Endless (32 page)

Tiffany was sitting on the curb with Jenny when her dad showed up.

Jenny spotted him, face haggard with worry, scanning the crowd. Everything studied dropped from his face when he saw her. He rushed across the pavement, grabbing her and holding tight.

“My God … I was worried sick.” He pulled back, combing her face with his eyes. “Are you okay? Were you hurt?”

Jenny shook her head. “But Ben and his mom were in there, too,” she said. “And Ben’s dad. He … he tried to hurt them, Daddy.”

The old name for her father had slipped from her lips, and he wrapped her in his arms again.

“Are you okay here with Tiffany?” he asked a couple of minutes later. “I’m going to go check on Clare and Ben.”

Jenny nodded, and her dad gave her a final squeeze before heading to the ambulance where Ben and his mom sat, wrapped in blankets and giving their statement to an officer with a notebook.

Stony Creek’s volunteer fire department, with the help of Acton’s bigger brigade, was still trying to put out the fire. Local news crews had already arrived, their dish-topped vans lining the street as cameramen took footage of the fire. Seeing them, Jenny was glad she’d insisted Nikolai go to the car. The last thing they needed was his face on TV or questions from the police surrounding his identity, even if it was related to what had happened in the store.

“You sure you’re okay?” Tiffany asked softly. “Can I get you anything? Some water?”

Jenny shook her head, coughing up soot. “I have to get Nikolai out of here, but I still have no idea what to do.”

Tiffany hesitated. “What about Morgan?”

“What about her?”

“Are you sure you can’t trust her?”

Jenny thought about Morgan’s last text to her.
I can help you.

Was she desperate enough to give Morgan another chance? To believe that Morgan would help her and Nikolai instead of turning him over to the Order?

Her dad appeared on the sidewalk next to her. “Honey, I’m going to go in the ambulance with Clare. They think she had some pretty severe smoke inhalation and want to check her out. Would it be okay if Ben got you home?”

“Doesn’t he want to go with his mom?” she asked.

“The police want to ask Clare more about Ben’s dad. She doesn’t want Ben to be there. She’s talking to Ben now, asking him to get you home while I go with her to the hospital.”

Jenny nodded. “Sure, okay.”

Her dad bent down and kissed her forehead. “I’ll call you in a bit to tell you when I’ll be home.”

He sprinted across the pavement, climbing into the back of the ambulance. The paramedics shut the door, and the ambulance pulled away, lights flashing but sirens off. Ben stood on the pavement, hands in his pockets, looking more lost then anyone Jenny had ever seen.

She stood up. “I need to check on Ben.”

She and Tiffany walked over to where he stood. Jenny took his hand. He didn’t flinch or even move. It was like she wasn’t there at all.

“Ben?” she said softly. “You okay?”

It took him a minute to notice her. When he did, he looked down at her with surprise. “He shoved me out the door.”

“I know.”

“He’s dead,” Ben said, his voice flat.

Jenny squeezed his hand.

“They … they wouldn’t let me go with my mom,” he said. “They said the police needed a private statement.”

She turned to face him, giving him a hug. “I’m sorry. But it sounds like she’ll be okay. My dad promised to call and give us an update.”

It took a minute for him to move, to wrap his arms around Jenny. But then he did, and they clung to each other, the red and blue lights of the emergency vehicles moving over them.

“Come on,” he said, shoulders slumping. “Let me get you home.”

“I don’t think I can go home yet, Ben. I … I need to figure out what to do about Nikolai first.” She felt bad saying it after all Ben had been through. Like all the other problems in the world should have resolved themselves in deference to Ben’s tragedy.

“Nikolai?” Ben’s face was blank, like the events of the past hour had erased his memory of everything that had transpired before.

Jenny was turning toward Nikolai’s car, still parked down the block from the store, when she noticed a second black car stopped behind the Audi.

And this one was a town car with the moon symbol on its driver’s-side door.

Jenny shook her head. “No … No!” She ran for the car, trying to warn Nikolai, to tell him to run.

But it was too late. She had only covered half the distance when Nikolai came into view, two large men in suits on either side of him. They muscled him toward the town car, forcing him into the backseat as Jenny rushed toward him, legs seeming to move through molasses, too slow to do Nikolai any good.

The two men got in the backseat with Nikolai and the car sped away, red taillights shining like evil eyes in the night. Ben and Tiffany appeared at her side.

“Was that … ?” Ben started.

Jenny turned to him. “They took him, Ben. The Order took him and now they’ll send him back!”

“Could we call the police?” Tiffany suggested. “Report Nikolai missing and say we saw him pushed into a car by the monks from the retreat center?”

“And what do we say when they ask us for Nikolai’s information? Where he lives?” Jenny paced the asphalt, a startling desire to scream out loud rising in her throat. “What happens when they look him up in the database and find no record of him anywhere?”

No one had an answer. Because there wasn’t one. Nikolai was gone, and they were the only people who even knew he existed.

Jenny looked up into the night sky. The full moon seemed to mock her.

“I have to go get him.” She started for Nikolai’s car, wanting to see if he had left the keys.

“Jenny, wait!” Ben said as he and Tiffany trotted after her. “You can’t just go up there. They’re not going to let you get within a hundred feet of Nikolai.”

Jenny yanked open the Audi’s driver’s-side door, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw the keys dangling in the ignition.

“I’d like to see them try and stop me.” She got in the car.

Ben put his hand on the top of the door, preventing her from shutting it. “There’s only one of you. There are … well, I don’t know, but a lot more of them. You’re not going to do Nikolai any good if you get caught.”

She stared out the windshield, trying to block out the reason in Ben’s voice. Trying to block out her own building despair. They had him. The Order had Nikolai. Any minute, they were going to send him to the bardo, and this time, he wouldn’t be able to find her because he’d be in some kind of in-between place. A crack in the sidewalk of the past and the present. Unreachable.

“I’ll go with you,” Tiffany said softly. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but at least you’ll have another person.”

Jenny shook her head. “I can’t let you do that. It’s too dangerous.”

“I want to do it. You’re my friend, Jenny. My best friend. You’d do it for me, wouldn’t you?”

Jenny nodded without hesitation.

“Then let me help. Maybe I can create some kind of distraction while you get Nikolai out or something.”

“Wait a minute,” Ben interjected. “You aren’t seriously thinking the two of you alone will be able to break Nikolai out of the compound?”

“Don’t you see?” Jenny shouted. “I have to try!”

Ben crossed his arms over his chest. “Then I’m coming, too.”

Jenny sighed. “No. You can’t do that. Your mom—”

“My mom’s safe for the first time in years,” he said quietly. “I’m still not sure how I feel about how it happened, but it’s true. I’d rather help you than sit on my ass waiting for someone to call and tell me how she is.” Jenny was still thinking about it when Ben continued, “Besides, I think I might have something for that distraction Tiffany suggested.”

“What?” Jenny asked.

“Come on. I’ll show you.”

Jenny reluctantly got out of the car. She and Tiffany followed Ben to his truck, still parked behind Books where Clare had left it when she’d come to work hours earlier.

Ben opened the door and lifted the seat, rummaging around for a few seconds before reappearing with a plastic-wrapped package in his hand. It took Jenny a minute to realize what it was.

“The fireworks.”

Ben nodded. “One of us can light them in the woods on one side of the monastery while the other two go in after Nikolai on the other.”

Jenny wasn’t sure if it would work, but the fact that Ben was willing to try and rescue Nikolai overwhelmed her.

She looked into his eyes. “You would do this for me?”

She saw him swallow. “We’re friends, aren’t we?” His voice was soft, like Tiffany wasn’t even there. Like it was just the two of them.

She smiled. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Tiffany said. “So someone lights the fireworks in the woods and the other two go in after Nikolai. Two questions: How will we know where he is? And, assuming we can actually get him out, what do we do with him then? Because I think it’s pretty obvious the Order isn’t just going to let him stay in Stony Creek.”

Jenny knew the answer even before she admitted to herself, Morgan’s text flashing again in her mind.

I can help you.

It didn’t matter if Jenny believed her. It was all she had.

*

They took Nikolai’s car. It would make for a faster getaway than Ben’s truck and its more powerful engine would make getting up the mountain easier.

Jenny second-guessed her decision a hundred times on the ride to Morgan’s house. She had sounded relieved and happy to hear from Jenny, but Jenny couldn’t help wondering if they would be greeted not by Morgan, but by the suit-clad men from the Order who seemed to do all the monks’ dirty work.

In the end, Jenny came back around to the same conclusion: they weren’t going to find the book. Morgan was their only hope of another way out for Nikolai. Better to be sure of her loyalty before showing up with Nikolai, possibly with the Order on their tail.

They pulled into Morgan’s driveway less than a half hour after Nikolai had been shoved into the car by the Order. Morgan’s car was the only one parked near the house. It didn’t totally ease Jenny’s mind, but it allowed for the possibility that Morgan was going to help them instead of ambush them.

They were getting out of the car when Morgan opened the back door.

She waved them in. “Hurry. There’s not much time.”

Jenny led the way up the deck’s stairs. For the first time, she felt like a guest in Morgan’s house. She looked around while Ben and Tiffany filed in, still half-convinced members of the Order were going to spring out at them.

Morgan shut the door. “Sit down. I have a lot to tell you and not much time to do it.”

Jenny perched on the edge of the couch while Tiffany and Ben took chairs by the fireplace.

Morgan took a deep breath. “I know you think I’m a traitor, Jenny. That I betrayed you. And in a way, you’re right. I have been forced to give the Order information about you from time to time, but only so that when you really need me, I could be here.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jenny said, still unable to hide the bite of anger in her voice.

“I already told you that your mother hid the Book of Time. That she hid it for you, knowing you would someday need it to keep Nikolai with you,” she said. “By the time she stole the book from the Order, I think she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to live in peace with you and your father. But she loved him with her whole heart, and she wanted you to have a chance at that kind of love, too.”

“So she hid the book,” Jenny stated, wanting to get on with it so she could get to Nikolai.

“And in looking for the right place to do so, she became very active in the underground.”

Jenny looked up. “The underground? Don’t they help people who are trying to evade the Order?”

“Exactly,” Morgan said. “Your mother became one of their most important advocates, helping to ferry people in and out and even helping them to escape the Order after they were caught.”

“Why didn’t she use the underground herself?” Tiffany asked.

Morgan’s smile was sad. “She had a husband and daughter that she loved. She would never have willingly left you. So she funneled all her energy into helping others who were out of time. And I helped her.”

Jenny shook her head. “You … helped her?”

Morgan nodded. “I had a deeper cover than your mother did. Before her death, I was still an active member of the Order. I still lived at the monastery with the others. Your mother was already something of an outcast, distrusted because of her relationship with your father.” Morgan paused, her face taking on a faraway expression. “But your mother and I were friends. Best friends. I would have done anything for her, and I helped her secret people out of the compound right up until her death.”

“Then what?” Jenny asked.

“Then I offered to move out of the compound to keep an eye on you.”

“On me?”

“You’re a daughter of the Order, Jenny. In fact, the only mortal child of a member that we know of. It’s quite possible that your power is every bit as strong and … unique in its breadth as that of your mother. Add that to the fact that, really, you’re not even supposed to be here, and you can understand why the Order has such an interest in you.”

“I can’t do anything important,” Jenny said. “I can only see the past, and that hasn’t done me any good at all.”

“It’s done me good,” Ben said from across the room.

Jenny’s nod was reluctant. “But that’s all I can do. The Order’s wasting their time.”

Morgan shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But the point is, I was tasked with watching you and that’s what I did. Sometimes I gave them pieces of information that I didn’t think would be harmful to you. I knew they wouldn’t trust me if I didn’t.”

Jenny thought about it. “I guess I can understand that, but I don’t understand how all of this will help me with Nikolai. How it will help me help him.”

“When your mother died,” Morgan started. “I took her place in the underground. I’ve been working with the others to build an extensive network of sympathizers who are well practiced at hiding those out of time—starting with a system of tunnels that leads out of Stony Creek to a network of organizations and safe houses far enough away that it will throw the Order off the scent of someone out of time, at least for a while.”