Unexpected Consequences

15. And Here Comes the Storm

BEN CAME TO school the next day sporting two Band-Aids: one across the bridge of his nose, and the other wrapped around his thumb. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had caused it; the entire team knew of the cute, stealthy demon terrorizing his house. I decided that I should probably keep my phone out of his view, considering that Salazar was my new background. It was why I jumped so hard and scrambled to turn my phone off when he abruptly walked up to me during gym and tapped my shoulder.

"Look," he said.

I followed his gaze and saw Dana by the two ropes in the corner of the gym, looking up at them with her arms crossed and a hard-to-read-expression on her face. She must've understood why I'd landed the way I did, way back when she kicked me off that rope. It was funny—in the past few months I'd hardly noticed her, and now I was seeing her everywhere. Behind me in the hallway, in the back of the English class I didn't realize she was in, in gym, in lunch, sitting a table closer to us than usual.

As per the words of Larry Daley to Dexter the Capuchin: there was a storm coming. I could feel the tension in the way we caught each other's eye, and I knew she wasn't done with me yet. But she did keep her promise in keeping my secret, so I'd take it as a win.

There was no team meeting today, but Ben and I found ourselves in the library anyway, him annotating a book for English and me flipping back and forth between math and history, finding x one second and memorizing the Bill of Rights the next. Not fun—give yourself more time to study, my friends, because cramming sucks.

"Any news on the drone?" he asked.

I pulled out my laptop and watched, chewing on the tip of my pen, as the program booted up. Last time I checked, the drone had continued scouring the entirety of New York City, even crossing into Hoboken and Nassau County. What reason did anyone have to get aerial views that were available on Google Earth? Unless it was doing something else?

To my surprise, the red path had ended sometime last night, and now there was a red dot pulsing gently over a building. "It stopped."

"Where?"

I zoomed out and zoomed in, I clicked all over to find some sort of labeling—I tried, I really did, but then I sighed in defeat and slid the laptop over to Ben. Jenny's programs grew more advanced by the week, and Ben was more tech-savvy and understood them ten times better than I did. He laughed at me (typical, but who was the Irrelevant Goose here?) and zoomed in on the map, typed in a few commands, hitting the keys in a sequence I could probably learn if I had time and gained hundreds of brain cells.

"It's a defunct warehouse facility," he said. "Hasn't been used in three years."

"Hm." I eyed the large, albeit secluded building on the map. Last time I visited a warehouse, I thought it was just a run-down shed, and it turned out to be Lex's. This seemed a little too...basic for him. Too out in the open, too obvious—if I saw the drone go deep into the city sewerage system and stop somewhere suspicious like an empty tavern, that would scream Lex. This did not. But regardless, I had to check it out.

"I'll go after school," I said, shaking my head. "But I don't think it's Lex."

"Then what is it?"

"We'll find out, I guess."

"The building's still locked and alarmed. How are you going to get in?"

I frowned, realizing that it had never been a problem for me before. Anytime I needed to get into somewhere locked, it was usually in a dangerous situation, and I broke my way in. What was I supposed to do for investigative work? Break the door and apologize if I was wrong?