Call Out (4 page)

"Partly. Mainly just common sense. And maybe
a little paranoia."

A smile tried to turn up the corners of my
mouth, but it ended up as more of a tired twitch.

"If you really just can't stay in here with
us - and I'd kind of get that - then I'll go down and see if I can
get another room close to ours."

It was a generous offer. I knew the Dolphin's
rooms didn't come cheap. And there was no way I was going to let
someone foot a bill that size. Especially when I didn't really want
to be alone anyway.

"Only girl or not, I'm not sleeping in the
middle," I told him. "I get claustrophobic."

"Duly noted," London said, standing up.

I turned back toward my computer, not because
I wanted to look at it but because I didn't want to look at London.
Or, well, because I wanted to not want to look at London. I managed
to ignore him as he moved around the room, doing who knows what.
When I heard the shower running, I knew it was safe to look up. I
shut down the computer and crawled into bed. Sleep probably
wouldn't come any time soon, but maybe I could pretend well enough
to avoid any more weirdness.

I'm something of an insomniac at the best of
times, but it had been a long day. Worry and travel both take a lot
out of a person. I faded into sleep before I could finish my
bedtime prayers, and even though voices and other sounds dragged me
near the surface a time or two, hours passed before I woke.

I might have slept the night through if
someone hadn't stolen the duvet, but the room was colder than a
walk-in cooler and I woke shivering. The soft glow of a laptop
showed me London sitting at the desk. That left Brian as the
blanket thief. Sure enough, there he was, wrapped up like a human
burrito. Dylan had the same annoying habit. The bedcover tug-of-war
between those two would be epic.

Shivering, I climbed out of bed, hoping there
might be a spare blanket stashed in the closet or the dresser. I
lucked out, finding one on the closet shelf. London barely spared
me a glance as I twirled the blanket around me like a cloak and
headed back toward the bed. I stopped behind him, curious what had
him up on his computer at this ungodly hour of day. The bluish
light lit his face in an otherworldly glow.

Otherworldly.

Is that what London's powers were? Or were
they just another talent, like drawing or doing math in your head?
I shook off the question and sat down on the end of the bed.

“Can’t sleep?” I asked.

“Haven’t tried. I wanted to try to figure out
our next step.”

“Wouldn’t our next step be filing that
missing persons report tomorrow?”

London pushed back from the desk a little and
turned the chair to face me. “About that. Turns out that the whole
twenty-four hour waiting period thing is a myth. That’s the good
news. The bad news is, we can’t file a missing persons report.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Since Dylan lives in Dallas, the report
would have to be filed there. In person.”

“Well, damn,” I said.

“Yeah,” London agreed turning back to the
computer.

“So now what?” I asked, looking over his
shoulder.

"I tracked down my old mentor," he said,
gesturing at a chat window with the mouse pointer. "Turns out
insomnia is pretty common for us freaks."

"You say 'freak' like it's a bad thing.
Can...." I looked a little closer. "Can Shelley help us find
Dylan?"

"Not directly," he said, logging out and
shutting down the browser. "But she knows a lot of...practitioners,
is the word she uses. She's gonna make some calls in the morning
and get back to us."

Patience is not my strong suit, but I knew
that calling people in the dead of night wasn't a good way to get
them on your side. So we'd wait.

London swiveled the desk chair away from the
desk, rubbing the back of his neck. "You've gotta be shitting me,"
he said, his eyes on the Brian-burrito.

"Why do you think I'm awake at four in the
morning?"

He just shook his head.

Twenty minutes later, he'd managed to get
Brian awake enough to unass the duvet and we were all snuggled
under its downy goodness, close but not touching. I turned my back
to the boys and tried to sleep, but I just couldn't shut down my
brain. The first thin, grey light of dawn peeked in around the
curtains before my jumbled thoughts gave way to even more jumbled
dreams.

Chapter Four

At first, I wasn't sure whether I was awake
or still dreaming. The soft sounds of someone strumming an acoustic
guitar drifted through the room, and someone - presumably not the
same someone, but you never know in dreams - was using me for a
human teddy bear.

Reality asserted itself slowly, and I eased
out from under London's arm, trying not to wake him. I gave Brian a
little wave as I passed him on the way to the bathroom, where I
spent a good few minutes splashing water on my face, trying to wash
away my sleepiness.

I was drying my face when I heard a cell
phone ring. It wasn't my cell; mine plays the Imperial March. This
one sounded like the mating call of some kind of robotic alien.
Let it be Dylan
, I thought as I dashed back into the
room.

But Brian had gone back to picking out notes
on his guitar. It was London who had answered his cell. Mumbling
into the phone, he fought his way free from the duvet and wandered
out into the hall in his pajamas.

"The girlfriend?" I asked, gesturing toward
the door.

Brian shook his head. "His mum, maybe. He's
between mistakes right now."

"Ouch."

"It's just the truth. It's like he goes out
of his way to find girlfriends who won't stick around."

"Some people are like that," I said, making
my way to the desk chair.

"He wasn't always. It's like he's given up on
finding anything real."

"That's kind of awful," I said. "Is it the
whole 'rock star' thing?"

"It's the whole 'magic' thing. He actually
told a couple of his exes about it. Girls he was serious about. The
first one thought he was mental, wanted him to see a shrink. But
Julia was worse."

"What's worse than having your girlfriend
think you're psycho?"

"She believed him. She wanted him to learn
how to control his powers. She said he'd been given a gift and he
should use it to help others. She wanted him to be a
superhero.”

"But he just wanted to be himself," I
guessed. "And that wasn't enough for her. And she broke things
off."

"Yeah. But even worse, she made him doubt
himself. Made him feel guilty for not being the hero she wanted him
to be."

"What a bitch," I said. "No one has a right
to tell someone else what to do with his life. Who the hell died
and made her God?"

Brian flashed me a smile and went back to
playing his guitar. Guess story time was over.

"It's too early in the morning for Pink
Floyd."

"No such thing," Brian disagreed. "Besides,
it's past noon."

I sighed, resigned to listening to him play
one of the most depressing - and beautiful - songs in the history
of rock music. Leaning back against the wall, I watched Brian for a
moment while I gathered my thoughts. I knew I needed to fill him in
on what London had learned during his internet search, but I wasn’t
sure where to start. I followed the advice I’d given London the
night before and opened my mouth to see what came out.

“Turns out we’re in the wrong state to file a
missing persons report,” I said. Tact and I are not friends until
I’m fully awake and often not even then. “It has to be filed back
in Dallas. In person.” I watched varied emotions flit across
Brian’s face before he settled on resignation. “I’m going to have
to talk to my brother at some point today and tell him what’s going
on. I’ll see if he can work on things from that end,” I added.

Brian gave me a solemn nod and then turned
his attention back to the guitar.

I grabbed my laptop and went back to bed,
propping up on a giant mound of pillows. In the first rush of
panic, I hadn't been thinking clearly. I still wasn't, but sleep
had blown a little of the fog away, and it was time to play
P.I.

Starting with Dylan's email accounts, I
combed through every internet source I could think of, looking for
some clue. Email first, then the social networking sites. I took
another look at the airline info, even though I trusted London to
know his way around a computer. Then I moved on to Dylan's bank
account.

"Well, Dylan made it to DFW, at least," I
said.

Brian stopped playing and looked up at
me.

"$3.56 charged to her debit card at Hudson
News, DFW. Probably water and a Goodbar for the plane. Nothing
after that, though." I leaned my head back against the headboard,
looking up at the ceiling.

"Means she made it through security there,"
Brian said, setting the guitar aside.

"Yeah. Which means she probably was on that
damned plane. Which means she had to have made it to Orlando."

"Then where the hell is she?" Brian rubbed
his hands over his face.

I didn't know what to say. A knock on the
door saved me from having to think about it. London had staggered
out of the room without a key, and I didn't even get the chance to
give him a hard time about it.

"We gotta go," he said before the door even
closed behind him.

"Go where?"

"No time. I'll explain in the car. Just get
dressed," he told me, digging through his suitcase. He started
dragging off his PJs right then and there, not the least bit shy
about it. Not that he had any reason to be.

I grabbed my suitcase and hid in the bathroom
to change. I pulled on real clothes, ran a brush through my hair,
and then stopped. Why the hell was I jumping to do what London said
without any explanation? I was getting pretty damned tired of all
the mystery and lack of communication.

"Where exactly are we going?” I asked as I
stepped out of the bathroom.

"Catching a flight to Key West," London
answered, shoving what looked like a passport into his back
pocket.

"We're doing what?" Brian asked. I was glad
he'd spoken first. My own question wouldn't have been nearly so
polite.

"Shelley found someone who can help us, but
he lives in Key West. And he refuses to come to the mainland, so
we're going to him."

I flopped down in the desk chair and reached
for my shoes. "And we're all going why?"

"We don't need anyone else going missing,"
Brian said. "We stick together."

"I knew you were going to say that," I said
with a sigh. I gave my backpack a once over, making sure I had my
ID, money, and iPod.

"Grab Dylan's dress, too," London told
me.

I did as I was told, carefully rolling the
dress into a cylinder and tucking it into my backpack. Fussing over
wrinkles seemed like a silly, girly thing to do right then, but I
couldn't seem to help myself. That done, we trooped out, headed to
Key West to see a man about some magic.

London used his phone to book our flight
online while Brian wove his way through Orlando toward the airport.
We still had to deal with the ticket counter to pick up our
boarding passes, and that small delay nearly made us miss our
plane. My relief at making the flight turned to near-panic as I
followed Brian up the jetway, visions of turboprops and seaplanes
dancing in my head. Key West is about the size of a postage stamp,
and I wasn’t sure the airport could handle jumbo-jets. My panic
faded as we stepped onto the plane; we were flying to Key West on
the airborne equivalent of a VW Bug, but at least it didn't have
pontoons or propellers.

The boys had sprung for business class seats,
the closest thing the baby jet had to first class. A glance back
into economy, and I knew it was a good thing. I'd have felt a
little cramped in those seats, but London-the-giant would've been
riding with his knees against his forehead. Brian took a seat next
to a grey-haired man who looked like the CEO of somewhere
important. London and I were in the row behind them.

"You want the window?" London asked.

If we'd been stuck in steerage, I might have
taken the window seat to give him the extra legroom. I'm nice like
that. But I figured he'd be okay in these roomier seats, especially
since we'd be on the ground in Key West in about an hour.

"It's all yours," I told him, and he didn't
protest.

The flying Bug began to taxi before I'd even
gotten my safety belt fastened. We hit a bump, and I grabbed for
the armrest. I made myself let go, forced myself to breathe and
relax. We were still on the ground, still just driving around the
airport toward the runway. There'd be plenty of time to panic after
we were cleared for takeoff.

Logically I knew we probably wouldn't
encounter anything worse than bad turbulence. I don't know the
exact odds of being in a plane crash, but it’s probably about as
likely as winning the lottery. With the lotto, you can't win if you
don't play. I looked at flying the same way: you can't die in a
plane crash if you stay on the ground. Odds against us dying or
not, I couldn’t change how I felt. Phobias aren't about logic. They
aren't about anything really. They just are.

The attendants finished their safety
instruction spiel, and the pilot came over the intercom, telling
the crew to get ready for takeoff. That's always my cue to flip
out, though I'm pretty ninja about it. Dylan can always tell that
I'm freaked, but the flight crew and other passengers remain
blissfully ignorant.

Sending up a silent prayer for a safe
journey, I gripped the armrests again and squeezed my eyes shut.
For some reason, I always think I'll be less aware of leaving the
ground if I can't see it happening. It never really works, but it
does help some.

"Hey," London said, his voice quiet and calm
the way you'd talk to a spooked animal. "You okay?"