Betrayal - By Lee Nichols Page 0,61

stringy hair, and Natalie was probably upstairs flossing.

Lukas swallowed when he saw me. “Dude, I got you something.”

I grabbed toast and a cup of tea and eyed him skeptically. Why would he want to give me a gift?

“Here.” He shoved a white plastic bag across the table. Another reason to be a guy: they didn’t feel the urge to wrap gifts in polka-dot paper and pink bows.

“What is it?” I asked, half convinced it was a gag gift that would explode with green slime when I touched it. Considering the trouble he’d caused with the ghosts at his last school, I wasn’t sure Lukas had grown out of that stage.

“It’s for your dagger. I made it in art class.”

I used one finger to pry open the bag, and nothing burst out at me. Inside was a dark brown leather belt with a tight loop sewn into one side.

Lukas shrugged. “I just thought … way cooler than whipping it out of your down jacket.”

In the hallway, Simon bellowed. “Natalie! We’re in a bit of a rush here!”

I slipped my dagger into the loop. Perfect.

Natalie stumbled in and grabbed the thermos of coffee that Anatole offered. She nodded her thanks and looked at my belt. “What’s that?”

“Lukas made it,” I said. “It’s a dagger holster.”

“Sheath,” he said.

Natalie’s eyes twinkled. “Are those little hearts stamped into the leather?”

“Gimme a break,” Lukas said. “My teacher is pretty seventies. It was that or peace signs, which didn’t seem apropos.”

“Oooh, apropos,” I said.

“Fancy vocabulary coming from a leather worker,” Natalie teased. “Have you been studying for the SATs?”

Simon strode into the kitchen and glared at us, and we fell into an abashed silence. “I’m not going to have to put up with juvenile joshing this morning, am I?”

“Of course not,” I said.

“You do realize we’re after Neos?” he said.

Lukas cleared his throat. “Yes, sir.”

Simon glanced toward Natalie. “No gossip about school?”

“Of course not. That wouldn’t be apropos.”

We all cracked up and Simon cursed under his breath. “Bloody teenagers.”

18

“Watch out!” Lukas yelled in the front seat. “Other lane, other lane!”

I fell against Natalie as Simon took a sharp right, and I swear the wheels on the left side of the car caught some air.

When we didn’t all die in a fiery crash, Lukas said, “Dude, where did you learn to drive?”

“London,” Simon said calmly. “This is nothing.”

“Right side, right side!”

I pulled out my iPhone and googled Cambridge Memorial Church, then checked MapQuest for the directions. I handed the phone to Lukas, so he could help Simon navigate from the front seat, then settled back. What were we doing? What made me think we’d actually find that guy I’d seen when I’d flashed on the disk?

I pressed my hand against the pocket of my jacket, feeling the shape of the coin through the fabric. The metal still echoed with Neos’s twisted power, but I sensed deeper impressions than his. Maybe a faint tracing of Nicholas’s touch—and mine, too.

There was much tire squealing and seat gripping as we entered Cambridge, and I suddenly called, “Wait! Stop! Pull over.”

The car jerked toward the curb. Horns blared behind us, but Simon didn’t seem to notice. He parked beside a No Parking sign and turned in his seat, looking at me expectantly.

I pointed toward the door with the cheerful wreath. “I saw that in my vision. I chased him past here. Everybody out.”

Simon put on the hazard lights and we all piled out of the car. I stood a moment, unsure what to do. It looked like a regular morning in a nice part of town. No dark figures lurked, no tendrils of strange power coiled from the shadows.

We looked down the street, and a light fog began to move in, though the sun still shone. The fog seemed to rise from nowhere in particular, thick and silvery.

“Um,” Natalie said. “That’s not normal.”

“No.” Simon’s forehead furrowed. “That’s a spectral fog.”

“What does that mean?” Lukas asked.

“That it’s only visible to us, in the way that ghosts are visible, and will—”

“There!” I said, pointing, as the man from my vision slipped through the thickening mist.

I jogged after him, and Simon called, “Wait!”

When I glanced over my shoulder, the fog was already too thick to see them, ten feet behind. I said, “Over here.”

“Where?” Natalie said. Then she blurted, “Hey! Lukas!”

“Sorry, dude,” he apologized. “I thought you were a street sign.”

“Yeah? Well, it says, ‘No Groping.’ ”

Now I felt like saying “bloody teenagers.” Instead, I called back, “Follow me—follow my voice.”

I didn’t hear them answer