by Obert Skye
The boy and girl wanted answers about Ray, but Jon didn’t have any. He knew surprisingly little about the man he had worked for. Furthermore, he wanted nothing to do with him any longer. He hadn’t enjoyed being sent to harm humans as young as Ozzy and Sigi. He also understood now how sick with power Ray was. He knew Ray wanted to control the will of everyone in the world—and he knew Ray was the kind of person who wouldn’t stop until he did.
Jon would have been happy to never think about the man again. Ray was the past; the future was Rin.
Unfortunately, it didn’t matter what Jon wanted. Ozzy had control of his brain and Ozzy wanted answers. The truth of the matter was that Jon also wanted answers, but the patterns of his past and Ozzy and Sigi’s memory of how he had treated them gave them every reason to work him over. Jon was useless under Ozzy’s control. All the boy had to do was look at him and he was suddenly knocking himself around or smearing himself with toothpaste. To make matters worse, the pizza had arrived and Ozzy and Sigi weren’t sharing. Sigi had answered the door, paid the girl with some of Jon’s money, and now she and Ozzy were eating the lunch of a man who once had filled them with fear.
Sitting on the chair, Jon watched them eat. He lifted his head, took a big breath, and spoke.
“Could I have some?”
“Could you tell us about Ray?” Sigi reasoned. “Also . . . who puts pineapple on a pizza?”
“You said you’d talk,” Ozzy reminded him.
“There’s nothing left to say. I’ve done work for him in the past,” Jon admitted. “But I’ve never met him. He texts me on burner phones he sends me. He hired me to bring you to him and I failed. I don’t think he’d want to hire me now. Failure is not something he tolerates.”
“And why did he want Ozzy?” Sigi asked.
“You both know what he wants,” Jon said. “Not many people have the ability to control other people. He knows your parents created the formula. He knows you have that formula coursing through your veins. He believes that the only way to recreate it is to extract it from you.”
“That sounds painful,” Ozzy said.
“I don’t think Ray worries about the pain of others,” Jon said sincerely. “He only worries about power. The job he wanted me to do changed as things progressed.”
“How did it change?” Sigi asked.
“He wanted Ozzy to come to New York. Then he wanted you held captive. He also wants that bird. He knows that Ozzy’s father created him, and he can see some value in that flying piece of metal.”
“That flying piece of metal’s name is Clark,” Sigi said sharply.
“Right. That’s what you call him.” Jon laughed. “Some of Ray’s men call him the Angel of Death.”
“Clark’s going to like hearing that,” Ozzy said, wishing the bird was there. “What other changes to the job did Ray want?”
“He wanted to silence the wizard.”
“He wanted to kill my father?”
Jon wiped more shampoo out of his still-red eyes. “Yes, he thinks he’s a nut who needs to be wiped out. His words, not mine.”
“And we’re supposed to believe that you no longer want to help him with all of this?” Ozzy asked. “You decided that it’s too hard and you’re out?”
“No,” Jon said seriously. “I decided that maybe I’m following the wrong path.”
“So you’ve had a change of heart?” Sigi asked doubtfully.
“Something like that,” Jon answered. “I want what the wizard has.”
“Really?” Sigi asked.
“Yes,” Jon said. “I want to believe.”
“In my dad?”
“In whatever’s happening,” he said quietly. “In the past, I’ve been driven to take care of problems with violence and money. It seems like your father and you two take care of problems with mind control and . . . magic.”
Ozzy smiled.
“I have one mission now,” Jon confessed. “I need to know what Rin knows. I know Ozzy’s ability comes from the serum, but not Rin’s. What he does is bigger than controlling minds.”
Sigi looked strangely proud of what Jon was saying about her dad.
“Rin’s not easy to find,” Jon admitted. “The only contact info I’ve found for him is an ad he posted in a magazine once.”
“Not just once,” Sigi said. “He posted that ad for years before Ozzy answered it.”
“I found an old copy of the Otter Rock Visitor’s Guide at the library. The sheriff’s report said that Ozzy called him and started all of this. So I’ve called that number hundreds of times, but he never picks up.”
“We’re not sure he made it out of the ocean,” Ozzy said, looking down at his pants. “Although we have our suspicions.”
“Then I’ll keep calling until I get him,” Jon said soberly.
“Have you left him any messages?” asked Ozzy.
“Yes, dozens.”
“I hope they were good,” Sigi said. “He’s big on messages.”
“I just told him that I wanted to meet.”
“That’s not going to impress him,” Sigi said sadly, picking pineapple off her pizza.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jon said strongly. “Because I won’t stop looking until I have an audience with him.”
“Oh, that’s a good line,” Ozzy said seriously. “If he ever comes back, make sure you say that to him. He likes audiences.”
“So neither of you have seen him since that night?”
They both shook their heads.
“What about the bird?”
More shaking.
“They could be dead,” Jon said without thinking.
“No,” Ozzy insisted. “Not Rin—or Clark.”
“How can you be sure?”
“You said you want to believe in something bigger,” Ozzy reminded him. “Well, those two combined are too big to just disappear. We wi—”
A loud banging on the door stopped Ozzy mid-word.
All three turned to look at the door. Before they could even properly wonder who it might be, a voice shouted out.
“Open up! It’s the police!”
“You told the cops I was here?” Jon asked in a panic, still not able to move on his own.
“No,” Ozzy said.
“You’ve got to let me go,” Jon begged. “I’ll find the wizard. I won’t hurt anyone in the process. I promise.”
Neither Ozzy nor Sigi answered the man because they were both a little nervous about their own future.
“Can’t you do something?” Sigi asked Ozzy as the cops pounded on the door again. “Make them turn around and leave.”
“And then what?” Ozzy asked. “Spend the rest of my life controlling people to keep them from getting to us?”
“Can you summon the wizard?” Jon begged. “Send that bird in to take them out.”
“We told you we—”
The police breached the door. What looked like a dozen cops poured into the room, yelling and knocking things over. They surrounded Ozzy, Sigi, and Jon, grabbing them and barking out orders.
“Don’t move!”
“Stay where you are!”
“Keep still.”
“Those are all the same thing,” Ozzy pointed out kindly.
“Also be quiet!” The order was given by a police officer with tiny round ears that were too small for his big round head. By the way the other officers treated him it was clear that Round Ears was in charge. “Don’t speak unless we tell you to.”
Round Ears and his friends were less patient and gentle than Sheriff Wills and his crew usually were. But they were kind enough to not put handcuffs on the two teenagers. Sigi broke their rule, though, shouting out to inform them that Jon was a bona fide bad guy and they might want to lock him up and throw away the key. Instead of doing exactly what she suggested, th
ey handcuffed Jon and marched him out of the room and down the cement stairs.
Once they were all in the parking lot, Ozzy and Sigi were invited to sit in one car and Jon was thrown into another.
Round Ears climbed into the front seat of the car Ozzy and Sigi were in. He looked back at them through the wire divide and instructed the pair to sit calmly and not bother him.
“What did we do?” Sigi asked a little too loudly.
Round Ears shouted back, “I told you not to bother me!”
“Where are you taking us?” Ozzy asked, still debating if he should use his ability to escape.
“We’re taking you back home,” Round Ears said. “Sheriff Wills is looking for you. So just sit back and be quiet.”
“I don’t like people telling me what to do,” Sigi said hotly.
“Then you’re welcome to ignore me.”
Round Ears spoke a few phrases of police code into his radio and then turned the car on. Jon was driven one direction, and Ozzy and Sigi were driven another.
It goes without saying—yet it’s still being said—that the ride back to Otter Rock was less enjoyable than the ride there had been.
Sheriff Wills was tall—not as tall as Rin, who stood at six-three, but taller than Ozzy, who was almost six-one. Under normal circumstances, his height would never be associated with Rin and Ozzy, but since the last few months of his life had been nothing but a wild mess with those two in the middle, it made perfect sense to compare the point where he topped off to that of both the young and the old wizard.
Wills sported a thin mustache that he spent too much time delicately trimming in the mornings. It was the only delicate thing about him. He also possessed a full head of graham cracker–colored hair and eyes the color of watery mud. His uniform was faded green and tighter than it should have been. He wasn’t fat—he just washed most of his clothes in hot water, and the results showed.
For most of his career, Otter Rock had been a quiet, peaceful town. There were tourists in the summer and the occasional drunken local year-round. But there had never been anything like the trouble that Ozzy, Sigi, and the man he had known as Brian had recently caused.
Back when Rin had first married Patti, his name was Brian and he was a middle-school teacher. He wore tweed sport jackets and didn’t stand out much in normal society. But shortly after Sigi was born, Brian began to change. To the casual onlooker, the changes didn’t look good. He and Patti began to have problems and Brian quit his job. Then one day Brian disappeared, leaving Patti to raise Sigi almost alone. Many years later he resurfaced, and was no longer Brian—he was a wizard named Rin. To make matters worse, he told anyone who would listen that he had spent the last ten years in and out of a place called Quarfelt.
Oddly, not everyone believed him.
Rin moved into a home he’d won in a bet, a place located in the trees a few miles out of town. To be more authentic, he began to wear a gray felt hat and a short bathrobe wherever he went. In the early days, the color of his robe had changed from brown to white to green to white again. For the last little while Rin had been consistently sporting a yellow robe, striped orange trousers, and red hightop sneakers.
The trouble Ozzy brought was different. The boy had come out of nowhere. He had lived alone until he was thirteen and then made the mistake of hiring Rin to help find his parents.
Sheriff Wills believed it was that move, that hire, that mistake, that was the catalyst for most of the problems that were happening. Ozzy and Sigi had nearly died or been seriously hurt repeatedly over the last little while, thanks to the trouble Rin had brought about. With Rin’s help, the two teenagers had been chased by a powerful man in New York who threatened to do them further harm.
It was Sheriff Wills’s duty to make sure the teenagers were protected. He had stationed officers outside of Patti’s house and at their school. Wills would also coordinate with them and Patti to follow them if they needed to travel anywhere or get anything outside of Otter Rock. He believed more trouble was coming, and he felt the only way to be ready was to be on constant alert.
There had been no major problems over the last three weeks, but today had been different. Ozzy and Sigi had slipped away from school during a commotion two students started. But they’d been foolish and took an Uber. Wills had learned from before that Rin loved to use ride-share apps. So he’d set things up so that his dispatcher would receive a notification if Ozzy, Sigi, or Rin ever popped up as a rider. The Otter Rock police station had been contacted by Uber while Ozzy and Sigi were still on their way to Salem. With help from the Salem police force, the two kids had been picked up and were now being driven back to Otter Rock so that Sheriff Wills could have a little talk with them.
The sheriff had contacted Patti. She had been a couple of hours away on business, but she was now on her way to the station as well.
Sheriff Wills stood by the front desk and listened to Wilma as she talked to someone on the radio. Wilma had been on the force for more than ten years. She had joined the force because she didn’t like the way an officer had treated her years ago. Wilma was black and felt like the cops in Oregon could use a little more color and education. Wilma had worked with Sheriff Wills for the last four years. She had short hair and a look that made the people around her straighten up and get in line without her ever saying a word.
“They’re just turning off Main Street,” she told the sheriff. “Those kids really know how to get messy. I’ve never seen two people more attracted to trouble. Like we don’t have enough things to take up our time.”
Sheriff Wills looked at the mostly empty police station. Things were quiet—no one else was around.
“Okay,” Wilma said, “maybe it’s slow now.”
“I don’t know what it is about them,” Sheriff Wills said. “Just when I think I have things figured out, they do something else stupid.”
A cop car pulled up in front of the station. Round Ears got out and escorted the two kids into the building.
“Sheriff,” Sergeant Ears said. “I brought you something.”
Ozzy and Sigi looked properly beat.
“Hello, Sigi. Hello, Ozzy. I’m glad you’re okay,” the sheriff said sternly. “Of course, that’s about the only thing I’m glad about at the moment.”
Round Ears sniff-laughed. “They were polite enough on the ride back.”
“Thanks, Mark,” Wills said. “Wilma needs you to sign the paperwork. I’m going to take these two and have a little talk.”
“I don’t feel like talking,” Sigi said.
“Well, then we can just sit in silence until your mother arrives.”
“You called my mom?” Sigi asked.
“Of course I called her. You were missing. You two are in potential danger and it’s my duty to keep you safe. When you disappeared from school, Patti was the second person I called.”
“Who was the first?” Ozzy asked curiously.
“My therapist,” Wills said. “I wanted to see if she had an opening for tonight.”
The two teenagers weren’t sure if Sheriff Wills was joking, but they followed him as he opened the small gate in the counter and walked back to his office. They both took a seat on the chairs across from his desk and tried to look casual. They were a little too familiar with Sheriff Wills’s office, and they knew him well enough to not fear him. They also understood that for the most part he was only trying to keep them safe.
The sheriff took a seat behind his desk and sighed.
“You two are something else.” His tone wasn’t mean, but it wasn’t complimentary either. “Who wants to tell me what happened at school?”
Ozzy looked at Sigi and she did the same right back. Neither one of them said anything.
“Right, you want to sit in silence.”
“I’ll tell you,” Ozzy spoke up. “There was a fight at school and—”
“—And we were worried we might get hurt,” Sigi interrupted. “That’s why we left the campus. We were hoping to find someplace safe.”
“Really? And Salem is the safe place you found?”
“It’s the capital of Oregon,” Ozzy said.
Sheriff Wills stared at the boy.
“Okay, let me ask you this: Why did you go to that hotel?”
“Motel,” Sigi said.
“Is that important?” the sheriff asked.
“You motor up to a motel,” Ozzy explained. “Hotels have indoor hallways.”
More staring.
“Rin taught me that,” Ozzy said.
“And was Rin at the motel?”
Ozzy and Sigi shook their heads.
“Jon was,” Sigi said.
“The man who chased you out to sea?” Sheriff Wills was beside himself. “That’s who they took to the Salem station?”
Ozzy and Sigi nodded.
A dark red patch spread up Sheriff Wills’s neck from under his green collar. It made his face both festive and frightening.
“You two went looking for this man by yourself?” The sheriff snorted slowly. “What part of you thought that was a good idea?”
“Our brains,” Ozzy said, thinking it was an honest question.
“You could have been hurt. Didn’t he kidnap you once?”
“He did,” Sigi said.
The sheriff put his hands in his head. When he looked up, he said, “I don’t know what to do with you two. How did you know this Jon guy was there?”
“I got an anonymous note,” Ozzy lied.
“From who?”
“I guess you don’t know what anonymous means,” Sigi said.
“Where’s the note?” Any patience the sheriff once had seemed to be evaporating.
“I lost it,” Ozzy lied again. “It was just an address and room number.”
“And where did you get it from?”
Ozzy looked at Sigi.
“It was in Ozzy’s locker,” she said.
“So it didn’t come in the box that was delivered to the school earlier today?” the sheriff asked, letting them know he had more information than they thought.