The bad atmosphere between Quentin and me must have also passed if he was bringing up this topic again. Hooray for a return to normalcy. “I told you no already.”
Quentin pouted. “Think of it as a deeper, more intimate form of teamwork,” he said. “There’s no shame in it. If anything, you’re the dominant one when we couple ourselves like that.”
“Okay, so part of why I will never fight with you as a staff is your inability to describe the process without sounding like a total pervert,” I said. “Besides, I can’t imagine a worse opponent than your evil doppelganger. As long as you don’t get your ass copied like a brand-name handbag again, we’ll be fine in the future.”
“I don’t know,” Quentin said. “There’s Red Boy . . .”
“When I saw the fire I thought this was Red Boy.”
He winced. “If it had been Red Boy, there wouldn’t be any school left.”
We lay on the lawn for a good while, gulping the clean air and prodding our bruises for deeper breaks.
“I need to apologize,” I said.
“For what?”
“Making you think I was ever going to say that spell.”
Quentin smiled. “I’m sorry, too. For believing that you actually might.”
I hesitated.
“Where were you after Third Period?” I said. “Before we saw each other at lunch?” I felt pretty stupid asking; there were more important things to talk about.
“In the computer lab with Rutsuo,” he said. “Why?”
That was all the way on the other side of the school from where I saw him playing tonsil hockey. “Really? You weren’t with Rachel?”
Guilt dawned over Quentin’s face. He ran a hand through his hair.
“I’m sorry for what happened earlier,” he said. “I know you don’t like her much but I didn’t realize helping her with her Spanish homework would upset you. I’ll stop.”
I thought about turning on true sight to verify his statements, but decided to simply trust him instead. “That’s all the two of you do together?”
He looked genuinely confused. “Yeah. What else would I be doing with one of your classmates? I have to fit into this school if I want to be near you, and everyone just studies all the time. You’re a bunch of gigantic nerds.”
Well there was my answer. It was the Six-Eared Macaque that had gotten to first base with Rachel. I cringed on her behalf and felt supremely glad that I’d sent the asshole who’d duped her to Hell.
It was going to be pretty awkward for Quentin though, the next time they ran into each other. In a lingering fit of pettiness I declined to warn him, even though the real Quentin had done nothing wrong.
“You can hang out with whoever you want.” I closed my eyes and leaned back against the nearest tree. “It’s not like I own you or anything.”
Once Quentin and I were able to make ourselves presentable enough, we circled around the building to join the rest of our class.
The trail of smoke leading into the sky only made it seem bluer and clearer by contrast. The grass under our feet was as crisp and green as money. Even the plain, redbrick fa?ade of the school looked handsomer than most days. Good old SF Prep! Dinged up a bit by today’s events, but still standing proud.
I could feel my wounds melting away like Quentin said they would. The tingling sensation was mildly euphoric. But even better than the mutant healing factor was the sense of closure. We’d found the faceless man, sewn up the loose thread. We’d corrected our mistake and could close the book on this case.
We ran into Mrs. Nanda coming the other way around the building. She was wearing a bright-orange safety vest over her dress and carrying a walkie-talkie.
“Genie! Quentin! Where were you two?” she cried out, angry and relieved at the same time. “You know our class’s rendezvous point is by the baseball diamond! I was worried sick!”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Nanda,” I said. “The, uh, smoke got too thick and we had to use the opposite exit. We’re fine.”
“Well get over there right now and stay put!” She pressed the button on her handset and it squawked to life. “I found Lo and Sun,” she said. “Repeat. Lo and Sun are with me.”
The walkie-talkie beeped back. “Affirmative. What about Park and Glaros?”
Quentin and I stopped walking at the mention of Yunie’s and Androu’s last names.
Mrs. Nanda’s voice wavered as she spoke. “Still no sign.”
“I don’t understand,” said the person on the other end. “We’ve done a full sweep. A bunch of the kids said they saw them before the alarm went off. Where’d they go?”
“I’ll check back in the East wing again, including the locked areas,” Mrs. Nanda said. “Maybe they got past the doors somehow. Do another head count just to be sure, and call their parents.”
Our teacher hurried off, concern for her missing students quickening her pace.
The siren of a fire engine wailed louder. Approaching. Imminent. My words echoed in my head.
An evil copy of Quentin.
A copy of Quentin.
According to the book, Quentin could make copies of himself.
“What are the signs of spiritual power in a layperson?” I asked, swaying where I stood, a palm tree buffeted by a storm. “How do demons choose their prey?”
“If you’re not a monk like Xuanzang, then the biggest indicators are . . .” Quentin’s eyes widened. “Unyielding moral character. Or exceptional talent.”
I began to tremble.
“Genie.” Quentin gripped me by the arms. “Genie, breathe.”
I couldn’t feel his hands on me. I couldn’t feel anything. I would never feel anything again.
Quentin guided me across the school lawn to a side street where no one would see us. It took a long time. I was deteriorating rapidly.
He set me gently down on the curb. I squeezed my knees to my chest. I wanted to be small, to shrink myself until I died.
“We won’t find her,” I choked out over the tightness in my throat. “If the earrings aren’t going off then they’re not working for some reason. I won’t know where to look.”
“Genie, don’t give up.”
Quentin was doing his best to be resolute, but even he couldn’t keep the act going. I could tell he thought the odds of getting her back were slim to none.
He began walking in a circle. “Think,” he said out loud to himself, rubbing his temples. “Think.”
I had never seen him do this before. He must have been truly desperate.
“We don’t know where he is,” Quentin muttered. “We only defeated a copy of him before. But if he took two humans for whatever purpose, he would have done it himself.”
I choked back a sob. Yunie and Androu didn’t even have names anymore in Quentin’s clinical triage.
“There’s only so far they could have gone,” he said. “The farthest away they could be is . . . as far as I could have taken them.”