Meg Cabot - Sanctuary

"You still want to do something?" Rob asked.

I prickled immediately. "What do you mean, do I still want to do something? Of course I still want to do something. We're going out, right? I mean, aren't we?"

Mikey and Claire, distracted by my tone of voice, which had suddenly gotten a little shrill, stopped kissing, and looked at me.

"Is that the Grit?" Claire mouthed, excitedly. I turned my back on them.

"Well," Rob said. "I don't know. I mean, yesterday at the mall, you seemed to wig out a little."

"I did not wig out," I said, appalled. "That was not wigging out. That was just … I mean, come on. That was weird. I mean, your mom, my mom. Whatever."

"Right," Rob said. But he didn't sound very convinced. "Whatever."

"But of course I still want to go out tonight," I said. I was clutching the phone very tightly, so tightly my knuckles were white. "I mean, if you want to. Go to dinner. Or a movie." Or to your uncle's Christmas Eve wedding. Whichever. Or both, actually.

"Well," Rob said, stretching that single syllable out unbelievably far. I hung onto the receiver in breathless anticipation. This was, I knew, ridiculous. Ruth would have killed me for it, if she'd known. Ruth has very firm rules about boys, and one of the rules is that you should never, ever chase them. Let the boys come to you.

And even though Ruth isn't what you'd call your stereotypical babe, the whole rules thing seemed to work pretty well for her.

But then again, as far as I know, Ruth isn't going out with a high school graduate who happens to have a criminal record.

Before Rob could say another word, however, the call waiting went off, as it usually did, right when I least wanted it to. I said to Rob, "Hold on. I've got another call." I tried to make it sound like this other call might conceivably be from one of the many other boys I knew who were just dying to take me out, but I don't know if I did a very convincing job. Especially since the only other boy I happen to know who wanted to take me out was Skip from next door, but Saturday nights he's always busy grand-wizarding the neighborhood Dungeons and Dragons game, so it probably wasn't him.

So, not surprisingly, when I pressed the receiver, the voice I heard on the other line was not Skip's. But I was far from expecting to hear from the person to whom it belonged.

"Jessica," Dr. Cyrus Krantz said. He sounded agitated. "We've got a problem."

You think you've got problems ? I wanted to say. I got a guy on the other line who apparently isn't aware that I am the best thing that ever happened to him .

Instead, I said, "Oh?" like I couldn't imagine what he was talking about. Even though I had a pretty good idea. He was calling about Nate Thompkins and the synagogue.

Only it turned out he wasn't. He was calling about something I'd almost managed to forget about … almost, because it was so horrible, I doubted I'd ever fully be able to forget it.

"Seth Blumenthal," he said, heavily. "We missed him, Jessica."

I felt something inside my head explode. The next thing I knew, I was screaming into the phone like a maniac.

"What do you mean, you missed him?" I shouted.

It was only when I saw the expressions on Mike's and Claire's faces that I realized what I'd just done.

Outed myself. Officially. To the head of the psychic network of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

I felt all the blood run out of my face. Could my day, I wondered, possibly get worse?

"The officers who were dispatched to the scene," Dr. Krantz was saying, in my ear, "were unprepared for the amount of resistance they received from the—"

"Resistance?" I blurted, once again forgetting, in my indignation, that the call I'd made concerning Seth Blumenthal was supposed to have been anonymous. "What are you talking about, resistance? All they had to do was go in and get the kid and come out again. How hard is that?"

"Jessica." Dr. Krantz sounded strange. "They were fired upon."

"Well, of course they were," I practically shouted. "Because the people who took Seth Blumenthal against his will are criminals, Dr. Krantz. That's who tends to kidnap kids. Criminals. And that's what criminals do when the police show up. They try to evade capture."

"You failed to mention," Dr. Krantz said, "that Seth was being held against his will when you spoke to the nine-eleven operator, Jessica. You failed to mention—"

"That he'd been tied up and gagged and shut up in the linen closet of a double-wide? I guess I did fail to mention that, didn't I?" I could feel tears welling up beneath my eyelids. Crying. I was crying . "Maybe because I had to keep that call short, in the event it was traced. Something I wouldn't have to do, if you people would leave me and my family alone."

"One of the officers," Cyrus Krantz said, completely ignoring my barb, "was critically injured in the exchange of gunfire." I realized then why it was his voice sounded strange. He was frustrated. I had never heard Cyrus Krantz sound frustrated before. I was surprised. I have to admit, I thought of him as one of those Energizer bunnies. You know, that he just kept going, and going. . . .

"The perpetrators got away," Dr. Krantz went on. "With Seth."

"Shit!" I yelled. Claire, on Michael's lap, opened her eyes very wide, but I didn't care. "Can't you people do anything right?"

"It's a little difficult, Jessica," Dr. Krantz said, "when you insist upon playing these childish games with us, claiming you no longer have your psychic powers."

"Don't you go blaming me," I yelled into the phone, "for your incompetence!"

"Jessica," Dr. Krantz said. "Calm down."

"I can't calm down," I shouted. "Not when that kid's still out there. Not when—"

My voice caught. Because, of course, it was all coming back. The fear and terror I'd felt in my dream—my dream about Seth.

Only it hadn't been a dream. Well, to me it had. But it was Seth's reality. A reality that had gone spinning out of control the minute he'd been snatched off his bike in the synagogue parking lot the day before. Who knew what all he'd endured since that moment? All I could see—all I could feel—was what Seth was seeing and experiencing at the exact moment my mind, expansive in sleep, reached out to him.

And that was the cold confinement of the closet he'd been locked into. The throbbing pain of the ropes cutting into his wrists, cruelly tied behind his back. The rough gag biting into the corners of his mouth. The muffled but still terrifying sounds he could hear outside the closet door.

That was Seth Blumenthal's reality. And my nightmare.

The fact that that nightmare was ongoing was almost more than I could bear.

"Jessica," Cyrus Krantz was saying. "I know how you feel about me, and about my organization. But I swear to you, if you would just give us another chance—one more chance for us to work together—you won't regret it. We need to find this boy, Jessica, and soon. He's in danger. Real danger. The people who have him are animals. Anyone who would torture a twelve-year-old—"

"What?" I'd been pacing up and down the hallway with the cordless phone gripped in my hand. Now I froze. "What do you mean, torture?"

"Jessica," Dr. Krantz said. "Haven't you realized by now that all of this—Nate, the synagogue, Seth—is connected?"

"Connected?" Something was buzzing inside my head. "To Seth? Connected how?"

"How do you think the people who set that fire at the synagogue knew where to find the scrolls?" Dr. Krantz asked. "Think about it, Jessica. Who would know exactly where those scrolls were kept? Someone who would have been reading from them on his birthday today."

Seth. Seth Blumenthal.

I couldn't believe it.

He didn't wait for the information to digest. Dr. Krantz said, quickly, "That's why I called. We desperately need your help, Jessica. Listen to me—"