Page 22 of The Power of Six (Lorien Legacies 2)

“Sure. Some days. ”

“Why do you stay, then? You could go anywhere. ”

He shrugs. “Several reasons. ” He pours more wine into his glass. “For one, there’s no one else to take care of my mother. Plus, this place is my home, and I’m not convinced there’s much better out there. My experiences have taught me that things rarely improve with a simple change of scenery. ”

“Maybe so, but I still can’t wait to leave. I only have a little over four months left at the orphanage, you know? And you can’t tell anyone this, but I think that I’m going to leave sooner than that. ”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Marina. You’re very young to be on your own. Where will you go?”

“America,” I say without hesitation.

“America?”

“There’s somebody there I need to find. ”

“If you’re so determined, then why haven’t you already left?”

“Fear,” I say. “Mostly fear. ”

“You’re not the first,” he says, taking a moment to empty his entire glass. His eyes have lost their sharpness. “The key to change is letting go of fear. ”

“I know. ”

The door to the café opens, and a tall man wearing a long coat and carrying an old book enters. He moves past us and takes a table in the far corner. He has dark hair and bushy brows. A thick mustache covers his upper lip. I’ve never seen him before; but when he lifts his head and meets my gaze, there’s something I immediately don’t like about him and I quickly look away. From the corner of my eye, I can see he’s still staring at me. I try ignoring it. I resume talking to Héctor, or rather I babble, hardly making sense, watching him refill his glass with red wine; and I hear next to nothing of what he says in reply.

Five minutes later the man’s still staring, and I’m so bothered by it that the café seems to spin. I lean across the table and whisper to Héctor, “Do you know who the person in the far corner is?”

He shakes his head. “No, but I’ve noticed him watching us, too. He was in here on Friday, sitting in the same seat and reading the same book. ”

“There’s something about him I don’t like, but I don’t know what it is. ”

“Don’t worry, you have me here,” he says.

“I really should leave,” I say. An odd desperation to get away has come over me. I try not to look at the man, but I do anyway. He’s reading the book now, the cover of which is angled toward me as though he wants me to see it. It’s brittle and worn, a dusty shade of gray.

PITTACUS OF MYTILENE

AND THE

ATHENIAN WAR

Pittacus? Pittacus? The man is watching me again, and though I can’t see the bottom half of his face, his eyes suggest a knowing grin on his lips. All at once I feel as though I’ve been struck by a train. Could this be my first Mogadorian?

I jump up, smacking my knee against the bottom of the table and nearly knocking over Héctor’s wine bottle. My chair falls backwards, crashing to the ground. Everybody in the café turns.

“I gotta go, Héctor,” I say. “I gotta go. ”

I stumble through the doorway and make a mad dash for home, running faster than a speeding car, not caring if anyone sees. I’m back at Santa Teresa in seconds. I crash through the double doors and quickly slam them shut. I put my back against them and close my eyes. I try to slow my breathing, the twitching in my arms and legs, my quivering bottom lip. Sweat runs down the side of my face.

I open my eyes. Adelina stands in front of me, and I fall headlong into her arms, not caring about the tension from an hour before. She tentatively hugs me back, probably confused by my sudden display of affection, which I haven’t shown her in years. She pulls away and I open my mouth to tell her what I’ve just seen, but she brings a finger to her lips the same way I did to Ella at Mass. Then she turns and walks away.

That night, after dinner and before prayers, I stand at the bedroom window gazing out as darkness falls, scanning the landscape for anything suspicious.

“Marina? What are you doing?”

I turn around. Ella stands behind me; I hadn’t heard her approach. She moves through these halls like a shadow.

“There you are,” I say, relieved. “Are you okay?”

She nods, but her big brown eyes tell me otherwise. “What are you doing?” she repeats.

“Just looking outside, that’s all. ”

“What for? You’re always looking out the windows at bedtime. ”

She’s right; every night since she arrived, since I saw the man watching me in the nave window, I’ve been looking outside at bedtime for any signs of him. I’m now certain he’s the same man I saw in the café today.

“I’m looking for bad men, Ella. There are bad men out there sometimes. ”

“Really? What do they look like?”

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