Earthbound e-1 Page 18

  My fingers shake as I hold up my hand and picture the tool in my head. An instant later I’m holding a rather short crowbar. I avert my eyes as Benson takes it from me. After that it’s a matter of seconds before he’s pried the lid off.

  We both drop to our knees to peer into the box.

  “Sweet,” Benson says, lifting a heavy pouch that jingles with the clink of metal. A quick look inside and he whistles. “Damn, this Quinn guy was seriously loaded.”

  “Give me that,” I scold, snatching it away. “We’re not grave-robbing.”

  “This is not a grave,” Benson says. “And that pouch has got to be worth five figures. At least.” He grins. “Think about how much gas and trail mix that is.”

  I glare at him and put it on the ground beside me.

  Though I do love trail mix …

  “Ooh, check it,” I say, pulling out a book with a familiar triangle pressed into the leather cover. “It’s another journal.” I flip it open, expecting Rebecca’s flowery script, but a bold, masculine hand greets me instead. “I think this was Quinn’s.”

  There’s no name on the front cover, but the second page has a list of names and dates, with Quinn’s name at the top. There are no repeating surnames and there doesn’t seem to be a pattern—though they do go backward until 1568. Then there are three more names without dates.

  I turn the page and hold the book out at arm’s length as I’m greeted with words three times the size of the precise list on the previous page.

  If you are not friend to me, then the gods have mercy on your damned soul if you read on.

  My eyes are wide as I reread the words. “Benson?”

  “There’s a painting and a pocket watch in here too. Weird.”

  “Benson?”

  “Hey, this painting has a house on it. What do you want to bet it’s the—”

  “Benson!”

  He looks up and I turn the book to him. “Am I a friend?” Friend to a ghost?

  Benson raises an eyebrow. “Do you think it really matters? He’s dead.”

  “He’s already haunted me for a week!” I retort shrilly, though haunting isn’t really the right word for it.

  Still, Benson freezes. “You’ve got a point.” He purses his lips. “He did show you the combination. I think that’s a pretty good sign that he doesn’t mind if you read this.”

  I nod, but adrenaline makes my fingers tremble as I turn the page and the writing returns to normal.

  I am Quinn Avery. I am Earthbound. I am a Creator. If you are reading these words, I pray thou be a trusted friend or mine own reborn. Within this box find ye the tools needed to restore me. But when ye have, seek and find Rebecca. Nothing in this wide world is of greater import. Find her. Give her the necklace.

  “Rebecca.” I whisper her name quietly, feeling it burn on my tongue. He wants me to find her? Her ghost, I guess. Why? So they can live ghostily ever after? I force my fingers to relax when I realize I’m gripping the journal so hard I’m beginning to bow the covers.

  “So—” Benson hesitates. “So you were right. He’s also an Earthbound. Was. You know.”

  I ignore the unspoken declaration that that means I’m an Earthbound too. I don’t know what that means and I’m not sure I’m ready to find out.

  “I wonder if his stuff also disappears,” I muse quietly.

  “Well, next time you see Quinn’s ghost, you should ask him,” Benson says, peering back into the crate.

  “He doesn’t answer questions,” I say, flipping through the journal only to find that it’s blank after about the first ten pages.

  “You said you had conversations with him.”

  “I thought they were conversations, but everything he ever said to me I can find in Rebecca’s diary. It’s like …” I let the journal rest in my lap. “Like he’s not a ghost so much as an echo of the past. I think that’s why he called me Becca, even though I told him my name was Tavia.” I remember how angry it made me. Now I feel strangely apathetic.

  Briefly I wonder what that means about me, but I have too many other questions to answer first. Bigger questions. Much bigger.

  I turn my attention back to the journal. “Hey, look!”

  Benson turns to peer over the pages with me as I point to two carefully drawn symbols.

  “It’s the one from the files in Reese’s office,” I say, pointing to a drawing of the feather and the flame with the word Curatoria written beneath it. “That’s the word Elizabeth used. I guess it’s a name, not a word.”

  “Makes sense,” Benson says quietly.

  “I wonder. I don’t have my phone anymore, but a couple days ago I took a picture of a really worn-down symbol on a building in Portsmouth. It was so faded I could only see something round over something with wavy lines. But it definitely could have been this symbol.”

  I move my finger to the opposite page. “But not this one. It’s totally the wrong shape.” This one is an ankh, but instead of the circle at the top connecting, one side curves out and makes the shape of a shepherd’s crook instead. “Reduciata,” I say. “Jay and Elizabeth both said that one.” I try to read, but Benson keeps moving the light back to the box he broke into.

  “Look at this,” he says, tilting a small framed painting up for me to see. It’s clearly done by the same artist as the others on the table, but this one is much smaller and it’s the only one we’ve found in a frame. It’s of a yellow house nestled in a grove of trees that are about halfway through the autumn change. “I bet it’s the house he was killed in.”

  “He wasn’t killed there.” The words are out of my mouth before I have a chance to consider them.

  I gape at Benson—how did I know that?—and reach for the painting. As soon as my fingers touch the brittle edges of the oil paint, I’m bombarded by an avalanche of distorted images and blended sensations.

  “It was a trick,” I manage to say as the barrage of sensation breaks my focus. My fingers wrap around the frame, gripping it tighter as words pour from my mouth and I can almost feel Quinn again, somewhere in the distortion and noise, but I’m nearly deafened by a scratching buzz, blinded by billowing fog. “They were never really in danger—not from the guns—but they had to … had to … I can’t! Help me, Benson!” I’m holding the painting out to him, but I can’t make my fingers let go as the sensation of fire licks up my arms and rattling static fills my ears.

  Benson yanks the painting away from me and tosses it on the ground behind him before wrapping his hands around my upper arms. I almost collapse against him but manage to wring the last vestiges of strength from my weary muscles in time to catch myself.

  “What happened?”

  “I—I don’t know. I touched the painting and it was … like I knew what happened to Quinn. Or, what didn’t happen, I guess.” Black dots swim in front of my eyes and I’m afraid I’m about to faint. I feel like I’ve just run a marathon on an empty stomach.

  “I can’t stay here any longer,” I say, my hands covering my eyes.

  “No problem. We can come back another day.”

  I nod mutely—not wanting to come back ever—and Benson reaches for the painting and tosses it back into the crate, pushing it into the darkness. He gathers up several of the other objects and packs them into a leather bag he brought along. I lean against the crumbly dirt wall and avert my eyes so I don’t have to see the painting again. Even the thought of it makes me a little queasy, like I’m riding a bad roller coaster.

  It’s not supposed to be this way. The thought comes unbidden to my mind.

  The journal starts to slide off my lap and I slap both hands down on top of it.

  “It’s just me,” Benson says.

  “I want to take this.”

  “Whatever you say. As long as it’s not going to mess you up like the picture.”

  “It won’t,” I insist. I have no reason to assume that, but somehow, I know it’s true. “I need it.”

  The words come out of my mouth, but they don’t sound l
ike mine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “I don’t think I can drive,” I say when we finally catch sight of Reese’s car half an hour later through the swirling gusts of sharp, icy winds. The shiny dots are back in front of my eyes as I try halfheartedly to help clean a thin layer of snow off the windshield. “Can you gemefood?” My words are slurring and I have to concentrate on standing upright as I dig the keys out of my pocket. I’m too tired to even worry very hard about the people following us, although, after the car incident, I ought to be doubly on edge.

  Especially because I’m completely useless right now. But given our freezing journey through the woods and how he had to half carry me and his messenger bag filled with stuff from the dugout, I can’t imagine Benson’s feeling too spry either.

  After helping me get in and buckle my seat belt, Benson asks, “Do you need to throw up? You look sick.”

  I shake my head and the motion makes me nauseous. “Need food. Starving.”

  “I think you should magic yourself something.”

  “Won’t help,” I argue, leaning my forehead against the window and closing my eyes. “Disappear in five minutes. Even the stuff I already ate.”

  “Yeah, but if you keep making more for the ten minutes that it’ll take me to get you some real food, you’ll keep replenishing the food that disappears. It’s got to at least help a little,” Benson says, his eyes pleading with me not to fight him on this.

  It takes a few seconds for the words to register and I realize it’s a rather brilliant idea. I fight it, though. The thought of actually ingesting something I made with my freaky magic makes me nauseous. More nauseous.

  I can last; there’s gotta be some fast food here. French fries. I can stay conscious long enough for some good, salty fries. The picture in my head is so vivid I have to resist the urge to lick my lips.

  It’s only when I feel the heat starting to seep through my jeans that I look down and see a carton of perfect french fries sitting in my lap. My hands grab for them even as my mind screams that they aren’t real, that I shouldn’t touch them. But Benson’s right—I have to eat something now. I almost burn my tongue pushing them into my mouth and try to remember to chew. In less than two minutes the carton is gone.

  “Make more,” Benson says, and he sounds very serious now as he bumps onto the paved road and heads back toward Camden.

  I don’t fight it this time, and soon I’m making my way through another carton of fries. They warm me up and replenish my blood sugar faster than I would have thought possible. When the second carton is gone, I take a few deep breaths before making another one. The first carton will be disintegrating soon and I realize I have no choice anymore: I have to keep eating to prevent my blood sugar from crashing again. Probably harder this time.

  I make another batch of french fries and conjure up a big cup of hot chocolate to go with them. Steadily, but not at the frantic pace I started out at, I munch and sip as I start to feel normal again.

  “Hamburgers or tacos?” Benson asks dubiously as he looks between two non-branded fast-food joints that look questionable at best. At least they’re open.

  “Oh, hamburgers, please. Some kind of double with fries—real ones—and a Coke. Not the diet kind.” I stuff another handful of fries into my mouth as it starts to water at the thought of a hamburger.

  There’s no drive-through and Benson turns to look at me sternly with his hand on the door handle. “Keep eating. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Hurry,” I say with a smile. I’m conning my body and I don’t know how long I can keep it up before it rebels.

  A handful of fries stops midway to my mouth when I realize that the last few days have been just like when I woke up from the coma. I ate and slept almost all day long. They told me it was because my brain needed immense amounts of resources to heal. It makes me wonder just what the hell my brain is doing now, what that picture did that my body needs this much help recovering from.

  Reese’s words about burning me out come back to me and I’m sick to my stomach again. What kind of horrible metamorphosis am I undergoing? I try to push the thoughts aside and conjure up a second hot chocolate. Nauseated or not, I have to keep eating or I’m going to be in big trouble.

  Twelve minutes pass by the time Benson slips back into the car, and I’ve gone through five cartons of fries and both cups of hot chocolate. The smell of the burgers fills the air, and I push the magic fries off my lap and onto the floor in my hurry to reach for the two to-go bags.

  “Watch it, Tave!” Benson gasps as fries scatter everywhere. “This is a Beemer!”

  Such a guy. “Gone in five minutes,” I remind him. “Grease stains and all.”

  “Well, these ones are real,” Benson says grudgingly. “So be careful.”

  I take a second to spread some napkins on my lap before unwrapping my humongous hamburger and taking a big bite. We munch silently for a long time as I slowly feel my system start to stabilize.

  “That was a really good idea,” I say when I get a moment to take a breath. “I’d have blacked out before we got here for sure.”

  “And I don’t even want to think about how I’d try to explain that to some stranger who saw us on the side of the road,” Benson says grimly.

  “No kidding,” I murmur. We eat a while longer. “Thank you.”

  “It’s just food,” he replies with a grin.

  “No, seriously.” I turn to face him fully. “Thank you for everything. Not freaking out, believing me even when I sound crazy; everything, Benson.”

  “You’re welcome, I guess,” he says, and I can’t help but notice there’s a smear of mustard just above his lip.

  I smile and reach a finger out to wipe it off. “You missed a spot,” I whisper when his eyes darken—no, deepen—pinning me to my seat in a flutter of nerves and delight. He reaches for my hand and lifts my fingers to his lips, kissing each one briefly.

  “Thank you,” he whispers, with an intensity I don’t understand but revel in. I hide my sappy grin behind my sandwich and we both finish our meal in silence.

  When my food is gone and I’m so full I’m just on this side of being uncomfortable, I wipe the oil off my hands and reach for Quinn’s journal while Benson finishes.

  “Listen to this,” I say, pointing to a short passage. “Of the brotherhoods trust ye the Curatoria but tenuously, and the Reduciata not at all. Give none of them your secrets. Above all, tell the Reduciata nothing of Rebecca. If you know her whereabouts, deceive them.” I think about Elizabeth blurting out that name—Reduciata. “Who do you think the Reduciata are?”

  “No clue,” he says around a big bite.

  “Must be someone bad,” I say, flipping another page. “Reese and Elizabeth were worried Quinn was a … Reduciate? That must be what they call their members.” I point at that paragraph. “I have a feeling he wasn’t.”

  “Sounds like this Rebecca chick was in some serious trouble,” Benson says, peering over my shoulder.

  “Quinn too. It’s got such old-fashioned wording—I’m going to have to read it carefully—but he talks about storing the gold to brace against disaster, and here, running to ground like a hare in the hunt.” I pause as a sinking feeling hits my heart. “Sounds like us, doesn’t it?”

  “Sadly.”

  “He says not to trust the Curatoria, but from what I can tell, it’s the Reduciata they’re always running from.” I pause, mulling the name over in my head. “Reduciata; it sounds kinda like Illuminati. Maybe they’re both secret societies trying to … I don’t know, run the government?”

  “Wasn’t much of a government back then,” Benson says. “Or at least not much of a United States. Not yet.”

  “True. But I don’t think they were just based in the United States. Look.” I tilt the book toward him. “You can see a drawing of a pyramid here, and the ankh symbol is from ancient Egypt.” I read that section, trying to make sense of Quinn’s old-fashioned prose. “It looks like the Reduciata a
nd the Curatoria were behind all the pharaohs of ancient Egypt—fighting to be the one in true control. It says the pyramids were built to hoard their belongings, kinda like Rebecca and Quinn’s dugout.”

  “That sounds a little far-fetched. People took their myths pretty seriously back then, though.”

  “Well, that is what they did with the pyramids, right? Filled them full of the pharaohs’ belongings? They would even bury servants alive in there.”

  “Yeah, but … the pyramids, really?”

  My fingers hesitate at the bottom of the page. “The pyramids. Benson, the pyramids are triangles. Triangles that face all four directions.”

  “I’m … not following,” Benson says, sounding almost wary.

  “The Curatoria and the Reduciata have symbols; doesn’t it seem like the Earthbound would too? It’s got to be the triangle. That’s why Reese said the triangle changed everything. Think about it. If you were an ancient Egyptian and you saw someone do the things I can do, what would you do?”

  “Stone him?” Benson suggests.

  I smack his shoulder. “Or make him your leader. In fact,” I add on, grinning as the idea occurs to me, “you might decide your pharaohs are gods. Even though they really aren’t,” I tack on quickly. “I think it makes total sense.”

  This time Benson nods. “I can see that. Does he say anything else in there?”

  “It’s hard to make it out,” I say, not bothering to hide my disappointment. “I’ve only figured out that one bit about the two groups.” I chuckle morosely. “I’m just making the rest of this stuff up.”

  “And you’re sure Quinn didn’t die in that cabin?” Benson asks as he crumples up our trash.

  “No. They were supposed to,” I say, wrenching my attention away from the journal—what little there is of it. “But … they escaped.” An ache starts as I try to think about that, but it’s not so overwhelming now that I’ve eaten.

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s like remembering a movie you watched a long time ago. You remember the basics, but not all the details. And the more I try to remember, the harder it is.”