Jericho Jaxon Read online

  I was a social outcast.

  “Eyes as black as onyx,” Gunner says thoughtfully. “That sounds alien to me.”

  “You do realize what you’re saying, right? If my father is an alien . . .” That would make me one too. Or at least half of one.

  “I’ve always said that you’re one weird chick. That would explain a lot.”

  I don’t believe in the paranormal. I’m a skeptic when it comes to anything supernatural. I believe beings from outer space belong in science-fiction movies.

  Chapter Two

  After Gunner unloads my Vespa from the back of his dad’s truck, I give him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for everything. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  “I’m your trusty sidekick. Always there to save your behind.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  He slams the truck’s tailgate shut. “Don’t forget to get gas next time. Especially if you’re planning another trip into the wild Arizona desert.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “I’d better get the pickup back to my dad. Don’t forget about Grad Night on Saturday.”

  “How could I forget? You’ve reminded me six hundred and forty-two times.”

  “Don’t forget about Grad Night.” He removes the toothpick from his mouth and grins at me. “Six hundred and forty-three times. I don’t like even numbers.”

  As soon as Gunner takes off, I hurry into my aunts’ house. It’s an old bungalow that was built in the 1920s that they have meticulously restored. They also added a large enclosed porch with a separate entrance where they see clients and do psychic readings.

  They’re sitting at the kitchen table, paying bills, when I enter.

  Anya, the older of my two aunts, looks up from the ledger she’s holding. “If you’re going to live with us after you graduate, you’re going to have to get a job and help out with the bills.”

  “Unless she takes classes at the community college,” Delia says.

  “She could still get a part-time job.”

  My aunts have a habit of talking about me as if I’m not standing right in front of them.

  Anya and Delia are in their midfifties. They both have shoulder-length blonde hair and bright-blue eyes. They’re my mother’s half sisters, all with the same father. My mother was the product of their father’s second failed marriage.

  “Colton Clark isn’t my father,” I blurt.

  My aunts stare at me, wide-eyed. I wait for them to say something, but no words come out of their gaping mouths.

  “If you were really psychic, I think you would have known that. Or maybe you’ve been lying to me all these years.”

  Anya closes the ledger now resting on the table in front of her and carefully places her pen on top of it. “We never lied to you, Jericho. Your mother didn’t tell us she was leaving town. One day she just disappeared, and we never saw her again. We assumed she left with Colton. They were very close to each other.”

  “Colton is gay. Did you know that?”

  My aunts eye each other. Then Anya says, “We had our suspicions.”

  “Did you know that my mother was dating someone named Luca?”

  Even though my aunts shake their heads, I feel like there’s still something they’re not telling me.

  “I’m going to find my parents. Whatever it takes.”

  Delia places a hand on Anya’s arm. “We should give it to her. I think it’s time.”

  Anya heaves a sigh. “Perhaps you’re right. No use postponing the inevitable.”

  She rises from the table, and Delia follows her. I trail behind as they exit the kitchen area and head into the living room.

  Sitting on the mantel over the fireplace among their trove of crystals and other metaphysical treasures is a small wooden box. When I was younger, I took it down from the mantel once and tried to open it, but it was locked, and I couldn’t find the key anywhere.

  Delia grabs the box. When she pushes in the center of the maze that’s etched on the top, the box unlocks.

  Inside the box is a silver horseshoe pendant on a chain and a folded note that’s not much bigger than the fortune inside of a cookie. Delia hands both items to me. “Your mother left this in an envelope right next to your crib.”

  The note contains a single handwritten sentence: Don’t trust the man of your dreams.

  I have no idea what the cryptic message means.

  I examine the pendant. It’s the size of a quarter and has a thick silver chain. I undo the clasp and put it around my neck.

  The moment is anticlimactic. In movies, when the orphaned child is given a symbolic token that’s supposed to reconnect her with her long-lost parent, it’s always so dramatic. A lone teardrop escapes down the orphan’s cheek while poignant violin music plays in the background.

  All I can hear is the highway noise from the traffic on I-10.

  “Your mother wore that all the time.” Delia points to the horseshoe. “Our father used to joke that a horseshoe would give her protection from the alps.”

  “The mountains?”

  She shakes her head. “In German folklore, alps are the demons who cause bad dreams. Alpträume. ‘Nightmares’ in German.”

  Don’t trust the man of your dreams. Did my mother have nightmares? I rarely remember my dreams at all.

  “There’s one more thing,” Anya says. “We saved it for your eighteenth birthday.”

  “I told you I didn’t want to celebrate my birthday,” I remind them.

  Saturday is the milestone. Even if I had any friends to invite to a party, which I don’t, they’d all be at Grad Night at the high school anyway.

  “Step into the office with me,” Anya says.

  Delia and I follow her to the back of the house, where their office is located. A large picture window that takes up half the room overlooks their Zen meditation garden in the backyard.

  Anya opens the small safe that sits underneath their desk. She removes a discolored manila envelope and hands it to me.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s the deed to our father’s property north of Cordia. He wanted you to have it.”

  I’m not sure what to say. My grandfather died when I was a baby, so I never knew him. He had a massive heart attack not long after my mom disappeared. My aunts like to say that he died of a broken heart. The story is a bit sappy if you ask me, but I’ve never been the sentimental type.

  “There’s an old trailer on the property,” Delia says. “Maybe you could fix it up. Live there if you want to. Or sell it. It’s up to you.”

  “We’ve already paid the taxes on it for this year,” Anya says. “But next year, they’ll be your responsibility.”

  My throat tightens. The only things I’ve ever been responsible for are the gas and insurance for my Vespa. Having land and a trailer is a huge responsibility. As mature as I like to think I am, I’m not sure I’m ready to be a property owner.

  And I don’t even have a job lined up yet.

  “Sit down with us,” Gunner’s mom gestures toward their family room. “We’re just starting the Mel Gibson film festival.”

  “We’re watching all of the Lethal Weapon movies,” Gunner’s dad shouts from the couch. “And we’ve got popcorn. You don’t want to miss Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh. The best buddy-cop duo ever written.”

  “Is Gunner up, by any chance?” I ask.

  His mom laughs. “If he isn’t yet, he should be. Go knock on his bedroom door.”

  Gunner’s parents, Levi and Landry Hollis, may look like average middle-aged Americans, but they are far from your typical next-door neighbors. There isn’t a conspiracy theory online that they haven’t thoroughly researched, and they’re well prepared for the upcoming apocalypse, which they’re convinced is coming any day now. They have one of the few houses in our community with a basement, which they’ve converted into a nuclear fallout shelter. And they’ve stockpiled enough food and water to last for several years of living underground.

/>   I head down the hallway toward Gunner’s room. His door opens before I have a chance to knock.

  “Want to take a trip with me?” I give Gunner a mischievous grin, which I hope will entice him to join me.

  “Where?” He yawns. His hair is askew, and the shorts and T-shirt he’s wearing are more wrinkled than his attire usually is.

  “Were you still sleeping?”

  “Maybe . . . what’s it to you?”

  “You’re like a bear that never stops hibernating.”

  “Sleeping is one of my favorite hobbies. And I’m good at it. Know why? Because I get lots of practice.”

  “Do you want to come with me or not?” I tap my foot on the creaky hardwood floor for emphasis.

  “You’re so impatient.”

  “It’s one of my virtues.”

  “I think you’ve got the whole virtue thing a little mixed up.”

  “I really want you to come with me, Gunner.” I try my best not to whine because I know he hates it.

  “Translation from Jericho-ese to standard English: I really want you to drive me there and then help me do whatever it is I’m going there to do.”

  I give him a wide smile. “You know me too well.”

  “I know you better than you know yourself.”

  “You’re the most important person in my life, Gunner. I really want you to share this experience with me.”

  He clears his throat. Then he moves the toothpick in his mouth from one side to the other. “Anything is better than having to watch movies with my parents. Again. I had to sit through a John Hughes marathon last night. Do you know how many times I’ve seen The Breakfast Club? Thirty. And no, that’s not an exaggeration. Thanks to my parents’ obsession with old movies, I know more about films from the twentieth century than I do about movies from this century.”

  I purse my lips and heave a sigh. “As if it’s any better at my house. At least your mom and dad rent movies. My aunts won’t pay for cable, so we’re stuck watching the channels we can get with an antenna. Local news. Public television. And the classic-movie channel.”

  Gunner bites back another yawn.

  “You’re not going back to sleep.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize I sound more like his mother than his best friend. “Please come with me. It would mean a lot.”

  “Fine, just give me a few minutes to get changed.”

  As he heads back into his bedroom, I shout, “You might want to comb your hair too.”

  “Your map sucks.” Gunner is a master at stating the obvious.

  We’re standing next to his mom’s Jeep, on the side of a dirt road, staring down at a hand-drawn map. It was in the envelope that contained the deed to the property my grandfather left me. According to the deed, the property doesn’t even have a postal address. Just coordinates from a county survey map.

  We’re at the foothills of a small mountain range that borders one of Arizona’s First Nations communities. The land my grandfather owned is somewhere around here. It’s just a matter of finding it, which is harder than it sounds. The entire area is undeveloped, with no significant landmarks. Everything looks the same.

  “This isn’t a place I want to get lost in,” Gunner says. “That’s how tourists die. They get turned around while they’re hiking and never find their way back to where they started from.”

  “Please, let’s try one more time. The turnoff has to be around here somewhere.”

  “You still haven’t told me what we’re doing out here. Why is this so important to you?”

  “It just is. Please. My birthday is tomorrow. You can call it an early birthday present.”

  “Maybe I already got you a present.” He gives me an odd look. One that I’ve never seen him give me before. It’s the same look Alexander Roth gave me in first grade right before he tried to kiss me on the playground.

  I clear my throat to get rid of the discomfort that I’m feeling. It doesn’t work. “Give me ten more minutes. Then we can go.”

  “Fine. Ten minutes. I’m setting the timer on my cell phone.”

  I glance down at the map again. “Let’s backtrack the way we came and see if we can locate the trail. It’s been almost twenty years since my grandfather lived out here. Maybe it’s overgrown.”

  “You’ve got nine minutes and thirty-five seconds left.”

  Just as we’re about to hop back into the Jeep, I notice a man walking down the middle of the dirt road toward us. He seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Granted, I was preoccupied with the map and the odd looks Gunner was giving me, but I usually have a better sense of what’s happening in my surroundings.

  As the man gets closer, my heart starts to beat more rapidly. He’s dressed in all black: a long-sleeved black sweatshirt, black jeans, and black boots. He’s massive in size, like a huge boulder walking toward us.

  He stops just a few inches in front of me and stares at me with his cold, dark eyes.

  They’re the color of onyx.

  My heart is beating so fast I feel like it could explode.

  He looks similar to the man Colton described. The one who Gunner joked was an alien. Except this man doesn’t have any scars on his face.

  “Are you lost?” he asks.

  He hasn’t even glanced in Gunner’s direction. The man’s attention is completely focused on me.

  My throat feels drier than the desert surrounding us. “I . . . um . . .”

  The man continues to stare at me, his face expressionless.

  I hold out the map in my hands. He doesn’t even glance at it. “I know where you want to go.”

  How is that possible?

  Gunner’s complexion has turned ashen. He looks like he’s going to be sick. “Who are you?” he somehow manages to squeak out.

  The man doesn’t respond to Gunner’s question. He doesn’t even look at him. It’s as if Gunner doesn’t exist.

  The man’s attention is drawn to the horseshoe pendant around my neck. He stares at it intently as if he’s examining it. “I can take you there.”

  Gunner and I exchange a wary glance. What if this guy is dangerous? He could easily snap both of our necks.

  Gunner isn’t that much taller than I am, and he’s not the type who works out. He’s no match for Black Eyes.

  “Maybe you could just give us directions,” I stutter.

  “Follow me.”

  When the man turns and walks away, I whisper to Gunner, “What should we do?”

  “I have no idea.” Gunner is so laid-back that I’ve never seen him afraid of anything before. Right now, he sounds petrified.

  “If he was going to kill us, he probably would have done it already, right?”

  “Unless he wants to get us off the road and into a more desolate area so that it’s harder to find our bodies.”

  When the man stops and turns back toward us, Gunner and I freeze.

  “Are you coming or not?”

  As I take one tenuous step toward the man, Gunner grabs my arm. “Are you sure about this?”

  “No.” I continue to walk toward Black Eyes anyway.

  Gunner stays glued to my side.

  “This way.” The man points to a narrow trail that doesn’t look much wider than a footpath. No wonder it was so difficult to locate from the roadway.

  We follow Black Eyes as he makes his way up the trail toward the top of the bluff. I wasn’t expecting a trek in such rocky terrain. The black sandals I’m wearing are definitely not the right shoes for the challenge.

  Gunner and I struggle to keep up with Black Eyes. He’s obviously used to hiking in the rugged outdoors. I was lucky to pass my physical education classes in high school. If it wasn’t for the fact that they lumped our health classes in with the sports they tortured us with, I wouldn’t have been as fortunate.

  By the time we get to a plateau where Black Eyes stops, I’m struggling to catch my breath. Gunner hasn’t fared much better. His face is so red I’m afraid he might have a heart attack.

&nbs
p; “This is it,” Black Eyes says.

  I look around. The land is barren except for a dilapidated trailer in the distance.

  “How did my grandfather get that up here?” I point to the trailer.

  “There’s a road on the other side of the bluff that goes out to the reservation.”

  “Are you a member of the tribe?” I ask.

  The man shakes his head. Another dead end.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  When he stares into my eyes, a shiver runs through my body. I feel like he’s looking right through me. “Nico,” he says finally.

  “I’m Jericho. This is my friend, Gunner.”

  Gunner gives him an awkward wave that goes ignored.

  “You’ll be able to find your way back to the main road.” It’s a statement rather than a question.

  I answer anyway. “I think so.”

  “Do you live around here?” Gunner asks.

  Nico crosses his massive arms in front of him. He doesn’t seem interested in sharing any additional information with us.

  “I guess we’ll take a look inside the trailer.”

  Nico doesn’t budge. He continues to gawk at me. Awkward.

  “Thanks for your help,” I say, hoping he’ll take the hint and skedaddle.

  No such luck.

  “We’ll be fine,” I assure him. You can leave now.

  “Watch out for pack rats. The trailer is filled with them.”

  Gunner and I glance at each other. He wrinkles his nose in disgust. We are clearly unprepared for this venture.

  “We’ll keep that in mind,” I say to Nico. Then I grab Gunner’s upper arm. “Let’s go.”

  I pull Gunner with me as I make my way over to the trailer. When I glance back, I notice that Nico is still in the same spot and still watching us with his eerie eyes.

  When we’re finally standing a few feet from the trailer, I whisper to Gunner, “Is he still back there?”