“Whaaat?” My eyes went as wide as they could go. “Your mom?”
Nudge shrugged. “I made Fang go down to Tipisco while we were waiting for you. We found the right address. I saw a woman, and she was my kind of color, but I wasn’t sure. Then the Erasers, including that dirtbag Ari, showed up, so we kicked butt and left.”
It took me a minute to digest this. “So you didn’t talk to her? Umm, your mom?”
“No.” Nudge carefully examined her fingernails, keeping her wings moving steadily.
“Did she look nice?” I was consumed with curiosity. Parents were something we all obsessed about, talked about constantly, cried about—if truth be told.
“I’ll tell you
about it later,” Nudge said offhandedly, so I knew it had gone badly.
I narrowed my eyes at Gazzy and Iggy. “We know what you’ve been up to,” I said. Gazzy gave me his sweet, abashed smile. That kid.
Time for news of my own.
“I think I have a tracer chip implanted in me,” I said baldly, feeling a coaster current in my face. I angled my wings and glided. “I’m not positive, but it showed up on an X-ray, and that’s what it looked like.”
Jaws dropped. Everyone stared at me in horror.
“You had an X-ray?” Fang looked incredulous.
I nodded. “Details later. If I do have this chip, it explains all the Erasers everywhere—but not why it’s taken them four years to hunt us down. And I don’t know if any of you have one,” I added, seeing the question on Iggy’s face.
Everyone was quiet, flying with their thoughts and fears.
Then, “Max? Do you think there’s still a chance?” The Gasman was forcing himself to be strong. Another reason I like that kid.
“I don’t know. I hope so,” I said honestly. Honesty is always good, except when it’s better to lie. Like to protect them. “I know I’ve delayed us by two days. I’m really sorry about that. I just did what I felt I had to do. But we’ve come this far—there’s no turning back. We’re going after Angel, no matter what.”
There were a few moments of silence, as if we were all gathering our courage again. I know I was, trying to pull my strength into a tight, hard ball that would carry me through the rest of the day, as we headed back to our worst nightmare.
Anybody’s worst nightmare, believe me.
52
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but all of us in the flock have an inborn sense of direction. I don’t know how it works. We just always know which way we’re going. So we rocketed west-northwest for a good two hours. Many of the hawks whose cliff Fang and Nudge had shared stayed with us, flying in loose formation. Our new best pals.
“We learned some stuff from the hawks,” Fang said, seeing me watch them. “Some banking moves, how they communicate, stuff like that.”
“They’re really cool,” Nudge added, flying closer to me. “They, like, use the tips of their feathers to help aim them, and we tried it, and it was amazing. A little thing like that makes such a difference. Like, I practically didn’t even know I could move those feathers.”
“Can you teach us what you learned?” I asked.
“Yeah, sure,” said Fang.
We ate our last granola bars in midair. We flew over desert, mountains, rivers, scrubby plains. I only looked down when I had to, and forced myself not to think about Ella or her mom, who I missed like a real mom.
I watched the hawks, imitating their moves, banking, tailing, soaring, diving—all the things they were doing, minus the dead rodents. I was exhilarated to be included among those fierce, awesome birds. When they split away from us at the edge of their territory, I was sad to see them go.
Just as I was starting to feel shaky from lack of sugar, our markers came into view. Signaling to the others, I headed downward, aiming for a small wood on the backside of a foothill.
It was a pretty unpopulated area, and I couldn’t see much activity, except for a strip mall about a mile away.
We landed and looked around. I rubbed my aching shoulder. “Okay, we need food. And a street map wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world.”
“The School isn’t going to show up on any map,” Fang said.