Betrayal - By Lee Nichols Page 0,60

nothing but black boxer briefs. “Yo.”

He caught sight of Natalie, and gaped—she might’ve teased him, except she was staring at him just as openly. Hoo boy.

“Hold up,” Simon said. “What’s going on?”

“Why’s Nicholas showing us that coin?” Natalie asked, looking away from Lukas with some effort.

“Looks like he’s begging,” Lukas said. “Sometimes he takes this waif thing too far.”

“He’s not begging,” I said, and told them what he’d told me. “There are waves of energy coming off it—can’t you feel them?”

“We’re not readers.”

“Well, I was afraid to touch it without you. You ready?”

They looked solemn, standing there in their pj’s, drawing their power closer to the surface. Natalie with her summoning energy crackling around her kittenish nightie, Lukas with his ripped bare chest—I mean his waves of compulsive force—and Simon with a look of grim determination behind his flashing eyeglasses, his dispelling power flickering around him.

I took a breath and swiped the disk from Nicholas’s palm. The ridges in the metal pressed into my still-tender skin, burning cold and hot at the same time. I felt a coil of dark power and then the whooshing, and the room began to spin, my vision whirling as though I were on a merry-go-round.

“Here we go,” I muttered, and closed my eyes against the wave of nausea.

When I opened them, I was standing alone on a dark city street in a neighborhood of old brownstones. A row of bare-limbed trees lined the sidewalk, and a scattering of lights glowed yellow in windows, too dim to illuminate the street. It was quiet, like early morning. Maybe the same time as it was in Echo Point?

Was that possible? That this wasn’t a flashback, that the disk was showing me someplace else in real time?

As I watched, the street filled with a thick silvery fog, and I shivered against the cold, even though I knew this was all in my head, and I was still standing in the museum hallway.

I looked toward a doorway with a cheerful wreath, then noticed a flash of movement up ahead. A dark figure darted through the mist. It looked like a man. He rounded the corner as I followed him across the road and onto another narrow street. The air smelled of dense moisture, and I tailed him onto a block of brick buildings with little shops and cafés.

I lost track of the man for a moment, then spotted him crossing a square and entering what looked like an old stone church with a tall spire. I stared at the sign in front of the building until it resolved into words: Cambridge Memorial Church.

I dropped the disk, and with a whoosh I was standing back in the museum, the disk rolling across the floor and clinking against the wall.

“Cambridge,” I said. “He’s in Cambridge, outside of Boston.”

“Who?” Simon asked.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see him fully in the vision. But this coin? It stinks of Neos.”

“Cambridge,” Simon said. “You think he’s there now?”

I nodded. “Hard to tell, but—yeah.”

“Then let’s roll.”

Behind his back, Lukas mouthed “let’s roll?” and Natalie chuckled as she slipped into her room to get dressed. I told Nicholas to ask Anatole and Celeste to make coffee and toast; then I changed into black leggings, a long gray sweater, and my black boots. I beat Natalie to the bathroom, washed my face, and checked myself in the mirror. The girl staring back looked pale and tired and not at all ready to battle ghosts.

I cleaned my hands in warm sudsy water, then carefully rinsed and dried them before applying a thin layer of Neosporin. The right one still stung from sparring with the Rake last night. Like he’d said, it was only pain, but I found a couple Advil in the medicine cabinet and popped them anyway.

A knock sounded, and Natalie waited on the other side of the door, dressed in jeans and a leopard-print sweater, her dark glossy hair slung back in a ponytail.

“Really?” I said. “Leopard this early in the morning?”

“It makes me feel fierce,” she said. “How are your hands?”

“Okay.” I waved them at her.

She didn’t flinch, so I guess they didn’t look that bad.

“I’ll see you downstairs. I asked Anatole to make coffee.” I was strictly a tea girl myself, but Natalie loved her morning buzz.

I found Lukas in the kitchen, scarfing buttered toast, and I sighed. He no doubt had jumped into clothes he found on the floor, slapped on some deodorant, and called himself good. Meanwhile, I was trying to ignore my