LOST

The rain fell hard as Wiz stood at the bus stop across from the diner, looking at Stew and Alex, who were inside waiting for him. He wanted, desperately, to go inside and say ‘hello’ to his brother, for whom he had been searching for twelve hundred years. He wanted to tell him everything—about the Circle of Light, Zachary, being immortal—but he looked at him laughing with Alex and knew that now was not the right time. Alex would not understand. Yet, he couldn’t just go in and not tell him. He would have to wait until he could talk to him alone.

Inside, Alex looked at her watch impatiently. “It’s twelve forty-five. I told him noon.”

“Maybe something came up,” Stew suggested. “Or maybe he doesn’t have a watch. He is homeless. Right?”

“I don’t know. We’ve already finished our food. I don’t know how to get ahold of him. Let’s just go,” Alex said, frustrated.

“You want to see if we can check out that studio apartment in Marc’s building?” Stew asked as they went to the counter and paid. “We’d have to go by the theater and see if Marc has the—”

“It’ll have to wait until later.” Alex gave the waitress a ten dollar bill and told her to keep the change. “I have to be at the tattoo shop by three.”

“I would say we could do it after you get off, but my mom is expecting me back in Salisbury this afternoon.”

“I know.” She sighed and shook her head in frustration as they walked to her car. “Today was just a wash. Let’s get you back so I won’t be late for work.”

“I’m sorry,” Stew said, “I can call my mom and just wait for Marc to get done.”

“Don’t be silly. We should have plenty of time.”

“You know this not being able to drive crap is pissing me off.”

“I know. But at least you were told that part would be over soon.”

“Yeah. Not soon enough.”

“Hey—you’re alive, breathing and can still speak intelligently…”

“I suppose you’re—”

“…sometimes,” she added with a wink.

“Very funny.”

Regan was sitting on the edge of a dumpster filled with cardboard and scrap metal, looking into a window on the side of Zachary’s warehouse hideout when Wiz came up behind her. “Hey, Regan.”

She nearly fell off the dumpster, but quickly caught herself before making any noise. She shot Wiz a look that could make a zombie run and hide. “You bugger! Why’d you do that? And what happened to your lunch date?”

“Never mind that. Anything going on in there?”

“I think they’re getting ready to leave, actually. You know, you might want to turn into a shadow or something,” she said, suddenly seeing how conspicuous he looked. Without another thought, his body vanished into a hazy blackness. “Much better,” she commented.

They could hear Zachary inside, yelling at his two henchmen to get a move on. As the three of them left through the front door, Wiz and Regan entered through an open air conditioning vent. Once inside and they were certain Zachary was gone, Wiz’s body returned.

“What are we looking for, anyway?” Regan asked.

“Anything that might give us a clue as to what he’s planning. You check out that area over there,” Wiz pointed to a coffee table surrounded by a couch and some chairs. “I’ll go look in his office.”

Regan sifted through the various things piled on the coffee table—a tarot deck, an empty pizza box, a map of North Carolina, two or three copies of the Charlotte Gazette and an unopened package from a map company. She joined Wiz in the office and told him about the package. Wiz stood behind the chair, gripping the back of it with both hands, and stared at the computer sitting on Zachary’s desk. Technology amazed him but always made him nervous, but lives were at stake. He decided to look through the desk drawers first while he worked up the courage to attempt operating the computer.

“He’s got to be planning some kind of trip. I haven’t found anything on his desk but lease papers, a bunch of old passports, photographs of Stew…” he paused, seeing a picture he hadn’t seen until then, “…and Alex.” He thought for a moment. “Surely not.” His face was wrought with astonishment.

“What?”

“I hope it’s nothing.”

“Well, it’s got to be something before it’s nothing. You wouldn’t have made such a face if it were nothing to begin with.”

“Just never mind. I wonder if I can figure out how to work this thing,” Wiz said, staring at the colorful logo that danced across the flat screen monitor on the desk.

“Don’t ask me for help. You won’t even tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Oh, hush,” he chided as he sat down in the chair. A colorful logo danced across the black screen. Wiz sighed as he reached his hand toward the mouse, or, as he called it, the rodent-clicky-thing. As soon as he touched it, the monitor changed colors from black to burgundy and a tiny picture of a flower sat in the middle of the screen, beside it in black letters were the words, ‘The Raven’.

“Oh, he’s so dramatic. What do I do now? Click this picture thing? Oh, yes. Okay. Password? Well… drit,” he exclaimed. “X-A-M-N,” he said as he typed. “No? It was worth a shot. T-H-O-R-S-H-O-L-R. Nope.”

After fifty or more tries and yelling every curse word he knew, he was quite exasperated. He had pulled the name of every person, every city and every object he knew to be linked to Zachary out of his head and entered it into the blank, white field that was waiting for an unknown number of characters to fill it. He had thought of every name except one, and then something hit him.

He sat up straight, excited that he may finally have found the answer to two quandaries at once. “A-S-T-R-Y-D,” he said and typed with confidence.

“Damn it!” he shouted, again denied access. “What the hell? Wait a second… Her name is spelled with an ‘i’, not a ‘y’. It’s a-s-t-r—I—d. Yes! I did it!”

The screen changed again to a picture of a wooded path littered with the orange, red and gold of fallen leaves in autumn. Scattered across the scene were more tiny pictures.

“Okay. Now, I’m lost again. What do I do?”

“Tell me who Astrid is and maybe I’ll give you a hand.”

“It’s Alex.”

“Huh?”

“Alex is Astrid. That’s why he has a picture of her. Astrid and Xamn were in love. Zachary was Astrid’s adopted brother and wanted her for himself. But he knew, if he just killed Xamn, the rest of us would go after him. So, he tried to kill us all. Yeah, that backfired.”

“Wow. That’s a monumental coincidence that, after twelve hundred years, the four of you would run into each other at the same exact time.”

Wiz smiled as he noted, “I don’t think it was a coincidence. I think it was fate giving both sides—The Circle of Light, as well as Zachary—the opportunity to finish what they started.”

“Click the green ‘I’,” she said, still in awe at the new information.

“I’m sorry?”

“The green ‘I’… on the screen. Click it.”

“Oh. Okay. Now what?”

“That square there. That’ll show you what he’s looked at.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“When you’re off, doing your thing, I watch people. Usually at coffee houses or internet cafés. The smell is wonderful and the people there are always so,” she tried to think of the correct word, “…busy. It’s fun to watch them run around. Then, there are those who have their computers shrunk so they can take them along wherever they go. Although, the only place they seem to go is the coffee house. Humans are strange creatures.” She saw that he was waiting patiently for her to close her mouth so he could ask something. “Sorry. I’ll shut up.”

“There’s nothing here,” Wiz said, sighing with disappointment.

“He must have erased everything,” Regan noted. “Well, at least you know about Alex now. Do you think you should tell her?”

“Well, I’d like to be absolutely sure first. There’s always the chance that Zachary’s wrong, though, I have a feeling that’s not the case. Besides that, I haven’t even spoken with Stew yet. That’s the first priority.”