Search (SEEK book 1)

Change of Plans

I pinch my brow, wondering when this whole mess started.

"We don't have to be in the exact location. How about the forest where you met the cougar?" Jonathan asks, as though reading my mind.

"The Daniel Boone National Forest," I say with final determination.

Jonathan nods to Mayet. She winks in return and blows me a kiss. I cup my cheek as she floats away in her bubble.

"No time to waste." Jonathan sweeps an arm up the trail.

I square my shoulders, marching beside him in silence, his eyes always on me. I manage to ignore it for a while, but eventually the silence is deafening.

"Were you studying psychology at Brown or something?" I ask, catching my toe on a rock, totally unlike like me.

Jonathan gentlemanly pretends not to notice and answers without missing his cue. "Hardly, I was studying Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I dabbled in parapsychology though. That's how I learned about the Khayal. It was an accident really, but I don't regret it."

"You're on both Kistall's and Episteme's Most Wanted lists. How could you not regret it?"

"Hmmm...good question." He nods, swiping a leaf from an oak tree and picking at it. "I've given myself a new crusade. I guess you could say I'm now a paladin for truth. The Khayal have been wronged and I'm going to prove it. Besides, as long as I stay out of Kistall custody no permanent harm can come to me."

"You are in Kistall custody. SEEK is owned and operated by Kistall, remember? So what, now you're invincible because of the Khayal?"

"Of course not." Jonathan wipes the glistening sweat from his face on his t-shirt as we cross the deserted ridge leading to the hotel. "They can only heal flesh wounds, nothing that affects the brain. One could die from mental illness, a gunshot to the head, cranial bleeding, and stuff like that."

"That makes sense," I say, wishing away the festering ball of dread in my stomach that says we're both making America's Most Wanted by nightfall.

"I know how you feel," he says, pulling me to a stop in the hotel parking lot, his expression suddenly brooding.

"No. I doubt very seriously that you have any idea what it's like to put your sister in a wheelchair, lie to your family, and then be lured in by a complete stranger with his pal, who by the way looks an awful lot like Tinkerbelle's cousin, and have your whole world turned inside out!"

Jonathan blinks at me.

"Sorry. I needed to vent."

"Let me tell you how it happened for me." He hooks my elbow and begins strolling slowly between cars. "Two years ago I was researching mystic phenomenon at the Stone Gardens in Georgia. There'd been reports of black shadows in the trees near the Adams Family Graves. A true family. Weird, right?" he asks. "My buddies convinced me it was for scientific research. Only we weren't supposed to be there. The graves are on private property and we were trespassing. The police showed up and chased us. My buddies flipped out and scattered. I was lost in the woods for a few days. It was February and I was freezing and hungry. I cut my hand trying to start a fire. That's when Mayet chose me. I tried to write it off as a hunger induced nightmare, but I started seeing her bubble everywhere and by day five she started speaking to me."

"Five days? That's how long it was before..." I trail off, chewing a cuticle and remembering the disembodied voice calling my name.

"You've heard her." Jonathan nods, looking pleased that I can't deny it any longer. "Yeah, there's an incubation of five to seven days after a Khayal bite before we can hear them. I'm not really sure why. Mayet doesn't think in terms of facts and figures so I can't get an answer from her," he says, a small frown playing with the edges of his bottom lip.