Jim Armstrong and the Goblet's Curse

Chapter 26: We're Not Sleeping Tonight Either

  I walked with Noah, trailing behind the others as we made our way up to the hotel. I was still silently fuming and James' recklessness. What could've been so special about a stupid wallet that he would risk his life for it?

I put my hand in my pocket again to make sure the leaves were still in there. Sure enough, they were. We'd gotten a taxi to take us back to the hotel, but even walking up to the building was tiring me.

Wow.

Finally, we made it up to our room, and James looked for the key card. He looked through his jeans pockets, his jacket pockets, and his wallet, but came up empty.

"Damn it, the key was in my pocket and it must've fallen out," he said. We stood around the door, looking at its unyielding form. "Does anyone else have a key?"

We all murmured no, checking pockets and hoping that a card would magically appear in front of us.

"How are we supposed to get inside now?" James asked to nobody in particular. We stood around for a few moments before Cecy scoffed and pushed past James. She sized up the door, then out of nowhere, kicked it, hard. The door swung open roughly, revealing our room behind it. We were all stunned for a moment, looking at Cecy in awe.

"I like the cut of your jib," James said, impressed. Cecy shrugged and led the way into the room.

The room looked almost exactly as we'd left it. The beds were still unmade, the blinds were still shut and the food wrappers were still scattered everywhere. The only thing different about the room, was that Davis was no longer there.

The others immediately noticed this too, and panic broke out.

"Where the hell is he?"

"Where could he have gone?"

"We made him promise not to go anywhere though!"

Suddenly, the bathroom door opened and we all whipped around. Davis came walking out, looking at us tiredly.

"I suppose that all that yelling was about where I'd gone?" he asked, coming to sit on one of the beds. "You didn't forbid me to go pee."

I registered that Davis was mocking us, but I couldn't care less, and I knew the others were relieved too. I drew out the leaves from my pockets and thrust them at Davis. His eyes lit up, and he took the leaves from me, turning them over and inspecting them. Finally, he put the leaves away before Noah spoke.

"Okay, we did our part, now you do your part," he said.

Davis turned back to us. "Now?"

"Uh, yeah," Cecy said. "We've been on this Itinere for almost four months. Anything could've happened in those four months, and we can't afford to waste any more time."

Davis rolled his eyes. "If you haven't noticed, princess, it's like 10:30 right now, and dark as hell," Davis said. "Do you really want to go get the Silver Sand during the dead of night, when anything could happen?"

"We don't care," I replied. "Those students need the Sand. It's their only hope."

"Some of them could even be..." Noah didn't finish. We all knew what the last word of that sentence was going to be, but that didn't mean any of us wanted to say it. We didn't want to think that that could even be a possibility.

"My sister is one of the people that needs the Sand," Cecy continued. "I need that Sand as soon as possible. She needs that Sand."

"You have to," Shea said. "We made a deal."