Unhappily Ever After

Chapter 72 - Hide and Seek

It wasn't going well.

I'd thought the road would run for maybe a mile and then come to a grinding halt in some forest car park. I'd thought I'd be able to find Scott within the hour. Instead, I'd found out that my 'dead end' ran through a village and three industrial sites before petering out of existence as four separate branches. It gave me an area about the size of a small town to search.

I'd quickly got sick of driving from building to building, scouting out each one with excruciating slowness to be sure I didn't alert them to my presence. I'd got sick of waiting for my reinforcements to show up, too. And so I'd sat myself on the bonnet of my car to search in a slightly less conventional manner.

I was drifting on the evening breeze. Every tree was glowing with a thousand pinpricks of light, and yet they were like tiny stars against the sun whenever I encountered an animal. Birds, squirrels, rabbits, foxes and deer — I could see them all, and I spent a heartbeat in each of their minds before moving on.

"Rhodric," a voice snapped in my ear. "What are you doing?"

It was like someone had snapped an elastic band against me. One minute I was out 'there,' wherever 'there' was, flitting from tree to tree, and the next I was staring at a sea of concerned faces. Mort and Tom were foremost amongst them.

"I was searching," I said.

My voice came out a bit hoarse because I'd been sat there for the better part of an hour with the sun beating down on me, and I'd been too far away from my body to notice its complaints. Now they were all clamouring at once, and my head was swimming. I had to jump down from the bonnet before I toppled over.

"Your eyes were ... um, see-through," Mort said. "Clear, I mean. Where the colour's supposed to be."

"Tell me you weren't casting," Tom admonished, and I could only shrug. He ran a hand through his hair, looking for all the world like he wanted to smack me upside the head. "You of all people should know how dangerous that is."

I stared at him. "Is that what it's called?"

Tom swore at me. He turned around to appeal to the raiders for help, but they did nothing but shuffle their feet and look skywards. Only one man bothered to meet Tom's eyes, and that was the man who was stood apart from the others with his hands in his pockets and an eternally bored look on his face.

"You're an idiot," Vik told me lazily. "And I think you know that."

Oh, I did. Just two hours ago, tapping had been out of reach entirely. Yet in my weakened state, I'd decided to do the one thing my mother had told me I should never do. The problem with letting your mind drift was that you could very easily stray too far from your body ... and then you couldn't get back. An eternity floating adrift was a fate worse than death.

"I was fine," I corrected, trying to blink away the dizziness. "And I'm not wasting any more time arguing with you. I've checked every building south of the road. No people. If you still want to help, you can start by searching the village."

He shook his head. "I'll look with my bloody eyes, Llewellyn. Not like that."

"Do whatever the hell you like, as long as you do it quickly."

To be honest, I couldn't search the village with my mind either. When I was free-floating, I could tell where people were, but I couldn't tell who they were. Not unless I went inside and did some riffling, and if it was Scott I barged into ... well, that might just give the game away.

Vik left. Tom and the others left, too. He would split the raiders into little groups and sent them to scout out the north side of the road, which meant we should have a location within the hour. And it was a good thing, too — the afternoon was wearing on and we might be able to launch an attack under the cover of darkness.