Ranth picked up the bucket and sat cross-legged in the center of the circle. Then he dumped the bucket over his head. The milk sluiced down his skin, leaving white thread-like tracery. He tipped his face to the sun and chanted in a language I couldn’t place.
He glowed. I’d never met anyone like him, and I probably never would again.
“I think he’s speaking Assyrian, based on what he said,” Ori whispered to me. My vision swam, and I crouched down.
Juke was watching the controls of her map grid. Juke’s grid would read and project; Ranth’s ritual would push the signal. A green haze lifted from Ranth’s skin, and the curse scribed on his arm glowed. The amulet in his upturned palm emitted a pink light. The white tracery from the milky trails lifted and wrapped the air, connecting Ranth to the amulet. The tracery spun outward as if attracted to Juke’s grid. The kyphi turned sharp and honey-sweet as the light went white and spread to the flexible map. The whole thing lit up like a billion-fiber optics firing at once. I covered my eyes.
I peeked out, squinting from the glare. The world was tinted amber, and sounds were elongated. Ranth sat in the triangle; the tracery was gone, and one point on the map glowed.
Buenos Aires.
The gold was in Argentina.That rooted itself deep as Ranth’s form glowed in front of me and blurred. I lay down on the asphalt, the rough blackness warm under my cheek.
I heard what might have been Ori’s voice, but the words swam in my head like fish I couldn’t catch.
Ranth’s voice cut through the haze, echoing oddly above the other layered whispers.
“I have taken too much from you. You will be okay. Sleep now.”
Familiar arms gathered me up, and trusting I was safe, I closed my eyes and slept.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Iknew I was in Freddie’s car before I opened my eyes: sweaty socks, longanisa, his cologne, and the pine air freshener swinging from his rearview mirror. I tugged my phone out as I extricated myself from the back seat, the map results flooding back. We needed the real location and a way to reach it before seven.
Before my text to Ori got a reply, I was out of the car and had a clear view of the dome and my friends across the parking lot.
My head was cottony, like my tongue. Ori waved me over, but I detoured to Juke’s cooler and guzzled one of her canteen bottles. My thoughts were still all over the place, but at least I was able to speak now. “What happened?” I asked as I entered the dome.
Juke pulled off her headphones as I approached. “You’re looking better. We were worried when you passed out. Ranth thinks the drug and the spell did some sort of transfer that affected you. Sleeping it off was the solution.”
“Yeah, my head is a mess.” I ran my fingers over my loosened braid. “Any plan how we’re getting to Argentina?”
“The gold is in Anaheim, not Argentina,” Ori said.
“Whaaa? But the light that stayed on was in South America.”
“South America was the fried light. Anaheim was the real hit,” Juke replied, pointing at the projected image on the ceiling. “See, it’s still on? The spell energy, or whatever it was, fried the upper part of the map. What should have lit was Anaheim, but there was no power. But I got the feed impression data, so on the monitor it looks fine.” She turned the screen of her laptop around. The map clearly showed the point southeast of Los Angeles.
“It’s Disneyland,” Ori said.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“That’s what I thought too. But they have a museum exhibition of ancient artifacts.” Juke held up her tablet with the zoomed in map.
“And it’s in the exhibition? That makes total sense. Bizarre though.” I pulled the elastic out of my hair and redid the braid.
“The security is tight,” Juke said. The headphones around her neck emitted a steady musical beat.
“Does it belong to the museum or is it on loan?”
“It doesn’t. It’s a private donor collection.” Ori’s eyes met mine.
Oh Foxgloves, don’t let it be…
“Gerrard Lin,” Ori confirmed.
The weight dropped. I could only hope my mother wasn’t watching wherever she was. Her last words to me about my father were to imagine I had no father and leave it at that. If Ineeded something, I always called Bud. Or my father’s lawyer. “Well, the good news is, that’s my biological father.”
