Pumpkin Spice Latte

Chapter 11 in Oh, For the Love of Coffee!
We ran. We were already East of Seattle, so we continued that way, ducking and hiding to try to stay out of sight. We stopped, out of breath, in a forest about five miles away from the field. We had lost the police for now, but I knew that they wouldn’t quit.

“How are we going to get back to camp?” asked Natalie.

“Not by train.” I said. “We’re all over the news. I don’t think any method of public transportation would work; we’d be spotted.”

“So hitch-hiking and camping?”replied Natalie.

“Yup.”

“I’ve always wanted to go camping!” I smiled at Emma’s comment, she sounded so enthusiastic, but it quickly wiped off my face when I remembered: Seth. He was still in Seattle somewhere, and I couldn’t go back to find him. I remembered the last line of the prophecy: arriving at the gates with one more than bidden. Panic gripped me. What if he had died? The whole arriving at the gates thing. I would never forgive myself for letting that happen, never. Natalie brought me out of my thoughts.

“Alright guys, let’s go.” She said. She was right. I gathered my pack together and got up.

For the most part, we stayed away from roads of any kind. Although, we did splurge in a couple rides from friendly pick-up drivers on deserted dirt roads. Every night we made camp from whatever we could: trees, rocks, leaves, you name it. Of course, we had blankets, but no tent; we didn’t expect this to happen. We ate whatever food we had, plotted our next day of travel, and moved on.

By the fifth or sixth day, out supplies were very low. We were all tired and hungry and worn out from a hell-hound attack two days earlier. We needed to go to a town, a relatively big one to get what we needed. The town we went to was Othello. I had taken us about six days to get there, averaging about thirty miles a day. I was proud of our progress, it was pretty good.

We went to a store and split up, trying to get out of there as soon as possible without getting noticed. There was still the possibility of the police looking for us this far out.

As I was looking, a hand clamped over my mouth and I was dragged into the back of the store. I grabbed Hesperus and slashed it behind me, but the attacker jumped back, releasing me, before it could make contact. I whirled around, sword at the ready, and standing there with a smile on his face was Seth.

His smile spread wider as he took in my expression. “Hey sis.”

“Phobos is over with Seth. There’s nothing there anymore.” How did he find us? I wondered, was Phobos still after us? Did he find a way out of his oath?

He didn’t respond; he just stood there, laughter in his eyes. Then it hit me. He has called me “sis.” I stared at him. “You mean…..you’re….” He nodded. “And instead of yelling my name and explaining you decide to freak me out?!” He nodded again. I ran up to him and gave him a hug, glad he was back. He returned it and we were both filled with joy. “Let’s go find the others.”

We found them by the front of the store. Seth hung back a little, not wanting to scare them. “Good, Kassi, you’re here.” Rebecca said, “Now all we need is…” She cut off as her eyes focused behind me at Seth. Natalie gasped and pulled out her sword in record time with a “Kassi, watch out!”

Emma just said cheerfully, “Hi Seth!”

“Whoa, whoa, guys, it’s fine. He’s better know.” I quickly said before they could tear him to shreds, but at least our battle reflexes were good.

“Really?” asked Natalie skeptically, “Is he really back?”

“Yup.” I assured her.

She went up to him and gave him a hug, glad to have her brother back. “But how did you find us?” she asked when they separated.

“Well, I was in Starbucks headquarters, waiting for Phobos to come back and give me orders,” he replied, “when all these memories came flooding back. I remembered the quest, and the cookie, and my family.” He paused to look at Natalie and me. “I knew that Phobos was defeated, and at first I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find you. I knew that you guys would have to go East to go back to camp, and that you would have to stay under the radar. I had looked in your packs before so I knew that you had less than a week’s supplies. So I calculated about how far east you could go and then used enie-meenie-miny-moe to pick the city. I took a train here and have been searching stores ever since.”

“Wow, that’s impressive.” Rebecca commented.

“Yeah, well, we still have a long way to go.” I said. With that, we bought our supplies and got moving again, all together.

Next Chapter ~ Chapter 12: White Hot Chocolate

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