Chaos (13 page)

Miranda’s arms were trembling. “Go!” she shouted.

Luc threw himself into the Crossroad, into the blur of colors and winds and whispered voices, staggering, disoriented by the brightness after the darkness of the tunnels. But he could breathe again. The crushing weight he’d felt in the tunnels was released. He felt his lungs expand in his chest, could practically feel the blood in his veins start flowing again. He could have cried out with joy.

Miranda followed him. Almost immediately, the hole behind them healed, webbed back together.

She had kept her first promise.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Come,” she said, without looking at him.

Even though she was obviously tired, Miranda controlled the Crossroad with little effort. As she walked, the colors ebbed and split, like currents parting around an obstacle. The shrieking winds and voices withered into silence. Luc had never seen anything like it in all the times he’d gone through the Crossroad. Not even Corinthe had been able to control the Crossroad this way.

Luc followed behind Miranda, fighting through the crashing waves of color and sound in her wake. It was like trying to swim behind a speedboat. He staggered forward as quickly as he could. If they were separated, he would never find her again, he knew.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“You’ll see.”

“Why should I trust you?” He reached out and grabbed her arm, spinning her around to face him. Her eyes flashed. But then she smiled, revealing the familiar pointy tooth, sharp as a fang, next to her incisors. It reminded him of what she was, what she had done. He needed to be careful around her.

“Because I need you, just like you need me,” she answered.

“Why?” The short time he’d spent in the tunnels of time had exhausted him. How long had it been since he’d left San Francisco, since he’d seen Jasmine off, since he’d eaten? “Why do you need me?”

“We both want something back that was taken from us. We share a common enemy. That’s a very strong bond.” Her smile faded. “No more questions now. We must go very, very quietly.”

Before he could ask what she was talking about, the winds released them; the colors shifted, ebbed away, until all that was left was a dull blue light. Mist swirled around them and Luc knew that they had reached another world.

Just as suddenly, the mist released them. Luc was standing on a surface as smooth as glass.

No. A surface
made
of glass.

Everything
was made of glass. Light reflected off the surfaces like prisms, creating brilliant colors that danced all around them, much like being in the Crossroad. It reminded Luc of a contemporary sculpture, all sharp-edged glass that appeared delicate and deadly at the same time.
Steep shards of glass punctuated the ground, extending toward the sky, creating a sort of maze leading off into the indistinguishable distance.

It was deafeningly quiet, so silent it hurt his ears.

Miranda leaned close so she could speak directly into his ear. “Welcome to Aetern,” she whispered. “Place of the eternal fire.”

Jasmine caught herself just before she fell.

The pain in her head faded. She stood, gasping for breath, fighting the urge to throw up. Had there been another aftershock? But the few people she saw on the street seemed unfazed; whatever had happened had obviously happened only to her.

She shivered. The air was full of mist. Overhead, dark, stormy clouds were knitted together in the sky.

Only moments earlier, it had been clear and sunny.

She ducked back into the coffee shop as the sky opened up and rain began to drum on the sidewalk. The red-haired girl was still behind the counter, but she was wearing a different shirt. There were more people now, some standing in line, others crowding the tables. The windows were fogged up from the heat of their bodies.

It was wrong. All wrong.

Intuitively, she glanced at the stack of newspapers by the door again.

She froze. Was this a joke?

Hysterical laughter bubbled up in her throat. She looked over her shoulder to see if the girl was watching her. It
had
to be a trick—some hidden-camera, practical-joke kind of thing. Maybe it was a new reality TV show. But the girl didn’t even glance her way.

A man in a dark suit started to push past her, a large to-go cup in his hand.

“Excuse me.” Jasmine licked her lips nervously. Her throat felt parched. “Could you tell me what day it is?”

The man looked at her curiously. “Monday.”

“Are you sure?” she blurted out.

“I had to go back to work today. So yeah, I’m pretty sure.” He pushed out the door and jogged to a car double-parked at the curb, using a newspaper as a makeshift umbrella. Jasmine followed him out onto the sidewalk, mindless of the rain. She barely even felt it.

She breathed in deeply, like the school counselor, Mrs. Cole, had instructed her to do when she felt overwhelmed. If she wasn’t caught up in an enormous conspiracy of practical jokers, that left only a couple of possibilities:

Time. Ford had said something about time. He was talking about Miranda.
Time was always an obsession of hers
.

And the note she’d found in the hidden room:
Find Ford. He’ll know what to do
.

Luc had mentioned that Miranda was responsible for what had happened to Jasmine on Friday night.

It all kept coming back to the same woman. Maybe Miranda was the crazy one.

Maybe Jasmine would be okay. She had to believe that.

Jasmine stepped back from the curb as a bus rumbled by. If it was truly Monday
—again
—then Ford would be at the rotunda. Maybe she could get him to take her to Miranda.

Jasmine ran down Jackson—noticing, again, how easily she took the hills, despite the fact that it had been hours (days?) since she’d last eaten—past the park and the gym where she’d seen Ford boxing. She caught the bus at the next stop and slipped loose change from her pocket into the slot where the driver sat.

She made her way to an empty seat.

The voices of the passengers around her slugged through her mind, distorted and deep. The constant lurching of the bus, the starting and stopping, sent spikes shooting into her head. She felt sick to her stomach. Time travel. Christ. It was something out of a science-fiction book. It was impossible.

Wasn’t it?

When the bus shuddered to a stop near the Palace of Fine Arts, she exited quickly, staring at the ground. She couldn’t have been on the bus that long, but with so many streets still without electricity and the sky filled with deep gray clouds, it looked darker than before. She estimated it must be around four p.m., about twenty minutes later than the first time she’d met Ford at the rotunda. She hoped he would still be there.

Jasmine walked in the direction the bus had gone, her head down and hands in her pockets. Divisadero was familiar enough to her that she knew where the rotunda was.

Rain ran under her collar, soaked her shirt, and made her long hair stick to her face. But it felt true, and real. It convinced her
she
was real.

The debris had been cleared away from in front of the hidden staircase. What did that mean? Had Ford discovered the hideout himself? A strong feeling of dread washed over her. The attack. It was here she’d felt a hand grab her ankle; it was here she’d blacked out.

Suddenly, she realized that if it really was Monday again, that meant her attackers would pursue her here, to this very spot,
again
. She was an idiot to have come.

She froze when she heard footsteps. A familiar figure moved into the light. Ford.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

She came down the stairs toward him. His face was in shadow. “Leaving,” she said. She seized his hand. “And you’re coming with me.”

“I thought I told you yesterday—” he started, but Jas cut him off.

“Yeah, I know. Different sides and all that. But you have to trust me on this one.”

Ford wrenched his hand away from hers. “How did you know where to find me? Were you following me again?”

“Not exactly.” How much time did they have before her attackers appeared again? “Look, there’s no time to explain everything. But we need to go.
Now
.”

He hesitated for a second longer. Then he sighed and shrugged. “Lead the way.”

They made it only halfway up the stairs before the boy appeared above them, blocking their way.

“Run!” Jasmine shouted, but it was too late; there was nowhere to go. The boy launched himself at her and drove her backward, into Ford. All of them fell. The air whooshed out of Jas’s lungs when she landed on the concrete floor, catching Ford’s elbow in her side.

Quickly, she rolled free and stood up, ignoring the shooting pain in her knee. The faint light from the main room barely illuminated the stairway. Ford scrambled to his feet, but the boy from the park was on his feet just as quickly. The knife glinted in his hand.

He didn’t look like a deranged stalker or a hired killer. He looked like any other guy Jasmine might know. He wore jeans, a dark T-shirt, and a worn brown leather jacket. His hair was a little too long, and it curled over his eyes.

“What the hell?” Ford said.

“Stay out of it,” the boy said. He kept his eyes on Jasmine, even as he addressed Ford.

Ford growled. “Like hell I will. You have a knife in your hands.”

For just one second, the boy glanced at Ford. “This isn’t about you.”

In that second, Jasmine struck. She drove her knee straight into the boy’s groin. He howled in pain. His gaze swung around and met hers. Then he doubled over, falling to his knees. Jasmine had to step over him to reach the staircase, but he barely seemed to notice.

“Come on,” she said to Ford.

Jas burst into the open air and collided with the female attacker on the other side of the door. The girl was obviously startled; Jasmine reacted first and grabbed the girl’s arm, yanking her into the stairwell. Ford flattened himself against the wall as the girl stumbled, her arms swinging wildly for balance. Before the girl could right herself, Jasmine pushed her and sent her rolling down the stairs.

“Remind me to stay on your good side,” Ford said.

They ran past the fallen columns and the chunks of fissured concrete and debris. At the street, she stopped. She blinked rain out of her eyes. Which way now? Her attackers would find her again. They had done it twice already.

As if on cue, raised voices came from the direction of the rotunda. Jas’s heart was wild with panic; she could feel it pounding in her throat.

Ford grabbed her hand. As always, a jolt of electricity went through her when he touched her. “This way,” he said, pulling her toward the bay instead of inland.

“Where are we going?” Jasmine looked over her shoulder as they ran. When they were a hundred yards away, she saw the boy and girl burst into the street. The boy still looked a little green, but he was moving
fast
.

Ford led her to the parking lot and yanked her over to the nearest motorcycle. He pulled a helmet off the handlebars and tossed it to her. She barely managed to catch it.

“Put it on,” he said, already climbing onto the bike.

As Jasmine was fumbling with the clasp, she saw the ignition spark, and the bike rumbled to life.

“How’d you do that?” she asked.

Ford revved the throttle a few times. “Are you going to keep asking questions or are you going to get on?”

He was right. Jas had ridden with T.J. enough to know how to fasten the chin strap and swing her leg over the bike, behind Ford. From the corner of her eye she saw someone running toward them shouting. She threw her arms around Ford’s waist, clasped her hands, and held on tight, and the bike jumped forward.

Ford drove across Lyon and wove around a pile of debris, then crossed Marina and turned left onto Mason. A car swerved around them, horn blaring, but Jas barely heard it over the frantic beating of her own heart. The girl and boy were still chasing them on foot, unnervingly close.

How could they run so fast?

Not human
. The words, the idea, suddenly broke into Jasmine’s consciousness, and she knew it was true. They weren’t human. They couldn’t be.

She remembered how she’d watched Ford split a bag apart at the boxing gym. Was he something other than human, too?

They shot down Mason, the throttle wide open and the engine loud. The storefronts sent back a watery reflection of their headlights. Jas peeked over Ford’s shoulder and couldn’t hold back a shriek of surprise. Someone had run into the middle of the road and stopped, right in their way.

The girl. She held the knife waist high, waiting for them. Waiting for Jasmine.

“Hold on!” Ford shouted. He didn’t stop; he aimed straight for the girl. He leaned forward and Jasmine gripped his waist. His coat was slick with rain. Jasmine’s chest was tight with terror. He was going to run the girl down.