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Authors: Hannah Jayne

BOOK: Under Attack
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“Damn,” I muttered.
Less than thirty minutes later, two sets of chopsticks poked out of a host of empty takeout boxes and a few fat grains of fried rice and packets of soy sauce littered the table. I eyed the backpack Alex had left untouched on the dining-room table and pointed to it.
“So, what's in there?”
I really hoped it wasn't a scrapbook of Alex's past relationship with Ophelia. I knew it was childish, but I earnestly prayed that in the time since they had been apart, Ophelia had sprouted a tail, horns, a unibrow, or a beer belly—anything that might render her patently undatable—as though Alex's description of her imminent evil wasn't enough.
Alex unzipped the pack and slid out a stack of leather-bound books. Nina wrinkled her nose, and I coughed, covering my nose over the dusty smell of old paper. “What are those?”
“Various accounts of the history of the Vessel.”
I picked up one of the books, squinting at the worn gold writing on the spine. “There are books about it? I thought it was supposed to be hush-hush.”
“Well, you can't exactly get them on Amazon.”
“
The Vessel of Souls and the Origin of Evil,
” Nina read. “Ooh, I'll take this one.”
I poked through the stack. “Looks like people have been searching for this thing for years.”
“Eons,” Alex said without looking up. “Searching for it, documenting the things they know about it, even the things they just think they know.”
I slid a thin volume out from Alex's backpack and opened it, leafing through the handwritten pages. “This one looks more like a journal,” I said.
Alex looked over my shoulder. “That's the journal of the last guy who was seeking the Vessel.”
“What happened to him?”
Alex shrugged. “Don't know. I didn't get a lot of back-story with the books.”
Nina kicked her feet up on the table and crossed her ankles. “Hmm. I'm guessing that means you didn't pick these up at our local Barnes and Noble?”
I watched Alex's Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. “No. I sort of took them. From Ophelia.”
I felt myself gape. “You ‘sort of' took them?”
“Okay, I completely took them. And pretty soon she'll come looking for them.” Alex poked the journal I held in my hand. “Especially that one.”
I flipped the journal to the first page and froze, my eyes set on the name inscribed. “Lucas Szabo,” I murmured.
“Yeah, that's the guy. He's some mortal guy who obviously has a serious desire for some power. There's no other reason to seek out the Vessel. Apparently, he got pretty close. It should help us. The guy was really detailed. He listed who guarded the Vessel, included drawings, pictures—where he last tracked it. Everything.”
My heart started to beat in the rapid thud-thud-thud of a panic attack. My palms started to sweat and the inscription on the yellowed page swirled as tears started to pool.
“Are you okay, Sophie?”
“Sophie?” I felt Alex's hand on my shoulder, but his voice sounded far away.
“Lucas Szabo,” I murmured again.
“Yeah, he was the hunter who was looking for the Vessel.”
I shook my head and with leaden hands, pulled the book toward me. I tried to form saliva to lick my parched lips, but I couldn't. All I could do was choke out the name “Lucas Szabo.”
“Sophie, what's wrong? You're scaring me.” Nina was standing up, rushing toward me, her coal-black eyes the size of saucers. I heard her voice, but it was a million miles away—distant—like the feeling of Alex's hand on my shoulder.
“Lucas Szabo is my father,” I answered.
Chapter Four
Nina's eyes widened. “Your father?”
I felt the sickening weight in my stomach again.
I knew my father by name only.
He had only spent four days with me—the first four days I was alive—but his identity had never been a secret. The fact that he was tracking the Vessel of Souls, however, had.
“I don't understand though,” I said, resting the journal on the table. “Mom was looking for someone normal when she found Lucas, someone who had nothing to do with the supernatural realm.”
Like my grandmother, my mother was a seer. But unlike my grandmother, my mother hated what she could do. She shut out her powers in any way she could—first with drugs and alcohol, and finally, with Lucas Szabo. The way Grandma told it, my mother and Lucas fell in love immediately. To Lucas, my mother was a classic beauty, a strong-willed woman who guarded her privacy and her serenity with everything she had. To my mother, Lucas Szabo was a stable man who wore cardigans rather than capes, who drove a sensible Ford Taurus and had a pantry full of cream of mushroom soup and Ovaltine rather than our standard eye of newt and freeze-dried bat. He taught mythological studies at the University of San Francisco, but rather than conjure or cohabitate with magicks, he debunked them. One by one Lucas went after the fake fortune tellers and mystics that pandered to the Pier 39 tourists. My mother thought his disdain for the mystical world was perfect and envisioned a future attending Junior League meetings and eating deviled egg sandwiches at Crissy Field. The perfect, normal family.
Nine months later I came along, and four days after that, Lucas Szabo disappeared.
Alex's hand closed over mine and squeezed gently. His touch was comforting but did little to dispel the surge of emotions roiling through me.
“He left her because of me.”
“That's not true, Lawson.”
I shook Alex's hand off mine. “Yes, it is. Apparently, he was looking for a kid that had some powers. After four days of gurgling and sucking on my toes I wasn't able to pull a rabbit out of my hat, so daddy dearest took off.”
“If he didn't believe in any of the supernatural stuff, why would your lack of abilities be a problem?” Nina wanted to know.
I shrugged. “I don't know. That's just the way the story goes. I don't know anything else about him. According to my grandmother, he never tried to contact me, not even after my mother died. He didn't even come to her funeral.”
I felt a stab of pain mixed with the sting of anger.
What kind of father abandons his child?
“Well, maybe there was something more to it,” Nina said hopefully. “The rest of these books are super old. Maybe that one is, too. Maybe—maybe your dad died. I mean, not that that's necessarily a good thing but ... do you even know if he's still alive?”
Nina and I both looked at Alex.
“What are you looking at me for?”
“Don't you have some kind of, I don't know, list of the dead?” Nina asked. “I mean, you know ...”
Alex frowned. “You're dead, too. Do
you
have a list?”
Nina held up a finger. “Technically, I'm undead. You, my friend, are dead-dead. And we don't deal in ghosts.”
Alex raised a challenging eyebrow. “I have a heartbeat. And a pulse. If anyone is dead here, it's you. You're way deader than I am. And we don't deal with ghosts, either. We work strictly souls. Well, angels and souls.”
“Okay! Now that we know that everyone is dead—or undead—can we get back to this? Can we get back to searching for the Vessel? There's got to be something informative in the journal.” I sounded a lot cooler and more aloof than I felt. In actuality, my fingers were twitching, anxious to devour the journal, to study every nuance of my father that could be culled from his writings. I wanted to know how he dotted his i's, how he crossed his t's. I wanted to know if there were long entries thinking about the daughter that he left behind; wanted to know if he wrote about my mother. My memories of her were fuzzy at best, the majority having been fed to me by my grandmother, who raised me after my mother's passing.
Nina leafed through the journal. “We don't even know why your father was searching for the Vessel.” Nina paused, cocked her head. “Sophie?”
I looked over my shoulder and Nina held the book open. I read the date—June 16, 1982. “That was eleven days before I was born.” I took the book from her, smoothed my palm over the image sketched on the page. “And that's my mother.”
Nina came beside me. “Then that must be you.”
Lucas had drawn a very detailed sketch of my mother. She had the same slight smile on her face that I dreamed of. Her long, delicate curls were tied at the nape of her neck and her slim hands held the full swell of a very pregnant belly. Inside the round swell, Lucas had drawn a baby.
“I guess,” I said, trying my best to distance myself from my mother's familiar eyes.
Nina flipped the page and I blinked. “You again,” she said.
Another baby drawing, this one me, without my mother.
“Why was he drawing pictures of me if he was just going to leave? Why was he drawing
me
in a journal that he used to log his searches for the Vessel?”
Alex squeezed my hand. “I don't know, Lawson.”
Nina hugged me to her.
Alex looked from her to me. “I think the real question is—how did Ophelia end up with your father's journal?”
I peeled Alex's hand from mine and brushed my fingers through my hair, my eyes still fixed on the journal, on the sketch of me.
“Maybe you should sit down.” Nina's cold hands pressing against my shoulders rattled me and I stepped away. “Maybe this journal will help answer some questions you have about your father, you know? It could be a good thing.” Nina tried to smile and I forced a nod.
“You know, I think I just need some air,” I said.
“That's a good idea,” Alex said. “We can go for a walk.”
“Actually, I think I'd like to be alone right now.” I pulled my keys from the ring by the door. “I'm just going to go for a drive.”
I went down to the underground garage and slipped behind the wheel of my new-to-me '91 Honda Accord. I'd always considered myself more of a rough-and-tumble SUV kind of girl, but since I'd written “My CRV was peeled open like a tin can by a power-crazed wannabe mystic” on my auto policy form—well, eyebrows at my insurance company were raised. After that, I figured a fairly nondescript sedan was a good way to go for a replacement car.
I sunk into my seat and practiced a little bit of deep breathing, determined not to cry. Or scream, or punch the steering wheel, or yell profanities to a man whom I'd never known and who would never hear them. Instead, I turned on the radio and pulled out of the garage into the inky black night, humming along to some throbbing new Lady Gaga beat.
The gentle flow of post-rush-hour traffic went to an immediate, brake-squealing stop-and-go when the sky opened up and started to dump quarter-sized raindrops onto the cement. I groaned and pulled around a soccer mom in an SUV the size of my apartment, angling onto the 280 Freeway exit. I had no idea where I was going, but according to the blurry green freeway sign, I was on my way south to San Jose.
I flipped on my headlights and thought about my father, thought about his careful script in the yellowing pages of the old notebook.
Nina was right; there could be things in that journal that answered my questions about him. If I knew enough about him to have questions.
As a little girl I imagined him tall and slim with a dashing career that kept him out of my life—perhaps a mild-mannered college professor by day, a continent-hopping James Bond type by night. He was supposed to
want
to be with me, to want to know his only daughter, but circumstances kept him at bay.
Now I knew what those circumstances were—greed. Power. My father wanted to find the Vessel of Souls. A Vessel that controlled the balance of good and evil in the world.
I wasn't any use to him... .
The thought entered my head on its own and I felt a lump forming in my throat. I clenched my teeth and felt the leaden weight in my foot as I pressed the gas pedal harder, my little car zipping past the minivans and eco-conscious carpoolers.
He could have found me anytime... .
My eyes stung and I took my hands off the wheel, pressing them over my ears. Why was I doing this to myself? The car pulled a little to the left and I jerked it back, then stared at the road in front of me. Somewhere along my drive I had turned onto a deserted strip of highway. The fat raindrops had now turned into a sad, constant drizzle that thundered on the hood of my car. I wiped the tears that poured down my cheeks. I sniffed, then squinted as a pair of halogen headlights beamed in my rearview mirror. I frowned. We were the only two cars on the road, yet Mr. Bright Lights apparently felt honor bound to drive directly behind me.
“If you're in such a hurry, go around!” I mumbled to the car's reflection. “It's not like there aren't three other lanes to choose from.”
In response, the headlights drew closer, filling the interior of my car with a glaring blue-white light. I snapped on my blinker and coasted into the slow lane. As Mr. Bright Lights pulled even with me, I shot him a dirty look, but the interior of his black SUV was dark. All I could make out was a figure hunched in the driver's seat.
“Jerk,” I muttered, my tears drying in my cheeks.
Mr. Bright Lights sped up again, showering a spray of water onto my windshield. I kicked my wipers onto high; with the first whoosh of water I saw the blurry glare of Mr. Bright Lights's taillights, directly in front of me.
“Holy shit!” I screamed, slamming on my brakes and yanking the wheel. My heart hammered as my tires spun and slid helplessly on the wet road. I felt my seat belt tighten and cut across my chest as the dark scenery outside swirled into a blurry, circling mess. I felt the prickling heat of sweat on my upper lip and down my back, and I let out a gurgling, wailing cry until my car glided to a gentle stop, just inches from the highway retaining wall. With shaking hands I killed the engine and bit back the feeling of hot adrenaline as it roared through my body.
There was no sound except the drumming of rain on metal and the thundering beat of my heart. I peeled my aching hands from the steering wheel and gulped lungfuls of air, waiting impatiently for the imminent post-traumatic-experience heart attack. When it didn't come I clicked off my seat belt and pressed my forehead against the cool window glass, my gaze sweeping over the desolate highway. Mr. Bright Lights was long gone.
I looked at the cement wall a hairbreadth from my car and realized that I could have been gone, too. Gone—dead.
The tears started to pool again and I rested my head on my steering wheel, crying until my heartbeat had resumed its normal, steady beat, until I was numb to the horror of a complete stranger in an SUV trying to kill me on a deserted stretch of San Francisco highway.
I started my car and exited the freeway, turning around and heading home. My arms felt as though I had just completed a marathon workout session; it felt like it took hours to drive the eleven miles back to my apartment. I don't think I took a breath until my car was parked in my designated spot and my feet were back on solid ground.
“My God, what happened to you? You look horrible!” Nina shrieked when I pushed open the apartment door.
I watched Alex give her an annoyed look, gently flicking her shoulder. “I mean, are you feeling better?” she corrected with a forced smile.
I dumped my sweatshirt on the floor and flopped onto the couch, Nina and Alex surrounding me, looking concerned but confused.
“Look, Lawson,” Alex started, taking his hand in mine. “This thing about your dad ... well, we don't know for sure that he was hunting the Vessel. Or why.”
I pulled my hand away from his. “It's not that—at least not right now.” I looked from Alex's cobalt eyes to Nina's coal-black ones. “Someone just tried to kill me!”
Nina frowned, halfway through tucking a fuzzy pink blanket over my shoulders. “Again?”
I ignored her. “On 280. I was driving ... thinking ... and this guy slammed on his brakes right in front of me! I spun out and almost hit the wall. I was this close,” I held my thumb and forefinger a miniscule distance apart. “And then he just drove away. I guess he thought he accomplished his mission.” I felt my lower lip pop out crybaby style.
Nina looked slightly skeptical. “His mission being to kill you?”
I nodded, feeling the familiar lump in my throat. My eyes searched Alex's. “Why does everyone want to kill me?”
“No one wants to kill you,” Alex said, rubbing my arm.
“Right,” Nina agreed, rubbing my other arm. “You know that most people have no idea how to drive. He probably didn't even notice you were on the road.”

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