I found myself falling into my usual habit, and without even thinking I’d gone beyond the gaze of the eyes and spotted a Glimpse. Immediately, I withdrew with fright.
That was odd, these eyes shouldn’t have shown anything at all. But it’d certainly been there, inviting me in.
So I did it again. I leaned the box forward, studying the gaze, trying to read what was behind it just because that was the only success I’d found so far. I saw a Glimpse, that was certain. But there was nothing there. It was like the eyes were open and surprised and caught in their exposing second, yet didn’t have any emotion or secret to tell.
Suddenly, the pupils narrowed.
I jumped, dropping the box at their unexpected movement. The pupils had squeezed inwards into thin slits like a lizard’s gaze. The box slammed back onto the counter with a crash. In my surprise, it’d felt like the fake eyes had leapt straight from their metal sockets, entering my mind and then slithering back all in the same second.
It was violating, like hands crawling up and down my skin, squeezing and touching me and giving me shivers with their coldness. It was like I’d had something pulled straight through my gaze, and I realized that the eyes I’d been trying to read had sucked in my Glimpse instead.
As if in confirmation of this, the box gave another click, an invisible seal glowing light orange around the parameter before cooling back into its regular gray. Some type of Guardian lock that worked through reading eyes? An alignment in the box that only allowed it to open at my Glimpse?
I shook the feeling away from me in shivers, hesitant hands reaching forward to remove the lid. It slipped off like the top of a gift box, revealing a tiny space lined with rich, black velvet inside. In the center was a single piece of thin paper.
I lifted the forlorn page out gingerly; it looked so fragile that I was afraid even a gentle blow from the ceiling A/C would make it tear. It wasn’t folded, the writing revealed on the opposite side as I flipped it over and set it flat on the counter.
It was mostly blank. The only part with marking was in the center, black hand-written ink that’d long soaked into the page. At the top was a set of numbers and decimals with two letters: coordinates. Below these was a simple note, written in scratchy cursive so harsh that it’d torn the page in parts:
IT IS HIDDEN IN THE CHURCH.
Their simplicity only made the words all the more severe. What I held in my hands was a treasure map already solved, directions that I had left for myself in some other life. It sank in that the last person to touch this page had been me, decades before, when I’d first been certain that I was going to die.
Was it going to be that simple? I couldn’t shake the feelings of uneasiness, some foreboding now that I had these instructions. Did I even understand what it would mean for me to find the Blade, how much of a chain reaction that would set off?
I placed the lid back and it sealed itself immediately. I turned to the cash. All this time I’d been trying to avoid looking at it. I peeled a stack of the bills from the block, stuffing them into my pockets: I could always come back if I needed more. Then I locked everything up and pushed the buzzer for the guard.
Even the heat of the day felt colder and more tinged with anticipation as I walked through the bank’s doors again. I rolled the paper up nervously as I turned the corner, seeing Callista and Thad still sitting on the cars. They both slid down to their feet.
“Anything?” Callista asked. I didn’t reply, nodding toward the Shelby. They understood, climbing in with Thad in the back seat and Callista beside me, no one speaking until the doors were sealed.
I handed Thad the paper and let him unroll it.
“The Blade is there?” he said after reading it.
“I’d think so,” I replied. “I can’t think of anything else that I’d have kept exact coordinates of.”
While I was saying this, Callista had reached forward and taken the GPS off its mount on the front window, switching it on and clicking its screen with her fingers. Thad and I must have figured out what she was doing at the same time because both of us fell into a hush as she typed. The GPS mulled for a few seconds, then the screen changed to show a path.
“Ten minutes away,” Callista said. “Twenty in traffic.”
“That close?” Thad said with uncertainty. “Why would you hide it out in the open somewhere?”
“Maybe because nobody’d think to look in the open?” I replied, pulling the car keys out of my pocket and slipping them in to the ignition. Thad slid out and walked over to his car, leaving Callista and I again as the engine growled to a start.
It just didn’t feel right to make light conversation anymore, as I made a U-turn and got back onto the main street. Our tension had risen to an almost unbearable level, leaving both our eyes locked ahead but mine still distracted enough to nearly miss turns and red lights.
I wondered why I’d fallen into such a state. It took half the trip for me to realize why: We were actually about to find what all of this had been leading to, what had started this entire fiasco decades before we were even born.
The GPS announced that we’d reached our destination far before I’d expected it to, and its voice caused me to whirl around in my seat.
“Do you see a church?” I asked, but Callista was already searching for it herself. There wasn’t a church in sight: we were in the thickest part of downtown, surrounded by cars parked against the street and pedestrians wandering through the restaurants and shops.
I hit the brakes at an abrupt red light, still searching for anything that might resemble an old church. Nothing. No steeple, no bell tower, and no giant doors—everything here was modern.
I turned the corner with Thad’s car still tagging close behind, going around the block again and stopping carefully where the GPS directed. I pulled onto the side of the road and parked.
“I still don’t see a church,” I said nervously. Callista grabbed the GPS again, confirming that it had been programmed correctly. She looked out her window.
“It should be there,” she pointed.
I strained my eyes looking, but it was no use. No church was on that street.
16
Restlessness
Callista and I waited stoically in a corner booth of the restaurant that sat where the church should have been. Businesspeople held loud conversations in the tables near us—I hardly noticed they were there. Scents of oregano and basil wafted through the air from the bustling and noisy kitchen, my spaghetti and Callista’s small pizza still steaming but untouched, ordered mostly so we could get a table. My fingers drummed as I stared at Thad’s empty seat.
Finally, Thad came walking through the restaurant doors, sliding to sit beside Callista.
“Good and bad news,” he said, picking up his fork and stirring his food around.
“Bad news first,” Callista said. He cleared his throat.
“We’re in the right place,” he explained with an unfortunate tone, twirling his fettuccini noodles onto his fork and taking a bite. “I looked up what I could online at the place next door. Saint Winslow’s Church used to sit on this exact spot, before it was burned to the ground thirty-four or something years ago. They built Fabolli’s on its foundation. You know what that means?”
Both Callista and I stared at him blankly. He swallowed a bite down first.
“Thirty-four is seventeen times two,” he said. “Two lifetimes ago, the church that was here just happened to be burned down.”