“They met in a park?” I asked, confused.
“No, it was like a type of tree, I think,” he said slowly. “Name some trees and maybe something will sound familiar.”
Thank God I aced my environmental science class freshman year. “Fir. Maple. Spruce. Evergreen. Elm. Pine—”
“Elm! It was the Elm. Or maybe Elm Street. No, it was definitely the Elm. They didn’t say where it was exactly, but it seemed like it was kind of close to here.”
I pumped my arms in the air in victory. Then I remembered that I was alone in my room, and I let them drop back down to my sides. I could celebrate later, when I’d found our parents. The important thing was that we had a name of the last place the Cleri was before… well, before they never came home.
But I couldn’t think about that right now. I had to keep my focus on the job at hand. “Peter, you’re amazing,” I said happily. “And if you weren’t total jailbait, I’d definitely kiss you for this.”
I hopped off the bed and scurried over to my computer, quickly typing in “The Elm” and the city Peter lived in as well as the surrounding areas. I had no idea what I was looking for: a restaurant, a hotel, a church. It could be just about anything.
My heart sank when only a few listings popped up. One was for a dance club about an hour away. The second for a diner right off Highway 64. And the last appeared to be a warehouse that stored construction equipment. None of them sounded like places where the Cleri would meet.
But this was the only lead we had.
So we had to narrow it down. No way were a bunch of old people hanging out in a club, so I crossed that one off the list. And when I called the diner to find out the hours, an answering machine message told me that it had closed earlier that year. So that left only the warehouse.
Once again I dialed Peter’s number and waited for him to answer. When he did, I started right in. “Give your aunt and uncle an excuse so you can get out of the house. We’ll pick you up in an hour.”
It ended up taking longer than I thought to round everyone up, and I didn’t pull up to Peter’s until an hour and a half later. By that time, my stomach was upset over the fact that I was running so late. It had already grown dark and I could barely see Peter standing in front of some bushes just out of eyeshot of the house, behind him. I hadn’t even come to a full stop when he pulled open the back door and jumped inside.
“Whoa, Speed Racer, what’s the rush?” Jasmine asked Peter sarcastically before I sped off down the street.
“My aunt thinks I left forty-five minutes ago to work on a school project,” he explained, throwing back the hood of his sweatshirt. “They’d freak if they saw me get into a car full of kids.”
“But we’re not just kids, we’re twitches,” Sascha said from the passenger seat.
Peter looked at her like he had no idea what she was talking about.
“She means teen witches. Twitches,” I said.
“Ohhhh,” he said, nodding. I saw Jasmine roll her eyes and then look out her window, already bored with the conversation. Her requisite black ensemble made her nearly disappear into the darkness of the backseat.
“Well, twitches or not, they’d freak if they knew what we were doing,” Peter said, settling back into his seat. “Ever since my parents…” His words trailed off as if he didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
I instantly felt awful about what Peter must be going through. Here we all were, freaking out over having not heard from our parents in less than a day when Peter’s family had been gone for twice as long. And in the Glovers’ case, there was proof of a struggle. A struggle that had ended badly. At least the rest of us still had hope that our parents were just holed up somewhere.
I knew it was a long shot, but it was better than the alternative.
“It’s all right, Peter. We get it. They’re a little overprotective right now because of everything going on,” I said.
He just nodded from his place in the back.
“Not to change the subject or anything, but do we know where we’re going?” Sascha asked, chomping on her gum. I’d picked her up first and she hadn’t shut up since she got in the car. If it were anyone else, I’d think it was simply nervous energy, but Sascha was a bit of a chatterbox to begin with. I’d just never been stuck in a car with her for a half hour before. Still, a nonstop monologue was better than silence. My mind tended to wander to dark places when it wasn’t occupied. Sascha usually kept things light—her favorite topics of conversation were celebrities, boys, or celebrity boys. I typically thought this was endearing. But tonight I couldn’t help but feel there were more important things going on than Taylor Swift’s latest relationship.
“We’re headed to the Elm warehouse over on one-nineteenth,” I answered for the third time that night. The GPS said we’d be arriving at our destination in nine minutes, but it wasn’t fast enough for me. Not when I had no idea what was happening to our parents.
“I think what Glinda here means is, why are we going to some random warehouse?” Jasmine chimed in. I waited for Sascha to make a noise like she was offended by Jasmine’s comment, but it never came. I guess I was still getting used to Jasmine’s sense of humor. Or total lack of a filter. But the others seemed to accept her—probably because they all hung out together pretty frequently—so I was going to try too.
I locked eyes with Peter in the mirror and at first neither of us said anything. When it became clear he wasn’t going to explain, I cleared my throat.
“We’re pretty sure that’s where the elders went last night. And that means it was the last place we know they were.”
“But why a warehouse?” Sascha asked, wrinkling up her forehead. I’d been wondering the same thing since I’d decided that this was the only possible place they could’ve gone. We drove in silence as the question hung in the air.
“Ohhhhh!” Jinx said finally, surprising us all. “I totally get it now.”
She’d been silent since I picked her up, and I had to admit, I’d forgotten that she was even in the car. When she didn’t elaborate, I shot her a look in the mirror, urging her with my mind to clue the rest of us in.
“I think I get the warehouse thing. Remember Phil Clinton? He graduated from Putnam a few years ago? Well, our families used to summer together in the Hamptons while we were growing up,” Jinx explained. “Anyways, they own a construction company, so his dad has a ton of equipment warehouses scattered around. I bet that’s where we’re going.”
I faintly remembered Phil. He was four years older than me and had graduated from high school before I’d gotten there, so we hadn’t exactly run in the same groups. Apparently, he’d headed off to college on a basketball scholarship. Either Dartmouth or Berkeley or something like that.
People said he’d refused to go to Cleri classes. Claimed that he was too busy spending his dad’s money to care about advancing his powers. It was hard to imagine that he and Jinx were from the same world. I hadn’t known his dad, but the connection made sense. Members of the Cleri were still active even if their kids weren’t attending classes anymore.
“In three hundred feet, turn right onto Fitzgerald Street. Continue to 10128 Fitzgerald Street, on left,” said Jane, otherwise known as the voice of my GPS. Not long after my parents gave the tech toy to me, I’d taken to calling her Jane. The computer-generated voice had the tiniest hint of a British accent, and I imagined the owner of the voice to be about twenty-five years old, sophisticated, and super-intelligent. Jane was most likely single—but it was by choice, not because guys weren’t into her. In other words, I sort of pictured her as being an older version of myself, but with a way cooler accent.
“Arriving at 10128 Fitzgerald Street,” Jane said.