Shadow Walker (Neteru Academy Books) (35 page)

“His name is Brent Wilson,” Sarah said, glancing around the room. “And for the record, he’s a world class jerk. We didn’t see him at the party last night, either. So we just figured they were off together somewhere.”

Her mother and Nana Marlene exchanged a glance as Aunt Juanita returned to the room with herbal tea, which both Aunt Inez and Mom Delores refused.

“Anything else?” Nana Marlene stared at Sarah.

Sarah glanced at Tami and then bit her lip. It was Wil’s secret, just like it was Tami’s, but this was so much more important than that… yet the thought of telling where they’d been… here… in front of everyone in the family…tied Sarah’s stomach in knots.

“Well?” Sarah’s mother said, walking over and grabbing her by both arms. “This is serious, Sarah! And I know you know the answer. It’s written all over your face. Tell me.”

“I—I went through a portal to town with a boy from school… when I was supposed to be at the luau,” Tami said, quietly. “Maybe that’s where they went, too. I don’t know for sure… but Sarah didn’t want to tell on me.”

“But I—”

“What!” Tami’s mother shrieked, cutting off Sarah’s attempt at a confession, then crossed the room so quickly that she was practically a blur. She got in Tami’s face, glowering at her, breathing hard, full fangs presented, and impatiently waited on a full explanation.

“It’s not her fault,” Sarah said, coming to her friend’s defense and trying to confess herself. “I—”

“Some Uppers opened a portal—like Baba Shabazz said during opening ceremonies,” Tami said, meeting her mother’s furious gaze and then turning to Nana Marlene. “Stefan… he didn’t open it and doesn’t know how, but he did take me to town on a joy ride. Sarah was in the hall with Wil looking for me when I got back, because she was worried…”

“But…” Sarah stammered. “I also—”

“Where’s this new portal?” Uncle Richard said, interrupting Sarah and checking the clip on his nine millimeter.

“In the back of Mr. Everett’s classroom.” Tami began twisting the hem of her shirt as her eyes filled with new tears. “But we came back, and…and everything was fine. He said someone would shut it down before anyone found it, so I forgot about it once we got back. Maybe Ayana and Alexis went down that portal with Brent, or maybe looking for Brent, and something happened to them. Oh God, I’m so sorry…. I didn’t think anyone would get hurt.” Tami’s words trailed off and then became wracking sobs, as her mother grabbed her and clutched her to her chest.

“I didn’t think anything would happen, either,” Sarah said, tearing up, and then squeezed Tami’s hand.

“Get Titan Troy, Jose and Mike on detail with you, Richard,” Nana Marlene said as he headed for the door. “Professor Raziel is out in the forest flying reconnaissance with Valkyrie, and Shabazz is working at ground level. I’ll mind-lock with Shabazz and give him a remote update. Shut that portal down hard, gentlemen.”

“This Brent,” Nana Marlene said, turning back to the girls and staring at Sarah. “Is he definitely Ayana’s boyfriend?”

Sarah nodded, feeling uncomfortable. “And. . .I overheard them arguing a day before the luau. He wanted her to go down the Shady Path and into town with him to get wasted, and she didn’t want to go. But maybe she decided to go find him?”

Her grandmother closed her eyes as Aunt Inez stood and paced toward the window. “Give me strength,” Nana Marlene said, and then looked at Aunt Juanita and Aunt Tara. “Please alert security—I want Brent Wilson’s butt in a chair in front of me, pronto.”

“Done,” Aunt Tara said, glaring at her daughter. “You and I will talk later.”

Aunt Juanita nodded, and both warriors slipped out of the room.

“We will find them. We will!” Nana Marlene said, grabbing Delores and Inez by the hand.

“Nana,” Sarah said, “how did this happen?” New tears filled her eyes. “And why does this
keep
happening? Where is she?” She couldn’t help it. She burst into tears.

Damali rushed forward and hugged Sarah again. “We don’t know, baby, but we’re going to find them. I promise you that.”

“But why Yaya?” Sarah sputtered through her tears.

“I keep asking the same question,” Aunt Inez said, twisting a tissue in her fingers until she’d shredded it. “Why my baby?”

“None of it makes sense,” Sarah’s mother said, stroking Sarah’s hair as she spoke. “She doesn’t fit the pattern we thought we’d figured out,” she added, looking at Aunt Inez. “All the other children who were abducted were orphans, kids who would be missed by their friends but who didn’t have an entire compound or an extended family to get up in arms about them.” She squeezed Sarah to her closer. “And the missing adults… The Rogue Guardians, by definition, travel alone… and the staff members from Nod, like the Fae, were refugees—and many of them were already alone in the world even before they came here. The witches who were taken were soloists, not part of a working coven.”

“Then they really screwed up when they took my chile,” Inez said bitterly, and then wiped her face with the backs of her hands. “‘Cause they oughta know I’ma hunt ‘em down till I draw my last breath.”

For a moment no one spoke; in fact, they barely breathed. The hurt and rage roiling within Aunt Inez were so intense that they filled Sarah’s lungs, threatening to suffocate her.

“Girls, there is something that you should know,” Nana Marlene finally said. “I’m strongly considering shutting the school down until this matter is resolved.”

“Damn right we’re shutting the school down,” an angry male voice said behind Sarah.

They all turned to see her father standing in the doorway. Uncle Jose, a distressed Uncle Mike and Uncle Dan were behind him. Uncle Mike immediately went to Aunt Inez, who collapsed against his tree-trunk frame.

Her father walked into the room carrying a grenade launcher on his shoulder.

“Did you find anything?” Sarah’s mother asked.

“Same whole lot of nothing we found at every other scene,” her father said, disgusted. “No one else found a thing, either. We haven’t got jack.” He made a slashing motion with his hand.

“Mike, Inez,” Nana Marlene said, worry and concern shining in her eyes, “how are you holding up?”

“Not well,” Uncle Mike said, his voice tight. “And I won’t be until I have my baby girl back.”

Marlene nodded and looked away.

“I think we need to get these kids out of here, starting today. Get the parents on the PirateNet and let them know what’s going on. I can start transporting students out as soon as they’re ready,” Carlos said.

Nana Marlene rubbed a finger between her eyebrows. “I’ll get my staff started on contacting the parents. In the meantime, we’ll begin informing the students.” She went behind her desk. “You girls try to get some rest. If you think of anything else, let us know immediately.” She looked up at Dan. “Can you get our girls back to their dorm?”

“Sure,” he said, hugging his daughter Allie tightly. “Come on, pumpkin. We’ll find Yaya, don’t worry.”

Sarah stood watching as everyone prepared to go off in different directions. No! The thought screamed out to her so loudly that she thought for a moment one of her Aunts had yelled it. This wasn’t right. They couldn’t leave. The school had to stay open. Something deep inside her knew they couldn’t go. They had to stay if there was any hope of finding Ayana and the other students alive. She felt it like a vibration deep within her.

“No. We can’t leave,” she said in a quiet, far-away tone. She didn’t move, didn’t turn away from her father’s look of impatience as she slowly began shaking her head.

Everyone turned to face her.

“What?” her father said with a frown.

Sarah stared at them, wiped her cheeks and repeated herself, “We can’t leave. Ayana’s still out there, and if we leave, we’ll never find her. I know it.” Then she stared off into space and said, almost as an afterthought, “Ayana wasn’t supposed to be taken. It was a mistake.”

Aunt Inez put her hand over her mouth, and Uncle Mike hugged her even closer. For a moment, everyone in the room paused and stared at Sarah as her mother and grandmother became eerily still.

“Baby… how do you know?” her mother asked in a quiet, intense voice.

Sarah swallowed hard. “I don’t know, Mom… I just do.”

Her grandmother shot a glance toward her mother, but her dad hesitated for a second and then crossed the room, seeming to dismiss her statement with a tense shrug.

“Baby girl, I know how you feel,” he said, trying to convince her to leave. “This is eating me up, too, believe me. But you can’t stay. It’s not safe. I wish that everyone had listened to me earlier and that none of you were here—but it is what it is. Now me, your Mom and the rest of the family have to fix this and make it right. Okay, baby? You understand me?”

Sarah shook her head stubbornly, becoming frantic. “We can’t leave. We have to stay and find them, Papi.”

Her father put his hands on her shoulders, leaned down and looked her in the eyes. “We
will
find her,” he said, and his voice was full of strength and conviction. “No matter what, we will bring Yaya home. We’ll bring all those kids home. There ain’t no doubt about that, ok? Just leave it to us. But we need you at home, safe, so we can do what we need to do.”

Pure terror entered her, and she held her father’s t-shirt in her fists as full-blown hysteria suddenly overtook her. “No, Daddy, you don’t understand. She’s my mother-seer! We’re linked! I feel her, I know…I can’t explain it, but I
know
—if you shut down the school, you’re sentencing her to death. Don’t do it!”

“Carlos, listen to the child,” Aunt Inez said, going to Sarah and hugging her, pulling her away from her father and staring into her eyes. “Tell us what you see, baby,” her aunt implored. “I’m a seer, your mother is a seer, your nana is a seer—and so’s our Yaya. Tell me, honey… can you feel her? Is she all right?”

Sarah nodded, crying harder in her aunt’s embrace. “They’re alive. It’s dark. I can’t see where they are… but I know inside my soul that if you shut the school down now, we’ll never find them.”

“I think the people who have the final say are those who have the most already at risk,” Nana Marlene said calmly but firmly, looking at Sarah’s father. “That would be Inez and Mike.”

Aunt Inez snapped her head up to look at Sarah’s father. “Carlos…it’s my baby girl who’s missing. Sarah is the only one who’s linked to Ayana this strongly. The mother seer bond between them has been growing steadily. It’s even tighter than the mother-daughter connection.”

Even Sarah’s mother nodded. “I don’t need to remind you that there is a strong link between a future mother seer and her charge, Carlos,” she said.

Nodding in agreement, Nana Marlene walked over to Carlos and put a hand on his shoulder. “It has begun, and neither you, nor anybody else, can stop it. This is the order of things. The babies leave their parents and form the link with the mother seer, and you have got to let Sarah’s instincts about this prevail.”

“If Sarah says we keep the school open, we keep it open,” Uncle Mike said, looking hard at Sarah’s Dad.

Clearly outnumbered, her father finally nodded. .

“I’ll work with Nana Marlene to contact the parents, so they can make their individual choices,” Sarah’s mother said.. “Some may pull their children, but we will honor Sarah’s instincts, Carlos.” Her mother went to Inez and brushed back her hair. “ We’re gonna get those kids back safely. All of them.”

“…Do not be hostile to me in the presence of the Keeper of the Balance…”

—The Book of Going Forth by Day:

The Egyptian Book of the Dead,

Translation by Dr. Raymond Faulkner

S
arah looked up at her uncle Dan as he guided them all back to the dorm. Strain was apparent in his deep blue eyes, his normally neat blond hair was mussed, and fatigue had cast a gray pallor over his normally robust complexion. She hated to wrest him from his deep thoughts as they trudged along like a defeated huddle of humanity, but she had to make a stop along the way. She had to
feel
Ayana’s room.

“Uncle Dan…I’ve got to go into Ayana’s room.”

The group stopped walking and simply stared at her.

“I have to,” Sarah insisted, beginning to twist her shirt into a knot. “I have to feel what the room can tell me.”

“All right,” he said hesitantly. “I’m no seer—I’m just a Tactical—but I’ve witnessed how sensing is done. I don’t suppose there’d be any harm in it, especially since your grandmother and mother, as well as your aunt Inez, have all been in there already to try to pick up impressions.”

“Thanks,” Sarah whispered.

“Dad, if anybody is connected to Yaya, it’s Sarah,” Allie said with a trembling voice as she put an arm over her friend’s shoulder.

“Okay, let me get you three into your room—and I’m waiting ‘til I hear you lock the door, got that? And then I’ll take you, Sarah.”

Just having a plan, having something to do, made her walk more quickly and added intensity of purpose to her stride. She waited impatiently for her uncle to herd everyone else into their dorm room and for him to say good-bye to Allie, knowing how parting with his daughter was tearing him up now more than ever. It had been on every parent’s face in Nana Marlene’s office, that sense of relief amid doom. It was telegraphed in the extra tight hugs, in teary eyes and wavering voices. All of it said, there but for the grace of God go I—that could have been my baby who’s gone missing.

But soon her uncle’s warm arm covered her shoulders as he steered her to Ayana’s room. He opened the door and stood back, allowing Sarah to enter under his watchful gaze.

She stood in the middle of the floor and closed her eyes. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. Ayana’s bed was made. Her books were stacked in the corner of her desk. Her roommates’ tension still thickened the air like a heavy residue… crying. Tina and Darlene were terrified and had been crying just like she, Tami, Allie and ‘Cinth had been. They had been moved to a new room for safety’s sake and clearly hadn’t wanted to leave. Sarah opened her eyes and hugged herself for a moment, then caught a glimpse of the shadows in the corner.