But it’s the fastest way I can think to get there.
The wind whistles around me, burning my ears as I trudge through the mud back to the courtyard. I point the light at the crumbled pile of metal that was once Clementine, crushed and twisted on the ground, barely recognizable. Just the memory of what Lucio did makes me angrier, and the wind picks up, spinning the cycle in circles on the ground. The metal groans.
I tried calling Nolan a dozen times, but every time his phone went to voicemail, so I finally gave up. If he’s being held against his will, he’s probably not allowed to check his phone, right? I couldn’t help sending him a text message just in case: I’m coming, I wrote. You sit tight.
I didn’t write what I’m really thinking: Please be okay. Please be okay. Please be okay.
The wind blows dust into my eyes, and I have to plant my feet firmly just to take a single step. “Calm down!” I shout. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. I don’t think I’ve ever been less calm. I take a deep breath and try to concentrate.
It was just before midnight when I called Ashley, so she should be here sometime this afternoon. But how am I going to sneak out without Lucio and Aidan trying to stop me again? What if they imprison Ashley too?
I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I have to make it through the next ten hours without letting on that I have a getaway car en route. I start pacing, even though it feels like the wind is pushing and pulling me in every direction. Despite the spirit-filled chill in the air, I’m sweating.
Step, step, step. They’ll never let me leave. Change direction. Step, step, step. But I have to leave.
I shout it out loud: “I have to leave!”
The breeze shifts, and an explosive sound fills the air. A window in one of the buildings across the courtyard shatters, sending shards into the air like hailstones. I scream, crouching down in a circle and covering my head with my hands.
Across the courtyard I hear another window break.
Then another.
And another.
Llevar la Luz is falling apart. If Aidan is right about the connection between the spirits and me, I’m the reason why.
Suddenly I know how I’m going to pass the next ten hours without making Aidan and Lucio suspicious. I have to get the spirits to calm down. If I can stop this wind, Aidan and Lucio will believe that I’ve calmed down too.
I don’t even bother using my cell phone as a flashlight anymore. The breeze is enough to guide me: I walk headlong into it. Each step takes enormous effort, like walking into a hurricane or swimming upstream. It’s so cold that the rain is turning to sleet. If this goes on much longer, it might even turn to snow.
It feels like it takes forever just to walk across the courtyard. I’m not sure I ever really realized just how enormous a place this is. It was meant to house hundreds of luiseach, not just three.
Or not just two, as one of us is getting out of here.
It’s even windier inside. The door slams shut behind me so hard that I’m not sure I could open it again if I wanted to. No place to go but forward then. The wind blows harder with each step I take, lifting what’s left of my hair off my shoulders so hard that if feels like someone is standing behind me, pulling my hair from my scalp.
Inside the lab Aidan and Lucio are shouting. It sounds like the first few minutes in The Wizard of Oz when it’s still in black and white and Auntie Em is calling for Dorothy, and they’re all terrified because a twister is coming.
Research papers and Aidan’s notebooks swirl around the room in the chaos. I’m struck by a large piece of paper on my leg. I look down and see that it’s the map Aidan had tacked to the wall, the one with four red circles and dates by each circle. Quickly I fold it and stick it in my back pocket. The map is coming home with me. Maybe Nolan will be able to make sense of it.
“Michael Weir’s spirit wasn’t this worked up when it escaped!” Lucio cries. A flashlight spins around in the breeze, casting strange shadows on the walls. It gives off enough light that I can see that Lucio’s eyes are closed. He’s trying to reach out to one spirit at a time like he always told me to do. “You have to let me move them on before it’s too late,” he begs.
“No!” Aidan yells to be heard over the whistle of the wind, but his voice is as even as ever. “We’d have to start all over again.”
“Better to start over again than risk all of them turning dark!”
My teeth are chattering so hard, it’s a wonder they don’t crack right down the middle.
“No!” Aidan repeats. “They won’t turn dark in this much warmth.”