Riser (Teen Horror/Science Fiction) (Book #1 in The Riser Saga) ((Volume 1)) (14 page)

“Give her some air, geez, Mom,” came Nancy’s voice right next to me.

I relaxed my death grip on Nancy’s mom and she pulled away from me, tears of sympathy in her eyes. “George, get us some hankies.”

George hurried to the end table next to the couch and grabbed a few handkerchiefs from a small stack and brought them back to the two of us.

“I’m Vianne, by the way, and this is George, but you probably already knew that.” She smiled as she wiped away her own tears and blew her nose for measure. “And I mean it. As long as you need or want to, you are welcome here. We’ve heard so much about you from Nancy, it’s just so lovely to meet you finally. I just wish it had been under different circumstances.” She kissed my cheek.

It almost made me break again, but I wiped my tears clean from my face. “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

“Your step-father is welcome here as well, where is he?” George was making sure I knew my whole family was wanted. They had obviously seen my fiasco in front of the press with Bruce. My mind went blank. I didn’t know what to say.

“He died, Dad. Of complications,” Nancy quickly interceded.

Vianne’s hand went straight to her mouth to cover her shock. “We didn’t know. The news didn’t report it. I’m so sorry, Chelsan.”

“I think I just need to lie down for a while.” All I could think about was collapsing and turning my mind off, even if it was just for a little while. It was taking too much energy to breathe, let alone carry on a conversation of cover-ups and lies to people who genuinely wanted to help me.

Nancy grabbed my hand. “I’m taking her upstairs to my room.”

“Good night. Let us know if you need
anything
,” Vianne said over our shoulders.

“Night. Thanks again,” I barely called out as Nancy dragged me up a spiraling wrought iron staircase leading to the next floor.

A long hallway greeted us with the same terracotta tiling as the foyer. The walls were Spanish yellow stucco and the doors were darkly stained oak. There were six doors total and they were all closed. Nancy opened the second one on the right and we entered my dream room (which happened to be Nancy’s).

First of all, it was huge! At least the size of one of our classrooms at school. Blue seemed to be the color of choice in terms of decoration, from the bed, to the carpeting, to the walls, all different shades of the same deep ocean blue. The entire back wall was lined with shoes. Nancy wasn’t kidding; she literally had hundreds of pairs. It was like she had a shoe store in her own room!

And then there were the holographic-pictures, and I had to stifle a laugh. The wall facing her bed was covered with holos of Jason Keroff, all with the same serious expression he always had on his face when reporting. She must have downloaded them from the same place I did, since I was seeing a lot of the same ones that I had.

Wait a minute.

Jason Keroff gave me his contact info.

He told me I was in danger. He knew about the exterminators. Or had suspicions anyway.

“Okay, so I’m obsessed, but so are you, so don’t give me that look.” Nancy had seen my horrified stare and misinterpreted it as shock from seeing her shrine to Jason.

“No. It just reminded me…” I knew Nancy needed to sit for this, so I led her to the bed and plopped her down. “Nancy, don’t freak out, but Jason Keroff was with the press at the trailer park. He told me I was in danger. It was like he knew what really happened. He gave me his contact information.”

“Okay, hard not to freak, Jason Keroff, seriously? You’ve got Ryan and Bill, Jason is mine.”

“Focus, here, Nancy. And I don’t really have Ryan or Bill.”

“What were you saying about focus?” She smiled knowingly at me and then her tone turned serious. “Right. What
really
did happen anyway? You didn’t tell me.”

Sitting on the bed next to Nancy, it unexpectedly hit me that she knew absolutely nothing. Not who my grandpa really was, not about the green smoke, not about Jason Keroff. I had some explaining to do, so I started at the beginning and told her everything, all the way from the very details of my grandparents’ ceremony, to what really happened at the trailer park. Nancy’s eyes widened to the size of saucers in a few places and I could tell she was holding her tongue (a mammoth effort for her). When I was all finished I was more exhausted than I thought possible. And even though Nancy was just bursting with questions, she obviously saw this, too.

“You need to sleep,” Nancy said as she squeezed my hand with encouragement. “I’ll interrogate you tomorrow.” She smiled.

“Sleep sounds really good. Do you have a sleeping bag? I can set up over there.” I pointed to a particularly nice corner in her gigantic room. It was a mass of pillows and looked exceedingly inviting.

“Oh no! Are you joking? Do you think I’m Jill or something? My bed is a double King! No way are you staying on the floor, you’re sleeping up here in my nice fluffy bed.” Nancy seemed almost appalled.

The bed was bigger than my room in the trailer and it felt ridiculously comfortable. “Thanks,” was all I had the energy to say. I almost blacked out on impact when I lowered my head to a pillow.

I could barely hear Nancy saying good night as I drifted off to sleep.

Chapter Three

Sunday September 19, 2320

The whole morning was spent answering all of Nancy’s questions. She was the most fascinated by the fact that Vice President of Population Control Geoffrey Turner was my grandfather.

“The one time I wish I could flaunt something in Jill’s face,” Nancy grumbled out loud. “If she knew that her daddy’s head honcho was your grandpa! The most powerful man in the
world
! It’s too juicy!”

“Not that juicy. He tried to have me killed, remember? And
me
living means his only son dying.”

“Yeah, but Jill doesn’t know that!”

“Nancy, telling Jill anything is basically telling Turner.” I could tell Nancy’s gears were churning, trying to find a way to rub this in Jill’s face, but I had to make sure she kept it between us two.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Nancy groaned.

We were sitting in her back yard on a swinging bench secured between two trees. She was lazily pushing it with her foot causing it to swing crookedly. Nancy’s property seemed to stretch on forever once you reached the back. There were several trees and lots of foliage in the main yard and in the back was a thick row of forest running down the entire street. I knew this was only an illusion of course. Each block of houses had a line of trees eight to ten rows thick in their back yards to follow with the Environmental Code of Oxygen policy. The kind of trees also showed how expensive the neighborhood was, the lower middle class, had bamboo, Nancy’s was pine, and zones as rich as Bill’s were cherry blossoms and bonsais. It was weird how everything was so divided by how much money you had. Trailer parks like mine didn’t even have tree policies, we just lived near wild flower and oak disaster zones so it made the planting of forest rows like Nancy’s moot.

“What about the ritual? Does it sound familiar to you at all?” I asked, wanting to bring the conversation back to figuring out how I had my gift in the first place.

“I can think of a couple of things. I’ll transfer some of the books I found to your reader so we can both get in research mode. I’m more interested in your father’s spell. He somehow managed to manipulate Turner’s hex and flip it back on himself. Sorry.”

She must have seen me cringe when she mentioned my father’s death. Up until recently my father was just an imaginative figure that died of natural causes when I was born. Now, not only knowing, but seeing my mother’s vision of the way that he died, it was difficult not to be upset. “Don’t be sorry. I want to figure this out. I just didn’t know how hard it was going to be.”

“We’ll do this one step at a time. The first thing we need to know is
exactly
what spell Turner used. Then we can deal with… the other stuff.”

We searched all morning in our readers. Nancy knew what she was looking for when it came to what I saw, but there’d always be one thing different in the ceremony. And it wasn’t just a simple thing like candle choice or the kind of knife he used, it was sacrificing a goat or severing a limb. So needless to say we’d have to search elsewhere. I asked if Turner could have made up his own spell, and while Nancy thought that might be possible, she still wanted to find the base spell he used.

“This is very powerful mojo we’re talking about here, Chelsan. This isn’t your run of the mill curse. He
made
you and your mother
die
. That’s as serious as it gets.” Nancy leaned back on the vinyl sofa. We had moved to the living room once the Recyclers made their rounds on her block. Their machinery was so loud sucking up all the garbage from each house it made it impossible to concentrate. I know I shouldn’t complain, everyone’s garbage ended up in Clean-Ups’ fertilizer and mulch trucks, but listening to a giant vacuum cleaner sucking up slurpy garbage made me a little queasy.

“Why do I get the feeling that a spell that powerful wouldn’t be found in a library download?” I was starting to feel like this was hopeless.

“I know, right? There has to be some way we can get access to books like that.” I could tell Nancy was getting frustrated as well.

“Maybe I should call Jason?”

“Yes, please.” Nancy was immediately perked. “He‘d definitely have access to stuff like that.”

I smiled at Nancy’s enthusiasm for calling Jason Keroff. I almost wanted her to do it. The thought of picking up the phone and dialing his number made my palms sweat. “I’m kind of nervous,” I admitted to Nancy.

“Don’t be. He asked
you
to call him. It’s not like you’re some kind of stalker that tracked down his number and are trying to get a date. Your mother and your entire neighborhood were just exterminated and he wants to help you. You are the one in control, okay?”

Nancy’s speech gave me some confidence. I had to stop thinking of Jason as someone better than me just because of who he was. I kept reminding myself that when I met him yesterday, I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t nervous, I wasn’t excited, I was just blank. That was good. I had to pull on that, if I had any chance of making this phone call without barfing.

“Okay. He said no cells, just landlines.” I took a deep breath as Nancy practically squealed reaching for the phone receiver. I grabbed it out of her hand and put it against my ear. “I’m so nervous,” I blabbered. I couldn’t hide it, especially not from Nancy.

“Do you want me to do it?” Nancy was serious and concerned. I could tell she genuinely felt my pain, but as tempting as it was, I knew I had to be the one who called.

“No. Thanks though. I really should do this. Here’s the number.” I flipped up the metal device Jason gave me and a 3D holograph of his number popped up and rotated slowly like it was on display. Nancy quickly dialed and I held my breath as I could hear his ringer through the receiver. Don’t be home, don’t be home, don’t be home…

“Jason Keroff.”

Uggghh. Major butterflies. “Um, hi, this is Chelsan, the girl from the trailer park. You told me to call you.” I said this so fast, I wasn’t sure if he could understand me.

“Chelsan, hi. Did you call from a landline?” His voice was warm, but had an edge of caution to it as well.

“Yeah, I’m at my friend Nancy’s house.”

Nancy leaned in to me as close as she could be without toppling me off the couch. Let’s face it, Nancy was definitely in swoon city. She could barely contain her sighs and squeals of delight and I had just started the conversation.

“Okay, look. I don’t want to talk on the phone. Can you meet me tonight at Alby’s Bar and Grill at the Riverside mall? Say, seven o’clock?”

I took the receiver away from my ear and placed my hand over it so Jason couldn’t hear me. “He wants to meet at Alby’s.”

Nancy’s eyes bugged out of her head. “Tell him YES! What are you thinking?”

I put the receiver back to my ear. “Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll see you then.”

“Be careful, Chelsan. I mean it.” Jason sounded intense and it made the pit of my stomach sink even further into the terrified zone.