The Rising King (14 page)

We drive all night, snacking on junk food and listening to really loud music. Leo’s downing energy drinks like water, and I’m beating out a rhythm on the dashboard. Three o’clock in the morning, we hit a patch of Nevada desert that stretches out in front of us cool and dry and black as pitch. I lay out in the backseat for a nap in a desperate bid to dream-share with Mom, but I’m locked out like a kid trying to sneak back into the house in the middle of the night. After a while, I give up and climb back into the front seat next to Leo.

“No luck?”

“Not even a little peek. I guess she’s still awake.”

“How’re we going to find her?”

I pop a couple of gummy bears in my mouth. “I’ve got an idea. But if it fails, all we have to do is follow the sirens. Mom’s good at causing chaos. Trust me, she’ll be in the middle of it.”

I stare out into the vast darkness, the bright lights of Las Vegas coloring the sky on the horizon, drawing us to it like moths to a flame. “We’ll find her.”

And I had no doubt we’d find our share of trouble, too.

Neon Lights and Nasty Fights

What does it say about luxury hotels that you can get nearly anything if you have enough money? Add magic to the mix and there is no limit. Dressed in a magically enhanced version of Armani, because if you’re going to pretend to be a playboy and his equally rich friend, you’d better look the part, we walk in at four in the morning and by four ten we’re in a private elevator going up. By four fifteen we’re in a three-thousand-a-night suite that sits high above the garish and noisy Vegas strip like a high-class call girl, all pretty and shiny and full of outrageous promises, but in the end she’s only interested in money.

I send Leo downstairs, and when he gets back, he doesn’t look happy. “Bro, when you said you had an idea, I didn’t think it would involve me propositioning some big gnarly dude working in the lobby to come to our room.”

He sweeps his dark hair out of his face and paces the large entry of our newly acquired penthouse suite. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I should’ve picked the wimpy one with the crooked glasses.”

“It’ll be fine.” I wish my confidence would infect him. His pacing is making me nervous.

There’s a basket of complimentary fruit on the entry table. I’ve always wanted to stay in a hotel that has a basket of free fruit waiting for me. Snagging a plump pear, I take a bite as I work my way around the room and stop at the wall of windows. Las Vegas, cloaked in its famous colorful neon lights, stretches out in all directions. My whole life I’ve wanted to be in the big city. To feel the hum of activity. Now that I’m here, all I want is to go home. Back to Oregon. Back to Kera. It’s a little disturbing how much I miss her. But the only way I can see her again is to track down Mom and the magic she holds.

“When did he say he’d be here?” Time is ticking and I want this over.

“As soon as he can, which probably means he’s getting a handful of his even bigger friends to come mess us up and steal us blind.”

I understand Leo’s nervousness. We’re two supposedly rich, underage high school students in the most expensive rooms at one of the biggest hotels. We’re a con man’s dream target, but we have no choice. Trying to dream-share in the car with Mom ended in a bust, and a quick call confirmed she wasn’t in jail. It would have been so nice if she’d been in jail. The last time I saw Mom, she said she wasn’t asleep. Millispit venom had put me under. Thankfully, I’m not stupid enough to go that route. Nope, we decided to knock me out in a way more common to Vegas.

A knock sounds and Leo lets in the big dude from the lobby carrying two darkly tinted bottles labeled absinthe. The guy’s uniform of crisp black pants and wrinkle-free white shirt with the hotel logo on the breast pocket flags him as a hotel employee. His beady eyes, thick chest, and a single-minded vocabulary flag him as an opportunist. “I risked a lot bringing you this.” He puts the bottles on the highly polished entry table and eyes first Leo, then me. “Underage and staying here, you got to have the means to make it worth my while.”

“I said we did.” Leo reaches into his back pocket to pay, and I stop him.

“I need to check it out first.”

The guy smirks. “You open, you buy.”

I smile back, and it’s far from friendly. “If it’s what you say it is, I will.”

“It’s the real deal. Not even watered down, which means you’re going to get seriously messed up, but go ahead.” He pulls back his coat.

Leo whips out his
incordium
dagger and points it at the guy, who looks at Leo like he shouldn’t be playing with sharp objects. “Mellow, skinny boy. Nobody’s going to shank anyone tonight.” Slowly the big guy pulls out a packet of sugar cubes and a slotted spoon and tosses them on the table. “Just so you know, your drink of choice wasn’t easy to find. Not exactly popular.”

Red-faced, Leo stashes his dagger and tries to look threatening, which honestly, makes him look even sillier. Knowing what I know, that Leo has most likely killed more people than the guy standing in front of us ever will, I feel I should warn him. “I know he doesn’t look like much, but thinking that way would be a mistake.”

The guy looks Leo up and down and nods. “We’re cool. Right?”

“Never cooler, bro,” Leo says even as beads of sweat pop out on his forehead.

After getting a crystal glass and carafe of water from the fully loaded bar, I pour an inch of green liquid into the glass, set the spoon against the rim and place the sugar cube on top. Slowly, I pour the water until the cube dissolves and the liquid turns a milky green.

“Cool,” the guy says and leans in for a closer look.

Not knowing what it’s supposed to taste like, I take a sip and I’m not disappointed. Thick and flowery, it’s like I’m rolling in the meadow. Like I’m in the woods, really there, and everything is perfect.

There’s no doubt I could become addicted to absinthe. Just one sip and I want more. A lot more.

I nod to Leo and he turns to the guy. “Seventy-five a bottle, right?”

Tipping the last sip into my mouth, I lick my lips to get every drop. The guy watches me out of the corner of his eye. “One-fifty a bottle.”

“What the—”

“Pay him,” I say without looking over at the pair.

Leo counts out the bills and the guy stuffs them in his pocket and heads to the door. “If you need anything else, girls, drugs, whatever…don’t hesitate to find me.”

Once he’s gone, Leo glares at the door. “He’s coming back with his nefarious buddies. You know that, right?”

“He won’t. When the elevator reaches the lobby, he won’t even remember coming up here.” I take the glass, sugar, spoon, and absinthe to the coffee table in the living room and slump onto the couch.

“What about all that money?”

“You didn’t actually give him any.”

Leo dives back into his pocket and counts out the bills, then looks at me warily. “It’s all here. I’m not complaining exactly, but maybe we shouldn’t do that anymore.”

I nod. It’s an easy promise to keep.

“So, do you think it’s going to work?” he asks.

“I’m about ready to find out.”

For the next twenty minutes, we sit in front of the TV. Leo switches from sports channel to sports channel, giving me a running description of what’s right and wrong about the teams as I pour sugar-infused absinthe into my system until my body feels as if it’s floating.

My mind conjures up images of Kera. Her beside me on the couch, her head on my shoulder, laughing the way she does that makes me believe in the goodness of people. She leans close and tells me she loves me and I melt. I blink and she’s walking from the bathroom into my bedroom, her long, gorgeous legs poking out of a teeny-tiny towel she has wrapped around her.

The visions aren’t real. I know it deep in my soul. I miss her voice. Her lips. The feel of her skin against mine. I have to get back to her, and there’s only one way that will happen. I down another glass of absinthe and pour another. Soon, I don’t see Leo or hear his excited chatter. I don’t hear the sounds of Vegas or see the sun rise over the city. All I feel is the warmth of nature being poured into my body and the pounding warning that I have to find Mom. Halfway through the second bottle, I slowly slip into unconsciousness.

I don’t know how long I lie there, my mind swirling with memories that plunge me into fears best left alone. One thing is glaringly clear. All of them center on Mom.

I wrestle my personal demons she helped create and when I finally shake loose, I’m again sitting on a bed in a rundown motel room where the air is stale and thick in a way that makes me want to not take too deeply of a breath. Mom is in the bathroom, fumbling through her toiletries. A haze of cigarette smoke fills the air. When she reenters the room, she stops cold. The last of the smoke she’s drawn into her lungs is released and her hand instantly goes to her necklace and rubs the amber between her fingers like a child does a security blanket.

I stand and face her, but I don’t make a move to go near. Her bare feet inch back. The sleep shirt she’s wearing is a T-shirt owned by a guy three boyfriends ago. He was a dick, but he always bought top-quality graphic tees of which I’m a proud owner of three. He never should have left on laundry day. The one Mom’s wearing has a picture of a dirt bike doing a wheelie across the front. She looks at the still-locked door and then back at me. “What are you doing here?”

Dark circles ring her eyes, a telltale sign she hasn’t been to sleep yet. “Late night?”

“Early morning.” She brushes a wet strand of curly hair off her cheek, but I know she’s lying. Her gaze lands on the bedside table stationery. She quickly crosses the room and shoves it in the drawer. Turning around, she leans against the tabletop. “You need to leave. However you got here, just go and leave me alone.”

“I can’t.”

Her hand inches toward the phone with room number 22 on it. “Leave, Dylan.”

“I’m not really here,” I say as calmly as I can. “I think you know that.”

Her hand stops moving. She takes a staggered breath and places her hand to her eyes as if she wishes to hide from me. “When will this be over?”

“When will what be over?”

“My life? I’m so tired. I’ve given it my best, but it’s not good enough. Not for me and not for you. That’s why I left. I could tell you didn’t need me anymore. You’re better off without me. We both know it.”

I stare at the pathetic figure in front of me. I’ve been angry with her for so long, it’s hard to just let it go, but I do, forcing it all out and taking a cleansing breath. “How often do you tell yourself that?”

“Every day,” she says on a ragged whisper.

I take a small step forward. “Do you believe it yet?”

“No.” The admission is so quiet, it barely makes a dent in the air.

I lightly touch her arm. “Mom, I just want to help.”

“You can’t. No one can.” Her hand slips over mine and she gives it a squeeze.

I let out a long, sad sigh. “What are you doing here?”

“Distracting myself.” She looks up at me all beaten and worn down by life. “What else is there?”

“
This
is why you stole money from Grandpa? To come to a dump like this? You could have stayed with them. They wanted you to.”

“Yeah, right.” The hitch in her voice tells me she doesn’t believe that. “And I didn’t take anything he couldn’t afford.” She looks away. “Don’t look at me like that. All I need is a little luck and everything’ll be fine.”

“You
need
sleep.”

She turns her suddenly watery gaze onto me. “I do. I lied before. I’ve been up all night, but I hate going to sleep. I have bad dreams…about Baun. About you. About my mom and dad. I just want it all to stop.”

Tears. Again. Why does she always fall into tears? I can’t just stand here and watch her melt into a ball of water. I pull down the bedcovers and fluff her pillows, changing the rough sheets into baby-soft ones and the mattress into a cushion of downy feathers that supports and cuddles her at the same time. I blow a soft breath out, filling the air with the scent of meadow flowers and sweet herbs that are at the core of absinthe. When I turn to her, she’s watching me closely.

“You’ve changed.”

“For the better, I hope.”

I tuck her in, but before I can pull away, she grabs my hand, her watery gaze unwavering. “When you look at me, what do you see?”

“I see you, Mom.”

She bites her lip as I stare down at her, waiting for I don’t know what. I think she’s going to burst into hard-core tears, but instead, she tugs on my hand, urging me to sit. Today is the first time she’s willingly touched me in years. I can’t walk away. I stretch out my legs as I lean my back against the creaky headboard, and I stroke her wet hair from her face. She closes her eyes. “I’ve been talking with men all night, praying one of them would like me. None of them did.”

“I like you, Mom.”

She curls into my side, a small, hopeless, helpless person. “You never did know what was good for you.”

She breathes deeply of the absinthe-scented air and falls into the first restful sleep she’s had in weeks. I turn to the bedside table and open the drawer. The motel stationery, with its faded logo and curled edges, tells me exactly what I need to know. Closing the drawer, I bend down and whisper into her ear, weaving my magic over her, “Sleep until I get back.”

I don’t get up. I don’t have to. I slowly fade into a dream about Kera. I miss her like crazy, and when I finally come around, I’m back in my room at the luxury hotel, still slumped on the couch with empty absinthe bottles on the low table in front of me. In the chair to my left, Leo sits like a patient watchdog guarding his sheep. Basketball is on the massive TV and he tries to keep his excitement down to a low roar.

I push myself into a sitting position and scrub my hands up and down my slightly numb face. Leo glances my way. “Hey Sleeping Buddy. Did you have a good nap? I know I did by the drool I left behind on my pillow.”

He picks up a pillow and tosses it at me. I catch it, pull a disgusted face at the huge wet mark, and throw it back at him. “Gross, dude. What time is it?”

He cranes his neck to check the clock hanging on the wall in the dining area. “Three o’clock.”

“In the afternoon?”

“That stuff knocked you out, bro. Never seen anything like it.”

I nudge one of the empty bottles with my foot. “Get rid of these, will you?”

As Leo collects the bottles, he steals a questioning glance at me. “You look like shit. I hope to God it worked.”

I lock eyes with him, feel my gut twist on itself, and nod. “I know exactly where she is.”