“Try it again,” I say, and end up having to pay with cash. I’ve got twenty bucks left in my wallet, so I head to an ATM. It eats my card. When I go into the bank, the teller tells me that my card has been reported as stolen. And then I know.
“What the hell, Dad!” I yell into the pay phone.
“Watch your language, young man,” he growls. “I told you to come directly home. What are you doing in Salt Lake City?”
“How do you even know where I am?” I yell.
“My assistant, Sam, is tracking your card use.”
“He reported it as stolen!”
“I’ll have him rectify that as soon as you reassure me that you are on your way to L.A. and I will see you here tomorrow.”
“I’m not coming home. I’m staying here until I find the girl.”
“If you do, Miles Blackwell, you can forget about Yale. I have my men on this, and I don’t want you messing it up.”
“But, Dad,” I begin. The phone line clicks as my dad hangs up.
I head back to the car, flipping through my wallet as I walk. Twenty bucks to my name and my dad’s Shell card, which can only buy me gas. I’m not leaving. I’m not going home, but where am I going to stay? I’m not Juneau—I can’t survive off the land. What am I going to do until I find her—snare pigeons with my phone charger and cook them over a campfire in the public park?
I press the button to unlock my car, accidentally popping the trunk open. Walking around to slam it shut, I see something I had completely forgotten was back there: the tent and camping supplies.
I glance around at the stunning mountain scenery surrounding the city and smile. I can’t afford a hotel room, but I can sure as hell camp.
45
JUNEAU
BY NIGHTTIME I’M DESPERATE TO LEAVE. BEING cut off from all communication with my clan makes me feel so out of control, I can barely sit still.
Tallie helps me limp outside, draws a circle on the ground with a stick, and tells me to throw Beauregard’s bones while thinking about my father. This reminds me so much of contacting the Yara that it makes me wonder once again if there is more than one way—Whit’s way—to Read and Conjure. And that Tallie’s just using a different method and vocabulary to get the same results from the same source. Although the thought is destabilizing, it also appeals to me. I take the dried old bones in both hands and toss them inside the circle.
Tallie squats down and studies them. She runs her finger along a series of small bones lying perpendicular to one another. “I don’t know why, Juneau, but it looks like your quest ends here, right now, at my house.”
“What?” I ask, aghast.
“You’ve deviated from the path you’re supposed to take, here.” She points to a bone in the series. “This one is off-kilter, and if you don’t put it straight, you won’t go any farther.”
She looks at me. “If you had to divide your journey into major steps, maybe into important Readings, how would it go?”
I think. “Well, first I fire-Read and saw Whit near the ocean. Then, once in Anchorage, my oracle directed me to Seattle. Which is where this old man told me how to find Miles, and said I had to be honest with him, but not to trust him. And . . . oh.”
“What?” Tallie asks, hand on her hip.
“He said that Miles was the one to take me far,” I say in a small voice.
“Looks like he hasn’t taken you far enough,” she says. “You’re going to have to tuck your tail and go find him. Convince him to keep going with you.”
“But his dad is out to get me for some strange reason.” Something strikes me for the first time. “What if Miles’s dad is actually working with Whit and his men? What if Miles’s dad is the one who kidnapped my clan?”
Tallie shrugs. “Whatever the case, it looks like you’ve got your work cut out. You have to, one, find the boy; two, convince him to forgive you for drugging him and stealing his car; and three, persuade him not to hand you over to his dad.”
I gape at her. “But without my ability to Read, how in the world am I supposed to find him?”
“Well, that’ll be a good incentive to get your abilities back. If Whit sent that bird to find you, do you think you could send it to find Miles?” she asks.
I nod. “I’ve tried that before, with a much smaller distance, and it worked.”
“Well then, that’s your next step. As soon as you’re ready, you let me know. I can hike over to the general store. Mikey over there’ll let me borrow his pickup truck, and I can get within a half-mile of here if I go back-road. Then I’ll take you to wherever the bird tells you to go. How’s that?”