Seeker (Shadows) (7 page)

“Kara, the girl on the small boat said they’d try to trick us.” Do I believe her? I’m not sure. The two people were our age, and maybe I’ve misread everything and they’re trying to help. I hate that I don’t know what to think anymore. Even though Landon’s gone there and they let
him come back, seeing a shadow person still scares the hell out of me. How am I supposed to trust something like that?

“Well. We keep going south until we learn more. But I’m going to have to go back in.” Landon plays with the edges of my curly blonde hair, sending shivers through me. “I still sometimes can’t believe I get to touch you like this,” he whispers. “I swear the pull to you is stronger every day. I love you, Micah.”

“Love you, too,” I whisper, aching at how it feels to lie next to him.

I press my face harder into his chest and slide my hand around his middle not wanting to leave this room. Maybe not ever.

SEVEN

Kara

Every time I’ve tried to talk to Ocean, he silences me with his hand. I’ve given up and instead just enjoy the feel of the wind in my hair now that we’re traveling on a real boat.

The steering wheel is familiar underneath my hands, and the sleek exterior makes me feel the confidence that I need to start tracking for real. I have the radar equipment on, which will pick up even small boats in our vicinity. The Middle Men boats are made bright and white—the less shadow, the less the chances of us being bothered by the beings that move through them. I keep scanning for Landon, and am driving in a bit of a zig-zagging path as I head south. It’s a long-shot that we’ll run into them, but it’s happened before.

I try to ignore Ocean as he sits in the passenger’s side of the boat with his eyes closed and tanned face tilted toward the sun. Still ignoring me, which is fine for now. We don’t have to work together yet, and maybe we won’t have to work together at all. If he wants to sulk, he can stay on the boat, and I’ll search. As I look at him, he definitely looks a bit like Landon, a face I may have seen a few too many times as I’ve studied his file...

Okay, Kara. You’ve got to keep better focus.

My eyes scan the GPS, charts and then the radar. A blip that looks as if it could be large enough to be their boat hits the edges of the screen, and I stretch my mind that direction but don’t feel anything. I adjust the heading on the boat just in case. It’ll only take us a few minutes to check it out.

I pop open a Dr. Pepper (the boat is stocked) and take a long deep drink of the sugary fizz when Ocean shifts in his seat.

“Nassau,” Ocean says. “Go to Nassau.”

I stare at him for a moment wondering if he knows or is just guessing to seem helpful.

“You know that’s like the armpit of The Bahamas,” I try to tease. Only I’m wondering why I’m trying to tease and loosen the tension, when what I need to be doing is telling him if he doesn’t want to be here, he can go back to Florida.

“That’s where they’ll be. You want my help or not?” His voice is short and hard. As much as I want to call him on his attitude, we really need to get to work, because Long Island in The Exumas is where we need to keep them from going, and it’s only a few days sail from Nassau.

“Do you want the rest of the story?” I almost have to yell to be heard over the sound of the engines and the wind. If anything will sway him to drop his weird attitude, this will be it.

“Stop and turn off the boat and then yes. I want the story,” he yells back.

Stop
? I shake my head as I close in on the boat I saw on my radar, but it’s definitely not them.

Everything in me screams to keep going as I pull down off power and sit for a moment with the engines idling, wondering if I care about how pissy he is and if I should just keep going.

I sigh and stare at him for a moment, at which point his brows go up slightly and I know that I need him on my side. I know like I sometimes know just what I need to carry with me on assignment. Or when I need to set my clock different, or put money aside. It’s a compulsion kind of feeling. I’m resigned, but also resisting the urge to scream in exasperation. I turn off the engines, letting us bob in the waves of the turquoise water.

“Finish the story and help me know why this is so important.” Ocean pulls his legs up and wraps his arms around his calves. There’s an innocence in his expression and the way his body’s positioned in the seat, and I see a flash of what he must have looked like as a boy. It changes things. It’s hard to hate someone or be irritated with
them when you have this idea of what they were like at eight years old.

“Why are you so difficult?” I ask.

“Always been that way.” He shrugs, but manages to keep his hands clasped around his knees. “Mom used to tease that it happens when you lose a twin. That part of you has a hole it’ll always try to fill.”

My chest suddenly feels scraped out. “Sorry.” But I’m not sure I said it loud enough for him to hear. I’m not sure what it’s like to have siblings, but I do know I’d suffer without Samson.

“It’s done.” His blue eyes are intense. “Long time ago, okay?”

“Okay.” Only there are probably days of conversation just in the very few bits he’s shared with me, and I wonder if Ocean and I would ever get along enough to talk for days. I wonder if I’d get along with anyone well enough to talk for days. I’m not around people enough to know.

“So? We left off with a woman who practiced Voodoo,” he prompts.

I sigh as I sit down because this makes me feel so small and vulnerable. The whole story. The idea of being connected to all the people with gifts. And furthermore, the idea that it would only take a handful of people to take away everything I’ve worked my whole life for.

“She was commissioned often to make dolls. So she had all these dolls made, and the British Navy had gotten wind of her witchcraft and burned down her store—Voodoo dolls and all. It wasn’t a very populated island, and they searched The Bahamas for years to find her. Though, some people say that it took them so long because several members of the British Navy used her services and helped to keep her hidden. But those are things we’ll never know.”

Ocean’s sitting, absorbing every part of the story.

“So all of these people who were dolls in her shop turned to shadows. They don’t live in this world, really. They live in a shadowy version of this world. Smoky.” I swallow once needing to go back to the woman before continuing with the shadows.

“So the woman was hunted as she fled, knowing that the soldiers had done more damage to those souls than she could have ever done.”

The lapping of the waves and the familiar feel of warm, salty air and hot sun does nothing to calm me. “The shadow people are what’s left of the people whose dolls were burned, and they started to track her through her magic. To put them off her trail, she divided all of her magical gifts amongst people she came into contact with to throw the shadows off, knowing that they’d take her into their world and steal her powers so they could come back to earth. I’m not sure how long it took the shadows to figure it out, or if they just inherently knew when they were stuck as ash. So. That’s how we’re connected. We all come from the same place. The same woman. And that’s how the shadows follow us so easily—they know the magic. Their existence came from the same place. We, well our ancestors, are what the woman used to escape the wrath of the shadow people.”

Ocean sits. Silent. And in this thick silence between us, once again being hit with how tenuous our existence with talents is, my body starts ramping up in the kind of tension that means I’m on a hunt.

“So. The shadows want to pull us in?” he asks.

“Yes. They almost succeeded once. They’d convinced a small group that separated, much like Landon, Micah, Dean and Addison have. Though, I guess we can’t call it “separated” when they were never a part of us. Anyway—the last time, everyone with talents almost lost because the shadows tricked enough people to get free. The Middle Men got to them just in time, and that’s when the Seekers became the “police” of The Middle Men. We only do what we have to do. We can’t know what the implications of that bitter, angry groups of souls who have been trapped in that shadow world are capable of if they’re able to get powers they were never intended to have. That old woman was smart enough to give all of hers up and to disperse them so we’d never have to worry about this happening.”

“And since Landon’s headed that way, you’re worried he’s going to try to give the shadows their power back? Why would he attempt to do something so awful?”

“Did you see him jump through the shadow on their boat and appear out of nowhere?” The thought of one of us crossing over and coming back shakes me to the core. They’re definitely going to try and convince Landon to help them, and we can’t let it happen.

“Yeah… But it didn’t seem real. I keep thinking my brain was playing tricks on me. That he was just standing behind the mast.” Ocean’s voice shakes a little, and part of me is glad that I’ve instilled some fear in him.

“No. He found a way to slip into their world, which means they’re one step closer to getting exactly what they want.” I lean closer to him, hoping he’s beginning to understand the gravity of the situation. “They almost killed me once, Ocean. The shadows did. I won’t let Landon give them a way to finish the job.”

We sit in near silence for a moment, the only sound is a far-off engine and the water lapping against the sides of the boat.

“Why doesn’t your dad gather
everyone up and launch some kind of full-scale entrapment?” Ocean asks.

I lean back, and what I already sort of knew comes crashing down on me because I never asked, because
I’ve learned not to. “My dad’s Insight is stronger than anyone’s, and something in him knows that plan won’t work.”

“And we will?” he asks. And for the first time I see some of the excitement that I feel when I’m tracking someone new. Or get a new job. A new task.

I shrug. We’re probably just the best odds.

“Can’t we ask him?”

“If we know it works, would we try as hard? Would the outcome be the same?” Besides. I’m used to my father’s totally cryptic answers that frustrate me more often than not. He has a different perspective on how time works since most of what he sees is in the future.”

He shakes his head. “And if we knew, just our knowledge would change the course of events.”

“Exactly.” I nod. “So you sort of get it.” And for the first time, I’m not upset about him being my partner.

He lets his feet flop to the floor as he scratches his head, further messing his blond and making him look even more like a movie star than he did before. “On one side this is so cool it’s sort of unbelievable, but on the other side, it’s so real that—”

“What we’re working on here is life-changing, and not just for us. Possibly for a lot of people. Definitely everyone with talents, and maybe more. We have to stop them.” I feel this desperate need for him to believe me and really, actually help me, instead of continuing to do this for fun. Because I bet that of the three “choices” he gave me for being with The Middle Men, his was for fun. I wonder what it is now?

“Agreed. They need to be found.” He stands up and takes my spot behind the wheel of the boat, which I happily relinquish if for no other reason than to watch his excitement. “Let’s see what we can do about that.”

EIGHT

Micah

Sitting in harbors stresses me out. In other words I get restless, grouchy, and hungry. I lean back on the bench seat behind the indoor table. “I don’t even want these cookies and I’m going to eat them all anyway.”

Addison laughs a little and grabs a chocolate chip from the pile. “I know. I didn’t even care that the oven heated up the whole stupid boat.”

Only her rail thin body won’t see the effects of the cookies, where my curves most certainly will—unless my nerves wear them away.

I slump further in my seat as the guys finish tying us to the dock. Dean’s relief at being on shore again is palpable.

Addison sighs as she takes another large bite. “Never in a million years did I think I
’d end up—”

“Running fro
m The Middle Men and chasing shadows and hanging out in a dirty harbor in Nassau?” I try to tease even though this is a million miles from where I thought I’d be too. Even four months ago, I thought I’d probably head to some university near Seattle and close to my mom and now… Now I’m in the middle of this huge plot to… I’m not even sure what we’re trying to do. It started out as a quest for more information and turned into a million more things when I had a vision of Landon and I being interrogated by an older man who I now know is part of The Middle Men. And we decided not to go with them. I had no idea what would follow that decision.

It still seems to me that if they wanted us, coming nicely would have worked much better, but maybe I just saw too far into the future. I can’t keep that thought in my head, because it may mean that by running away, we’ve forced ourselves into my vision. Even with so much more understanding of what I do, there are so many more things I
don’t understand.

“My biggest concern a few months ago was replacing a pair of jeans that I threw away because I got arrested, and I didn’t want to wear them again. And that the guy who’d used me for far too long was getting married to some snob of a girl his parents are sure to adore.” Addison sighs. “But Dean… I mean. I didn’t get it, you know? People in love. And now? I’d do anything for him. Well, and I didn’t expect to be chased by the guys my dad works for either. All Dad’s work stuff seemed so far removed from my life.” Sadness pulls her face into another frown, and I’ve held on to both her and on to Landon trying to use their energy to find her dad, and don’t see him. He helped Dean and Addison find us, and we’re not sure how The Middle Men would have dealt with that.