He heaved it off his shoulder. As he did, the guard shouted again. Simon"s foot slipped. The bag fell.
"Your insulin," I said.
"Just the backup. I"ve got my kit in my pocket"
I didn"t care. I"d feel safer with that backup. "Go. I"ll get-"
He grabbed my arm as I started over. "No."
I glanced at the men. The guard was fumbling to pull his gun from the holster at his waist. I took one last look at the bag, then helped Simon over and we climbed down.
We found a place to hide and watch, but there was no sign of pursuit. Just a couple of factory employees, interested only in getting us off the premises.
When I was sure no one was coming after us, I followed Chloe"s trail from the factory yard. It led to a street over from Lyle House. I knew where she was heading-the commercial area we"d checked out the night before. Smart. Good. Now that it was daylight, Chloe and Rae wouldn"t look out of place.
They hadn"t gone into a shop for a candy bar, though. They"d gone to a payphone.
"s.h.i.t," Simon said. "Who"d they call? Try- No, there isn"t a redial b.u.t.ton. s.h.i.t!"
Chloe"s trail left the payphone, went to the corner and stopped.
Simon swore some more. We both knew what this meant. They"d called someone to come and get them. But who?
I went back to the phone and sniffed around. It can be tough sorting out scents, but it seemed that Chloe was the one who"d gotten close enough to make a call.
I told Simon and added, "She must have called her dad."
He shook his head. "Her aunt. Her dad"s never around. He went back overseas as soon as he got her into Lyle House. There"s a housekeeper, but she doesn"t like Chloe very much. Chloe won"t go there."
I hadn"t known that. I felt like I should have. But we hadn"t talked much about personal stuff. That"s the kind of thing you do with someone you expect to be your friend or your boyfriend. Someone like Simon. Not someone like me.
"Do you know her aunt"s name?"
"Lauren Fellows. She"s a doctor. Look up Dr. Fellows." He paused as he caught my expression. "Derek?"
"Nothing. Just . . . The name sounds familiar."
"Probably because you heard them use it at the house. She"s the one who came to get Chloe for breakfast that day."
"Right."
Only it sounded morefamiliar than that. Dr. Fellows. I must have known someone with that name. Maybe a doctor where we"d lived once. It wasn"t important. What mattered was that Chloe had called someone who might send her right back to Lyle House. We had to find her before that happened.
There was only one problem. We couldn"t get a home address for Lauren Fellows. The number in the phone book rang through to her office in a medical clinic. I should have known. Dad used to say we didn"t need to worry about anyone thinking it was suspicious that they couldn"t find us in a phonebook. As a lawyer, he was unlikely to list his home number. A doctor would probably have patients calling at all hours.
We tried getting a phone number from her clinic. Simon figured if he did that, he might be able to convince the phone company to part with an address. Normally, he"s really good at getting people to do stuff like that. But Dr. Fellows" after-hours staff knew better than to give out anything, no matter how charming Simon was.
"Okay," Simon said when we finally gave up. "If she went to her aunt, they"d take her to Lyle House, right? So that"s where we go."
Returning to the place we"d just escaped? Was he crazy? I almost said that. Then I thought about it.
Returning to the place we"d just escaped wascrazy, which meant no one would expect it. Anyone looking for us would stake out bus terminals and train stations. They wouldn"t be at Lyle House.
As it turned out, no onewas at Lyle House. We crept through a neighboring yard until we could see that all the windows were dark. The morning sun beat down on the cold ground, leaving a layer of thin fog. Simon used that cover and added his own fog so he could get closer to the house.
"Empty," he said when he came back, hunkered beside me behind the neighbor"s shed. "That must mean they only had Tori left, so they moved her to another home. So they didn"t catch Chloe and Rae."
"Or they did, which is why they moved them allto another home."
"I like my explanation better."
"You could be right. If Tori was the only one left, I bet they didn"t move her, though. They let her go home. Reward for turning us in."
"What?"
"You said those guys came after you right away. There wasn"t time for Gill to notify them after she saw us. And what the h.e.l.l wasGill doing at the house anyway? She must have been called in becausewe ran off. So how did they know we were gone?"
Simon gave a slow nod. "Because Tori must have heard us making plans and warned them. What difference would it make to her if we got away? h.e.l.l, you"d think she"d be happy to have the whole house to herself."
"Better to use the information to negotiate her own release."
"b.i.t.c.h." He glanced at me. "So what"s the plan?"
"First step is getting you some food." I cut off his protest. "You need your shot and if you have your shot, you need food. We have to try finding Dad andChloe. That"s going to keep us busy. We"ll start with breakfast."
Five.
We had two ways to find our father: natural and supernatural. Natural meant hunting for him the way anyone else would-by computer. Supernatural meant using a spell Dad taught Simon.
So if Simon had this magical spell, why hadn"t he used it when our dad first went missing, before we got locked up in Lyle House? He"d tried. It hadn"t worked. At the time, that hadn"t surprised me. Even Dad had trouble with the spell.
After a few months in Lyle House, that excuse had faded, overtaken by another one-that for it to work, both people needed to be in relatively close proximity. It hadn"t worked while we were at home and in Albany because Dad hadn"t been there. So why did we think Dad might be in Buffalo? First, if he"d been kidnapped by his old employers-the people we"d been running from-they were based in Buffalo, so they"d bring him here. Second, if Dad had been taken by someone else and gotten free, he might have realized we"d be brought back to Buffalo and come here looking for us.
Was either of these a perfect explanation? h.e.l.l, no. They weren"t even all that plausible. But when you"ve spent months locked up, having no idea what happened to your father, you start grasping at straws. You just don"t realize it until you"re outside those walls and faced with the cold reality that you really don"t have a clue what you"re doing.
My plan was to travel from library to library. While Simon cast his spell outside, I"d search on the computer inside. Changing locations helped Simon. It helped me, too. There"s a limit to how long you can use a library computer. With some people they don"t notice if you"ve been there a while. With me, they do. I"m six feet tall, with hair that always looks like it needs washing and skin that looks like it needs pro-acne cream. Librarians are usually quick to tell me to move along, probably shutting down the computer afterward to check the history list for p.o.r.n sites and bomb recipes.
So we spent all day moving around, casting and searching. I"d promised Simon I"d look for Chloe, too, and I did. It just wasn"t as easy as it was with my dad, where I could search on his aliases. With Chloe, I was hunting for either her home address or her aunt"s. I couldn"t get one for Dr. Fellows, but with some detective work, I figured out a way to track down Chloe"s.
I knew her mother was dead. Simon said it had been a hit-and-run when Chloe was five or six. Combine that with knowing her mom"s maiden name-Fellows-and it was easy to pull up the news of her death. I only needed her dad"s first name, and that was right there, along with his company. I knew I should probably stop reading there. Obviously she hadn"t minded telling Simon about the accident, so she"d tell me too, if I asked. Or so I reasoned. It justified finishing the article.
It was your typical senseless tragedy. Chloe"s parents were heading home after a date night. Their car was. .h.i.t by someone running a red. The other vehicle collided with the pa.s.senger side, killing Chloe"s mother. Her father escaped with minor injuries.
Chloe hadn"t been in the car. That was good. I didn"t like to think of her witnessing it. I guess I wouldn"t like to think of anyonewitnessing the death of a parent, but, well . . . I was glad she hadn"t been there.
I figured the driver hadn"t been caught, but I checked anyway and when I did, I found something else. An article from her mom"s hometown mentioned the accident and linked it to another tragedy in the family. Her mother"s twin brother, Ben, had died at the age of nineteen, when he"d fallen from a rooftop.
I only needed to check the original article to know what happened to Ben Fellows. His friends had reported that he"d been withdrawn for a few years. He"d changed his plans for college and often seemed anxious, jumpy and just "out of it."
Necromancy runs in families. Reading this, I knew it came from Chloe"s mother"s side, and that her twin brother had inherited the genes.
Had he given up trying to deal with ghosts and killed himself? Or gone up on the roof to escape one and fallen? Or been lured over the edge? Was that possible? Did it happen with necromancers? Could it happen to Chloe?
"Find anything?" Simon whispered.
I alt-tabbed fast to hide the screen. "Got her dad"s name and his business. I should be able to get a home address from that."
"Good. The librarian is checking her watch. I"ll distract her until you"re done."
I didn"t ask if he"d gotten any feedback from his spell. If he had, he"d have said so.
When he was gone, I skimmed the article about Ben Fellows again. I wasn"t telling Simon about it. No point. If- when-we found Chloe, I wasn"t telling her either. She had enough to worry about.
I started a search on Steven Saunders and the name of his business. It took a while to dig up a current address, but I finally found one. That would be our next stop.
Six.
It was evening now. We"d spent all day touring libraries and ended up here, at the foot of an apartment building.
"It"s the penthouse suite," Simon said, looking up. "That"s at the top, right?"
"Usually."
"So we can"t just peek in the window. Penthouse means it"s the only apartment on the floor, too, doesn"t it?"
"Usually."
"d.a.m.n."
"For once, you"re going to need to take the slow, careful route-"
"Never." He walked into the lobby and randomly hit b.u.t.tons until someone buzzed us in. Then he looked back at me. "Coming?"
I shook my head and followed.
We went up the stairs. It was a long walk.
"No wonder Chloe stays so skinny," Simon said as we hit the eighteenth floor. "Taking the stairs every day? Even just going down? h.e.l.l of a workout."
"How do you know she takes the stairs?"
He shrugged. "She mentioned it."
When? I wanted to say. How come I"ve spent more time alone with her, yet you know all this stuff? What kinds of conversations were you two having that she just happens to mention her dead mother and taking the stairs every morning?
Personal conversations. Real conversations. When I was with Chloe, we only seemed to discuss whatever was going on at the moment. Talking to dead people. Fighting zombies. Reburying their corpses. Sure, when you"re in the middle of those situations, it doesn"t leave a lot of time to talk about your favorite snack food, but still . . .
"You like Chloe, don"t you?" Simon said as I followed him up the stairs.
I stumbled over a step. "What? No. Course not."
"I thought you did. You get along okay. Most of the time anyway. Even when you don"t, you seem to like her well enough."
"Oh, you mean-? Sure, I like her well enough. Better than the other girls you"ve gone out with."
"Which is my point. You didn"t want anything to do with them. It"s different with Chloe. She"s different. It"sdifferent, you know?"
"You really like her."
"I do. I mean, sure, I"ve liked a lot of girls and you probably think this is just the same thing. But it"s not. I like being with her. Hanging out with her. Talking to her. Getting to know her. I"m not just asking questions to make conversation. She"s different and she"s interesting, and she doesn"t know she is and that"s . . ." He glanced back at me. "I"m glad you two seem to get along." He grinned. "It"s a nice change."
I nodded and waved for less talking and more climbing.
When we reached the top, we found a door that seemed to automatically lock from the outside. You could get intothe stairwell from outside Chloe"s apartment, but couldn"t get to her apartment from the stairwell. Made sense, security-wise. Would have made more sense if the lock couldn"t be snapped by one good wrench of super-strength.
The door led to a hall with entrances to the stairwell, the elevator and the penthouse. I walked to the last and crouched, hoping to pick up Chloe"s scent. It was there, all right. Everywhere. None of it seemed recent, but I couldn"t tell for sure.
While I hid inside the stairwell with the door slightly ajar, Simon rapped on the penthouse door.
A middle-aged woman with bright red hair answered the door. She looked Simon up and down.
"How did-?" she began.
Simon cut her short by holding out his hand. "I"m Tad. I go to school with Chloe. You must be Annette."
"How did you get up here?"
"I buzzed, but no one answered, so I came up the stairs."
She glanced toward the stairwell. "You aren"t supposed to be-"
"Is Chloe here? I haven"t seen her at school for over a week. No one seems to know where she is. I texted her, but she didn"t get back to me. I wanted to ask her to the dance next week, and I, uh, well, I hope that"s not why she"s avoiding me . . ." He gave a small laugh.