"Do we tel Riley? Do we think he doesn't know?" I asked. Diego sighed and dropped his hand. "I don't know. Let's think about this while we track them."
"We're going to have to be careful, tracking them in the day. We're kind of noticeable in the sunlight, you know."
He grinned. "Let's be ninjas."
I nodded. "Super-secret ninja club sounds way cooler than the whole BFF thing."
"Definitely better."
It didn't take us more than a few seconds to find the point from which the whole gang had left the island. That was the easy part. Finding where they'd touched ground on the mainland was a whole other problem. We briefly discussed splitting up, then vetoed that idea unanimously. Our logic was real y sound - after al, if one of us found something, how would we tel the other? - but mostly I just didn't want to leave him, and I could see he felt the same. Both of us had been without any kind of good companionship our whole lives, and it was just too sweet to waste a minute of it.
There were so many options as to where they could have gone. To the mainland of the peninsula, or to another island, or back to the outskirts of Seattle, or north to Canada. Whenever we pul ed down or burned down one of our houses, Riley was always prepared - he always seemed to know exactly where to go next. He must have planned ahead for that stuff, but he didn't let any of us in on the plan.
They could have been anywhere.
Ducking in and out of the water to avoid boats and people real y slowed us down. We spent al day with no luck, but neither of us minded. We were having the most fun we'd ever had. It was such a strange day. Instead of sitting miserably in the darkness trying to tune out the mayhem and swal ow my disgust at my hiding place, I was playing ninja with my new best friend, or maybe something more. We laughed a lot while we moved through the patches of shade, throwing rocks at each other like they were Chinese stars.
Then the sun set, and suddenly I was stressed. Would Riley look for us? Would he assume we were fried? Did he know better?
We started moving faster. A lot faster. We'd already circled al the nearby islands, so now we concentrated on the mainland. About an hour after sundown, I caught a familiar scent, and within seconds we were on their trail. Once we found the path of the smel, it was as easy as fol owing a herd of elephants through fresh snow.
We talked about what to do, more serious now as we ran.
"I don't think we should tel Riley," I said. "Let's say we spent al day in your cave before we went looking for them." As I spoke, my paranoia started to grow. "Better yet, let's tel them your cave was fil ed with water. We couldn't even talk."
"You think Riley's a bad dude, don't you?" he asked quietly after a minute. As he spoke, he took my hand.
"I don't know. But I'd rather act like he was, just in case." I hesitated, then said, "You don't want to think he's bad."
"No," Diego admitted. "He's kind of my friend. I mean, not like you're my friend." He squeezed my fingers. "But more than anyone else. I don't want to think..." Diego didn't finish his sentence.
I squeezed his fingers back. "Maybe he's total y decent. Our being careful doesn't change who he is."
"True. Okay, the underwater cave story it is. At least at first...
I could talk to him about the sun later. I'd rather do it during the day, anyway, when I can prove what I'm claiming right away. And just in case he already knows, but there's some good reason why he told us something else, I should tel him when we're alone. Grab him at dawn, when he's coming back from wherever it is he goes...."
I noticed a ton of I's rather than we's going on in Diego's little speech, and it bothered me. But at the same time, I didn't want much to do with educating Riley. I didn't have the same faith in him Diego did.
"Ninja attack at dawn!" I said to make him laugh. It worked. We started joking again as we tracked our herd of vampires, but I could tel he was thinking serious stuff under the teasing, just like I was.
And I only got more anxious as we ran. Because we were running fast, and there was no way we had the wrong trail, but it was taking too long. We were real y getting away from the coast, up and over the closest mountains, off into new territory. This wasn't the normal pattern.
Every house we'd borrowed, whether it was up a mountain or on an island or hidden on a big farm, had a few things in common. The dead owners, the remote locale, and one other thing. They al were sort of focused on Seattle. Oriented around the big city like orbiting moons. Seattle was always the hub, always the target.
We were out of orbit now, and it felt wrong. Maybe it meant nothing, maybe it was just that so many things were changing today. Al the truths I'd accepted had been turned upside down and I wasn't in the mood for any other upheavals. Why couldn't Riley have just picked someplace normal?
"Funny they're this far out," Diego murmured, and I could hear the edge in his voice.
"Or scary," I muttered.
He squeezed my hand. "It's cool. The ninja club can handle anything."
"You got a secret handshake yet?"
"Working on it," he promised.
Something started to bug me. It was like I could feel this strange blind spot - I knew there was something I wasn't seeing, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Something obvious...
And then, about sixty miles farther west than our usual perimeter, we found the house. It was impossible to mistake the noise. The boom boom boom of the bass, the video-game soundtrack, the snarling. Total y our crowd.
I pul ed my hand free, and Diego looked at me.
"Hey, I don't even know you," I said in a joking tone. "I haven't had one conversation with you, what with al that water we sat in al day. You could be a ninja or a vampire for al I know."