Shift (25 page)

“She kept them in here.” I hurried behind her desk and opened a small cabinet. Four white mugs sat upside down on a woven cloth, next to a twilight blue teapot. I yanked out the mugs, two in each hand, their ceramic clink hurting my ears. I peered inside and underneath each cup. Nothing.

Zachary knelt beside me. “The symbols appear when the mugs are filled with hot water, remember? So we can’t know which one she means until we fill them.”

An invisible clue only we could find. Eowyn Harris had just topped Zachary as the coolest and most frustrating person I’d ever met.

The astronomy department’s coffeemaker was empty, so we said goodbye to Madeline and took an all-too-long elevator ride to the vending machines in the basement.

The soles of my creepers and Zachary’s sneakers squeaked on the empty hallway’s freshly waxed floor. It seemed like we should skulk so no one would see or hear us, but maybe the adrenaline rush was just cranking up the drama in my head.

We stepped up to the tall, humming coffee machine, relieved that it gave us the option of using our own cups.

I unzipped my bag and retrieved a mug, trying to forget that Zachary and I, once again, made a great team. Even Mrs. Richards had proclaimed it in front of our history class, giving our junior thesis the only A+. I’d been amazed, considering that during our entire joint presentation, all I could think about was jumping my partner’s bones.

“What do you want?” Zachary said in a low voice.

I twitched. “Huh?”

“To drink?” He fed a dollar bill into the vending machine slot. “No point in wasting money. Besides, our brains need caffeine to figure out these clues.”

I couldn’t argue with that, though Eowyn’s letter—and Zachary’s presence—had made me plenty jittery. “Mocha.”

The machine spat out a rancid-smelling approximation of my favorite drink. Before the mug was even full, the ogham letter
quert
appeared—a straight vertical line with four lines connected to it. It looked like a toothbrush facing left.

The apple tree. Signifying love.

“I had that one.” My chest tightened as I remembered how much seeing that symbol had hurt, so soon after Logan’s death.

“No, I had it,” Zachary said.

“That’s because you traded with me, the Love mug for your Strength.” The first in a long line of kindnesses.

“Aye,” he said softly. “I remember now.”

I didn’t look at him as we inserted the second mug and fed the machine more money. Sure enough, a bitter-smelling tea poured into
the mug with the letter
duir
—the oak, signifying Strength. It was like
quert
, but with only two horizontal lines. A toothbrush that’s seen better days.

“Eowyn had the mug for Healing,” I said. “I don’t know the letter’s name, but I remember it looked like a telephone pole.”

The ogham letter on the third mug looked nothing like a telephone pole. It looked just like
quert
, except facing the other way.

“There.” I pointed to it. “The only one we didn’t use.”

“I’ll look it up.” He opened the web browser on his phone. “Good memory, that.”

I remember everything about that day
, I thought as I sipped the mocha, which tasted like chocolate-flavored battery acid.

“It’s
nuin
,” he said, pronouncing the Gaelic like the native speaker he was. “The ash tree. Supposed to signify Connection, if that helps.”

“So the second clue must be under an ash tree. Or inside one? I don’t even know what they look like.”

He turned his phone so I could see the screen. “There’s a picture.”

“Great—big and green, like a tree. There must be a hundred of them on this campus.”

He thumbed through the text and let out a soft curse. “Says they were all but wiped out by a beetle the past few years.”

“That’s sad for the trees, but it might make our job easier.”

“Let’s see if anyone’s home in the botany department.” He called information, subduing his accent so the directory robot could understand him.

When the call went through, though, Zachary turned on his Scottish charm. “Aye, hello, lassie. Might you tell me where we could find
an ash tree on the College Park campus?” He chuckled. “No, I promise it’s no’ for an exam. It’s for an article in
Tree Huggers
magazine, a wee independent UK publication. We’re doing a feature on universities maintaining viable populations of threatened species.” Leaning against the vending machine, he smirked at my silent laughter. Then he put the phone to his chest and spoke to me. “She says there’s none on campus, but one at the National Arboretum. Where’s that?”

“In DC. Maybe half an hour away.”

He spoke into the phone again. “Aye, I know where tha’ is. Brilliant. Cheers for the information.” He hung up. “Thank God a woman answered. American men are immune to the accent.”

I waved off his arrogant but accurate statement and dumped the rest of my drink in the water fountain. “Let’s go.”

The ash’s leaves waved their pale underbellies above my head, as if cheering on my frustration. The thick canopy allowed only glimpses of the bright early evening sky, white with the haze of Washington, DC. We’d been lucky to slip into the National Arboretum twenty minutes before closing. Any minute now they’d be kicking us out.

For the third time, I ran my hands over the ash’s smooth gray trunk, then searched the area around its roots. No secret box or compartment.

“What did you expect,” I asked myself, “Keebler elves to the rescue?”

“Who?” Several yards out, Zachary was pacing an outward spiral around the tree, shuffling his feet and examining the grass, which was begging for a good mow.

“Keebler elves. They make the cookies that taste like cardboard.”

He grunted without looking up. “I miss the packaged biscuits from home. No one makes junk food like the Brits.”

“Better than my grandmom’s cookies?”

“Does your grandmother make dark chocolate HobNobs? No. So yes, better.” He stopped. “Here we are.”

“What’d you find?” I scampered over, practically on all fours.

In front of his toes lay a small brass plaque bolted to a six-inch-long concrete frame. The plaque read
WHITE ASH
,
fraxinus americana
.

Zachary tapped the edge with his foot. Two of the plaque’s bolts had come off, and the other two were loose. I pried up one end and stuck my hand in.

Zachary grabbed my wrist. “What are you doing? There could be anything down there.”

“Like what? An angry leprechaun?”

“Like a snake or a vole.”

“What the hell’s a vole?”

“A rodent. They bite.” He tugged on my wrist. “Let me get it.”

“Your giant man-hands won’t fit.” I tried to ignore the way his touch was sending ripples of zings across my shoulders.

He wrenched the plaque off all its bolts. “Now they will.”

We leaned over to peer into the hole. It was so narrow and dark, I couldn’t see the bottom.

Zachary’s hand flashed out. “Got it.” He pulled from the hole a thin steel box the size of a TV remote control, with a piece of laminated paper attached. I ripped off the card to read the clue:

#2 of 3: Alpha and beta to the proud queen of the sky.

Zachary shook the box. Something rattled inside. “It’s locked with a combination. Six numbers.”

I flipped the clue card. On the back it read,
If this note isn’t meant for you, put it back now or be forever cursed.
The last two words were underlined in red. It reminded me of the warning at the beginning of Logan’s notebook.

“So this clue will help us figure out the combination,” I said.

Zachary turned the card over without taking it from my hand. “Alpha and beta. The two brightest stars in a constellation?”

“Ooh, yeah.” I pondered how a star could be numbered. “The combination could be the magnitude of the stars’ brightness. That’s three numbers each.”

“Fantastic.” He lifted his phone to open the browser. “But which constellation? Who was the proud queen of the sky? Andromeda?”

“She was a princess. Her dad tied her to a rock to sacrifice her to a sea monster, because—” I thumped the side of my head, hoping to shake a memory loose from our eighth-grade mythology segment. “Some god—Poseidon?—was pissed off because the king’s wife had said she was prettier than the nymphs.”

“The king’s wife would be the queen,” Zachary said flatly.

“No shit.” I tapped the edge of the card against my chin. “It’s the one with—oh! Oh!” I jumped to my feet and pointed at the sky. “The constellation that looks like a W.”

“Oh. Cassiopeia.”

“Cassiopeia!” I pumped both fists in the air, then put a hand to my head, suddenly dizzy. I realized I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

While time crawled, Zachary touched his phone screen to look up the stars’ magnitudes. To occupy my nervous hands, I tossed the box into the air, flipping it end over end and catching it.

“Whatever’s inside better not be breakable,” he muttered.

“She would’ve marked it ‘fragile,’” I said, almost dropping it.

“Here’s Alpha Cassiopeia’s magnitude: two-point-two-four.”

My hands shaking, I punched in 224.

“Beta Cassiopeia is—oh, that’s interesting. Two-point-two-eight.”

I tabbed 228 onto the box’s buttons, then tried to turn the latch. It wouldn’t budge.

Zachary stood to look over my shoulder. “Try it again all at once. Maybe it didn’t like the pause.”

I steadied my hand and plugged in 224228. The latch sprung. “Yes!” I lifted the lid. The box held a small key with a tag that said “308.”

And another laminated card.

#3 of 3: The place that holds your treasure box of truth shares five digits with ruis.

“Another ogham?” Zachary brought out his phone again. “I’ve still got that page open.
Ruis
means ‘elder,’ which stands for Transition. So there’s a treasure chest under an elder tree? How tedious.”

“Trees don’t have digits. That key could be for an apartment. But where the hell is it?”

“It’s too small. And since when is an apartment a ‘treasure box of truth’?”

I groaned and stamped my foot. “It could be a metaphor.”

“All right. Calm down.”

“I can’t calm down!” I kicked at the grass. “What if I never find out this truth because I was too dumb to figure out the clues?”

“Eowyn wants us to know. She’s given us the hints in our work.”

“But why not just tell us where it is?” My breath started to come fast. Too fast.

Zachary reached out. “Here.” He eased me to sit. “Head between your knees.”

I stared at the shadowed ground beneath my legs, silently begging my guts not to empty.

He sat beside me. “Are you afraid we won’t find the answers about your father and the Shift? Or are you afraid we will?”

I dug my fingers into the dirt. “Yes.”

Zachary set the open box between us. “We could give up. Protect ourselves.”

“Protect ourselves with ignorance? It would make us weaker.”

“Possibly.” He nudged the box with his foot. “Whatever you decide is whatever you decide. But I thought I should remind you that you have options.”

With my chin on my knees, I looked around the grounds of the arboretum. Over by the azalea garden, a young couple held hands as their little girl chased a butterfly—free from ghosts, thanks to Zachary’s presence. Besides them, we were alone.

“What have we gotten ourselves into?” I whispered.

I glanced at the key in the box. It would open up my past and probably my future. Once I learned the secrets, I could never unlearn them, never go on living like I didn’t know.

Maybe I couldn’t figure out this last clue because deep down, I didn’t
want
to know.

Zachary spoke softly. “I wish I had all the answers so I could give them to you.” He adjusted the sleeve of his polo shirt. “In exchange for dessert, of course.”

Despite my fear, I couldn’t hold back a semi-smile. “Doesn’t sound like much fun for me.”

“True, adventures are better with both of us.” He leaned back on his hands and nodded to his car. “And it’s good practice for me, driving from town to town, not crashing.”

My chuckle faded as his words tickled my mind. “Wait, what did you say?”

“About not crashing?”

“Before that.”

“Er, it’s good practice? Driving? Town to town?”

The puzzle piece slid into place. “Towns!”

“All right, towns,” he said, exaggerating the vowel so that it didn’t sound like “toons.” “Don’t take the piss out of my accent.”

“Towns! Five digits! Maybe it’s a zip code.”

He snatched the key from the box, shaking the tag with the number. “Could this be for a postal box?”

“Maybe.” Excitement rushed to my fingertips, and I turned the clue card over. “‘Shares five digits with
ruis
.’ Elder.”

“Is there a town called Elder?”

“Eldersburg! It’s—I don’t know, somewhere near Baltimore. I’ve heard them say it on the traffic report.”

“Let’s search for the post office.” Zachary thumbed the screen of his phone. “No results.”

“How can it not have a post office? Every town does. What’s the zip code?”

“21784. Hold on.” A grin spread across his face. “Sykesville. Same zip code, and that’s where the post office is.”

“‘Shares five digits with
ruis
.’ We did it!” I reached out to hug him, then stopped myself and offered a high five. We clasped each other’s hands for a long moment, then Zachary helped me to my feet. As we walked toward our cars, he didn’t let go of my hand right away.

But he did let go.

W
here were you when I called earlier?” Zachary asked me once we’d dropped off my aunt’s car at my house. “It sounded loud.”

“Dress rehearsal.” Since we had an hour’s drive ahead of us to Sykesville, I told Zachary everything—about Nicola’s publicity help, Logan’s concert, and even what he planned to do at the end: turn human, then pass on once his seventeen minutes were up.