Rising (46 page)

“Yeah,” he whispered groggily, “very
funny.”

***

I woke up to the smell of bacon
frying.
 
My stomach rumbled
expectantly.
 
I couldn’t even remember
the last time I ate, and I was starving.
 
I was alone in the bedroom, but I could hear the romping laughter of
kids in the next room.
 
As I shuffled the
covers off, I noticed my gym bag on the side of the bed with a few pairs of
jeans and some of my other clothes stuffed inside.
 
I slipped on a pair of jeans and changed into
a soft cotton t-shirt that had swirling patterns of green vines all around it.

The back door was open, leading out
toward the bayou.
 
I could see my dad,
Mr. and Mrs. Jaden, and Ben’s dad all talking quite seriously, while drinking
coffee at the picnic table. There were sleeping bags piled all over the floor,
which made me realize how lucky I was to have one of the few beds in the cabin
last night. Gabe’s mom and Melanie’s Gram were shuffling around the kitchen
making breakfast.
 
Gabe, his Pop, and Ben
were at the table eating heartily.
 
Gabe
looked cleaned up since last night.

“Good morning,” he said, taking a bite
of a buttered biscuit.

There was a basket of biscuits, a plate
of fried bacon and fried ham spread out on the counter.

“You hungry, Sweetheart?” asked Ms.
Goddard.
 
“We’ve got plenty. Of course,
we didn’t bring any eggs, and all we’ve got is water to drink.
 
I didn’t have time to empty all of the
fridge, because someone was in such a hurry to get going,” she said, swatting
Gabe on the shoulder as she set a bottle of syrup on the table.

“It’s good enough for me,” said Pop,
pouring syrup all over two biscuits stuffed with slices of ham.

“Wow,” was all I could say, then
something dawned on me.
 
“Wait a
second.
 
How did you cook all this
without electricity?
 
I don’t hear a
generator.”

“No, we didn’t have time to bring that
either,” said Ms. Goddard.
 
“Come to find
out, we’ve got our own.”

I knew I looked puzzled.

“It’s Ben,” said Gabe, pointing to the blonde-haired
mess next to him.

“What do you mean?” I asked, completely
confused.

“Well, we were talking this morning
about how he burned that black slime that the reaper spat on him yesterday and
killed it. Ben said he shocked it to death. Then, I wondered if he could shoot
electricity into something else, so we tried it.”

“Yeah,” said Ben, still chewing, “so I
held the plug to the toaster and zapped it and it worked just like it was
plugged in the wall.
 
Cool, huh?”

“That’s when Ben suggested trying it on
the oven so that my mom could get some breakfast going.
 
Of course, he had to zap it five separate
times to keep it hot enough to bake biscuits.”

“But wasn’t it worth it, son,” said
Pop, biting into a soppy biscuit.

“Mm-hmm,” agreed Ben, chewing happily.

“Well, that will definitely come in
handy,” I said, “It seems a bit coincidental that you all wanted to test it on
food appliances,” I said.

“I don’t mind.
 
It gave me something normal to do,” said Ms.
Goddard.
 
“This whole thing is so weird to
me that I’ve stopped trying to understand it.”

“I know it’s difficult to believe,”
said Mel, walking in the room and looking as if she hadn’t lost a wink of sleep
with her long hair pulled neatly into a ponytail, “but I’m just glad that you
trusted Gabe and came with him, not even having seen the creatures for
yourselves.”

“I heard enough from Sarah Jaden to
know that you’re all telling the truth.
 
Besides,” she said, glancing at Gabe, “I’ve always known that my son had
a special intuition.
 
I just didn’t think
it was supernatural-special.”

Gabe glanced at her, but didn’t
comment.

“Everything happens for a reason,” said
Gram, “these kids have been friends for a long time.
 
Something has kept them together.”

“Well, except for Jeremy,” said Ben.

“Has anyone seen a knife around here?”
asked Ms. Goddard, opening and slamming drawers shut.
 
“I can’t find one sharp knife in the whole
dang place.”

“
Hmph
,” was
Ben’s comment with a roll of the eyes.

“Speaking of Jeremy, where is he?” I
asked.

“He wanted to go back into town for
something,” said Gabe.

“By himself?”

“He’ll be fine during the daytime,”
assured Mel.
 
“That’s what Homer said.”

Knock, knock, knock.
 
We all looked at the door, but no one moved.

“I don’t think a reaper would knock,”
said Mel, crossing the room and opening the door.

It was Homer with his orange tabby cat
Newton in his hands.
 
He had on the same
kind of plaid shirt, but a green and brown one today, and his Roper,
steel-tipped boots.
 
His hair was pulled
back in a ponytail like yesterday, too.
 
Was it really only yesterday that we’d met?
 

“Good morning, everyone,” he said,
stepping inside.
 
“I’m happy that
everyone appears to be safe and sound.
 
You must be Melanie.
 
It’s nice to
meet you face to face.”

“Same here,” she said, shaking his
hand.

“I’m Melanie’s grandmother,” said Gram,
shaking his hand, too.

“This is my mother, Nancy Goddard,”
said Gabe.

Ms. Goddard wiped her hands on a towel
then shook his hand lightly.

“We’ve heard quite a bit about you this
morning, Mr. Homer,” she said.

“Oh, just Homer please.”

Geez, how long did I sleep?
 
It seemed like everyone knew about
everything, but then I realized I hadn’t left the bedroom since we got
here.
 
I imagine they were all talking
well into the night about everything that had happened.

“Would you like some coffee, Mr.—, I
mean Homer?” asked Ms. Goddard.

“That would be wonderful.
 
Thank you.”

Misty swept my ankles, staring intently
up at Newton in Homer’s arms.
 
Newton
made a hoarse, grumbled meow, so Homer put him down.
 
The two cats ran up and touched noses then
Misty flitted away with Newton close behind.
 
It made me smile.
 
Then Homer
walked up to me and put a hand on my shoulder, asking gently, “Are you feeling
okay, Clara?”

There was such genuine sympathy in his
voice and in his eyes that I felt the sting of tears welling up suddenly.
 
I swallowed hard.

“Yes, Homer, as well as can be
expected.”

“Good,” he said, “because we all have a
great trial ahead of us.”

Hearing that, Gabe and Ben left the
table to join us.
 
We gathered on the
beat-up sofa and mix-matched chairs.
 
Mel
pulled a chair from the table to sit next to me.
 
Gram joined us, too.
 
Ms. Goddard brought Homer a cup of coffee
then milled around the kitchen but she seemed to be keeping an attentive ear on
us.
 
Pop brought his coffee with him and
stood behind Gabe.

“First, I think we should talk about
what happened with you and Jeremy last night, Gabe.”

“What happened?” I asked hastily.

“We had a run-in with some reapers when
we passed the mill,” he said, not completely holding my gaze.

I realized he was leaving something out
about the mill, but I wasn’t going to press the issue.
 
Obviously, it was something pretty
unpleasant.

“Yes.
 
It was a close call,” said Homer.
 
“I was concerned when I was tracing you, because everything became hazy
after the car accident.”

“Car accident!” I exclaimed.
 
“Why didn’t you tell me about an accident?”

I was staring straight at Gabe,
probably making him uncomfortable, but I didn’t care.

“There was no need.
 
We made it just fine,” said Gabe calmly
before turning back to Homer.
 
“Why would
they come after just two of us in a car when they didn’t need to?”

“They knew you were
Setti
,
and they knew you were separated from your clan.
 
That’s of course when it would be easiest to
pick you off, pardon the expression.
 
You
have to understand that the reapers are an arrogant race of creatures.
 
Because they dominate humans so easily, they
have a sick pride about killing
Setti
, who have a
power equal to their own.
 
They would
never agree that we’re equal, but when we work together, we are actually
greater than them.
 
They saw the
opportunity and took it.”

The back door opened and Jeremy stepped
through with his backpack over his shoulder.
 
He had pep in his step for some reason, bobbing his head to his iPod.

“Hey,” he said too loudly and unplugged
his earphones, “what’s up, Homer?
 
Come
to join the party?”

“Hello, Jeremy.
 
We were just discussing yours and Gabriel’s
escapades last night.”

“Yeah, that was something else,” he
said, spinning a chair around that was facing the fireplace and sitting.
 
“Thought we were wasted when that reaper
jumped in the boat.”

“In the boat!” I exclaimed.

“It’s okay,” said Gabe, trying to calm
me, “we all made it just fine.”

I realized then that they wouldn’t have
been in danger if I’d been there.
 
Gabe
was right about needing to stick together.
 
I couldn’t act on my own selfish whims anymore, not if I planned to keep
everyone safe.

“You know, Homer,” said Jeremy, “I was
wondering if you knew why we had all those nightmares.
 
I mean, Clara had one that didn’t exactly
come true, but then it sort of did.
 
Then
last night, I remembered my dream about Main Street and seeing people killed
there in the plaza.
 
That’s what made me
look and stop where Mrs. Jaden was.
 
Are
these dreams we’re having like visions?
 
Like what you have?”

Homer pressed his lips together and
scratched his bearded chin.

“Not exactly.
 
They’re not visions of the certain
future.
 
I don’t even have those kinds of
visions.
 
What I see is always connected
to the power of the
Setti
and also the
myrkr
j
ö
tnar
,
or the reapers as we call them.
 
Your
dreams are connected to the power of the
Setti
in the
same way.
 
I’ve talked to my friend
Herrald
in Arkansas and he claims that his clan members
have all had nightmares, too.
 
I think
it’s like an innate warning system that comes with the power that binds us,
that shows us and prepares us for what is coming.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” said
Mel.
 
“I mean, that it’s not a vision of
the future.”

“Why?” I asked.
 
“You told us you hadn’t had any nightmares.”

“Well, I didn’t.
 
Not recently anyway.
 
But, I did have one really frightening
nightmare over a month ago.
 
I asked Gram
to help me do the
traiteur
ward against nightmares,
which worked.
 
I didn’t realize I’d
basically blocked them myself.”

“Well, what was the one dream?” asked
Gabe.

Mel’s eyes flicked to Ben then away
again to Homer.

“It wasn’t about monsters.
 
At least, I didn’t see any.
 
I guess that’s why I didn’t make any
connection to the reapers.”

“What was it then?” asked Jeremy.

“I dreamed that Ben exploded.”

“So Firefly becomes Firecracker,” said
Jeremy.

“Drop it,” said Gabe a bit too sternly.

Jeremy was always joking about Ben, but
something hit Gabe wrong this time.

“I wouldn’t worry about that dream,”
said Homer reassuringly, “these nightmares aren’t predictions of the
future.
 
They’re only warnings to prepare
us for what we must face.”