Chasing Power (20 page)

“It’ll be over soon,” Kayla promised. To Daniel, she said, “Let’s go to Tikal. The top of the Great Jaguar Temple, so we can avoid the irate archaeologists.”

“Is that a thing?” Selena asked.

“It’s totally a thing.” Kayla flashed a reassuring smile at Selena, even though her insides were churning as if she was making the worst mistake she’d ever made. She hoped she wasn’t.

He took her hand, and the world flickered white, black, and gray.

Rain pummeled them, hard, as if a bucket of water had been dumped on their heads. It poured down their faces and necks, instantly drenching their clothes.

Kayla yanked him backward into the shrine. Outside, rain poured so thickly that it seemed as if a screen had been pulled over the doorway. She took off the useless sunglasses and stuffed them in her hoodie pocket. “Now what?”

Daniel squeezed water out of his shirt. “It’ll pass fast. It’s only a thunderstorm. I’ve been in worse. Once, I jumped into a blizzard. Returned home with near frostbite.”

“You know, we could jump back. Get a smoothie while we wait.” Or she could get a smoothie, and he could wait outside or someplace else, not near her.

He shook his head. “You might change your mind.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“You hate me,” he pointed out.

“Yes, I do.”

“Besides, the rain will stop soon. Storms like this don’t last. Once, I was in London and—”

“I really don’t care.”

He fell silent.

Shifting from foot to foot, Kayla watched the rain beat the stones. She couldn’t see more than a few feet outside. It was shrouded in gray. On the plus side, at least no photographers or reporters would be out in this mess. On the negative side, she was stuck at the top of the temple with Daniel.

She checked her watch. An hour and twenty minutes to change her mind and return home with zero repercussions. She could claim she was wet because she’d jumped off the pier in a moment of wild abandon. Moonbeam would believe her, maybe.

Kayla studiously avoided looking at Daniel. Instead, she studied the murals on the walls. They were chipped and faded, damaged by time and weather, but she could make out a few glyphs, plus half a portrait of a long-ago king, the same one as on the parchment. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Daniel kneel next to the grate that used to cover the stairs. It was warped and dented. The entrance was filled with rocks. He peered around the rocks, as if looking for a way through. Even a snake would have difficulty slithering through. Of course, since Daniel was a snake, he should know that.

She noticed she was clenching and unclenching her fists and forced herself to stop. If she wanted to do this, she had to play nice with him. She could deck him after it was all over. For now, civility. “Did you get in trouble?”

“With who?”

“Your mom. After the frostbite. What did she say?”

“Oh, she wasn’t home. Plunged myself into a hot bath, and that fixed me. But still have some deadness to my fingertips here.” He stood up to show her. Turning his hand over, he took her hand to touch the tips of two of his fingers. The skin was rougher to the touch, though it looked the same. She suddenly realized she was stroking his hand, and she yanked away.

He was looking at her as if he wanted to say something, maybe an apology or an explanation. She didn’t want to hear it. Instead, Kayla stared at the rain and tried to will it to stop. The longer she stayed here, the more she thought she shouldn’t be here at all. She should go home, apologize to Moonbeam, and forget about this idiocy. She didn’t owe Daniel anything. He’d tricked her into helping at all. But the opportunity to stop Dad …

“Kayla—”

“Do you think it’s going to stop soon?” she interrupted.

“How much trouble were you in?” he asked softly.

“A lot. She wanted to ground me. Only thanks to Selena she didn’t. Certainly will if I’m late today. Assuming my father doesn’t kill me first.”

He was silent for a long moment.

Side by side, they watched the rain.

At last he said, “You know, you’re lucky your mother cares so much.”

Kayla heaved a sigh. She felt like she was deflating. She
was
lucky, and she was lucky that it wasn’t her mother who’d been kidnapped by Dad. “I know. That’s why it’s impossible to be angry with her when she pulls her OCD overprotectiveness, which, given that my father nearly killed me, is beginning to seem much more reasonable.”

Tentatively, he asked, “Do you … Are you sure that’s what he wants?”

Kayla stirred the dust at her feet with her mind. She should be angry at Daniel for asking that. But instead the question only made her feel tired. She thought of Selena, asking if he was a monster, and she rubbed her damp arms. Rain battered the shrine, spraying inside. “I don’t remember him very well. He didn’t spend much time with me. I wasn’t very interesting, I guess. All I wanted to do was play tea party or basketball or superheroes or board games or whatever he’d be willing to play with me … but as it turned out, I wasn’t good at the games he wanted me to play.”

“What did he want you to play?” Daniel’s voice was hushed. He was treating her as if she were a wild animal that could turn vicious on him at any moment. She kind of liked that. She felt fierce.

“In one of the games, he’d throw a ball at me, and I wasn’t allowed to move to catch it. It hit me in the face over and over. I didn’t know what he wanted me to do.”

“Sounds like he was testing you. You know, for—” He made Selena’s gesture for telekinesis.

“I didn’t have any power then. Certainly not enough to catch a ball. Anyway, I remember Mom saw once, when he was chucking a ball at me, and yelled at him for an hour. She was Mom then, not Moonbeam. After we moved to California, she became Moonbeam. Anyway, my dad played more with my sister, and I remember being jealous. Needless to say, all this negative emotion seriously messed me up after he killed her. I remember being convinced that if I’d been better at his games, she’d still be alive. Stupid, right? I was a kid. He was an adult. It’s not my fault.
Blah-blah-blah.” She looked at Daniel, studying his profile. He was staring moodily out at the rain. “What’s your father like? You never mention him.”

“He died when I was young,” Daniel said. “He was a good man, I think. At least that’s what everyone tells me. People like to say that.”

“People like to say a lot of things. I think it comforts them to try to be comforting. You know she never even got a funeral? We fled, right after the police failed to do anything. It wasn’t safe to stay. And so we left. We left everything. I wasn’t even allowed to talk about her. No one could even know I had a sister; that might be one more clue for my father to find us.” She felt so much bitterness swirl up into her throat that she thought she might choke. Maybe Daniel wasn’t the only one she was angry at. Around her feet, the dust began to swirl in a miniature cyclone. She let it swirl faster and faster, whipping against her feet.

“No offense, but you had a messed-up childhood.”

“And yours was peaches and sunshine? Father dead, mother absent. Any therapist would tell you that’s why you’re so reckless. You want to get caught. You want your mother to notice you. And that’s why
you
want to save her, instead of the police, isn’t it? She’ll notice you if you save her. Did you even really tell the police? Or is this all a lie?” She sent the cyclone against his ankles. The sand and pebbles pelted him.

He glared at her but didn’t move. “Defensive much? I haven’t lied to you.”

“Except about my father.”

“That was an omission, not a lie.”

“In case I haven’t been clear, I haven’t forgiven you.”

He looked pained, but she refused to feel guilty. He deserved
every second of angst. She created more cyclones. “But you hate your father more than you hate me?” he guessed.

“That sums it up nicely, yes. I want him stopped. I won’t live in fear. That’s my mother’s life, not mine. He can’t make me feel this way.” She glared out at the rain and sent a cyclone into it. The dust was pummeled by the droplets, and the cyclone fell apart.

“If we meet him again, I can teleport him somewhere,” Daniel offered. “Leave him on a mountaintop. Drop him in the ocean. Say the word.”

Despite everything, she nearly smiled. That was the nicest present anyone had ever offered her. “You’ll bring him to the police. That’s my price for helping you. I want him behind bars for what he did to my sister. It’s the only way my mom will feel safe, if she knows for certain he can’t reach her. She’ll never just take my word for it. It has to be visible.” She let the other cyclones fall to the floor. “If he tries to kill us again, of course, all bets are off and feel free.”

“Deal.”

They resumed watching out the doorway. Soon, the rain swept by as if it were a gray sheet that had been draped over the trees and then yanked away. Blue sky appeared in patches and then spread, the gray peeling away around it. A few minutes later, Kayla could see the distant mountains. Daniel wrapped his hand around hers. She flinched. “Sorry my touch is abhorrent,” he said stiffly. “Do you want to stay here?”

She glared at him and let him take her hand, and the world flashed around them.

Rain dumped on them again.

“Guess we should have waited,” Daniel said, squinting as he looked up. Water streamed over his face.

“Indeed,” Kayla said.

“Sorry.”

“On the plus side, I don’t think it’s possible to get any wetter.”

Around them, the rain battered the leaves. It sounded like drums. But soon, it lessened to drips, the forest lightened, and the birds began to call to one another again. Kayla shivered. “Any idea what the stages of hypothermia are?”

“A few jumps, and then we’ll jump somewhere to warm up,” he promised. “I just want to get a little farther.”

“Fine.” Her teeth chattered like fake windup teeth.

“I said I’m sorry.”

“And I gave a very optimistic, silver-lining response about not getting any wetter. If you’d rather I actually complained, I can do that, though I’ll warn you that I can achieve epic-level whining, given the opportunity.”

“It
is
called a rain forest,” Daniel said.

“Was I blaming you?” Kayla said. “I don’t think I was. I blame you for lying to me. I blame you for leaving me emotionally unprepared to come face-to-face with the man who personified fear and danger to me my entire life. I blame you for bringing me to his attention, endangering both me and my mother. But I don’t actually blame you for the rain.”

“Good to know,” Daniel said blandly. The sky had cleared enough to see a few peaks in the distance, but they were shrouded in streaks of gray. More rain.

Kayla noticed that his lips were tinged bluish. He was shivering too. “I vote we dry off now, let the rain get even farther away, and then come back and continue after the rain stops. Are you familiar enough with this place to come right to this spot?”

He glared at the rainstorm that they seemed to be chasing and then sighed. “Fine. The weather changes visibility anyway. Should I bring you home?”

Kayla glanced at her watch. Only a few minutes left before Moonbeam started to worry. She could go back, and Moonbeam would never know she’d tried this. But if she went back … she knew she wouldn’t leave again. It would be too easy to stay there and stay safe and let her father roam around Guatemala and Peru without her.

“Kayla, home or not?”

If she saw her mother, Kayla would lose her nerve. She had to stay strong. “Not.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t want to lie to her. I don’t want to explain. I want to fix this.” All they had to do was get to the end of this trail, find the stone, and capture her father. Then her mother would forgive all.

“Selena’s house?”

“Her mother’s home. I don’t want to complicate her life more. Queen Marguerite?”

He shook his head. “Rather not tell her we lost the first stone.
Ira Reginae Dolorem
, remember? We can go to my home.”

“Yours?”

“It’s not like anyone is there,” he said, his voice grim. He put his hand on Kayla’s shoulder, and the world winked around them.

It took a moment for Kayla’s eyes to adjust. She saw shapes in the darkness: a flight of stairs, a mirror … Daniel flicked on a
light. They were in a foyer. A mirror in a wood frame hung on one wall, and Kayla avoided looking at her bedraggled self. There was an umbrella pail and a coatrack next to the mirror. She didn’t know anyone owned a coatrack. She’d thought those were reserved exclusively for restaurants or the 1800s. A raincoat, gray and tailored, hung picturesquely from one of its brass hooks. A few black-and-white photos decorated the wall, mostly houses and streets in Europe. One had a cat in silhouette on a London roof. Another was the Eiffel Tower. A third was an ornate church with a triple dome. None were of people.

It hit her that she was doing this. She hadn’t gone home. She was going to let the two hours expire. Kayla exhaled.
You can do this
, she repeated like a mantra, as if she were the Little Engine That Could, if what the train wanted to do was toss its dad into prison.

Through one doorway, she glimpsed a perfect dining room with a china cabinet filled with delicate glass vases, Fabergé eggs, and plates with Native American designs. Around a corner, she saw a hint of a kitchen with a stainless steel refrigerator and an extensive spice rack. Directly ahead of Kayla was a flight of stairs with a deep red rug running up them. Daniel trotted up.