybe Mercer knew something else about Yana, even what she had planned.”

“Fine,” Jesse muttered. He didn’t say another word until Anthony came to a stop in front of his house. “Be careful,
okay?” Jesse said. He didn’t wait for an answer. Just climbed out of the car and slammed the door.

The car felt very empty without Jesse in it. Anthony cranked the music as he headed out. It didn’t help much. His
thoughts were too distracting. There was no way Yana would give Rae’s dad a real address. Was there?

With Yana, who knew? Her aunt really could have died. And she could have brought Rae to… That’s where
Anthony got stuck. To what? To find some new way to torture her by pretending to be her best friend? That’s what
she’d been doing so far.

I’m probably going nuts over nothing. Yeah, Yana might make the next couple of days miserable for Rae, but that’s

it. And as soon as I find Rae and tell her the truth about Yana, it’ll be over. Rae’s tough. When she knows what the

real deal is, she’ll handle it. There’s probably no reason for me to even be trying to track them down.

Anthony pressed his foot down on the accelerator.

His brain was telling him there was no real danger. But the gut snakes were telling him another story. He sped up a
little more.

Steve Mercer was behind all the really bad stuff,
he reminded himself, trying to keep calm.
He’s the one who

arranged for the pipe bomb that was supposed to blow Rae to bits. He’s the one who kidnapped Jesse. He’s the one

who held Rae and Yana hostage. And he’s dead. Yana’s just doing kiddie stuff. Painting Rae’s locker and putting

those flyers all over school. Sick, yeah. But not lethal.

You forgot the one where Yana started going out with you behind Rae’s back,
he thought.
And I actually helped her

with that one. I’m such a moron.
Anthony pushed the accelerator down a little farther.
She’s okay,
he thought.
She’s

okay. Yana’s not going to do any damage.

He told himself that over and over. Five hours and thirty-two minutes later he finally pulled onto the street that
could or could not be where Yana’s aunt lived. He parked a few houses down from what was supposed to be Yana’s
aunt’s house. He didn’t see Yana’s yellow Bug anywhere. But maybe it was in the garage. Or maybe she wasn’t even
in this state.

Anthony checked his watch. It was almost two-fifteen. He wanted to go straight to the house, pound the hell out of
the door, wake everybody up, thengrab Rae and get her out of there. If she was in there, he couldn’t help adding.

But that was a dumb plan. Yana was clearly wacked. And people who were wacked were unpredictable. It’d be
better to wait until morning, then go up to the house and say he’d heard about Yana’s aunt and decided to show up
for the funeral. Then somehow he’d make sure Rae rode back to Atlanta with him. Yeah, that was what he should do
and what he would do.

Anthony knew he could stretch out in the backseat for a while, nap. No one would be up and around for hours. But
he also knew there was no way he was going to be able to force himself to take his eyes off the house. It was
pointless to even try.

His eyes began to itch after about half an hour. A couple of hours later they began to burn. But he kept staring at
the house, only blinking when he absolutely had to. Around five a girl on a bike threw a paper onto the porch. And a
moment after that, the front door swung open. A woman in a robe stepped onto the porch.

Anthony launched himself out of the car. His feet had fallen asleep, and as he ran toward the house, he got the
pins-and-needles sensation from his toes to his heels. He didn’t care. “Hey,” he called softly, not wanting to scare
the woman. “Hi,” he said as sheturned toward him. “I’m a friend of Yana’s. Are you one of her relatives?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” the woman answered, sounding sleepy and annoyed.

“Yana Savari,” Anthony rushed on, even though he already knew the trip had been wasted. “Dyed blond hair. Blue
eyes. About seventeen. Here for her aunt’s funeral.”

The woman shook her head as she headed back toward her door.

“Have you seen someone who looks like that around? Maybe I have the address a little wrong,” Anthony called
out.

“Haven’t seen anyone like that,” the woman answered. She ducked back into the house before Anthony could ask
another question.

He stared at the closed door. There was no point in staying, but he couldn’t get himself to leave right away. This
had been his only hope of finding Rae. She and Yana could be anywhere. And he had no idea what that psycho
Yana had planned.

“How long are you planning on staying here?” Rae asked Yana. She couldn’t imagine surviving here even one
more night. The hunting cabin was falling apart. She’d hardly slept at all the night before because she’d been afraid
that part of the roofwas going to come crashing down on her. And she’d found a mushroom growing on her faintly
damp sleeping bag. It was a tiny, cute little mushroom, yeah. But it was still a mushroom.

“I don’t know,” Yana admitted. “But it’s got everything I need.” She wandered over to the steel sink in the kitchen
part of the room-the cabin was all one big room, except for the bathroom, which in Rae’s opinion shouldn’t be called
an actual room. It should be called gross-out central.

Yana turned the knob closest to her, and rusty brown water began to pour into the sink. “See? Running water. And
an amazing knife-just like the ones from the commercials that come on at three in the morning.” Yana picked up the
blade and turned it back and forth, admiring it. “This baby can cut through a tin can.”

“I don’t know why you insisted on buying that thing. We didn’t get anything at the store that needs cutting. We got
peanut butter, bananas, bread-already sliced, thank you very much-American cheese-also already sliced, and each
slice in its own little wrapper. We got-”

“I like my marshmallows thinly sliced,” Yana interrupted. She gave a sheepish smile as she set the knife back
down. “Besides, I don’t know, it just makes me feel good to have it around.”

“Safe, huh?” Rae said. Safety had to be at the top of Yana’s list right now.

No, I’m going to use it to slice off your head, Rae. Your neck will be much easier to cut through than an aluminum

can.

“Uh-huh. Safe,” Yana answered. “Hey, you feeling all right?”

Yana’s words sounded like they were coming from a million miles away. Rae could hardly hear them over the
shrieks of her own thoughts. She hadn’t been touching anything when she got that not-her thought. Nothing. But
the thought had been so powerful, so
evil,
that it had almost knocked her off her feet.

“You feeling all right, Rae?” Yana repeated.

“Yeah,” Rae managed to get out through a throat that felt like it was filled with itchy grains of dry sand. “Yeah.”

You don’t look all right. You look like crap. But it doesn ’t matter. They’ll pretty you up at the mortuary. You’ll look

beautiful, Rae. Like the little princess you are.

I’m only losing my mind,
she added silently.
’Cause what else could be happening?
Her psi ability was very
specific. Touch fingerprint, get thought. So that horrible thought that had… had just raped her brain, it had to have
come fromsomething else. All Rae could think of was that it had come from herself, that she was schizophrenic or at
least something like that.

People will like you a lot more when you ’re dead, Rae. Marcus will probably even cry. There will be one of those

memorials at your locker, with flowers and stuffed animals and everything . You’re going to love it.

“So you have no idea where she is,” Anthony pressed.

“Look, she goes off sometimes. I don’t know where,” Mr. Savari told him, his beefy body almost filling the doorway
of the house. “Yana and I, we don’t get in each other’s business. She’s seventeen. It’s not like I need to be helping
her cross the street.”

Anthony glanced at Jesse. Jesse gave a little shrug. “When she shows up, will you just tell her I’m looking for her?

” Anthony said.

“Sure,” Mr. Savari answered. “I kind of thought she was with you, actually. She pretty much always is, right?”

“I guess.” Anthony didn’t see why he should tell Yana’s dad that Yana’d used him like a Kleenex. “Later,” he
muttered. Then he turned and headed down the walkway to the sidewalk, Jesse right behind him.

“We have time to stop by her school before we’re supposed to meet up with Aiden,” Jesse said when they were
back in the car. “Maybe one of her friends knows something.”

Anthony glanced at his watch, then made a left when he got to the corner. “Might as well. There should still be
some people hanging around. But I think Yana pretty much keeps to herself at school.”

He cranked up the radio a little higher so he and Jesse wouldn’t have to talk. Jesse always ended up asking some
question like, “Do you think Rae’s kind of like Yana’s hostage?” Anthony hated it. It’s not like he hadn’t thought of
whatever question Jesse spewed out. Almost every time, Jesse asked something that Anthony’d already been
worrying about. But hearing the questions out loud made them feel twice as scary. Twice as
real.

It only took about ten minutes to get to Yana’s school. Anthony pulled into a parking spot and killed the engine.

“Want to split up and meet back here in twenty?” he asked Jesse. “We can cover more people that way.”

“I’ll go right. You go left,” Jesse answered.

Anthony climbed out of the car and headed left, which took him alongside the baseball diamond. He decided to try
the weed-heads hanging out under the bleachers first. He always felt like he already knewguys like that even when
he didn’t. Probably because he’d spent the majority of his high school career as one of the guys like that.

“Hey,” he said as he ducked under the bleachers, allowing himself a long suck of secondhand smoke. “I’m
looking for Yana Savari.” Every time he said her name, he got a dose of bile. The inside of his throat probably
looked like raw hamburger. “Any of you know her?”

“That blond-headed chick who snarls if you try and talk to her?” a guy in a dorky monster-truck T-shirt asked as
he tried to handle an almost nonexistent joint butt without a roach clip.

“Yeah. Sounds like her,” Anthony answered.

One of the other guys carefully took the joint butt out of the monster-truck guy’s hand and handed him a nice new
fatty. “This is the last time I’m floating you,” monster-truck guy’s buddy warned. “You’re always blowing all your
cash and then looking all pathetic like it’s my problem.”

“Yana? Girl who snarls? Know where she is?” Anthony prompted. Monster-truck guy held the joint out to Anthony,
but Anthony shook his head. Right now a few tokes would go down so good. But he’d be useless to Rae if he was
stumbling around in a haze, obsessing about where he could find that chewy banana candy they used to have at
the drugstore nearhis house. “Do. You. Know. Where. She. Is?” Anthony asked again, saying the words slowly and
carefully.

“I hate that girl,” monster-truck guy answered. Anthony looked at the other guys. There wasn’t even a flicker of
recognition in any of their bloodshot eyes.

“Guess I’ll be moving on,” Anthony said. He backed out of the bleachers and moved over to some marching band
geeks taking a break. “Any of you know Yana Savari?”

“She’s in my history class,” a short girl holding a flute answered.

“You seen her around today?”
Say yes,
Anthony willed.
Say she’s in the gym or in detention. Give me something

here.

“She skipped class. Again,” the flute girl answered. “Big surprise.”

“Any of the rest of you know where she might be?” Anthony pressed, even though he knew what the answer
would be. He got the bunch of “nos” he was expecting-from the band geeks and everyone else he asked.

It was a thousand-to-one shot, anyway,
he told himself as he headed back to the car
. Make that a million to one.

Why did we even bother looking for Yana here? She and Rae are off… somewhere. You know that.

He did know that. And the knowledge had turned his bones to cement, so heavy, every movement felt exhausting.

But he had to keep looking, even in places where he was sure there’d be no chance he’d find Rae. If he didn’t keep
trying, he’d go nuts.

“Anything?” he asked as he got in the car. Jesse was already in the passenger seat.