Sabotaged

37

Antonio and Brendan immediately rejoined their tracers to huddle over the fallen man.

“Old man! Old man!” Antonio called out, gently shaking John White’s tracer shoulders. “Wake up!”

“Did he faint?” Andrea asked, crouching down with the two boys.

“I think so. And then-” Brendan broke off, because Antonio’s tracer was turning John White’s head side to side, then pushing him to the left, revealing the point of a rock right where his head had been.

“He hit his head!” Katherine cried.

Andrea reached out, as if she’d forgotten that she wouldn’t be able to touch the tracer. She pointed instead, to a gash beneath the man’s hair.

“It’s in the same place,” she whispered, her voice a mix of awe and fear. “It’s exactly where the real man hit his head when he almost drowned. It’s just not… bleeding.”

“Get ready-get ready,” Brendan separated from his tracer to tell the others. Then he rejoined his tracer to tell Antonio, “I knew there were still evil spirits here. Make haste!”

Antonio scooped up John White’s tracer and practically ran toward the canoe. Brendan was right behind him. He broke away from his tracer to call back over his shoulder, “Our tracers aren’t going to mess around getting away from here! Get in the canoe as fast as you can!”

Jonah began running through the bones, alongside Katherine and Andrea and Dare.

We’ll just have to come back later to look at that grave, he thought. There’s no way I can tell them about it now!

Antonio reached the canoe and gingerly placed John White’s tracer inside, right on top of the real man. The real man rolled to the side, fitting precisely into the tracer, linking completely. When John White turned his head, Jonah could see that Andrea had been right about the location of the tracer’s injury: The real and tracer wounds matched exactly.

But the tracer’s injury must not be as bad, Jonah thought. Because it matches the other wound after it’s had two days to heal…

Should Jonah tell Andrea that now or wait until they were out on the water again?

Just then Dare reached the side of the canoe. But he didn’t leap in, the way he always had before. He stopped, then spun around to face the woods that lay beyond the village. He pricked his ears up and seemed to be staring intently at… something. And then, barking furiously, he began racing toward the woods.

“No, boy!” Andrea cried, reaching down to stop him. “We’re leaving!”

Dare slipped right through her grasp.

“I’ll get him!” Jonah called.

He dashed off after the dog, but couldn’t quite catch up. This time Jonah made no effort to pick his way around the animal skeletons. He cracked skulls beneath his feet; he splintered brittle bones with practically every step.

I bet I’m leaving a lot of tracers, Jonah thought.

That was hardly his biggest worry right now.

Some vague thought teased at his brain: Tracers… tracers… were there any signs of tracer lights beside that fresh grave back by the temple? That would have helped me know if Second was the one who dug it…

But Jonah hadn’t thought to look for any sign of tracers back at the burial ground; he didn’t have time to think about it now. He lunged for Dare but the dog streaked away, still barking.

“No, boy!” Jonah called. “Come back!”

And then they were at the edge of the woods, Dare barking even more fervently. The dog plunged into the underbrush and Jonah lurched after him-dodging trees, ducking under branches.

“Jonah!” Katherine called from back at the canoe. “Hurry up!”

“Almost-got-” Jonah yelled. He decided to leap toward the dog rather than saying the last word. His fingers brushed Dare’s fur, and then he grabbed on to the collar. There! He had him.

Dare whined and tried to pull away. He barked again, staring straight ahead, as if to say: Look! Look! You’ve got to see this!

“What? There’s nothing there,” Jonah said disgustedly. He gestured with his free hand, and his hand swiped through something pale and ethereal.

Pale. Ethereal. See-through. Ghostly.

Glowing.

It was another tracer.

Still clutching the dog’s collar, Jonah took a step back. The dog whimpered.

“I see it, I see it,” Jonah muttered.

The tracer was an Indian girl in a deerskin dress. She had long braids on either side of her head. And even though she was a tracer, Jonah could make out the light tone of her skin, the sad gray of her eyes.

Light skin. Gray eyes. This wasn’t an Indian girl’s tracer.

This was Andrea’s.