I finally dragged my gaze away from it and glanced at my cell phone, hoping I’d missed a text from Adrian in response to one I’d sent earlier with our status. There’d been little communication from him throughout the day, which seemed odd after yesterday, when he’d sent almost constant updates. I knew it was unreasonable to expect him to do nothing except sit by the phone to talk to me, but I couldn’t shake the difference. After the troubling way things had been between us this last month, I found myself getting caught up in weird fits of paranoia, thinking that maybe once the shock of having me gone was over, Adrian found he kind of liked the freedom.
The waitress arrived with our food just then, and I tucked the phone back into my purse. As she set down our plates, her breath caught at the sight of the sandstone brick.
“Did you guys steal that from Ha Ha Tonka?”
We stared her as though she were speaking another language.
“I mean, that’s cool if you did,” she added hastily, unnerved by our silence. “It’s a sweet place. I see lots of people going to and from there. Wouldn’t mind a souvenir myself.”
Ms. Terwilliger recovered herself first. “Can you say that name again? Ha Ha Wonka?”
“Ha Ha Tonka,” the girl corrected. She glanced between our faces. “You really haven’t been there? That brick looks just like the one the ruins are made of. You should check it out if you’re going into the Ozarks.”
The instant she was gone, I looked up Ha Ha Tonka on my phone. “No way,” I said. “There’s a castle in Missouri!”
“Do you think Jill’s being held there?” Eddie asked, eyes aglow. I could already tell he was envisioning himself rescuing her from some tall tower, possibly battling a dragon or a robot dinosaur in the process.
“Not likely. She was right about the ‘ruins’ part.” I showed them a picture of Ha Ha Tonka, which was an impressive structure, despite having seen better days. It had no roof, and some sections of the walls were gone, making it all open-air and easy to walk through. The building was technically a mansion, not a castle, and the whole area had been turned into a state park full of trails and other natural attractions. If Jill was there, it wasn’t obvious where she could be held captive . . . but at least we had a destination now, because the waitress was right about one thing: Our brick looked exactly like those from the ruins.
The new knowledge reinvigorated us, and we nearly forgot our food as we began making plans. According to the park’s website, it opened at seven in the morning. We decided to get there as soon as we could get in and do some preliminary scouting. If there was a chance we might have some showdown akin to what we’d faced at the robot museum, then we’d go to the trouble of sneaking in after hours. With the way this weird scavenger hunt was unfolding, there was really no telling what we might be facing or what the person running it expected of us.
We woke up energized the next morning, even after only five hours of sleep, eager to get on the road and see what secrets Ha Ha Tonka held. The park was only an hour away, but we stopped at a gas station to fill up the car before getting on the highway. While Eddie took care of refueling, I headed inside the station to make sure Ms. Terwilliger and I had more coffee for the road. As I was approaching the door, I came to a screeching halt when I saw someone familiar inside.
My dad.
He was standing at the counter, taking money out of his wallet. His body was angled away from me, so he couldn’t see me on the other side of the glass door. Yesterday’s conversation came back to me, and I suddenly wondered if this really was all some Alchemist plot to catch me.
For a moment, I was so paralyzed with fear that I couldn’t react. Despite the awkwardness of my living situation at the Moroi Court this last month, there was no question that it was a million times better than what I’d faced in re-education. I’d thought that I’d been able to put that awful experience behind me, but as I stood there, staring at my dad’s back, I suddenly found it hard to breathe. For all I knew, fifty Alchemists were about to spring out from all directions, dragging me back to a tiny dark room and sentencing me to a lifetime of physical and psychological torture.
Move, Sydney, move! some part of my brain shouted at me.
But I couldn’t. All I kept thinking about was how the Alchemists had overwhelmed me before, and that was with Eddie by my side. What chance did I stand here, all by myself?
MOVE, I told myself again. Stop feeling helpless!
That spurred me to action. I began breathing again and slowly backed away, not wanting to do anything that might catch attention in his periphery. When I couldn’t see him anymore, I spun around and prepared to make a mad dash back to the car.
Instead, I ran into my sister Zoe.
She’d been walking toward the gas station, and my panic shot back up as I looked at her. Then, as I studied her expression of complete shock, I realized something: I was the last person she’d expected to see here. This wasn’t some sort of elaborate trap. At least, it hadn’t been until I walked into it.
“Zoe,” I squeaked. “What are you doing here?”
Her eyes were impossibly wide as she attempted her own recovery. “We’re on our way to the St. Louis facility. I’m starting an internship there.”
Last I knew, she’d been in Salt Lake City with my dad, and I couldn’t help but pull up a mental road map. This wasn’t a direct route between the two places. “Why didn’t you take I-70?” I demanded suspiciously.