Page 18 of The Power of Six (Lorien Legacies 2)

She scratches the bottom of her right foot. “I’m not sure, but ever since I’ve been able to mess with the weather, it’s always the same face that appears. I assume it’s Loric. ”

“Yeah, probably. And here I thought it might be a crazy ex-boyfriend you’ve yet to get over. ”

“Because obviously I have a weakness for ninety-year-old men. You know me so well, John. ”

I shrug. Both of us smile.

That night I cook dinner on a rusty but serviceable grill left on the back patio. Or try to cook, I guess. Since I took home economics with Sarah in Paradise, I’m the only one who knows how to make anything remotely resembling a meal. Tonight: chicken breasts, potatoes, and a frozen pepperoni pizza.

We’re sitting on the living-room carpet in a triangle. Under the blanket Six has draped over her head and body, she wears a black tank top, and her pendant hangs in full view. The sight of it returns my mind to the vision I had. I long for a normal dinner around a table and a normal night’s sleep where I’m not tortured by my Loric past. Was that what it was like on Lorien before we left?

“Do you think about your parents a lot?” I ask Six. “Back on Lorien, I mean?”

“Not that much anymore. I can’t even tell you what they look like, really. I remember how it felt being near them, though, if that makes any sense. I think about that feeling quite a bit, I guess. What about you?”

I pick at a burned slice of pizza. I resolve never to cook frozen pizza on the grill again. “I see them a lot in my dreams. Which is really great, but at the same time it tears me up inside. Reminds me that they’re dead. ”

The blanket slides off the top of Six’s head and rests on her shoulders. “What about you, Sam? Do you miss your parents right now?”

Sam opens his mouth and closes it. I can tell he’s considering telling Six that he thinks his dad was taken by aliens, abducted when he went out for milk and bread. Finally he says, “I miss them both, my mom and dad, but I know that I’m better off here with you guys. Considering what I know about everything, I don’t think I could be at home. ”

“You know too much,” I say. I feel guilty he’s eating my terrible meal on the floor of an abandoned house instead of feasting on his mother’s food at a dining-room table.

“Sam, I’m sorry you got caught up in this with us,” Six says. “But it’s nice that you’re her

e. ”

He blushes. “I don’t know what it is, but I feel a weird connection to the whole situation. Can I ask you something? How far away is Mogadore from Earth?”

I think back to when Henri blew on the seven glass orbs, how they came to life. Soon we were looking at a floating replica of our solar system. “It’s a lot closer than Lorien is, why?”

Sam stands. “How long would it take to get there?”

“A few months maybe,” Six says. “Depends on what type of ship you’re flying and what type of energy it uses. ”

Walking in circles, Sam says, “I think the U. S. government has to have a ship built somewhere that can handle that distance. I’m sure it’s a prototype and top secret and hidden under a mountain that’s hidden under another mountain, but I was just thinking about what would happen if we couldn’t find your ship and needed to take the fight to them—go to Mogadore. We have to have a Plan B, right?”

“Sure. What’s Plan A again?” I ask, biting my tongue. I can’t fathom fighting the whole planet of Mogadore on their own turf.

“Getting my Chest,” Six says. She pulls the blanket back over her head.

“And then what?”

“Training?”

“And then what?” I ask.

“We go find the others, I guess. ”

“It just sounds like a bunch of running and not much of anything else. I think Henri or Katarina would have us doing something more productive somehow. Like studying how to kill certain enemies. Do you know what a piken is?”

“Those are those huge beasts that destroyed the school,” Six says.

“What about a kraul?”

“Those are the smaller animal things that attacked us in the gymnasium,” she answers. “Why?”

“In the dream that I had in North Carolina, when you and Sam heard me speaking Mogadorian, those two names were mentioned, but I’d never heard of them before. Henri and I simply called them ‘the beasts. ’” I pause. “I had another dream earlier. ”

“Maybe you aren’t having dreams,” she says. “Maybe you’re having visions again. ”

I nod. “It’s hard to tell the difference at this point. I mean, these dreams felt the same as the visions I had of Lorien, but I wasn’t on Lorien during these two,” I say. “Henri once said that when I have visions it’s because they hold some sort of personal significance to me. And that’s always been true—the past visions were always of things that had already happened. But I think what I witnessed in my dream this morning . . . I don’t know. It’s like I was seeing it as it was actually happening. ”

“Wicked,” Sam says. “You’re like a TV. ”

Six crumples her paper towel and tosses it up in the air above her head. Without thinking I set it on fire, and it wilts into nothing before landing on the carpet. Then Six says, “It’s not impossible, John. Some of the Loric have been known to do it. That’s what Katarina said, anyway. ”

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