Chapter 26

After our passionate make-out session on the couch, my ponytail had turned into a hopeless tangle, and my t-shirt was damp with sweat. It was a good kind of sweat, it smelled thick and hot, and it reminded me of Holly.

I told Holly I needed to go to the airplane's bathroom to clean up again. I hated lying to her, but a thought lingered in the back of my head. I needed to find who these people were.

I didn't head for the bathroom this time. Even as I felt gloriously happy in Holly's arms, I couldn't stop wondering about this plane and the people in it.

In the back of the plane, I noticed that there was another room beyond the bathroom. The door was ajar.

Peering inside, I saw a minibar and some stools. Although the room seemed excessively large for an airplane, the space was small enough for me to see Jack sitting on of the stools. He was blabbering to someone on his cellphone. I didn't want to overhear, but I couldn't help it.

"No, for the thousandth Ma, stop worrying. What did I tell you? Everyone got out alive — you, Kevin, Aunt Lauren, little cousin Ben. My boss made sure you guys were evacuated from the outer boroughs long before there was any hint of a storm."

I felt frozen in place. My fists clenched reflexively. Jack knew about the storm. His entire damn company knew. And they evacuated their relatives and left the rest of us to die.

Why did Jack come back to Windflower Springs that morning if he knew his relatives were safe?

"Ma, Ma! Take a chill pill. There's going to be no 'next' storm," Jack stood up and started to pace back and forth. He tucked his free hand under his armpit as though he was trying to stop himself from gesturing wildly for emphasis. "Dammit, Ma. Of course, I matter to them. Do you have any idea who your son is? I'm a goddamn genius."

I crept into the shadows behind the ajar door as Jack marched over to one of the portal-like windows. He tapped his fingers on the oval frame of the window and sighed into his cellphone as though he was being lectured to. "Ma, I'm not supposed to tell you this. This is all super classified. I got into some trouble in Nivaria. You know how I told you last Christmas that I was bros with the big boss's son who was about the same age as me? No, no ma — not Rykirov, a bigger boss. Well, it turns out my buddy Orion decided to call me up one night to get some bank account codes for him because he was going to use it to buy contraband weapons to take out his dad. It was weird — I guess it was inheritance issues, you know these billionaires. Anyway, after his dad gave him a beating on the fields of Jahen, Rykirov gave me a mission to redeem myself.

"There's a big bad dude who suddenly showed up about three months ago, let's call him Jude. He's so crazy powerful he can control the weather. Chairman Oslen himself told me he would transfer a cool twenty million dollars into my account if I would just do this one thing for him. I needed to go to Windflower Springs and protect some random girl named Ailith while pretending to be her friend from high school. I guess I'm enough of a small fry that I wouldn't attract any attention. It was supposed to be a perfectly safe operation until this Jude dude caught onto it. He's here in Florida now, but we're on a jet out of here. He may be strong, but he can't reach us on our base in Bermuda."

"I'm safe here, goddamn it, Ma. I'm done trying to explain things to you. You're insane. I'm hanging up. I've been holed up in this backroom long enough as it is. Love ya, Ma. Tell Aunt Lauren hugs and kisses too. And tell Kevin not to eat too many vanilla creme cupcakes. Save some for his older bro. I'll see you guys soon."

As Jack hung up, I saw him linger by the window. I had a million things I wanted to say to him the second he came out of that room, but my eyes drifted to the window too.

Outside, it was starting to rain. In the pitch blackness of night, it was hard to tell what sort of rain it was.

"You're not Jack Fayer, are you?" I asked. "If I'm so important, why don't you finally tell me the truth?"

"No, I'm not," the stranger before me said. Little by little, I was starting to see it. He wasn't Jack at all. He was this operative from this place called Nivaria. His real name was Joseph Faherty.

Joseph sighed and rolled his eyes at me like I was hopelessly dim-witted.

He wasn't even putting up a pretense of being our friend anymore. His obligation to Holly and me was finished. He was just going home to cash out his millions of dollars for bringing me onto this flight.

"I'm a hacker for a mercenary army called Shadow Corp. You are of special interest to a powerful man named Oslen. Probably a good thing too — he's the only person now who can create Lumin pills now that the head of Yagerin is dead."

When I didn't reply, Joseph turned back to the window.

"Your old schoolmate Jack Fayer is a computer programmer in Chicago. I probably have a striking resemblance to him, but you're right — I'm not Jack Fayer."

"You're a liar."

"The people I'm working for aren't going to hurt you."

"Why should I believe anything you're telling me?"

"Just listen, okay. I'm telling you the truth now. When they assigned me to come to Windflower Springs to find out, they told me to impersonate Jack so that you would come with me. Jack Fayer was the kind of nerdy, shut-in that no one remembers clearly. Neither you and Holly remember what Jack Fayer really looks like or any social interaction you had with him, do you?" Joseph straightened up and laughed coldly. "See, you popular girls, you are too busy study the moles on the quarterback's biceps to notice the boy wearing glasses in the library."

"Well, good for Jack, wherever he is — he finally got noticed by someone even if it's just a bromance," I reply sarcastically. "And just so you know, Joseph, I was never one of the popular girls in high school."

"Well, you're one popular girl now. Everyone's after you — the Levarsi, Qarinik, Yagerin...even Mr. Oslen."

"What does he want with me?"

"I don't know. I thought maybe you knew." Joseph said. "He said you told him once you'll find your way back to him."

I shook my head. I didn't know what Joseph was talking about except I didn't like any of it. Oslen, that name had a sinister ring to it even though it drew a complete blank in my mind. I needed to get away from these people. If I didn't, something terrible was going to happen.

Just as those thoughts crossed my mind, I felt the plane shudder from under my feet.

I caught the handle of the bathroom door to steady myself, I knew without a doubt it was Blight Rain.

"Fuck!" Joseph yelled as he grabbed onto the walls for support. He rushed to the window. The rain was pelting us from all sides now. The needle-like droplets had turned into sheets of water running down the oval windows with such fervor we might as well have been a submarine. "Oh fuck, LIVET!"

The door to the bedroom slammed open and knocked into the opposite wall with such force I worried Joseph would blow a hole in our aircraft.

Holly appeared at the end of the hallway. She had already straightened up her hair and smoothed all the wrinkles out of her sweater.

"What was that?" Holly snarled at Joseph. Although her tone was harsh, her eyes said she was just as terrified as the rest of us.

Joseph shoved Holly aside as he made his way to the cockpit.

"Something that's not supposed to be happening."