Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3 (49 page)

Tonight we’d be staying at a private home just beyond Huaraz, a house currently occupied by a member of the Praetorian Guard. This house was the approximate site of the map’s second location. “The building was once a convent, the home of a group of Catholic nuns,” Mr. Specter said. “After that it was a school, and then later it was used as a hotel. Currently it’s the home of Oswald Neverman. He was my professor at the university and a mentor to me and now he’s a very dear friend. I have no idea why David Hofstetter had this site listed, but I think it’s best if we don’t mention David’s name at all. And as I stated before, please keep your powers to yourself. “

We were about an hour into our bus ride, when Russ said to me, surreptitiously, “Do you think Whitehouse was the one who planted the death threat?” He sat next to the window on the side looking out over the ocean. Sitting next to him was perfect because I could look at him while I pretended to admire the view.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “She didn’t know anything about it until it landed at her door.”

“Are you sure? Because, I’ve been thinking...” He leaned in closer. “Maybe she was so angry because she was the one who did it and then Mallory sent it right back. Like you figured her out.”

“It wasn’t her.” I’d felt Mrs. Whitehouse’s rage at the park when she’d shoved the rock in my face. It wasn’t the emotion of someone whose plan had been foiled. It was the feeling you get when you think someone is mocking you. I knew the difference. “Trust me.”

“Okay,” he said. “You’re the expert.”

When we’d talked among ourselves, we’d discovered that all four of us had been a little freaked out by the death threat initially, and then when nothing happened, our concerns faded. A prank? A test? I wasn’t sure. I think I’d be more worried if the person doing the threatening had done a better job of it. Weren’t you supposed to cut letters out of magazines and paste them together? Or was that just ransom notes? Anyway, the threat looked like something a fifth-grader would do. They’d have to up their game if they really wanted to scare us.

The bus pulled off the main highway and onto a dirt road at lunch time. We traveled past farms and ramshackle houses, driving alongside fields where random clusters of goats and sheep grazed. When the driver stopped, we were in front of a concrete building with two wooden picnic tables in front of it. It looked like a converted gas station. Our guide Alex said, “The driver says this place has the best food for miles around.”

We piled out and sat at the tables while the driver went inside to let them know we had arrived. Without planning it we grouped together by age, the teenagers at one table, the chaperones and Alex at another. The driver came out with a chalkboard menu and showed it to each of us, one at a time. I told Mallory to tell them I’d take whatever she was having. A few minutes later, a teenage girl came out with a tray of bottles of Inca Kola, a soda I’d acquired a liking for back at the hotel. It looked like Mountain Dew and tasted like bubble gum. She set the tray on the table and without a word handed each of us a bottle. When she got to me, she stopped and stared at my face. “Gracias,” I said, taking the bottle. Would this constant scrutiny of my scars never end? I couldn’t wait to see if Russ could heal my face once we got home. I was tired of it.

The girl said something to me in Spanish. I looked to Mallory, who didn’t translate in English, but just answered her directly. Before long they were having a back and forth, and then the bus driver came and pulled the girl back inside.

“Get this,” Mallory said. “She’s the bus driver’s niece. This is their house and her mother is the one cooking our lunch. He didn’t want her talking about it, and that’s why he made her go back inside.”

“But what did she say about me?” I asked.

Mallory shrugged. “Not much. She asked how you were injured and wanted to know if you knew about the legend, and I told her we’d heard it already. She said the angel always chooses who gets to be the hero in the stories.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, then I choose Russ to be the hero.” I moved my hand in Russ’s direction like it was a magic wand. “Choos-i-cus, hero-cus. And so it has been decided.”

I was just talking silly, but two hours later, when our lives were endangered, Mallory remembered it as if it were a prophecy.

Russ

On the bus ride afterward Nadia was even quieter than usual. At lunch, Mallory had filled Jameson and me in on this whole Burned Angel legend after our waitress had brought up the subject. While Mallory explained, Nadia had kept her face down, quietly eating her empanada. I think she was trying not to cry. I felt terrible for her. I knew how sensitive she was about her face. The subject had come up a few times during our late night talks when she’d astral projected to me. She told me that every day since the accident she felt hideous, like the sight of her face made people gag. Once Nadia told me that she understood how the Phantom of the Opera felt, that she wished she could wear a mask and live in her own underground lair. I tried to tell her that she was imagining it much worse than it was. That I didn’t even notice her scars anymore. I knew she didn’t believe me.

And now I wished I could put my hands on each side of her little face right this second and put every bit of energy and emotion I had into healing her. Curing Jameson’s hangover had been a stupid use of my powers. What if I could only do it a certain number of times? Say I had ten total healing uses and then it ran out and I could never do it again. If that were true, I would regret not leaving him puking in the hotel room. He deserved to be sick. A just punishment for a night of stupidity. But Nadia? She didn’t deserve what she got at all. And if I could fix her face, it would be my greatest achievement.

Nadia was looking past me, out the window. I smiled. “Are you okay?”

She said, “Yeah, just tired of being on this bus.”

We rode in silence for a while. Up front Mallory was chatting it up with Alex. Handsome, smooth Alex. He wasn’t as tall as me though, which made me feel slightly superior. I didn’t like the way they were always speaking to each other in Spanish. It was kind of rude to those of us who couldn’t understand what they were saying. Since they both knew English, it seemed a deliberate choice, a way to keep us out. It wasn’t like Mallory to be that way, so I was thinking it was Alex who was doing it intentionally. Frankly, I didn’t trust the guy.

When we’d exited the highway, we’d turned right and headed inland. The further we drove from the ocean, the greener the grass became. The narrow dirt road was barely big enough for two cars coming from either direction to pass each other, but we didn’t come across many vehicles. At one point, we came upon a beat-up pickup truck filled with men standing in the back. It looked like we were going to collide, but the bus pulled onto the shoulder to let them go by. Since then, I’d only spotted a single motorcyclist and the occasional farmer walking alongside mules carrying packs. If not for the electrical wires strung between wooden poles that dotted the length of the road, you could have convinced me we’d gone back in time.

Over on his side of the bus, Jameson was engrossed in playing with his bola, like a kid with a new toy. Now that we were traveling on unpaved back roads, the ride was uneven. The surface was grooved from tire tracks, and rocks as big as human heads lined the edge of the road. Every time the bus went over a bump, Jameson used telekinesis to make the balls of the bola jump in an exaggerated way. We’d been warned about not using our powers when we were out and about, but he didn’t seem to care about that. Jameson turned around to see if I noticed what he was doing and I quickly averted my eyes. We weren’t friends and I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of being his audience.

Nadia noticed though and she seemed amused, which encouraged him to up his game. He turned to face us, and held the leather cord over his head so the balls dangled in the aisle, then used his powers to get them to move in circles like they were pursuing each other. I waited for one of the adults to notice and tell Jameson to stop but they all seemed oblivious to his showing off. Nadia grinned and Jameson, feeding off the attention like a vulture, had the balls swing up in the air and almost meet before dropping down. I silently wished he’d lose control and one would smack him in the face, but no such luck. Up front, Alex and Mallory were wrapped up in their Spanish conversation. Mrs. Whitehouse had her head back and eyes closed, while Mr. Specter and Kevin Adams looked down at their respective screens. Unbelievable. No one was noticing this blatant disregard for the rules.

Well, two could play at that game. I held my hands up, palms facing each other and created sparks that jumped back and forth between them. Just as I hoped, I snared Nadia’s attention away from Jameson, and man, did he look irritated that I stole his spotlight. The electricity shooting out of my hands glittered like a sparkler, and jumped from my fingertips. I moved my hands around so the effect was like juggling. Higher and higher the sparks flew until they formed a small arc over our heads. I felt the warmth, but it wasn’t hot. Nadia grinned. “You’re a one man light show,” she said.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jameson wrap the cord around his wrist and turn around, disgusted. Yes! Victory was mine. I stopped what I was doing and whispered to Nadia, “I win.”

“What is it with guys having to be the alpha dog?” she asked, shaking her head. “Always competing.”

“Believe me, there’s no competition. There’s me, and then there’s Jameson trying to keep up with me.” This was the new Russ Becker. I’d gained a lot of self-confidence since Mallory had brought the four of us together. Jameson might be the genius homeschooled kid. He was a few inches taller than me, and knew Mallory (and Nadia) longer than I had, but he had nothing on me. It was fun to watch him try though.

When the bus lurched to a halt, I thought we’d stopped at an intersection, but the pause was too long and there was no intersection in sight. All of us looked to the front to see the driver slide out from behind the wheel, and announce something loudly before climbing down the steps to exit the bus. We’d passed through a small village at least twenty minutes before and there was nothing in sight except for farm fields and a small shack just ahead on the left. “What is he doing?” Nadia called to the others in front.

“He says he has to stop to go to the bathroom,” Mallory yelled back.

I rested my head against the glass to look. The driver didn’t look like a guy heading out to take a leak. There were some scrubby-looking bushes off to one side that would have been a perfect spot to unzip and release, but he wasn’t headed in that direction; in fact he wasn’t headed in any direction. He stood statue-like in the middle of the road, his hand a visor over his forehead, his gaze on the horizon. Like he was waiting for something. Weird. And I wasn’t the only one seeing this.

“Maybe he needs peeing lessons,” Kevin joked. “Does anyone want to go out and show him how?”

Before long, we saw what he was waiting for. A tiny gray car sped toward us, kicking up dust as it approached. It stopped right in front of the bus, paused to let our driver climb in, then sped off in the direction we’d just come from.

“What the hell…” Jameson said, standing up to get a better look. But there was nothing to see, just a gray blur driving away at top speed.

“Did he say anything to you? About where he was going?” Mr. Specter asked Alex, who shook his head.

Right as he said this, my eye caught some movement down the road. The door opened in the wooden gray shack standing a few feet off the left hand side of the road. As I watched, three men carrying long barreled guns burst out the side door and began yelling in Spanish. They wore wide-brimmed hats. Bandannas covered the lower part of their faces, like bandits in the Old West.

“All of you stay put,” Mr. Specter said. “I’ve got this.”

I’ve got this
. Like he was providing change for a toll, or giving directions to someone who was lost. He trotted down the aisle of the bus and went out the open door, still open from the driver’s departure. Mr. Specter walked up to the three men and began speaking in Spanish, gesturing to the bus and then back to them. They had their weapons pointed right at his chest, but he looked completely unfazed. The guy had nerves of steel.

“I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all,” Nadia said quietly next to me. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“It’s going to be fine,” I said, speaking with more assurance than I felt. She was falling apart. Someone had to be steady.

Alex said, “They probably want money. He’ll pay them and they’ll let us go.”

All of us had gathered on the left side of the bus, our faces up against the window, silent as we watched the drama unfolding outside. One of the men was getting right in Mr. Specter’s face, yelling something loudly in Spanish and then stamping his foot. Mr. Specter shook his head. He looked completely calm and collected right up until the point that one of the men surged forward and hit him in the groin with the butt of his gun. Every guy watching could feel the pain and even Mallory audibly gasped. Mr. Specter fell to his knees on the dirt road, clutching his front. Two of the men came behind him and dropping their weapons, tag teamed him, grabbing him roughly and blindfolding him with a strip of white fabric.

“Hey!” Jameson said, heading out the door, his bola still in hand.

Nadia ran to the back of the bus where I heard her retching. Her nerves had gotten to her stomach. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t help her at that moment. But I could help Mr. Specter and I wasn’t going to let Jameson go out without me. When I got to the front of the bus, I paused to give Alex and Kevin Adams a stern look. “What are you guys waiting for? Come on!”

I scrambled down the steps and around to the front of the bus, following Jameson, who was already walking up to the group of men. The hand gripping the bola trembled at his side, but still I had to give him credit for going right into a bad situation.