Nine stands in the doorway laughing. ‘So sorry, dude. I totally forgot to tell you I rigged that up.’
Furious, I jump to my feet. Bernie Kosar skids in and growls at Nine. While he berates Nine for his stupidity, I focus on pulling the sticks out of the walls. I will them to hover in the air, aimed at Nine. ‘You don’t sound sorry.’
I’m seriously considering launching the little spears at him when he uses telekinesis to break the sticks into two, four and then eight pieces and they fall to the floor.
‘Hey, I really did forget,’ he says, shrugging. He turns around to head into the other room. ‘Anyway, grab your Chest and get in here. We have to jet, so start pulling your stuff together.’
My Lumen lights up the moldy cupboard and I carefully stick my head under the sink. At first I don’t see anything and think Nine is messing with me. I’m about to march into the living room to demand he return my Chest to me when I notice something. The left side of the cupboard goes deeper than the right. I feel my way around and pull away the false plywood wall. Jackpot. There it is. I grab the Chest and carry it out of the kitchen.
In the living room Nine’s digging in his own Chest, the Chest we rescued from the Mog cave. ‘Good to see you, old friend,’ he says when he pulls out a short silver staff. Next he grabs a round yellow thing covered with small bumps. It looks like a strange fruit and I half expect him to squeeze it to produce juice. He sets it in his palm, and before I can ask what it is, he whips it down at the floor and quickly backs himself up against the wall. It bounces high after hitting the carpet and changes from yellow to black, expanding to the size of a grapefruit. When it reaches shoulder height the small bumps explode, turning into razor-sharp spikes. I duck and roll in BK’s direction to avoid getting impaled.
‘What the hell?’ I shout. ‘You could have warned me! This is the second time in less than five minutes that you’ve almost killed me.’
Nine doesn’t flinch when the spikes retract violently back into the ball just before it returns to his palm.
‘Hey, hey, hey, would you please relax?’ Nine says. He holds the ball close to his eye, causing me to hold my breath. ‘I knew nothing would hit you. I can control it with my mind. Well, I can control it partly. Usually.’
‘Partly? Are you kidding me? I didn’t see a lot of control just now. I had to jump out of the way.’
Nine takes the ball away from his eye, looking a little chagrined. Not enough, though. ‘Right now, I can only control the color.’
‘That’s it?’ I’m incredulous. He shrugs.
BK tells him to stop fooling around.
‘Hey, I’m just checking to make sure I remember how everything works. Everything I know how to use, at least,’ Nine says, dropping the ball back into the Chest. ‘Because you never know.’ He pulls out the strand of green stones he used back at the Mog cave and flings it into the air. It hovers in a perfect circle and sucks debris off the ground like a black hole. It spins towards a back window and glows white, and when Nine snaps his fingers the debris explodes out of the circle, breaking whatever was left of the window.
‘Check that one off,’ he laughs.
I open my own Chest. Nine thinks that there’s something in our Chests that can help us find the others. The first thing I see is the blue coffee can holding Henri’s ashes and I suck in my breath. I’m instantly transported back to the forest in Paradise, walking with Sarah through the melting snow to see Henri’s dead body. I promised Henri I would take him back to Lorien, and I still plan on it.
I carefully move the coffee can to the floor next to the Chest and grab the dagger with the diamond blade, letting the handle extend and wrap itself around my fist. I turn it over, looking at the blade. I release the dagger and continue to sift through the items. I try not to dwell on the objects I don’t know – the star-shaped talisman, the collection of brittle leaves tied with twine, the bright red oval bracelet – and I stay away from the crystal that’s double-wrapped in towels and stuffed into a plastic bag. The last time I touched that crystal, my stomach convulsed and acid climbed up my throat.
I push aside the smooth yellow Xitharis rock that transfers Legacies and pick up an oblong crystal that is full of memories. Its surface is waxy with a cloudy inside, and it’s the first thing Henri ever pulled out of the Chest to show me. When the cloud swirled, it meant my first Legacy was developing. This crystal was the beginning.
Then I see Sam’s dad’s glasses and the white tablet Six and I found in Malcolm Goode’s office in the well. That’s enough to snap me back to reality.
I look over at Nine. ‘Maybe something in our Chests can get us through the blue force field. I think the effect of it is weakened, anyway. There may be a chance we can get to Sam tonight.’
‘Would be nice if something in the Chest would help us do that, that’s for sure,’ Nine says in a casual tone, his eyes focused on the purple pebble he is balancing on the back of his hand. It disappears.
‘What’s that?’ I ask.
He turns over his hand and the pebble reappears on his palm. ‘I have no idea, but it would be a killer conversation starter with the ladies, don’t you think?’
I shake my head and slide the red bracelet from my Chest over my hand. I hope it will propel me into the air or shoot a ring of lasers, but it just hangs there on my wrist. I wave my arm over my head, asking it to work, begging it to reveal its powers. Nothing happens.
‘Maybe you should try licking it?’ Nine laughs, watching me.
‘I’ll try anything,’ I mutter, frustrated. I keep it on and hope something will just happen. Everything in my Chest came from the Elders. Everything has a purpose, so I know it must do something. My hand brushes against the velvet bag holding the seven orbs that make up Lorien’s solar system. I pull open the bag and drop the stones into my hand and show them to Nine, remembering the day that Henri first showed them to me. ‘Are these what you’re looking for to find the others? Henri had these. This is how we figured out another member of the Garde was in Spain.’
‘I’ve never seen those before. What do they do?’
I blow softly on the stones and they glow, coming to life. Bernie Kosar barks at the sight of the orbs hovering over my palm. They have become planets and orbit the sun. Just as I’m about to shine my Lumen onto Lorien to see it in its lush, green state as it was the day before the Mogadorian attack, the orbs once again speed up and brighten and I can no longer control them.
Nine comes closer and we watch as the planets collide one by one with the sun until there is just a large single ball in front of us. The new globe rotates on its axis and flashes a light so bright we have to shield our eyes. Eventually, the globe dims and sections of its surface rise and recede until we’re looking at a perfect replica of Earth.
Nine is mesmerized. The Earth rotates and we immediately see two pinpricks of pulsing light one on top of the other. Once we can orient ourselves, we see they are in West Virginia.
‘There we are,’ I say.
The ball continues to rotate and we see there’s another pulse of light in India; a fourth is moving north quickly from what looks like Brazil.
‘When I was showing Six and Sam our solar system a few days ago in the car, the same thing happened. It turned into a globe of the Earth. It was the first time it ever did that,’ I say.
‘I’m confused,’ Nine says. ‘There are only four dots on this thing and there are supposed to be six of us left.’
‘Yeah, I’m not sure about that. When this happened before, a dot showed up in Spain,’ I say. ‘Then the globe went all fuzzy and we heard someone who sounded panicked yelling the name Adelina. We assumed she was another member of the Garde. That’s when Six decided to go to Spain, to try to find her. I figured this was how you planned to contact the others, but I guess not if you’ve never seen it before.’