There were even some who seemed to be packing to leave. We passed more than a couple families loading suitcases into their cars. If Mr. Minor was right, they wouldn’t get far. I wondered what would happen if a car ran into the Getharey shield at full speed. I wanted to warn these people. Tell them not to try to leave. Tell them to get inside and stay there. But who would listen? Who would believe a crazy teen blurting stuff about magical creatures from another world and the impending apocalypse?
I pulled my gaze from them. Whatever the Getharey had planned, these people would have to fend for themselves. All I could do was save my own skin.
“We really need to get off the street,” I said. “What if they’re still looking for us?”
“Ah!” Mr. Minor exclaimed as a thought came to him. “Ms. Woodman’s home is a few blocks from here.”
“Ms. Woodman? Your assistant?” I asked.
“The one and the same. She’s on vacation, though.” He thought a moment. “Tanning on a beach somewhere. Barbados, I believe, but not to worry. I happen to know where she keeps a spare key.”
I tried to not think about Ms. Woodman tanning on a beach anywhere. She was older than Mr. Minor by at least a decade. I’m not sure how I felt about breaking into a woman’s house when she was out of town, but that hesitation was tempered a bit by the fact that she was out of town. Definitely something I was jealous of. I’d love to be out of town—anywhere out of town. It didn’t have to be Barbados. Just anywhere.
***
Mr. Minor had indeed known exactly where the spare key was located. It was stuck in the dirt in a pot that had a long dead plant of unknown variety. He went right for it and let us in the small house.
Ms. Woodman’s home was exactly like what I assumed an old woman’s house should be. It was small, clean, and decorated with furnishings so old they were coming back in style as “retro.” Aoife, Dylan, and I stood awkwardly in the entry while Mr. Minor waltzed into the sitting room like he owned the place. He settled into a chair with enough cushion to line a large couch. The skinny old man nearly disappeared in it.
“Sit, sit,” he said with a wave of his hand. “We could all use a moment to catch our breaths.”
Aoife was the first to move. She stepped to the couch, which seemed threadbare compared to the chair. She sat and leaned forward with her hands crossed at the wrists over her knees. She looked deep in thought. I had learned to recognize the look as one that settled on her face when she was trying to work things out in her head.
“Am I going to get an explanation now?” Dylan asked after clearing his throat.
“I suppose you don’t know what is going on, judging by how your family reacted to Ms. Connelly’s disappearance,” Mr. Minor said. He turned to Aoife. “Your brother should be filled in, especially considering he seems to have put his life on the line along with ours.”
“When did this become we?” I asked.
“When you climbed in my car,” he answered.
“We needed your car, not you.”
“Luckily for you, you got both,” he replied with a straight-toothed smile.
“Lucky? How?”
“The ability to use your power for one.” He gestured at my forehead. “Answers for another.”
“I haven’t heard any answers for anything,” Dylan said.
“I think we’re safe enough here to get to that, Mr. Connelly. If you two young men would take a seat, we can begin.”
Dylan and I glanced at each other. There was barely disguised animosity in his eyes. He probably thought this was all my fault. My fault his sister disappeared. My fault the town was being overrun by strange creatures from another world. Maybe he was right.
I dropped my eyes and moved to sit in a wicker rocking chair. It creaked a bit but held up under my weight. Dylan sat next to his sister.
“Now, I don’t think anything I have to say will make much sense to Mr. Connelly, so we should start with the little adventure you two went on,” Mr. Minor said.
Aoife and I caught each other’s eyes. We stared at each other, waiting for the other to tell the tale.
“I would do it myself, but I wasn’t there,” Mr. Minor put in. “I have a few guesses, but I’m sure I’ll get more than a few of the details incorrect.”
Aoife and I stared at each other a moment longer before she sighed. She glanced at her brother, then turned her gaze to her hands before beginning.
29
KEEPER OF THE KEEPERS
Aoife finished with her showing up at her house and finding only Dylan there. She left out none of the major details. Her following me through the gateway. The Jo-Shar. Our frantic night flight from a flying creature. Being chased by large cats and my fall into the river. The Ashlings. Being attacked by the Balataur and her subsequent kidnapping and rescue. The swamp. The plain. Delicia. Daresh. Betrayal. Escape. She glossed over the plane flight. Judging by Dylan’s reaction to the Balataur taking her, I guess she figured he’d blow a vein in his head if she told him about metallic dragons attacking us and nearly falling to our deaths. She told about saving the Mother Tree and coming back through the gateway.
Aoife told the story without the sarcasm this time. Without the hate. It was like she had grown completely numb to what had happened to us. She told it in more depth and when she finished, the room fell into a long silence, though her words seemed to still echo around us.
If Dylan had questions racing around in his eyes before, they were gone now. It was like his mind had frozen and he couldn’t seem to reboot it. His mouth opened wider as his jaw went slack. Different emotions went across his face as he tried to process the whole story. Confusion. Disbelief. Worry. Shock. They were all there, cycling like a clock.
Mr. Minor sat quietly with a look of concentration on his face.
“So, what you told me before was true?” Dylan asked. Given what he had seen in the last hour or two, swallowing the story was a bit easier. Digesting it was another matter.
I didn’t much care about Dylan’s reactions, though. It was expected from someone who had no idea about the possibilities outside their own little world. I was much more interested in my former dentist. He seemed to have that knowledge and much more. I watched him closely for any reaction to particular parts of the story, but his expression never changed.
“That was…” Dylan’s voice faded and he cleared his throat. “Really, if you don’t want to tell me where you two were, just say so.” His voice lacked the conviction of someone who thought the whole story was a load of bull. He knew it was true but just didn’t want to believe it.
“Whatever, Dylan,” Aoife said. She gestured at the front door. “Those things out there are proof, even for somebody as thick as you.”
I was glad I wasn’t the only one to suffer at the hands of her verbal abuse when she thought I was being ridiculously dense. Some might think she was being spiteful when she said such things, but I had come to realize it was her way of telling a person they were capable of thinking for themselves and acting stupid did nothing for them.
“What I really want to know is what you have to do with this,” I said to Mr. Minor. “I mean, you’re a dentist!”
“Retired dentist,” he corrected. “Speaking of that, have you brushed your teeth? I’m sure you didn’t have much opportunity since going through the gateway.” He made an odd noise. I could tell by the way his boney shoulders shook under his golf shirt he was trying to not laugh.
I didn’t find the joke funny. “What are we doing here?” I snapped. “I need to find my mom and aunt.”
“They’re on the other side of town, Gaige,” Aoife said. “That will be our next place, but we need to rest.”
“You saw that thing they built.” I stood up, not sure if I was going to run out the door or not. “Whatever the Getharey are planning, it’s going to happen soon. We don’t have time.”
“So, you’re going to run all the way across town?” Mr. Minor asked.
“If I have to,” I said with
defiance.
“I think a better idea is to pause and regroup. When’s the last time rushing headlong into something worked out for you?”
He had a point there, but I wasn’t about to give in. “This is my mom and aunt we’re talking about here. Besides Dylan, Aoife’s family is out of town and I don’t know if you even have family or whatever. My dad’s out there, too,” I added as an afterthought. A sudden thought hit my memory and stuck like cooked spaghetti on a wall. “They’re at your house. What do you have to do with this?”
I took the two steps to cross the room and I loomed over Mr. Minor. Dylan and Aoife shot up, startled by my sudden movement, but only stood in front of the couch. Mr. Minor looked surprised to find me suddenly standing over him with hands balled into tight fists. No doubt he was trying to reconcile the little kid who always complained about getting his teeth cleaned with the nearly six-foot teen standing over him.
“I said—”
“They’re safe, Mr. Porter,” he said. “In fact, they’re in the safest place in this city at the moment. Please sit down.”
“How do you know that?” I growled.
“My house is warded against demons like the Getharey,” he said like he was talking about how fluffy his scrambled eggs were. “If any of those nasty creatures come close, they’ll get a nasty shock that will stop them in their place. Not unlike a slug trying to cross a strip of copper, times a hundred.”
“I don’t understand.” I relaxed my aggressive stance but didn’t back away.
“I’ll be happy to explain,” he said. “But, you standing over me like that is quite distracting.”
“Sit down, Gaige.” Aoife patted the couch beside her. “Give him a chance to explain before you start swinging.”
A feeling of comfort settled in me, urging me to calm down and relax. I turned to look at Aoife’s golden eyes. Maybe I was getting used to being manipulated or maybe it was just the feelings she broadcast, but I let it calm me as I maneuvered around the coffee table too big for the room and sat between her and Dylan.
“Very interesting use of your abilities, Ms. Connelly,” Mr. Minor beamed.
“I sat down of my own accord,” I protested.
“Of course, you did.”
“Just because I did, that doesn’t mean I don’t agree that somebody’s face needs pummeling,” Aoife said. “I suggest you start talking.”
Mr. Minor cleared his throat. “Right. Well, first thing’s first. My house. It is warded, as I said. Do you remember the day of the last earthquake when you walked by after school Mr. Porter?”
I nodded. I had thought nothing of it at the time as the dentist crawled around his house in the bushes. Just an obsessive old dude worried about structural damage or something.
“I was checking for damage to the wards.” I wasn’t far off. “They’re built into the foundation and I was worried the earthquake might have made cracks in the concrete those wards are etched in. I was out of town camping and had to rush home to check. That’s when you saw me.”
“If you were worried about that earthquake damaging the wards, what about the earthquake this morning?” Aoife asked. “It was a lot stronger. You showed up minutes after it hit. Did you check them?”
Her thinking was definitely leaps and bounds faster than mine. It took me several very long moments to piece together what she was asking. “Yeah,” I said as a bit of panic settled into my bones. I shifted to stand and probably would have run out the door without hesitation if Aoife hadn’t prevented me by putting a hand on mine. Even without her abilities activated, she had known what my reaction would have been. She left her hand there even after I let my muscles uncoil.
“Indeed, I didn’t have time, but Mr. Porter, your father,” he said to me, “was there. He had studied wards in his travels with your mother. He’s actually quite proficient at it. He offered to check the wards while I retrieved you kids. Our little detour to the park was quite unexpected.”
“How did you know where to find us?” Aoife asked. “How did you know we were at the store?”
Dylan stirred at the mention of his beloved—and now mostly destroyed—place of employment. He didn’t say anything, though. The slack look on his face and glassy eyes were a clear indication of somebody who couldn’t manage to rub two thoughts together.
“I didn’t know exactly where, but the fear you broadcast during the earthquake was quite like a beacon.”
“That ability has been useful,” I said.
Aoife squeezed my hand, having the same thought. It was that fear beacon that had led Seanna and me directly to her when the Balataur took her.
“I knew only the general area, but luckily you three were standing out by the street so I could go straight to you as soon as I spotted you.”
“Okay, but how do we know the wards are intact?” Aoife asked.
“Ah!” He leaned to the left and dug a dinosaur cellphone out of his pocket. It was even older than mine before it was destroyed on Alisundi. He flipped it open and pushed a few buttons. “Mr. Porter, your father, texted a few minutes before we reached Ms. Woodman’s home.”
He leaned over to hand the phone to me. I looked at the screen. There was no contact name, just a phone number that looked vaguely familiar. The text was short. Wards are a-ok!
I stared at the words on the tiny green screen. They didn’t make me feel any better. They didn’t seem like something my dad would say. I had never heard him say “a-ok” before. But, then again, I hadn’t known my dad for three years. It’s not like I had a cellphone when he died, so I didn’t know what kind of texter he was.
Aoife took the phone from me, closed it, and handed it back to Mr. Minor with her free hand. “Okay, so who are you? How do you know about all this? About me?”
“Those are questions that require a little more than a text message to answer.” He stuffed the phone back in his pocket.
I watched the grey thing slip away. I felt somehow I had missed my last chance to talk to Aunt Stacy. Maybe even Mom if she was in the mood. Aoife spoke before I could ask for the phone back.
“Well, we don’t have a lot of time, so I suggest you talk fast.”
The old dentist nodded as he considered his words. He settled back into the chair and laced his fingers on a crossed knee. “As you may know by now, your mom was a Gatekeeper.”
I nodded numbly. That was something I had worked out from the events of the past few days.
“Well,” he went on, “most Gatekeepers have, er, keepers of sorts. People who are there to help train and advise them in their roll. I was just that for Mrs. Porter for many years, just as I was for the Gatekeeper before her. Smart woman, your mother. She caught on to things without being told twice. And her diplomacy? I have never seen a person more sympathetic to all races no matter how hostile they were to her.
“At any rate, I helped Mrs. Porter throughout her years as a Gatekeeper. Advice, knowledge, and what have you. I was never much use in the physical department, but between her and Mr. Porter they usually had things well in hand.”
I felt my own face going slack much like Dylan’s. I’d worked out my mother’s past as Gatekeeper, but the true scope of it was just now sinking in. It was a lot like finding out my parents were CIA agents or something. Except a lot more insane.
“But, I don’t get it,” I said. “When did they have time to do this?”
My parents took “alone trips” from time to time, but nothing as frequent as would be required as a Gatekeeper couple or whatever. I could remember them only being gone a few weekends through my lifetime.
“Ah, most of their adventures came before you, Mr. Porter,” he explained. “Once your mother became pregnant, they cut back severely, only going off world when the need was at its greatest.”
“So, you went with them?”
“Not as frequent as all that. I was more in an advisory role by the time she picked up the Gatekeeper mantle. I did most of my traveling and learning with the previous Gatekeeper.
I was well into my fifties by the time she had. I thought it was high time I concentrated on my dentist business so I could retire before I was a hundred.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to process the information. “So, the previous Gatekeeper was Grandpa or Grandma?”
“Ah, that’s the thing.” He sat forward in the large chair, showing real excitement for the first time. “The Gatekeeper mantle isn’t hereditary. In fact, after your parents’ accident left your mother incapable of performing her duties, I thought Ms. Connelly would be the next.”
“Me?” Aoife asked.
“Her?” Dylan said at the same time.
“At the time, your unique abilities had already developed, though you hadn’t quite realized it yet. Still, that’s a sure sign of a Gatekeeper.”
“How did you know about them?” Aoife asked. “I never told anybody.”
“You learn to recognize things,” Mr. Minor said with a shrug. “But then Mr. Porter began to display signs of his own ability in the way he threw a football.”
“Football?” I said. “I’m lost again. Still lost. Whatever.”
“You’re quite the gifted young man, but the accuracy in which you throw a pass began to improve not long after your parents’ accident, correct?”
“I guess.” I had no clue what he was talking about. I always thought I was good.
“I believe the emotional trauma triggered your physical gifts.”
“Okay,” I said, moving past the point. It didn’t seem important at the moment. “So, I’m the Gatekeeper, not Aoife. How? You said it’s not hereditary.”
“That’s the mystery, isn’t it?” He winked like we were part of some great conspiracy. “I’m afraid I don’t have that answer.”
“How are Gatekeepers chosen, then?” Aoife put words to the big question I had yet to formulate in my head.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy Page 51