Sovereign Hope (4 page)

“
You thought what?”

“
Nothing.” I took a deep breath. “How did you know where to
find me?”

 “
Your insurance card. And before you ask,
I’m in my boxers because
 
my clothes got soaked
yesterday while I was saving you. I’m not sleeping on a sofa in wet
jeans. But now that I see you’re alive, I can leave you in peace to
get on with your life.” He stepped over the glass, heading towards
the hallway where I had walked right past his drying
clothes.

He couldn’t
leave. If he left, I would never get any answers. Walking slowly
after him and feeling worse by the second, I gripped hold of the
banister. I propped myself against it as he pulled on his damp
jeans. A picture of me and my mom pulling goofy faces amongst the
photos on the wall caught my attention, and for some reason I found
myself repositioning in front of it, blocking it from view.

“
Please…I really need to know what’s going on. Has this got
anything to do with my mother?”

He reached for
a worn leather jacket slung over the railing, and then stared down
at it in his hands. “I don’t know anything about your mother,” he
said quietly, his hair falling into his face. 

“
But yesterday, you said—”

“
Trust me, you’re better off not going any further down this
path. It doesn’t lead anywhere good.” He slid the jacket on and
pulled a set of keys out of the pocket, still avoiding my
eyes.

“
What path? What are you talking about?” 

 “
Just go to bed. Sleep. Go to school. Get
on with your life. Stop thinking you have it so bad,” he said, his
voice gruff.

I shrank back
as he stepped towards me. He was so close I could see the small
flecks of amber that surrounded his irises; they flared and sparked
as he drew his face even closer to mine, and the smell of him
filled my head. Citrus and smoke—not cigarette, something else,
like he’d been standing in front of an open fire.

“
Don’t think that next time there’ll be someone there to pick
up the pieces. Because there won’t.” His eyes told me he meant
every word.

“
So that’s it. You’re not going to tell me
anything?”

He
straightened and gave me a strange, long look before stepping back
and walking to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob.

“
No.”

With that, he
opened the door and walked out without looking back, slamming it
shut behind him.

CHAPTER FOUR

Agatha

The note had
been there when I woke up, slipped under my bedroom door. I’d been
staring at it since then, trying to figure out what to do.

Farley,

Sorry about Daniel. He said you had questions. Meet me at the
Monterey Fair
 
tonight, 8 p.m. sharp.  I’ll do my best to answer
them.

Agatha

 
There was no sane reason on earth to go and
meet with this Agatha. She could be a psycho killer, intent on
luring me out to chop me into little pieces. Only the faintest
voice of reason suggested that if that were the case, this Agatha
would likely have killed me when she broke into the house to leave
the note. That would make more sense. The house was quiet and
secluded, whereas the fair was the exact opposite, filled with
over-excited children all hopped up on sugar. Killing someone there
wouldn’t exactly be easy to get away with.

Tess would
usually provide sage advice on the matter, but when I called, Mrs.
Kennedy informed me she was off on some epic day hike with Oliver.
She wasn’t expected back until late. The thought of Tess in the
outdoors, hiking no less, only served to confuse me more. Tess
thought the great outdoors was the realm of survivalist nuts who
lived off road-kill stew.

Her thoughts on the Monterey Fair matter were pretty much
guaranteed, anyway.  I could almost hear her
now: 
This is awesome! I’ll run
interference in case anyone’s watching. I’ll bring my dad’s taser.
If it looks like things are going south, I’ll pop the crazy
bitch.

She was going
to be mad that she’d missed the opportunity to camo up and break
out the walkie-talkies we hadn’t used since we were eleven. She
would probably be even madder that I was considering going alone,
but what else was I supposed to do? The likelihood of Daniel
showing up and filling in the gaps of his own volition was slim to
none.

That left only
one option: Agatha.

The decision
had been fairly easy to make, but as the day rolled by and
seven-thirty approached, things suddenly seemed less clear-cut.
What if the hundreds of people at the fair were a distraction,
designed to make me feel safer than I truly was? I had no way of
knowing what these people’s motives were or what they wanted from
me. What if this woman had nothing to do with Daniel at all?

I grabbed my
leather messenger bag and pushed down the jitters playing havoc
with my stomach. This was about my mom. Every fiber of my body told
me so, and even if it was incredibly dangerous, there was nothing I
wouldn’t do to find out where she was.

I marched out
of the house, only to freeze in the driveway. The truck. Of course.
The Tacoma had been torched. I didn’t even know where the wreck had
been taken. The insurance company needed calling, and who knew how
understanding they were going to be. Was accidental destruction due
to being caught in supernatural crossfire even covered under car
insurance policies?

 
I called a cab before I could change my mind
about the fair, pulling the huge red coat my mom had bought me for
Christmas tighter around my body. The battered yellow taxi arrived
shortly afterwards. The car journey didn’t last long enough, and I
was still riddled with nerves by the time I pulled into the swamp
that was the Monterey Fair parking lot. Yesterday’s rain had turned
the ground to sticky, churned up mud, and the thick brown mess had
somehow found its way up the walls of the white canvas tents
erected around the perimeter of the fair. It sucked greedily at my
shoes, trying to pry them from my feet as I struggled to avoid the
worst of it on my way to the entrance. Bare light bulbs in red and
yellow formed a brightly lit archway, where a ticket booth was
located to one side. The female vendor inside smiled broadly when I
finally made it to the window without slipping over.

“
Ev’n, honey. You want ride tickets?”

I shook my
head. “No. Just entry.”

The woman gave
me a quizzical look but accepted the ten-dollar bill and stamped my
wrist with an ink-blue juggling clown. A sea of people swarmed
beyond the lit archway, smiling and laughing, all snaking their way
to the various stalls and rides that spread out inside the fair’s
compound. The air was rich with the smell of toffee and caramel,
salt and smoke. All around, food vendors touted a vast array of
saturated fats disguised as candy apples, hamburgers, giant
pretzels, and fried donuts.

The rides at
the Monterey Fair had been the same since I was a kid. I tended to
get motion sick pretty quickly, so I steered clear of them. The
memory of throwing up on the Gravitron six years ago was still too
fresh. I preferred the games that tested your skill, like the
archery stands.

The target
markers were in their usual spot at the other end of the field, and
a handful of other amusement stalls lined the way in between:
balloon darts, horse shoes, hoop games. I made my way down the
familiar walkway and paused by a stall covered in small glass jars.
The game was an old favorite, the premise a simple one: get the
rubber ball in the jar, win a goldfish. The goldfish in
question—the kind that only lived for three days after you took
them home—hung from hooks on the ceiling, glaring boggle-eyed out
of their water-filled bags. They looked kind of depressed. The
stall appeared unattended until a middle-aged, balding man emerged
from around the back, stubbing out a half-smoked cigarette.

“
You wanna win a fish, missy?”

“
No, no, I—”

“
You don’t wanna play the game then move along. Gotta keep
this area free for people who do wanna play.”

A steady
stream of people weaved back and forth in front of the stall, yet
no one seemed interested in winning a fish.

“
Can you just give me a second? I’m waiting for
someone.”

The fat man
re-lit his half-spent cigarette and spat on the ground. “Well,
you’ll have to meet them somewhere else, sweetheart. You’re
cluttering up my area.”

“
Fine. I’ll just…hey, where would people usually arrange to
meet here?” The note just said to meet at the fair. I hadn’t really
considered how big the fair was before now, and the overwhelming
flood of people suddenly seemed all the larger. Finding this woman
was going to be impossible, given the fact that I had no idea what
she looked like.

“
There’s a security tent where people pick up their kids when
they lose ’em. Could try there,” the attendant said.

That was
probably the last place I would find Agatha. I huffed, “Fine,” and
pushed back into the flow of people. Suddenly every woman I saw
looked suspicious. It was maddening. Any one of them could be her,
this woman who had promised me answers, but each time I made eye
contact with one of them, I would only receive a curious frown or a
polite smile in return.

Across the
fairground, the huge Ferris wheel that had been stationary since
I’d arrived squealed into action. The sound was grating and sharp,
too much metal grinding on rusted metal. More bulbs flashed on the
chairs that slowly rotated up into the night air, occupied by young
couples and children. It had to have been twenty years old and a
hundred years past rickety. My knees trembled just looking up at
it. It didn’t really go all that high, but the wheel’s dilapidated
condition sent a barrage of images tumbling through my head. Metal
struts snapping like elastic. Screaming. Falling. Falling…

“
Farley?”

Adrenalin shot
through my chest. It fizzled out when I spun around to find
Mitchell Hunter grinning sheepishly at me. Definitely not a
stranger named Agatha. Mitchell had been St. Jude’s ‘most likely to
attain sex symbol status’ the past three years running and would
probably earn the title again this year. His shaggy blond surfer
hair had grown during the break. He flashed his dimples in a way
that made most of the girls in my year go weak at the knees.

“
Oh, hey, Mitch. What’s up?” I said.

His grin
widened. “My little sister’s been bugging me to bring her here all
week. My parents said they’d confiscate my car if I didn’t give in.
Hence the mud all over my insanely expensive jeans and the
crystallized sugar I can’t seem to get out of my teeth. What about
you?”

“
I’m, um…I guess I’m meeting a friend.” Telling him I was
meeting a strange woman potentially involved in my mother’s
disappearance didn’t really feel right.

Mitchell
shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back onto his
heels.  “And how are you feeling about going back to
school? Break’s over in three weeks.”

“
Okay, I guess. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“
And your mom? Have they…y’know, have they
found…anything?”

“
No. Not yet.”

“
Oh. Well, you know what they say. No news is good news and
all that.”

I gave him a
generous smile, but it felt tight around the corners of my mouth.
He was only trying to be nice. He wasn’t to know that the longer
someone was missing, the more likely they were to stay that
way.

“
Yeah. No news is good news. So where’s your sister,
anyway?”

Mitch gestured
over to a group of giggling young girls around the balloon darts
obviously whispering about the cute stall attendant behind their
hands. “They’ve been stalking this guy, I swear. He’s the only
reason they come here. It kinda makes me wanna throw up in my
mouth. Hey,” he paused,  “are you okay? You’ve gone a
weird color.”

I wasn’t
listening. I was locked to the spot, straining to get a clear view
through the crowd. People slipstreamed past one another, blocking
the view I was searching for. The woman I had seen. The blue
dress.  The short, wavy black hair. The flash of familiar
blue eyes that had met mine for a split second before being
swallowed by the hustling jostle of bodies. 

“
Farley?”

“
Huh?”

“
You okay?”

“
Uh, no, actually. I think…I think I have to go.” I left
Mitch standing there. The woman had looked exactly like my mom.
That dress was one of her favorites. It couldn’t have been anyone
else.

“
Mom!”

People scowled
as I shoved passed them, pushing forward as best I could. It was
hopeless, though. No matter how hard I fought, I kept getting
pushed further back. The crowd closed in around the distant woman,
and the bobbing head of black hair vanished out of sight.

“
Mom!” I screamed. Why wouldn’t she turn around? She’d looked
right at me. Why hadn’t she come to
me?  “
Mom!”

“
It’s not her, Farley,” a voice behind me whispered. I
shouldn’t have been able to hear it over the thump of the bassy
music coming off the rides, and yet the voice filled my whole head.
A woman’s voice.

“
Agatha?”