Van Bender and the Burning Emblems (The Van Bender Archives #1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

practically glowed red, and the black bar nearly singed my fingers.
    Either Nick Savage was right, or he was playing some kind of cruel joke on me.
    I couldn’t wait to get back to him during intermission and ask about the device. What was it, really? What did it do?
    The lights went back on. My band started up the next song. I dropped the Cask into my pocket. Nobody seemed to notice that I missed the first bar of my riff, because the crowd had gone bonkers again.
    I played on. With the heat of the Cask fresh on my fingers and its weight in my pocket, the energy rolling in from the audience felt like much more than simple excitement.
    It felt like power.
    And Nick Savage seemed like a wizard genius, not a lunatic.

Chapter 8: I have to go number two
Sometimes Richie takes forever in the bathroom. I’ve thought about taking him to a doctor.
-Elizabeth Van Bender
    At intermission, Mom and I met with my band and the stage crew to discuss some tweaks to make to the sound. I soon excused myself to use the bathroom. Mom followed as I left the stage.
    “What’s going on?” she said with a frown as we reached the restroom. “You seem unusually cheery. And you look really tired.”
    I rolled my eyes and started to open the door.
    She grabbed my arm. “What’s going on? What are you planning?”
    “Right now I’m planning on using the bathroom.”
    She didn’t let go. Her eyes narrowed. For a moment I thought she might step into the bathroom like she’d done with my dressing room.
    “Did you want to help?” I said. “It’s a number two.”
    She raised her eyebrows and let go. I pushed through the door. It shut with a bang behind me.
    I didn’t have time to feel bad for brushing her off like that. Nick stood in front of the mirror, examining his teeth.
    “Well, son?” he said. His southern accent again caught me off guard. “How did it go?”
    Strange that he called me “son,” but he must have done that with all kids. I pulled the Cask out of my pocket. The metal bar felt hotter than a burrito out of the microwave, and the wooden cylinder throbbed with red heat. I juggled it in my hands as I held it out. The last bulb had lit up.
    “It’s like,” I said, “like it just got out of a nuclear explosion!”
    He turned to me, and an expression of concerned surprise replaced his excitement. “You look downright tired.”
    I felt worse than tired. Dull pain throbbed through my body, even stronger than before the concert. It surprised me. Ever since the cancer, I’d made significant efforts to strengthen my body. In fact, I had a trainer that tortured me daily, keeping my body fit, trim, and as muscular as a fifteen-year-old can get.
    So, feeling such weariness surprised me, even if it did take a lot of energy to stay lively in front of ninety thousand people.
    Flashes of the concert’s first half blazed through my mind. The crowd responding to my thanking them for coming. The cheering-like-crazy when I had started playing Pictures in My Head , my first huge single. And how, when I’d asked them for a moment of silence for cancer victims, the place had become as still as a morgue.
    A thrill shot up my spine at it all. I wanted to do another concert the next night. And another the night after that. Actually, in two nights, I would perform at the awards show, right before they awarded the Best Young Entertainer of the Year award. That might just have to do.
    The Cask was burning up my hands. I held it toward him. “Why is it so hot?”
    He studied me for another moment before turning his attention to the Cask. His eyes brightened. The green light from the LEDs lit his face.
    “Let me see that.”
    I plopped it into his hands. He hissed, nearly dropping it.
    “Holy crap! It’s downright burning up!” His eyes glowed almost as much as the Cask.
    “Did it work?” I said. “Did it harvest the power?”
    Giving in to my curiosity was easier than heeding the warnings in my head.
    He turned back to the counter,