Torment - Lauren Kate [88]
“Enough, Shelby,” Luce said.
Miles shook his head. “I have so much catching up to do.”
“Okay, if it’s not me, we must be … I don’t know, somehow related.” Luce watched as the woman cashed out chips for the bald man with the tie. Her hands looked sort of like Luce’s. The way her mouth set was similarly serious. “Do you think it’s my mom? Or my sister?”
Shelby was scribbling notes furiously on the inside back cover of a yoga manual. “Only one way to find out.” She flashed her notes at Luce: Vegas: Mirage Hotel and Casino, night shift, table stationed near the Bengal tiger show, Vera with the Lee press-on nails.
She looked back at the dealer. Shelby was a stickler for the details that Luce never noticed. The dealer’s name tag read VERA in lopsided white letters. But the image was starting to wobble and fade. Soon the whole image broke apart into tiny shadow shreds that fell to the floor and curled up like the ash from burning paper.
“But wait, isn’t this the past?” Luce asked.
“Don’t think so,” Shelby said. “Or, at least, it’s not far in the past. There was an ad for the new Cirque du Soleil in the background. So what do you say?”
Go all the way to Las Vegas to find this woman? A middle-aged sister would probably be easier to approach than parents well into their eighties, but still. What if they made it all the way to Vegas and Luce choked again?
Shelby nudged her. “Hey, I must really like you if I’m agreeing to go to Vegas. My mom was a waitress there for a couple of years when I was a kid. I’m telling you, it’s Hell on earth.”
“How would we get there?” Luce asked, not wanting to ask Shelby if they could borrow SAEB’s car again. “How far is Vegas, anyway?”
“Too far to drive.” Miles spoke up. “Which is fine with me because I’ve been wanting to practice stepping through.”
“Stepping through?” Luce asked.
“Stepping through.” Miles knelt down on the ground and brushed the fragments of the shadow together in his palms. They looked almost tired, but Miles kept kneading them with his fingers until they formed a loose, messy ball. “I told you I couldn’t sleep last night. I sort of broke into Steven’s office through the transom.”
“Yeah, right.” Shelby balked. “You flunked levitation. You’re definitely not good enough to float in through the transom.”
“And you’re not strong enough to drag the bookcase over,” Miles said. “But I am, and I have this to show for myself.” He grinned, holding up a thick black tome titled An Announcer How-To: Summon, Glimpse, and Travel in Ten Thousand Easy Steps. “I also have an enormous bruise on my shin from a poorly planned exit through the transom, but anyway …” He turned to Luce, who was having a hard time not ripping the book from his hands. “I was thinking, with your obvious talent for glimpsing, and my superior knowledge—”
Shelby snorted. “What’d you read, point three percent of the book?”
“A very useful point three percent,” Miles said. “I think we might be able to do this. And not end up lost forever.”
Shelby cocked her head suspiciously but didn’t say anything else. Miles kept kneading the Announcer in his palm, then began stretching it out. After a minute or two, it had grown into a sheet of gray almost the size of a door. Its edges were wobbly and it was almost translucent, but when he pressed it away from his body a little, it seemed to take a firmer shape, like a plaster cast after being set to dry. Miles reached for the left side of the dark rectangle, feeling around its surface, searching for something.
“That’s weird,” he muttered, trolling the Announcer with his fingers. “The book says if you make the Announcer area large enough, the surface tension reduces by a ratio that allows for penetration.” He sighed. “There’s supposed to be a—”
“Great book, Miles.” Shelby rolled her eyes. “You’re a real expert now.”
“What are you looking for?” Luce asked, stepping close behind Miles. Suddenly, watching his hands rove, she saw it.
A latch.
She blinked