Another thing in the plus column: my mother had been released.
Mika assured me that they had people watching her house, to make sure the Rooks left her alone now that she was free. I hadn’t heard anything directly about Jon yet, but Ullysa and Ivy seemed confident that he would come out of this unscathed, too.
Still, I never really relaxed.
It wasn’t all Revik, or even the never-ending physical discomfort since that morning when we woke up in bed together. I was an outsider here, and I knew it. Most of the time, I couldn’t forget it for more than a few seconds in a stretch.
More than that, they all seemed to take the Bridge thing a little too seriously. As a result, even when they saw me as a fellow seer, I wasn’t really one of them. I was something else, and I felt it in every word they said to me, every time I saw their faces grow more closed when I was around, even though Mika and a few of the others, including Ullysa, tried to befriend me.
I’d gotten a lot more on the Bridge thing, though, mostly from Revik, and mostly during our frequent, if one-sided, chess matches. It was one topic he seemed pretty comfortable talking about with me. Revik told me that the symbol of The Bridge was part of their Myth of Three, where they believed some kind of apocalypse happened for each of the humanoid races. Humans, who were nearing the point of their own apocalypse, would be given a group of beings to aid them through that transition, just like the other races had been.#p#分页标题#e#
The Bridge supposedly led that group of beings.
Thus the cracks about the four horsemen...which I think Revik meant mostly as a joke, although it was hard to tell with him. I could tell there was some seriousness to his teasing, too. He would drop things, here and there, that let me know he believed in the whole Bridge thing as much as the others, even if he seemed to see me differently.
According to Revik, the human myths were pretty far from those of the seers, in terms of their meaning, but honestly, I wasn’t sure if that relieved me or not, since I didn’t really understand either.
I spent the vast majority of my time in Seattle in my room...that is, when I wasn’t practicing with the Baby Eagle, playing chess, or learning sight tricks with Ullysa. Alone, I found myself drawing mostly, or reading texts about seers that Ullysa translated to English for me via some software program she had on her headset.
Now I stood outside, feeling even more like the outsider.
Ullysa and her band of merry seer-hookers hadn’t been super-informative about the whole thing around me and Revik, but they had a lot to tell me about maneuvering in the world as a renegade seer. I had new passports, visas, local ident cards...even a forged birth certificate saying I was Yolanda Emily Paterson from Phoenix, Arizona, born a few months and four years before my actual birthday, which my mom made up anyway.
I wore prosthetics on my nose, cheeks and forehead, and contacts that turned my eyes brown, all of which were uncomfortable...and sunglasses. My hair had been cut to jaw length and dyed burgundy, thanks to Ivy and the African-looking seer, whose name turned out to be Yarli. Both of them quizzed me about Phoenix the whole time they did my hair and make-up, until they felt I knew enough to be able to pass.
They asked me what languages I spoke, which was none apart from English and kitchen Spanish, and what countries I’d been to, which was nowhere but Mexico as a kid.
Ivy, who was in charge of my paperwork, also asked Ullysa if we wanted to avoid “the usual places,” to which Ullysa said yes.
The usual places, I found out later, was a list of cities and countries in which the Rooks maintained a heavy presence. It included, among others, Romania, Switzerland, Syria, Argentina, Nigeria, Malaysia, South Africa, Guyana and Laos, and the cities of Orlando, Berlin, Bejing, Salt Lake, Tel Aviv, Helsinki, Portland, Nashville, São Paulo, Moscow, Dubai, Nassau, Zagreb, New York, Las Vegas, Barcelona and Akron, Ohio.
Not surprisingly, Washington D.C. also made the list.
Approaching the motorcycle warily, I stared at Revik’s back.
Giving me a bare glance, he motioned for me to get on behind him, so I stepped closer, then threw a leg over and eased onto the leather seat. My fingers touched his jacket for balance as he moved the bike upright. He clicked over the ignition, and I saw him wince as he stepped sharply down on the pedal.
He did it a few times before the motor caught.
“Are you okay?” I said.
It was a lame attempt at an entry point. I couldn’t be sure he’d even heard me over the revving engine. Picking up a dark blue helmet resting on the gas tank in front of him, he handed it to me.
“Revik,” I said, fighting exasperation a little. “Is this really the best way to do this? You were half dead a few weeks ago—”