8.

BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS.

VIRGINIA.

IN MY DREAMS I saw my house consumed in flames again, and its heat was a personal accusation. I embraced the guilt and walked into the fire until my clothing and my hair began to burn. I deserved to burn. I deserved far worse than burning. Our house was gone because of me. My mother had died because of me. My little brother was missing-perhaps also dead-because of me.

Then a door opened somewhere, and I could hear a wooden floorboard creak as someone approached me. I cracked open my eyes with effort, blinking away the crust of dried tears.

It was Devon. He crouched down by the side of my bed and waited until my eyes focused on him before speaking.

"She got out," he said. He touched me gently on the cheek; the tenderness of it made me want to cry. "Your mom. She got out in time. It was on the news. She's in the hospital now, in stable condition."

I trembled, and I wept, and he waited silently by my bedside, allowing the tears to flow. I wanted to ask him where I was now, what had happened after the fire, but I couldn't gather my thoughts enough to form words. One thing mattered more than everything else, though, and finally I managed, "Tommy. Is he . . . ?"

He hesitated. "No one's seen him since the fire, Jesse. I'm so sorry." He eased himself to his feet once more. "We can talk more about it when you get up."

"His computer," I pressed. "Did it have any clues on it? So we can find him?"

He shook his head. "We'll talk about it when you get up."

I wanted to ask more questions, but I didn't have the strength for it. My body ached from a thousand small wounds; my soul had been bled dry of all vitality. But at least the serpent of guilt that had been crushing my heart was finally easing its death-grip. My mother had survived the fire, and as soon as I got on my feet again I would find my brother. Wherever he was, whatever had happened to him, I would find him, and I would bring him safely home.

Somewhere in the middle of that thought, sleep claimed me again.

When I next awoke, I was alone. I wiped a crusted layer of dried tears from my eyes and looked around the room. It was a small but well-appointed s.p.a.ce, with neat modern furniture and a few pieces of tasteful but impersonal art on the walls. Totally unfamiliar. The thin bars of sunlight streaming in between the blinds were low-angled, which could have meant it was late afternoon or early morning. I had no sense of time.

As I got out of the narrow bed-which took an amazing amount of effort-I struggled to get my physical and emotional bearings. The events of the night before were now a blur of fear and exhaustion, and judging from the way the room wavered around the edges, I must have hit my head pretty hard. One thing I remembered clearly: Devon telling me that my mother had survived the fire. The rest was a chaos of fragmentary memories: sharp rocks, broken gla.s.s, a barefoot flight through the woods, tears shed in the back seat of a car while we sped through the mountains, heading . . . where? My skin throbbed from a thousand small cuts, my body ached from a thousand bruises. Never run through a forest barefoot. And never climb through a broken window with nothing but a tank top and sleep shorts to protect you.

Lessons to be remembered for the next time someone tried to burn me to death.

A pile of clothing lay neatly folded on a chair by the door. I figured it had been left for me, but I didn't feel coordinated enough to manage the task of dressing. Or perhaps it just didn't seem as important as other things. I needed to know what had happened since the fire more than I needed clean clothing.

I approached the door and waited until the room stopped swaying and my legs felt reasonably steady, then I opened it.

Outside was a long, L-shaped room, with a half-circle of couches and chairs surrounding a fireplace at the near end and a combination kitchen and dining area at the other. The furniture was crisp and neat, straight off the showroom floor, with gla.s.s-topped tables like you see in home decorating magazines. Except for one end table with half-eaten fast food items on it, the whole place was spotlessly clean, which made me acutely aware of my current sooty state. One wall of the room was made of gla.s.s, and it looked out over a steep green hillside. No other houses were in sight.

Where the h.e.l.l was I?

Devon and Rita were sitting next to the messy table; they jumped up as soon as I entered. Both looked like they hadn't slept in days. "Jesse!"

"Where are we?" I whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "What time is it?"

"Sunday afternoon," Devon said. "You're in my family's cabin. Rita brought you here last night. We figured it was the safest place to hide out while we figured out what to do next."

A place to hide out. Because there were people trying to kill us, I thought. That's what the fire had been about. Someone tried to burn me to death. I swallowed back hard on a rising tide of fear. Stay focused, girl.

"We got you food," Rita said, indicating the messy end table.

Hunger growled in my stomach, but I didn't feel up to eating just yet, so I waved the offer aside. "What happened after we left?" I asked. My voice was so dry I could barely force words out.

My house was completely gone, they told me. It had burned so quickly that by the time the fire department managed to put the flames out there was pretty much nothing left. Mom had gotten out through a window in time to save herself, but barely. She was in Mana.s.sas Hospital, her condition serious but stable. Devon had tried to get more information on her, but the hospital said they would only give that out to family members, and he thought that pretending to be related to me was a bad idea. I totally understood. Whoever had tried to kill me and my family might target anyone claiming to be my relative.

a.s.suming Devon and Rita weren't in their crosshairs already.

I fought back a sick wave of fear that accompanied that thought and asked hoa.r.s.ely, "What about Tommy?"

"MIA," Devon said. "Local news says they're searching the woods for both of you."

So much for hoping that Tommy would magically show up after the fire died down. Not that I'd really expected him to. The minute I'd seen the broken gla.s.s in his room I'd known that something was seriously wrong, though I still couldn't put my finger on what gave it away. But I knew deep in my gut that this was about something far more complicated than little kid escapes a house fire.

"What about his computer?" I asked. I'd grabbed it that night without really thinking, but now that my brain cells were starting to function again I realized just how important it might turn out to be. If Tommy had been online when the fire started-playing a game, chatting with his friends, whatever-he might have said something to someone that would give us a clue to his whereabouts. That was, a.s.suming we could track down whoever he'd been talking to, and drag them back to reality long enough to get intelligible answers from them. . . .

"Locked up tight." Devon's response scattered my thoughts. "We were hoping you knew his pa.s.sword."

"Shouldn't need one. It was on when I grabbed it."

"Except that somewhere between Mana.s.sas and Front Royal it ran out of power. And when we finally plugged it in again, it rebooted. Hence . . ." He spread his hands in the universal gesture of helplessness.

Did I know Tommy's pa.s.sword? Good question. He had told it to me once, while he was off visiting relatives, so that I could post something for him, but it was a good bet he changed it as soon as he got home. What thirteen-year-old wouldn't? But that did give me an idea about what kind of pa.s.sword he preferred, so I might have a shot at guessing the new one. "Where is it? I'll see what I can do."

Evidently the laptop was charging in the kitchen. While Devon went to fetch it I picked up a lukewarm hamburger and tried to eat it. It had been sitting around way too long to be appetizing, but at least it filled the void in my stomach. Rita handed me a can of soda, and I downed half of it without pausing to see what it was. My body soaked up the moisture with painful desperation, though I tasted nothing.

"Maybe he just got spooked," Rita offered. "Ran scared when the fire started, and is just too shaken to come out of hiding now. When things calm down, he'll show up again."

I wanted so much to believe that! But even as she spoke I could see his room again, the way it had looked that night. Gla.s.s shards littering the floor. Blankets a tangled ma.s.s on the bed. I had sensed at the time that something about the arrangement was wrong-terribly wrong-but I hadn't known what it was. Now, suddenly, it came to me, and the revelation shook me to my core. "Someone took him," I muttered.

Devon was on his way back with the laptop, its power cord trailing behind like a forgotten dog leash. "How do you know that?"

"The broken gla.s.s. It was all inside the room." I wiped my eyes dry with the back of my hand. Everything about me felt gritty. Filthy. "If he'd broken the window himself it would have shattered outward, not inward. And he wouldn't have to do that, anyway; he could just open it from the inside." I paused. "Which means someone broke it coming in."

"Jesus." Rita shook her head in amazement. "I would never have thought of that."

"Saw it on Law and Order once." I almost added: My whole d.a.m.n life looks like one of their episodes right now.

"But why would they want him?" Devon put down the computer in front of me and looked for a place to plug it in. Apparently there was no outlet close enough, so he coiled the cord and set it on the gla.s.s table. "He's not one of us, is he?"

Us. Changelings. Fugitives.

I shook my head. "Maybe they broke in upstairs to avoid the alarm system on the first floor. Then when they found him there they had to do something to keep him quiet."

But even as I said that, I knew it wasn't the right answer. If all they had wanted was to keep Tommy quiet, wouldn't they have just killed him on the spot? Count on the fire to destroy the evidence? No, there was something more than that going on, something way more complicated than simple arson.

His body hasn't been found yet, I comforted myself. So he's not necessarily dead. I knew it was a slim hope, but I clung to it with all my might. The thought of Tommy being kidnapped was something I could almost deal with. The thought of Tommy lying dead in a ditch somewhere, his body being picked over by wild animals, wasn't.

Shutting all those thoughts out of my mind, I sat down in front of the laptop. In the back of my mind I was aware that I was leaving sooty streaks all over the pristine couch, but it was a distant fact, without the power to move me. All that mattered now was the data on this computer, and what it might reveal.

The pa.s.sword he'd given me previously was the name of one of his favorite gaming characters. G.o.d knows I'd heard enough stories about Tommy's online adventures to fill a phone book, so one by one I entered all the fantasy names I could remember him ever mentioning, my heart skipping a beat each time I hit the "enter" key. But no matter how many I tried, nothing worked. Character names, quest locations, guild t.i.tles, you name it. I even tried three or four versions of a few names, just to make sure I had the spelling right, and subst.i.tuted numbers for letters in every variation I could think of. But still nothing worked.

Leaning back on the couch, I wiped a film of sweat from my brow as I struggled to come up with a new idea. I had to get into my brother's head, to sort out all the crazy gaming stuff that must be swimming around in there. What was he proudest of? Which tidbit of data would matter the most to him? I started to enter stuff from his Australian game-not only names this time, but every combination of elements I could think of. It was a long shot, since that game had only taken place a few days before, and I couldn't imagine he'd changed his pa.s.sword since then. But either Seyer's visit to our house had really spooked him, or else maybe he'd known those players longer than I thought. When I finally typed AUSSIE25 and hit enter, the system let me in.

Trembling with antic.i.p.ation, I watched as the desktop loaded, colorful gaming icons popping into existence one by one. Given that his wallpaper was an ill.u.s.tration of two dragons spouting neon fire at each other, it was hard to see anything. I focused on each icon as it appeared, searching for anything that would give me a clue as to what Tommy had been doing that night. But I wasn't a computer person and really didn't have a clue how to look for that kind of information. When the desktop finished loading I was no closer to an answer than when it had started.

Tears of frustration welled up in my eyes, making them sting. I wiped them away with the back of a sooty hand. Which made them sting worse.

"Here," Devon said gently. "Let me try."

He came around the couch, and I moved over to let him have the driver's seat. You could tell immediately that he knew what he was doing. His typing was lightning fast, pure geek style, and screen after screen flashed by, some of it stuff I'd never seen before. While he worked, his expression was so intense you'd think it was his little brother at risk. I would have hugged him for that, if I hadn't been afraid it would screw with his concentration.

Finally he saw something on the screen that seemed to be of particular interest to him. He hit a few more keys, watched as a few more pages of data flashed by, then asked, "Your brother was into video?"

"He uploaded things to YouTube, if that's what you mean. Clips from his games, mostly. Sometimes speeches. Every time one of his games changed something in its design he uploaded hours of b.i.t.c.hing. Which his friends responded to with videos of them b.i.t.c.hing." Suddenly it sank in why Devon would ask me that. "You think he might have been recording something when all this went down?"

"Looks that way." He started typing again. "Let me see if anything was saved when the power went out."

I think we were all holding our breath in that moment. I know that I was.

After a few seconds a video box appeared on the screen, and we saw Tommy's face. The room behind him was achingly familiar, books and toys and posters on the wall that now were no more than ash. I took another swallow of soda, trying to wash down the lump in my throat. His computer hadn't been facing the window, which was frustrating, but you could see most of the room clearly enough. A small desk lamp had been turned on, but not the ceiling light; Tommy hadn't wanted anyone to realize he was awake.

With an expression so solemn you'd think he was speaking at a funeral, my little brother addressed the camera. "I'm sorry, I just can't agree with that review. Yeah, the new module is really flashy. Lots of bells and whistles. But at its heart it's just the same old story line, and there comes to a point where new graphics can't save-oh, c.r.a.p!" A wave of his hand had hit something off screen; I heard a thunk and a splash as it struck the floor. "h.e.l.l," he muttered, as he slid out of his chair. I could see him looking around the room, probably searching for something to wipe up the mess with. Finally he scurried out of camera range, presumably to go fetch a towel or something. We heard the door to his room open, then close.

And we watched the screen in silence. I was so intent on listening that I hardly dared breathe; I didn't want some subtle clue to be drowned out by the sound of my respiration. But when the clue finally came, it wasn't subtle. Gla.s.s shattered loudly somewhere off-camera, and I found myself leaning forward, as if getting closer to the screen would somehow bring the cause of it into view. Then there was the sound of gla.s.s crunching underfoot as someone walked across the room, louder and louder as it approached the computer . . . and just when I thought I was going to scream from sheer frustration, a shadowy figure appeared on the screen. He was wearing some kind of hood, so we couldn't see his face, and he crossed the camera's field and disappeared on the other side without turning.

Then there was silence again. It didn't take a genius to deduce that the intruder was probably waiting beside the door, ready to grab hold of my brother the minute he returned. My hands balled into fists as I waited. I was maddened by my own impotence. It's a terrible thing to watch a video of someone you love about to be hurt and not be able to do a d.a.m.n thing about it.

We heard the door open again, followed by a brief scuffle. Don't let him be killed. Please, G.o.d, anything but that.

The dark figure returned to our field of view. He had Tommy's small body thrown over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. "You want me to wait?" he asked someone off-screen. He had an odd accent: almost British but with a hint of a southern tw.a.n.g.

"No." The voice that responded had a similar accent. "Head back to the caverns. I'll finish up here."

The guy carrying Tommy nodded and started toward the window. Our brief show was about to end, and we had learned nothing useful.

But just before the man left the camera's range he glanced back briefly over his shoulder, and for an instant-just an instant-we could see his face.

"Holy c.r.a.p . . ." Rita whispered.

I was speechless.

It was a slender face, delicate in bone structure, with high cheekbones and a narrow, feminine chin. The eyes were large and dark, vast almond-shaped orbs that reflected the shadows in the room. Maybe those eyes were impossibly huge, or maybe it was just the tiny size of his nose and mouth that made them seem that way, but the end result was that the face looked . . . well, not human. And the color of his skin wasn't human either, but a weird grey hue with some kind of mottled pattern. It's the lighting, I told myself. Or the monitor's got the color wrong. But as an artist I was pretty alert to cues of lighting and color, so those excuses fell flat. Everything else in the room looked perfectly normal, which meant that both the lighting and the monitor settings were close to true. We were seeing what this guy had really looked like.

The figure walked off-screen. We heard more gla.s.s crunching. Then there was the sound of a window opening, a few m.u.f.fled comments I couldn't make out, and finally a heavy wooden thud as the window fell shut again. A faint tinkling of gla.s.s followed that, as if someone had brushed against a wind chime. Then silence.

For a full minute, none of us said anything. English didn't have the kind of words you needed to respond to a video like that.

Rita was the first to find her voice. "What the h.e.l.l was that?"

"A hoax," Devon croaked. "Some kind of video hoax. Kids do things like that all the time."

"Someone tried to burn down my house," I said sharply. "Two people nearly died. That's hardly the kind of practical joke my brother would play." My head was pounding fiercely now, and not from physical pain this time.

"We should tell someone," Devon said, without conviction.

"Tell them what?" Rita snapped. "Jesse's brother was kidnapped by a s.p.a.ce alien? Or by some kind of . . . Jesus Christ, what was that thing?"

Maybe this is all just a bad dream, I told myself. Wishful thinking. A dream was something you could wake up from. This was worse than any nightmare I'd ever had.

Rita got up from the couch and started pacing. Back and forth, back and forth, movements jerky and quick like those of a nervous animal. "We can't show this to anyone. Anyone! You all understand that, right?"

Devon opened his mouth to protest . . . then just shut it and nodded. Because Rita was right. If we showed this crazy video to the police they would just accuse us of having altered it digitally-perhaps even staging the whole scene ourselves, as some sick kind of teenage prank-and then not only would we not get any help, we'd probably be arrested for falsifying evidence. Maybe they'd even suspect us of having started the fire, because why else would we make up such a crazy story? I'd seen people on cop shows arrested over less.

No one would believe what was in this video. No one.

Which meant we were completely on our own. And that was more scary than all the rest combined.

"He mentioned caverns," Devon told me. "That's where they were taking your brother."

"There are a million caverns around here," I reminded him. The karst mountains flanking the Shenandoah Valley were like Swiss cheese-I remembered that much from Geology. "So that's not much to go on."

Rita looked at me. "He said it like it was the name of a place. Or part of a name, anyway. Aren't there caverns with names around here?"

Devon nodded. "Half a dozen, at least. Shenandoah, Endless, Skyline, Luray . . . but they're all open to the public. Not the kind of place kidnappers would use for a hideout."

Least of all kidnappers who don't look human, I thought darkly.

But his words sparked a memory of something that had happened back when I was a kid. Fifth, maybe sixth grade. My science teacher had booked a tour for us at one of the big caverns: special lecture for young people, private tour, the whole nine yards. Only it got cancelled at the last minute. Apparently the caverns we'd planned to visit had come under new ownership and would no longer be open to the public. It all happened so fast there wasn't time for our teacher to book an alternative tour before year's end. Man, we were angry. Really angry. You never forget that kind of thing. "Mystic Caverns," I said. "Closed about six years ago."

Without saying a word, Devon returned to the laptop. I saw him pull up a browser and start scrolling through web pages. I rescued the remains of my soda from the table and tried to wash down the lump in my throat as I watched him. Rita went back to pacing.

"Got it," he muttered at last. He leaned back on the couch and began to read aloud.

". . . Shoponi tradition says it is home to powerful spirits, and that if a shaman sleeps there after proper ritual preparation, he can enter the spirit world in his dreams. In the early 19th century the caverns were used as a way station for escaped slaves, and during Prohibition private parties were often held in its depths. In 1936 the owners revamped the tourist facilities, adding steel walkways, an electrical system, and a new and larger entrance at the southern end. Mystic Caverns remained a popular tourist destination until it closed in 2007 . . . ."