Thief Eyes - Janni Lee Simner [48]
“Dropped call?” I asked, but I knew better.
“No.” Ari swallowed hard, cursed softly. “She couldn’t hear me. The people at the hotel, they weren’t so bad—they don’t know us. But Mom …” His voice tightened.
Katrin couldn’t help us. I stared down at our linked hands. No one could. “We’re on our own.”
“Maybe Mom will see the number. Then she’ll at least know we’re all right. I should try a text message.” Ari’s voice was bleak, though, and I knew he didn’t expect that to work, either.
Alone, alone, alone. I clutched Ari’s hand so tightly my knuckles turned white. Did Dad even remember who I was? What had he thought when I ran away and didn’t come back? The coin felt warm through my pocket. It wasn’t going to disappear just because Ari and I had turned to ghosts.
If the spell lands on you, you must cast it back again. Thorgerd, Hallgerd’s daughter, had said that in her spellbook. The means of the casting, plus other useful spells, follow.
“I think”—I drew a breath—“I think it’s up to me now. Your mom gave me a copy of her spellbook.”
“I know.” Ari stared down at our linked fingers. We reached an intersection with another dirt road, one with less mud. He turned right. “She stayed up half the night translating that thing.”
I pictured Katrin copying spell after spell that she thought might protect me. My stomach felt funny. “Your mom said to take the coin to Hlidarendi.”
“Gunnar and Hallgerd’s home, yeah. It’s maybe another hundred kilometers east of Reykjavik.”
“So two hundred miles total. Maybe a little more.”
“Pretty long walk,” Ari agreed.
“You don’t have to come.” I’d been assuming he would, but maybe that wasn’t fair. He’d already gotten into enough trouble trying to rescue me. Yet the thought of going on without him made me feel funny, too.
“Like there’s anyone else I can talk to?” Ari laughed, then stopped abruptly. “You’re serious, aren’t you? Don’t be stupid, Haley—of course I’m coming with you. We’re in this together.”
I squeezed his hand, taking comfort from the thought. No one else could hear us, but at least we could hear each other.
Ari smiled. “Maybe there’s a bus we can catch in Holmavik. I’m sure they won’t mind a couple of invisible passengers, yeah?”
“Yeah.” We can do this. Send the coin back, and figure out everything else after that. We kept walking, still holding hands.
The wind died down. A sudden burst of tinny music made me jump. It was the Star Wars theme, and it was coming from Ari’s pocket. He fished out his phone and stared at it.
“It’s ringing,” Ari said. “I don’t know the number—” He quickly flipped the phone open. “Hello?”
I bet it’s just some telemarketer. I bet they won’t hear us, either.
Ari listened a moment, and his face grew very strange. “Yes, of course,” he said in English. He released my hand and offered me the phone. “It is for you, Haley. He says his name is Jared, and he says he’d like to talk to you.”
Chapter 12
I grabbed the phone. “Jared?”
“Haley? Oh God, is it really you?”
My stomach did a little flip at the sound of Jared’s voice. “Yeah, it’s me.” I sat down, right at the side of the road, because I suddenly didn’t trust my legs to hold me up. Ari sat down beside me, keeping a careful distance.
“You can hear me,” I said into the phone. Speaking English felt strange.
“Of course I can hear you. Haley, where on earth have you—” Jared’s voice rose, caught. “We thought you were dead, or kidnapped, or lost in the wilderness, or—”
“Jared.” He was babbling. He always babbled when he got nervous. It made me want to babble, too, to tell him everything, to talk for hours and hours until both our voices were hoarse. But I didn’t know if we had hours, or when Jared might stop hearing me, too. “I’m fine. Really.”
“You don’t sound fine. Where are you? Have you called your dad? He gave me this number months ago, said it belonged to the guy you disappeared with. It kept going to voice mail until today—”
“We’re having—a problem with the phone. Have you spoken to Dad? Is he back home? Is he okay?