The Hag's Blood Incident

Chapter 7

     Minutes later, we were speeding uphill along the switchbacks of a back road that would take us back to our home. In a surprise to everyone, Ms. Gretchen had actually agreed with me. She lent us her car, so that we could and I quote "Go clean up that boy's mess."

     Tam tilted his head sideways and back a little, addressing me from the driver's seat, "How are we going to find this guy? We live in a city of two hundred thousand people, and you want to find one stranger you ran across on a bus? Did you at least get his name?"

     I chuckled darkly, resting my arms of the captain's chairs in the front of the car, "That would make this easier, so of course I didn't. But, don't worry. I have a plan."

     Ari groaned, lowering her cell phone from her ear. I couldn't tell if it was from failure on the phone, or me mentioning I had a plan.

     "No luck?" I asked, hopefully.

     "The KAT terminal said they can't give any information about their drivers to the public." Ari replied with frustration, shoving the phone into her purse between her legs.

     "We figured that would be the case." I said in an attempt to mollify her. "All right, here's my plan. Each of us is going to take a separate bus. Ari you take the eleven fifteen. Tam you take the twelve o'clock, and I'll take the twelve forty-five. It's the one I took before and of the three of us I know what the guys looks like the best."

     Ari looked back at me in disbelief, frowning. She raised a questioning eyebrow at me. "How are you going to recognize him? Did he have any distinguishing features?"

     "I don't know." I said simply, and both Arianna and Tam groaned loudly.

     "Look, I know, it's not great, and I was out of my gourd when I met the guy, but of the three of us, I know what he looks like the best." I answered both of their disbelieving expressions.

     Dissatisfied, Tam focused on the road and Ari turned back around and threw her hands into the air in frustration.

     "What do you want to do? Do you want to leave someone else out in the world that could be affected like Mister Spider was? We need to find this guy, not just for his sake, but for anyone he comes in contact with as well." I said passionately. "Look, here's what we'll do. We'll each ride to the park to see if he gets on today. I'm going to try to talk to the bus driver to see if they can give me some more information about the kid, you might try doing the same. Remember, he's a five foot tall snake-guy. His legs are fused together and he slithers around, okay. Hopefully, he'll stand out. Maybe there won't be too many more like him on the route."

     I pulled out my wallet and retrieved six hundred dollars of the money Stanton had given me. "Use this to get the people on the bus talking." I held out two hundred dollars to both of them. Ari plucked it from my fingers quickly. "Explain to the people you talk to that you owe the guy money that he loaned you the other day. But, don't show the money off if you can avoid it. He seemed like a pretty good Samaritan, so if one of the passengers or the drivers know him it should help to jog their memories about him. You can use the money how you want, but I'm going to use the second hundred for the bus driver. Hopefully, it'll help alleviate their conscience about telling a stranger about a passenger."

     Tam reached back and took the money from my outstretched hand.

     "I didn't have time to break it, so try to use it sparingly if you can." I said.

     "We know how money works, Love. You don't have to explain that to us, too." Said Ari, sarcastically. "I still don't know about this plan. We don't have much to go on, and you don't have the best track record recently."