“Not even the fifty percent that’s solid?” I fought the desire to laugh.
She kept her focus on the street, but I could see her lips twitching from the corner of my eye. “Don’t push it.”
“Fine, then.” I kept my focus on the street as well. “I don’t like you, either.”
“Good,” she said, sounding authoritative. “You think we can work on this ‘finding crap’ thing for a few minutes before dark? My calculus homework isn’t going to do itself.”
I gave in to my smile. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 18
Three days.
That’s how long it took Lily to find an object that didn’t belong to her.
“I did it, uh-huh, I did it.” She danced around in my laundry room, swinging her hips from side to side, holding up the shirt I’d worn the night at Em’s house when I’d discovered Lily’s ability.
It took great effort, but I kept my focus off her hips and on the situation at hand. While I was happy about the latest development, I had to fight to ignore the twinge in my gut telling me that we weren’t moving fast enough. “Okay, think. What did it feel like? How did you know where it was?”
“Kind of a hook in my belly button.” She rubbed her hand across her stomach. “But I could see the shirt, too, like a photograph. Right there under your Batman boxer briefs.”
“Those were a gag gift. And my last pair of clean underwear.”
“I don’t know which of those statements I find more disturbing.”
“Try again,” I said. “Find my sword.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Lame.”
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Tiger.” I didn’t sound half as frustrated as I meant to. “I meant the one from the masquerade.”
“There’s no room in the gutter. You’re taking up all the space.” We stepped out of the laundry room into the hall. “I simply meant that finding the sword should be a piece of cake.”
“Sure you did.”
We’d reached some sort of working truce after the conversation about my mom. I didn’t want to blow it by pushing Lily harder, but I needed more from her. We all did.
She’d just closed her eyes to concentrate, when my back door flew open.
Dune had a folder full of papers, and a big smile.
“What did you find?” I asked.
“The jackpot. I searched the public school systems around Memphis.” Dune dropped the folder on the kitchen table. “Oh. Hey, Lily.”
“Hi, Dune.”
They spent more time smiling at each other than was really necessary.
“I didn’t realize you two had met,” I said, a spark of jealousy popping up out of nowhere. Why did I care who Lily smiled at?
“Yeah,” Dune said. “Em introduced us after you told me about Lily’s search ideas.”
When Dune noticed I was staring at him, he stopped smiling. “Okay, then. I did some editing on a photo of Jack and ran a face recognition program. It only took twelve hours to get a hit.”
“Who are you? Bill Gates’s younger brother?” I picked up the folder.
“Don’t insult me.” Dune flipped a chair around and straddled it. It creaked under his weight. “My gene pool is way more impressive than his.”
Lily laughed. It was sort of husky and really sexy. I’d never heard that laugh from her before.
Dune started smiling again and slid a picture out of the folder. “Here’s the one I created.”
“Nice editing work,” Lily commented, putting her hand on his shoulder to lean over and look at the photograph. “Is that version 9.5 or 9.7?”
He looked up at her sideways, and his expression rivaled that of a kid getting ready to blow out his birthday candles. “It was 9.5, but I had an add-on and I was able to manipulate-”
I cleared my throat and tapped my fingers on the tabletop.
Dune’s smile disappeared, and he pulled out a piece of paper. It was a black-and-white picture, and it was grainy. “Here’s what the search uncovered.”
A copy of a photograph. I peered down at the face. It wasn’t super clear, just a tiny scan from a yearbook, but there was no mistaking it. “That’s him. Jack. With a really bad haircut.”
“Someone put it up on a social networking site pretty recently. They’re trying to organize a high school reunion, and Jack was on the ‘cannot find’ list. He grew up in Germantown. The rough part.” Dune shuffled through the papers some more and removed a set of school records. “No brothers or sisters, no dad. Not even on his birth certificate.”
“You found his birth certificate?” Lily asked, sounding impressed.
“It’s easier than most people think,” Dune answered, sounding modest.
“Well,” I said, sounding pissy, “we obviously need to focus our search on West Tennessee.”
I handed the school records to Lily. At least Dune finding a location narrowed things down for her.
“The bad news is, this was all I could find,” Dune said, tapping on the folder. “So if we’re going to focus the search, we’re going to have to go to West Tennessee to do it.”
“So someone needs to go to Memphis,” Michael said when Dune finished explaining his results.
I’d been standing in the corner, watching Lily not look at Dune.
“Yes. Maybe more than one of us,” Dune said. “Someone there might still have a memory of him. I think it would be worth asking around, since at this point, any information would help.”
“I don’t think a lot of us popping up somewhere and asking a bunch of questions is a good idea,” Em said. I’d been pretending she hadn’t been looking at me while I watched Lily. “The last thing we need to do is draw attention to ourselves.”
“Then we’d better not waste any time.” Dune leaned back in his chair. “We could map out the city, take it by section. Do you have your laptop, Kaleb?”
“Battery’s fried,” I said. “Michael still owes me money for the last one he and Em shorted out.”
“If no one has a map handy, I can pull one up on my phone.” Dune started to reach into his pocket. “But a big one would be easier for everyone to see than all of you trying to scoot in close and lean over my shoulder.”
“No scooting in close necessary,” I said, pushing myself away from the wall. “There’s an atlas in Dad’s office. I’ll get it.”
When I got back, I handed the map to Dune, who had just said something to make Lily laugh. She took the atlas out of my hands without looking at me.
Dune crossed his arms over his chest as he watched Lily flip through the maps of the states. He’d always been solid, but not exactly shredded. His biceps were more defined than I remembered. So were his pecs. Probably from working out with Nate, who was on a perpetual quest to build bulk.
I needed to get back to the gym.
“Liam is never going to let us go to Memphis without a fight.” Em looked at Michael. “You’re going to have to do a lot of convincing.”
“We don’t all have to go.” Michael was doing the superior thing. Em called it protective, but I didn’t need protection. Neither did she.
Em punched him in the shoulder. “Don’t you even, Michael Weaver. You aren’t cutting me out of this.”
“Or me,” I said.
Everyone started talking at once, arguing about who would go where and when.
Just as we were on the brink of a full-scale blowup, Lily dropped the atlas and gasped.
Shock. Disbelief.
“What’s wrong?” Em abandoned her argument and went to Lily’s side.
Lily covered her mouth with her hands. They were shaking. “The map…” She slowly lowered them. “I touched Ivy Springs. I was going to trace the route from here to Memphis.”
“Okay.” Em waited for the rest. The amount of concern she was putting out made me tense. Lily didn’t seem like the kind of girl to needlessly overreact.
“I was going to look for Kaleb’s sword from the masquerade earlier, by using my ability.” Lily took a deep breath. “We didn’t get around to it. But just now, when I touched the map, I saw the sword. Immediately, and exactly. In my mind-through my fingers. Like I was reading Braille or something.”