The security bar across the sliding door still dangled loose against the glass. In fact, the little metal lock lever was still up, indicating that the door itself wasn’t even locked. So Mara hadn’t been home very long, or else she’d been too distracted to resecure her home after our interruption this morning. Either way, it didn’t bode particularly well for us. After all, she shouldn’t have been home at all, and if something was big enough to keep her from obsessively locking her doors…well, if you asked me to guess, I’d have said that nothing was of the magnitude to cause that kind of disruption in her routine.
Through the glass, I could see that the kitchen was empty. A plate with crumbs was on the counter next to the toaster, and a chair was turned on its side next to the table.
I raised a questioning eyebrow at Zane, and he shook his head. It hadn’t been like that when he’d last seen it.
I tugged at the splintery wooden handle on the door, using my ability to keep the security bar from making noise against the glass. I couldn’t hear anyone other than Mara inside—her emotional and chaotic thoughts a roaring ocean of noise—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t drowning out someone else’s much quieter thoughts. Plus, given her wobbly mental state, I thought it might not be a good idea to scare her into thinking someone was breaking in. Which, okay, we technically were. Although it was more of a walking in, but still.
Zane crossed the threshold first, before I could stop him. I glared at him, which he ignored, searching the room for signs of his mother’s whereabouts.
When he finally looked to me, I gestured toward the doorway that led to the hall. Going to the left would lead us to the front door, but the noise of Mara’s thoughts felt more like it was coming from the right.
Zane nodded, his expression grim, and started in that direction without waiting for me to take the lead.
I followed, gritting my teeth against the urge to call out for him to stop. Hadn’t we had enough nasty surprises in the last few days? Did he really need to charge ahead as if he were the one with superpowers, so to speak?
I could have stopped him, against his will, but I suspected that no matter how much that option appealed to me from a practical standpoint, he wouldn’t appreciate it.
As I passed the kitchen table, I noticed a tablet computer placed with care in the center, on a dish towel. It gleamed dully under the fluorescent lights. The corners were battered and cracked, and the glass screen bore an ugly set of parallel scratches as if someone had skimmed it across a gravel parking lot. A very expensive Frisbee.
I frowned. Wait, was this what the chief had thrown at Mara? It was about the same size and shape. She must have picked it up before coming inside.
But what the hell had driven him to throw something so pricey at her? The Bradshaws weren’t poor, but they weren’t the “toss crystal goblets into the fireplace in a toast” type either.
And why had Mara then taken it inside and treated it not just as item to be returned or thrown away, but with a certain respect or reverence? I wasn’t familiar with her relationship with her ex, but I had trouble with the idea that she’d take something hurled at her in anger and idolize it simply because it belonged to him. After all, she’d had the courage to leave him in the first place.
I shook my head. Something wasn’t making sense.
Acting on an impulse that I didn’t completely understand, I scooped up the tablet from the table and tucked it under my arm before scurrying out to follow Zane around the corner into the hall.
The staircase that I’d noticed earlier curved in a tight right angle, making it impossible to see upstairs or even beyond the first five steps.
But of course that didn’t stop Zane. He took the first three steps as one.
I sighed inside. When this was all done…
Don’t you mean if? If you survive. If he survives. If he is still speaking to you. A melancholy voice whispered in my head.
I ignored it.
When this was all over, I was going to have to teach Zane some very basic sneaking-around skills. And not charging ahead into a blind corner would be Lesson 1.
Fortunately, this time, the curve on the staircase was empty of anyone lying in wait. As was the tiny landing at the top.
Peering around Zane’s back, I could see four cheap, wooden doors, the flimsy kind that cave in at the slightest pressure. More a suggestion of a barrier than the real thing. Two were closed, and two were open.
Zane paused a second on the landing and then headed for the second door on the right, one of the open ones. Mara was up here somewhere, but in this small of a space, I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where. When I stopped to listen with my ears instead of telepathy, then I could hear the rustling movement of quick steps on the carpet coming from that room.
Moving swiftly on his heels, I reached the doorway only a second after him.
Leaning to the side of him—he really made a better door than the actual doors—I could see an open suitcase in the center of a bed with rumpled covers, overflowing with clothing hastily tossed inside.
Clearly Mara had had enough, and she was headed out. But where? To meet someone? Or was she just fleeing town, her resistance worn to the breaking point from the events of the last day?
And where was she now? The room, other than the bed and a tiny TV on a stack of plastic milk crates, was empty.
Then, before I could voice the question or tap Zane on the arm, the click-clack noise of hangers being shoved aside came from an open doorway parallel to the one we were standing in. A closet. A second later, Mara bustled in with an armload of clothing.
“What are you doing?” Zane asked in what felt like an outrageously loud voice but was probably only slightly above normal.
I winced.
She spun around, dropping the clothes on the floor and revealing a large butcher’s knife clutched in her right hand.
Lesson 2 for Zane: never startle jumpy—and potentially armed—people.
I lunged around him, elbowing him out of the way, and raised my hand to direct the power already tingling in my fingertips. I didn’t know if she’d try to throw it or simply lurch at us, but either way I had it covered by clamping down on her wrist and fingers. That knife wasn’t getting anywhere near us.
As soon as she saw it was her son, though, Mara released the blade without a fight. With a little direction from me, it landed point down in the thin carpeting, where it promptly listed to one side under its own weight.
“You’re okay,” she breathed, eyes only for Zane.
Then her gaze fell on me.
“You.”
I flinched and then steeled myself for whatever stream of invective would follow.
“You have to come with me,” she said.
I blinked. That was not what I’d been expecting. “Go with you where?”
“Back to Wingate.” Then she bent down to scoop up the clothes she’d dropped and hastily piled them onto the mound already in her suitcase before slamming the lid closed. Or trying to, anyway. Sleeves in a variety of colors oozed out the edges, like invisible hands raised in protest at their treatment.
Zane gave me a worried frown, and I lifted a shoulder in a shrug, my mouth tight. It was the same song from before. Go back, you don’t belong here, you’ll never have a normal life, etc., etc. The only thing new was this overwhelming sense of urgency radiating from her. And I had no idea what might have triggered that.
“Mom, listen, I don’t know what Dad told you, but I’m fine. We’re fine,” Zane said, emphasizing the “we” of that statement by gesturing back and forth between us.
Mara paused in her frantic attempts to zip her suitcase. “You saw that? You were that close?”