The Secret Source (The Book of Sight 3), page 12
Dominic decided to skip a shower but pulled on clean clothes before heading downstairs to sneak a few cookies for his breakfast. One of the perks of living with your grandmother was that there were always cookies. He grabbed a handful and was almost out the door when he thought of Sam and grabbed a second handful.
The morning sun was beautiful. He could feel it like a physical touch, warming the backs of his arms. The walk felt good with all the nervous energy left over from a night of tossing and turning. He took his time, but he still arrived at Logan’s way too early. Darcy answered the door in her pajamas and yelped when she saw him. Only a couple of homemade cookies convinced her to forgive the necessity of getting dressed in a hurry.
Now that he was here, there was nothing to do but wait for the others. Pacing was out, since there wasn’t room for more than a few steps in the living room of the little trailer. Instead, Dom offered to wash the dishes sitting in the sink. Logan looked embarrassed, but Darcy accepted immediately. Washing the dishes must have been her job.
When Alex arrived, with the little fur ball Ralphie peeking out of her backpack, he was just finishing up. She raised her eyebrows when she saw what he was doing but didn’t say anything.
“Okay, I’m out of here,” said Logan’s mom, breezing out of the bathroom and grabbing her purse.
Darcy gave a little gasp as Ralphie turned his glowing eyes on her mother. Everyone froze except Mrs. Talbott, who walked right past the mully without a glance. Instead, her eye fell on the last cookie sitting on the table next to Darcy’s elbow.
“Really, Darcy?” she said with a sigh. “Cookies for breakfast?”
“Dominic brought them!” Darcy protested. “Anyway, that one is Sam’s.”
Mrs. Talbott shook her head resignedly. “Well, I certainly can’t yell at Dominic after he just cleaned up my kitchen. Thank you, by the way. I’m just going to have to assume they’re oatmeal so I can live with myself. Be good, kids. I’m off at five today, so I’ll make dinner tonight.”
When she was gone, Alex let out the breath she had been holding. “Oh man. I’m sorry, guys. I should have had Ralphie better hidden. I forgot she would still be here.”
“She never even saw him, though,” said Darcy. “That’s so weird.”
“Looks like Eve doesn’t need to worry so much about her mom finding him,” said Dom.
“Nothing is ever going to make Eve stop worrying about her mom,” said Logan.
“What’s Eve’s mom doing now?” asked Adam, coming in the door with a whole box of Pop Tarts in his hand.
“Unfrosted strawberry!” squealed Darcy, diving for the box.
“You just ate three cookies,” said Logan.
“So?” said Darcy with her mouth full. “Unfrosted strawberry are my favorite.”
“So they’re also Adam’s, not yours.”
“It’s okay,” Adam said. “It’s not like I’m going to eat the whole box. I was just running late, so I grabbed the first thing I saw. Anyone can help themselves.”
“See,” said Darcy, spraying crumbs. “Adam doesn’t mind.”
Logan gave her a disgusted look.
Adam laughed.
“We ought to send you to live with Eve’s mom for a while,” Logan muttered. “She’d teach you some manners.”
“So there’s trouble with Eve’s mom?” asked Adam. “Is that why she isn’t here?”
“No trouble that we know of,” said Alex.
“Where’s Eve, then?” asked Adam. “Didn’t we say eight to try to have more time than yesterday?”
Dominic glanced at the clock. It was 8:15. It wasn’t totally unusual for Eve to be late, but it irritated him that she would have chosen this morning for it.
“You know how she is,” said Logan. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon. If you guys want to save time, I could leave now and take the kids over to Maddie’s. Then I’ll just meet you at the house.”
“Maddie’s is right on the way,” said Alex. “There’s no point in going separately. After that visit from Candace, I don’t want to split up any more than necessary. We can just drop them as we go.”
Dominic fidgeted through another ten minutes. Alex had gotten Ralphie out, and the mully was rolling around on the table to the amusement of all the others. Dominic couldn’t stop staring out the window. What was taking Eve so long?
“Maybe you should call her,” he finally said to Alex. “See if something is wrong.”
Alex dug out her cell phone. “No answer,” she said after a minute. “Not surprising. She turns it off half of the time…or doesn’t charge it. You want me to call her mom?”
“That’ll just cause problems for her,” said Logan.
“She’s a half-hour late,” said Dom. “We need to know if there’s any point in waiting or not.”
“We’re not going to do this without her,” said Logan.
“Before anyone gets mad, let me just call her mom and find out what’s up. I think I can do it without getting Eve in trouble. For some reason, her mom likes me, or pretends to, at least.” She dialed and almost immediately someone answered. “Hi, Mrs. Sloane! This is Alex Hughes. Just calling to see if Eve is around…”
Even from across the room, Dominic could hear the yelling on the other end.
Alex’s forehead creased, but she managed to keep her tone light. “Really? No, I…oh…I’m sorry…yeah, that’s…No, ma’am, I have no idea…well, yes…I’m sure…No, we were together yesterday, but we all went home around dinner time, and I thought…okay…”
The voice on the other end was increasingly hysterical. Alex waited while the rant went on, but she was grinding her teeth. Finally she spoke over the other person. “I’m sure you must be so worried. I totally understand. I’ll ask around, and I promise you that I’ll let you know if I find anything out or…yes, obviously, if I see her…yes. Okay. Okay. Okay, Mrs. Sloane, I need to go, my dad…Right. Okay. Okay, I have to go now. I’ll check back later. Okay, bye.”
She hung up the phone and dropped it on the table, brow furrowed. “Eve never came home last night. Her mom doesn’t know where she is.”
“She never came home?” Adam said.
Logan closed his eyes.
“That’s what her mom said.”
“But we all split up for home really early for once.”
Alex shook her head and picked up Ralphie. “What do you think, buddy? Why didn’t she go home? Did she tell you anything?”
As if he understood what was happening, Ralphie’s eyes had gone black again. He rubbed the side of his head against Alex’s palm but made no noise.
“You guys, we have to find her,” said Darcy. “What if something happened to her? What if something got to her? What if it was Candace?”
Dominic’s mind raced, knowing that any of those things were possible. “We need to go back to where we split up. See if we can find any trace of anything. Maybe Ralphie could help?”
Logan had stood silent through all the discussion. Now he opened his eyes and said, “I think I know where she went.”
* * * * *
Even with a quick detour to drop Sam off at Maddie’s (Darcy refused point blank to be left behind), they still made it to the creepy house by 9:15.
Looking up at the horrifying gargoyles Darcy cringed. “Are you sure this is it? Why would she come here alone? Why would anyone ever want to come here?”
“It’s not the house,” said Logan. “It’s the fountain.”
He led the way around toward the back.
When they came through the trees, Dom saw the fountain up ahead. The bird was back, sitting as it had before on the edge of the fountain, just as beautiful and just as serene. Eve was there, too, looking intently into the water.
She was completely wrapped in dark green vines.
Head to foot, they crisscrossed her body, binding her tightly and trailing up around the fountain and into the trees beyond. In the two seconds it took to cross to the fountain, Dominic saw a loop circle slowly around her mouth. Eve didn’t struggle. She didn’t move at all. She just looked into the sparkling pool with a little smile on her face.
Logan beat Dom to her side, frantically yanking on the vines around her shoulders. The plant was stronger than it looked and didn’t yield at all under his hands. Dominic tried to help, even as he heard a gasp from behind him.
“Eve! Eve?” Alex ran to Eve’s side attempted to step between her friend and the fountain. “Eve! You have to look away. Can’t you feel what’s happening?”
Eve muttered something, and her smile disappeared, but she didn’t look up from the water.
Now that he was working on the vines himself, Dom couldn’t believe she could even breathe. The tendrils were digging into her skin. Getting his fingers around them was nearly impossible, and when he did finally get a grip on one, it was as thick and tough as old rope.
Logan was now pulling so hard that Eve rocked back and forth, still captivated by the water, but now frowning in frustration.
“Stop it,” snapped Darcy from behind Logan. “Stop pulling, you idiot. It’s not helping, and you’re going to hurt her. Where’s your pocket knife? Do you have it in your bag?”
Logan ignored her, but Dominic realized that Darcy was right. He shrugged out of his own pack, and started to dig for the knife he always carried. He could see that Adam was trying a different approach, following the vines away from Eve, looking for their source. He already had his own knife in his hand.
Dom finally found the blade and jumped back up by his friends. “Get him out of the way,” he said to Darcy, who was trying unsuccessfully to root around in Logan’s backpack while he was still wearing it. She nodded and yanked hard at the pack, whirling her brother around.
Alex was shaking Eve now, trying to wake her by shouting in her face. Eve snarled back angrily.
“Let her be,” Dom said, “I’m going to try to cut her loose.”
Alex immediately backed off, pulling Ralphie off of her shoulder and hugging him to her chest as she watched Dom work. It wasn’t going the way he had hoped, though. The vines were so secure that he couldn’t find a spot to cut without risking cutting Eve, too. He tried to slip the blade in between two coils piled on top of each other around waist level, but even then, he needed to saw a bit to make any break at all. Each motion he made came close to jabbing Eve, so he was forced to work very slowly.
Fortunately, Adam was having more success on the other side of the fountain. Dom heard his shout when the first vine was severed. The vines wriggled and seemed to pull tighter. Dominic could see Eve’s grimace of pain, and he tried to work faster, but the only result was a little cut on Eve’s arm.
A few minutes later Adam yelled, “There’s only one left! Pull hard.”
Dominic dropped the knife, and he and Logan grabbed Eve’s shoulders and pulled her back from the fountain. This time, she tipped backward, falling into their arms still completely wrapped but no longer tied to the fountain.
With the girls’ help, they hurriedly dragged Eve as far from the water as possible. She had closed her eyes when she fell, and she lay on the ground unmoving as they cut away the vines that now had no life of their own.
As soon as the vines were all off, Eve shot up, staring around like someone who had been awakened by a loud noise.
“Where…wha-…Oh…you guys…did you decide to come here, too?” She seemed to register their looks of horror and sat back down slowly. “Wait…did I…fall asleep or something? Because I had this dream…” She looked down at the cut vines lying all around her and drew her arms into each other. “Oh. Not a dream. Good thing you guys decided to come back, then, huh?”
“Eve, we didn’t…it’s…” Alex couldn’t finish the sentence.
It was Darcy who looked Eve straight in the eyes. “Those vines nearly killed you. You’ve been here all night. We didn’t know you were gone until Alex talked to your mom this morning, and Logan guessed this was where you would be.” She sounded like a mother reprimanding a child for running into the street.
“It’s…I was here all night?” Eve looked around at the confirmation on all their faces. “It only felt like a few minutes. I mean, I was just watching all this awesome stuff for a little while and then…right there at the end, I started feeling like I was being squeezed really tight, but even that was just…for a couple of seconds,” she finished lamely.
“Try hours,” said Adam. “Which isn’t surprising since that’s exactly what happened the last time.”
Eve blushed and looked down. “I know. I just thought… well, I thought you were wrong about the danger and that I could show you... It was stupid. I’m sorry.”
“We should get out of here,” said Logan, packing up his backpack as if he hadn’t heard her.
“Yeah,” said Alex. “Your mom is frantic. You should get home.”
Eve went pale. “Oh man. You guys…my mom. I’d rather not hurry home to that, thanks.”
“Eve, you were gone all night. She’s worried, and she should be. No matter what she’s like, she doesn’t deserve that.”
“I know,” said Eve. “But how am I ever going to explain this?”
“You’ll think of something,” said Alex.
“You always do,” muttered Logan.
Eve looked at him and then away quickly. She bit her lip. “Okay. Thanks for finding me and…” She gestured at the vines. “And I really am sorry. I should have known better. I did know better than to come here alone.”
“Yeah, I seem to recall someone just the other day saying that a person would be totally stupid to go off alone right now.”
Eve closed her eyes. “As usual, that person was right. I admit it. I’m totally stupid.”
“Agreed,” said Alex, standing up and holding out a hand to help Eve up. “And now that you know that, you’ll never do it again, so let’s get out of here.”
“We all have to take a turn doing something stupid, I guess,” said Adam.
Eve smiled weakly.
They were just turning to go when the music started again. Dom had forgotten all about the strange bird, which had disappeared during their struggle with the vines, but now it was back and perched in the branches above their heads. Its long beautiful tail hung down just in front of them. The song it was singing now was slightly different from before, sweeter and more compelling.
Dom stopped, relaxing as it washed over him. A second before he had been in a hurry to get away from that place and the disturbing vines that lay all about, but now he remembered that he had wanted to look into the fountain once before they left. Something in the song reminded him of the images of himself in the woods with his friends, relaxed and at peace. He wondered if that really was supposed to be his future. He turned toward the fountain. It would just be for a minute. A minute couldn’t hurt with all his friends there to watch his back.
He never even noticed that they were all moving toward the water.
All except Darcy, who was frowning up at the bird. She stared for a minute and then shook her head hard to clear it. “I see your game,” she muttered, clamping both hands over her ears. Then she noticed that the others were nearly to the fountain already. “No! Morons!”
She ran toward them and shouted, “Plug your ears! Plug your ears now!”
Years of fights with her brothers had made her loud, loud enough to drown out the bird’s voice for just a minute. Just as Dom was about to lean over the fountain, he heard the discordant noise of her yelling. He pulled back. What was she shouting about? Something about ears. He half turned toward her.
“Plug your ears!” she shouted again.
For some reason, Dominic did as she said, noticing that everyone else was doing the same. Darcy sagged with relief.
Dom could still hear the bird’s song, but now that it was muffled, he realized that it sounded more mournful than soothing. As his mind cleared, he realized what it was doing. Seeing a rock on the ground nearby, Dominic snatched it up and threw it at the bird as quickly as he could.
He missed, but it flew off squawking anyway. As soon as its song was completely gone, new horror of the place washed over him.
He wasn’t alone. No one said a word as they hurried out to the road again, but no one had to. They were still completely silent as they headed across the fields towards town.
Only when they reached the gas station that marked the edge of city limits did Adam say, “Good thing we brought you with us, Darcy.”
Darcy shrugged one shoulder, and Logan smiled over at his sister. “So we’re agreed that we’re never going anywhere near that place again?” he said.
Alex nodded fervently.
Eve stared at the ground as she walked. “Yeah,” she said in her most miserable voice. Dominic assumed the consequences of her night by the fountain were starting to seem real to her.
“We stay away,” Dom said. “But I want to find out more about it if possible. We can’t keep searching today. Eve has to go home. Maybe we should swing by and ask the Dund about the fountain. He may know or remember something about the web, too.”
“Good idea,” said Adam. “I haven’t seen him in a while. I’d like to show him the map, see if it means anything to him. You don’t mind if we go there while you head home, Eve?”
Eve let out a low groan.
“It’ll be okay,” said Logan. He seemed to have forgotten his anger at her, probably because he had nearly been trapped by the bird’s song just like the rest of them. “She’ll be mad, but it’ll blow over. It always does.”
“I know,” said Eve. “Doesn’t mean I have to look forward to it.”
“I’ll go with you, help you figure out a story to tell her,” said Alex.
“We just have to go by Maddie’s before we do anything else, tell her you’re safe, get Sam,” said Logan.
“Fine by me,” Eve muttered. “I’m in no hurry.”
At Maddie’s they found Sam playing croquet by himself on the front lawn. It looked pretty challenging with all the statues and plastic lawn ornaments he had to play around. Adam let himself get drawn into a game to give the others space to tell Maddie the whole story.
