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  Chapter Eight

  I remember wishing I could relax enough to get a little nap. The next thing I remember is Brian waking me up so we could head back to the airport. London insisted on my riding up front this time, and I didn’t argue.

  Ashe climbed in behind the wheel, watching his rearview mirror to make sure the boys were settled in. Once we were on our way, he turned down the radio that had blared to life when he started the engine.

  “I made a snap judgment about you back at the airport. And I’m pretty sure I was wrong. I just wanted to apologize for that,” he said.

  I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see it. “It happens. No apology necessary.”

  “I thought you were trouble,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “And you could be, if you wanted. “

  “Trouble, huh?”

  Ashe waited for a Jeep to pass by, and then turned onto a cross street. “Trouble. Not just a distraction, though that can be bad enough when you’re dealing with magic. But a...what’s the word I’m looking for. Not impediment. Obstacle! An obstacle.”

  I pondered that for a moment. “You thought I’d stand in between London and his magic, somehow.”

  He snorted. “Somehow. Yeah, somehow.”

  “You thought I was his girlfriend. And that I’d...I don’t know. Disapprove?” I thought about his ex. What’s her name. Kelley. She’d been an impediment for sure.

  “Disapprove, yeah. Think magic makes him evil. Think he was fucking nuts.”

  “From what Brian told me, London’s dealt with all of that. But I’m not his girlfriend. I just met him.”

  Ashe glanced at me. “You think that means you can’t be trouble?”

  I looked out the window, remembering all the little touches and things that had passed between London and me. Oh yeah, trouble can come out of nowhere, for sure.

  “It’s not like that,” I said.

  “Sure it isn’t. And I’m Mother Teresa.”

  I turned to look over my shoulder. All I could see of London was a cloud of caramel-colored hair, whipped around by the breeze.

  “It’s not like that,” I said again as I straightened in my seat.

  “You’re as gun shy as he is. What’d they do to you, baby girl?”

  “Asked too many fucking questions,” I answered.

  Ashe laughed, but he took the hint.

  When we reached the airport, Ashe dragged himself out of the truck long enough to shake hands with me and Brian and clap London on the shoulder with a reminder to call him if he needed anything. He climbed back into the truck and was pulling away before we even made it inside.

  There wasn’t much of a wait to pick up our boarding passes or go through the security screening song-and-dance. We made it to our gate—if you could call it that—with a little time to spare. I hit the ladies room while the boys found a vending machine with bottled water. I downed half of mine before we boarded. The terminal building couldn’t have been much cooler than the outdoors; mid-April or not, the temperature had to be in the high 80s.

  When we’d left Orlando, none of us had known when we’d be heading back from Key West. That being the case, London had booked us one-way flights. He’d booked one-ways again for the flight home, but the last minute arrangements had left us with slim pickin’s as far as seats. Business class had filled up, pushing us back into the crowded, cramped economy section. London somehow managed to find two seats together, with a third a few rows ahead of them. London took the single aisle seat. I knew it was so I wouldn’t be alone and wouldn’t have to sit by the window. Still, as much as I like Brian, I’d have preferred having London beside me. Silly, but true.

  We taxied out and were cleared for takeoff. Brian offered me his hand, and I had a sneaking suspicion that London had told him all about my fear of flying.

  I took Brian’s hand with a nearly-whispered, “Thanks.”

  Maybe it should have bothered me, knowing London had been telling my secrets, but instead I was kind of grateful.

  Stressed and exhausted, we didn’t talk much on the flight to Orlando or the drive back to the hotel. Back at the Dolphin, we surrendered to the robber baron and ordered room service. I kicked off my shoes, peeled off my socks, and crawled onto the bed to sit with my back against the headboard. Brian dropped into the desk chair and reached for his guitar, but hesitated as he watched London slide down the wall to sit with his knees drawn up and his head down.

  “London?”

  “I’m fine,” London said, in answer to the question Brian hadn’t really asked. He ran his hand over his face. “I should have said something sooner, but the timing sucked. Anyway, Dylan’s still okay.”

  Brian sat back in his chair, and I said a silent little prayer of thanks.

  “And I feel like I should tell you guys that I lied to you,” he added.

  “About what?” Brian got the question out before I could.

  “Nothing important. This is going to sound weird, but I lied about business class being sold out.”

  Sound weird? What an understatement. “Why?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “This is awkward,” he said, wrapping his arms around his knees. “But I wanted an excuse to not sit beside you. One that I didn’t have to explain.”

  I shouldn’t have felt like I’d been kicked in the gut, but I did. Something must have shown on my face because Brian told London he might want to explain his statement.

  “We didn’t have a lot of time before the flight, and I wanted to wait until we were back here to get into this. It’s not easy for me talk about.”

  “What isn’t?” Brian asked

  “All this paranormal stuff. Talking to Ashe, having him teach me, it brought back a lot of memories.” He sighed. “I had what I wanted to say planned out in my head, and now it’s all gone.”

  “London,” I began, but he cut me off with a wry grin.

  “I know, I know. It doesn’t matter where I start. Just open my mouth and see what comes out.”

  I smiled at him and gave my head a little shake. “I was going to say you don’t owe us any explanation.”

  “Maybe not, but I need you—both of you—to understand what we’re dealing with.”

  “We’re listening,” Brian said.

  London took another deep breath and launched into his story. “Everyone I know who’s involved with magic, or whatever it is, has different abilities. Mine deal with emotion.”

  “Like with Dylan’s dress. You could see her because of the emotions tied to it. Right?”

  He gave me a little nod. “That’s part of it. But I don’t really see her. I sense her emotions. And before you ask, she’s a little bit scared, a lot pissed off, and worried—I think about how Brian’s dealing with her not showing up at the airport.” He turned to look at Brian. “She’s pretty crazy about you.”

  Brian swallowed, hard, and said, “Good to know.”

  “Anyway, the first time I reached out for her, with you two touching me, I didn’t just sense her emotions. I felt them like they were my own.”

  “That’s why it hit you so hard,” I guessed.

  “Yup. You two, and your feelings for Dylan, acted as a kind of focus, but there are other things that can make the connection stronger, too. For me, and for a lot of other people from what Shelley told me, working with your abilities makes them stronger. Kind of like weight-lifting, right? But there’s a gap, I guess you’d call it, in between learning to call your powers and learning to control them. While you’re in that gap, you’re really vulnerable. When I first started dealing with my abilities, they were ‘on’ 24-7. I couldn’t choose when to focus on someone’s emotions and when to shut them out. So every time I touched someone—shook somebody’s hand or got bumped into or anything, I knew what they were feeling.”

  “And you were just a kid,” Brian noted.

  “Yup. Fourteen. And having to deal with knowing when my parents were pissed at each other or my brother was lu
sting after some girl who wasn’t his girlfriend. That was pretty bad. But when things were at their worst, I didn’t even have to touch someone to read them. If I did touch them, I could usually tell why they were feeling what they were feeling—who they were mad at or what had happened to upset them. Shelly told me it meant my abilities were really strong. All I knew is that I was learning a lot of stuff about people that I didn’t want to know.”

  London fell silent for a moment, and I thought about what he had said. It would be hell to know what everyone was feeling all the time, especially for a fourteen-year-old. Being a teenager is hard enough for us vanilla folk.

  On the tails of that thought were my distant and unhappy memories of high school.

  “High school,” I said aloud. “You were surrounded by people all the time.”

  “Yup. I went to a pretty big school. Something like 5,000 kids. All that emotion, it was overwhelming. And a lot of the time I couldn’t tell where my own feelings stopped and other people’s started. I felt like I was drowning.”

  He stood up and went to the windows, looking out into the night. I hadn’t bothered looking out the window, but I knew Disney’s Epcot stretched out below it. It’s beautiful, all lit up at night. I doubted that London even really saw it.

  “I still don’t know whether it was not being able to deal with my abilities—my own fear and frustration—or if I’d picked up one too many negative emotions from other people. But whatever it was...” He sighed and leaned forward to rest his forehead and one arm against the glass.

  I looked at Brian. He was watching his friend—his brother—with a look of dawning horror. He’d reached the same conclusion I had. I wanted to tell London to just stop, that we didn’t want to hear any more, but I stayed silent and let him talk.

  “It was right after the Christmas break. We’d had a couple weeks away from school, and I thought I was getting a handle on my powers. I had learned a little about shielding—turning off my ability to sense emotions. But as soon as I got to school that first day back, I knew I hadn’t learned enough. A couple of days later, I chased a handful of my brother’s allergy meds with half a bottle of my dad’s Scotch. I woke up in the hospital. My parents knew enough about what I was dealing with that they kept me out of the nuthouse, and they were a hundred percent behind me when I said I was done with magic.”

  “Jesus, London,” Brian breathed.

  I didn’t have anything to add. Couldn’t have, anyway, without giving away the fact that I was crying. I eased off the bed and into the bathroom to grab a handful of tissues. I was still standing there mopping my teary face when London pushed on the half-open door and peeked inside. I reached out to touch him, but made myself stop. He’d put distance between us earlier, on the flight home, to keep me from touching him, to keep from feeling my emotions. I wasn’t going to inflict them on him now.

  London smiled at me, his eyes tired. He pushed the door again, so it was wide open, and held his hand out. “It’s okay,” he said. “Come here.”

  I hesitated for just a second, and then took his hand. He shivered, even though the room wasn’t cold. His eyes met mine and there was something in them that I couldn’t quite put a name to.

  After a minute or so, he changed his grip on my hand and drew me forward to wrap me in a warm hug. A foot of difference in height makes hugging a bit awkward if you don’t go about it right. A couple of my friends are pretty tall, though, so I had had a little practice. I slid my arms around London’s waist and rested my head against his chest, right over his heart.

  We didn’t stay like that long; we enjoyed the moment, and then let go. But brief or not, that hug was pretty amazing.

  Room service showed up a short time later, and we ate dinner to the somewhat muted sound of fireworks exploding over the nearby theme park. Not long after we’d finished dinner and the last firework had boomed, London spoke up.

  “Shelley sent me to Ashe because he’s the only person she knows of who has powers similar to mine and has used them to track people,” he said. “He hates the mainland and avoids it as much as he can. We’re assuming Dylan is probably in Orlando still, and he didn’t want to have to come here and try to track her, so he passed that job on to me.”

  “Can you do it?” Brian asked.

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I could track you guys from the backyard without a focus, and Ashe said that’s a good sign. I could find you,” he added, looking at Brian, “from a little farther away, because we have an emotional bond. Ashe’s words, not mine. And I could track you from way down the block using Dylan’s dress as a focus. From any farther away, I couldn’t do a damn thing, though. I want to try getting more distance with one of you, but I’d need something personal, something with emotional attachment. Using secondhand emotion, like with Dylan’s dress, just doesn’t work as well.”

  We both stayed silent for a moment. I hoped that Brian would come through. I had something with me that had a strong sentimental attachment, but I wanted to avoid admitting to it if I could.

  “My guitar,” Brian said after a moment.

  “Thought you’d say that,” London said. “But I had something else in mind. Are you still carrying around that letter?”

  “Yeah.” Brian pulled out his wallet and opened it up to withdraw a creased sheet of paper from the bill section. I recognized the handwriting.

  “Is that…?”

  “A love letter from Dylan?” London finished. “Oh, yeah.” He took the letter from Brian, a small smile playing across his lips. He grabbed the spare key card from the desk where he’d left it when he came in from the bar the night before.

  “You’re not going to wander off alone are you?”

  “Not if you come with me. Brian can stay here, where it’s relatively safe. I don’t need him to be missing; I just need to know if I can find him, if that makes sense.”

  It did. I pulled my socks and shoes back on and followed London down to the lobby. He stood there for a moment, eyes closed, and then gave a little nod. He turned and walked away, trusting me to follow. We went out the back door of the hotel to the covered walkway that leads to the Dolphin’s sister hotel, the Swan. Halfway between the two buildings, London stopped again, reaching for Brian with his senses. Again he nodded. He repeated his routine from inside the Swan. So far, so good.

  London wandered out the front doors of the Swan and looked around. There isn’t much there except a big circular drive and a fountain. We couldn’t get much farther away, going that direction.

  “This way,” I said, leading him back through the hotel to the walkway. Outside, I took a right instead of following the path to the Dolphin.

  London took the lead once we were on the new path, trying to compare the distance to what he’d already tried. I shook my head and moved ahead of him—no small feat considering my stride is half the length of his.

  “Let’s go down to the Boardwalk. If it’s too far for you to sense Brian, you can work your way backward, right?”

  London stopped in his tracks. “I feel dumb,” he said.

  I laughed. “We can’t all be brilliant,” I said.

  Shaking his head, London stepped forward and caught my hand. Anyone watching us walk down to the Boardwalk would think we were young lovers enjoying a night in the Happiest Place on Earth. Even under the circumstances, it was kind of nice.

  At the far end of the Boardwalk, London dropped my hand and closed his eyes again. He frowned in concentration for a moment, and then shook his head.

  “It’s too fuzzy,” he said. “I can sense him, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from.”

  My heart sank. We weren’t all that far away. We’d have to be practically on top of Dylan to find her. In a city this size, it’ll be like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. If she was even in Orlando.

  London stared across the lagoon at Epcot for a minute and then took my hand again. Instead of leading me back toward the hotel, he closed his eyes. His lips curved up i
nto a smile, and when he opened his eyes they shone with triumph.

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  “You boosted the signal, that’s what happened.”

  Hope flared inside me. “How much of a signal boost?”

  “Enough,” he said. He turned and looked behind him. “Where does that path go?”

  “Um. Not sure. Epcot maybe? But if we go that way,” I said, pointing off to one side, “there’s a long, long sidewalk out to the road and the employee parking lot and stuff.”

  London headed off in the direction I pointed, my hand still in his. We were nearly to the street before he shook his head again. I had a mere second to feel that sinking pang again before he said, “It’s not even fading. We need the car.”

  We went back to the room, got the keys from Brian, and dragged ourselves back to the parking lot. Two miles, give or take, seemed to be the cutoff point.

  “Not bad,” London said, as he circled around and pointed us back toward the hotel.

  “It’s still a pretty small search radius,” I said.

  “But think about it, Em. You care a hell of a lot more about Dylan than you do Brian. And he cares about her, too. With both of you, there’s no telling how much bigger that search radius is gonna be.”

  I did think about it. Then I added, “But your bond with Brian is stronger than with Dylan. I mean, you don’t even know Dylan.”

  “When Ashe and I were experimenting, my own feelings only gave me a few extra yards. Your feelings for Brian, which we both know aren’t as strong, gave me nearly two miles. I think it’s safe to assume my own emotions don’t play as big a part in this.”

  Hope reared its head again. “You really think you can do this?”

  London parked the car, shut down the engine, took out the keys. He sat behind the wheel for a moment, staring out at the night. “I’m sure I can. It won’t be easy or quick, but I’ll find her. We’re going to get her back, and then she and Brian are going to have that happily ever after you don’t believe in.”

  “You pull this off, and I’ll believe. Having Dylan back safe is happily ever after enough for me.”