Earthbound

I give him a sort-of smile, but I don’t really feel it. When I woke up this morning, curled unnaturally into the front seat with my knees braced against the steering wheel, every muscle in my body ached. On top of that, now I have a long scab across my face from a tree branch. My legs are sore from running and my arms from simply being terrified.

But it balances out the numbness that has enveloped me on the inside.

“You were right,” I whisper against the soft fabric of his jacket. “About Quinn, I mean. He’s—he’s dangerous and obsessed and … and … you were right.”

His hands are suddenly tight on my arms. “Did he hurt you?” he asks, eyes flashing fire. “Did he lay a single finger on you? I’ll kill the bastard!”

“No, no,” I say before he can get any louder. “I’m fine. I promise. I just …”

“Do we need to call the cops?”

I feel tears build as Quinn’s betrayal sweeps through me again, but I push them back—I will not shed another tear over him. “No. Technically he didn’t do anything. And I have nothing to tell them even if he did. His name’s not even Quinn. Everything he ever told me is a lie.”

“Tavia, seriously, did he hurt you?”

“He never touched me. He just led me to this old … cellar, I guess. It was kind of hidden.”

“A hidden cellar?” Benson asks, not exactly disbelieving, but there’s a hint of that.

I open my backpack and, after a quick look around, pull out the ancient journal.

An impressed whistle escapes Benson’s mouth as he reaches for the book. “You’re good,” he says, smiling in earnest now, and I feel a faint glow at his compliment. I crave his approval, though I’m not sure quite why. Maybe I just need someone to believe I’m not out of my mind.

Just psychic.

And magic.

And something called an Earthbound.

I’m so in over my head.

“This is seriously impressive.” Benson flips through the pages, and something clanks onto the table.

“Holy crap,” I say, picking up the gold coin. “I didn’t mean to take this.”

“Is that … ?” Benson’s eyes shoot up to mine.

“I think so.”

He holds it up, turning it and watching the light glint off it. “Is it really awful if we keep this?” he asks, his voice tense.

“I am not taking it back,” I say. “I’m never going there again.”

“Ten tanks of gas,” Benson says, pocketing the coin and turning his attention back to the journal. “So this was just sitting in there?”

“Whoa! Benson, look!” I close the journal, and on the front cover is a triangle, each side at least six inches long. “You can see that, right?” I ask, a little paranoid.

“Yeah,” Benson says quietly. “The triangle; I can see this one.”

I trace the small indentation with my finger, going around all three sides. A strange flicker crosses my vision and I see another hand following my fingers.

But I blink, and it’s gone.

Holding back a sigh at yet another disappearing image, I flip to the front of the journal. “Right before we went in, he called me Becca.”

“Rebecca Fielding,” Benson says softly, his eyes on the curly script. “1804.”

I skim the book in silence, Benson giving me peace. The darkness inside my chest spreads as I find more and more familiar words. “It’s all in here,” I say, paging carefully through the book, each new entry making the waffles I just ate feel heavier and heavier in my stomach. “Everything he ever said to me. Look, here she talks about how he had things to show her. Here he asks her to trust him. How he messed everything up and frightened her. And this part”—I point at the book—“this is the part I read last night. It’s word for word what he said to me. He’s obsessed with this dead Rebecca and trying to reenact his sick fantasies with modern-day girls. With … with me. But there could be others. He could be a freaking serial killer!”

A hard look is pasted on Benson’s face as he leans over the book. “This is so weird,” he says.

I flip back toward the beginning and a name catches my eye. “Benson!” I can feel all the blood draining from my face as I read the passage.

“What?” he asks, leaning over the page and looking where I’m pointing, his vague expression indicating that he doesn’t see what I’m so upset about.

“It says she first saw him when she was walking past his house, and he was minding his little sister.”

Benson is trying really hard, but his face is completely blank.

“There was a little girl with Quinn when I first saw him! In Portsmouth, a few days ago. Do … do you think he kidnapped her?” My heart is beating wildly as I wonder just how major of a psychopath I’ve run into.

“There’s no way,” Benson says. “I don’t know how he got that girl to play the part, but we’d have heard something on the news if a little girl was missing.”

It makes sense, and I try to latch onto Benson’s confidence to calm myself. “But the house was gone too,” I think aloud. “When I went back, it wasn’t there anymore. It wasn’t real. Maybe the little girl wasn’t real either.”

“Maybe this Quinn guy isn’t real,” Benson says, and there’s a low simmer of hostility in his tone.

“No,” I say dismissively, still focused on the words in the journal. “He talks to me. He got that door open in the dugout. He is definitely real.”

“The journal’s real too,” Benson says. “Not just physically real,” he adds, rapping a knuckle softly against the cover. “It appears to be authentic. Do you think Quinn just stumbled onto it somewhere?”

“I don’t know,” I admit in a small voice. “Honestly, I haven’t had the time or energy to think of anything except that I was a complete moron.”

“No,” Benson says, rubbing a hand on my arm. “People like this are always uber-charismatic and nice and all that. I mean, come on, every time a serial killer gets caught, what do the neighbors say? Oh, he was such a nice guy.”

“You’re not making me feel better,” I mutter, laying my head down on the table.

“Point is, it’s not your fault he’s a creeper; it’s his.”

Mentally, I know it’s true, but I don’t feel that way.

“So … it looks like maybe Quinn has nothing to do with … the … the Earthbound thing?” he asks hesitantly.

I stare at him, uncomprehending for a moment. “Oh, right,” I say, feeling even more defeated. “The fact that I can create matter out of thin air just got bumped down to second on the list of drama in my life. Fabulous.” I clasp my hands in front of me. “But no. I think he’s like me, Benson. I think he can do what I can do. At the very least he knows about it.”

“You talked to him about it?”

“Sort of. Do you think he’s working with Sunglasses Guy?”

“Dragging you out somewhere alone in the middle of a snowy night and abandoning you? Whether he’s working for that guy or not, I think we can assume he is some seriously bad news, Tave.”

I let my head fall onto my arms. “No kidding,” I mutter. I feel like such a complete moron.

Benson rocks back and forth a few times. “Maybe we should look up Rebecca and the original Quinn. On microfiche.” Benson continues with an eyebrow raised, “Though considering the era, we’re likely to find more on Quinn than Rebecca.”

“Why?”

“Because he was a man,” Benson says dryly.

“True.”

He leans his head close over the table and grins. “Surely along with the chipper attitudes and polyester pants, we could find a library around here somewhere.”

I nod stoically. “Okay, let’s do it.”