“Studying with Kathryn. Don’t we have a test tomorrow? Why were you out?”
“Rinnie, I’m being honest with you tonight. Please show me the same respect.”
“You want to talk about honest?” I spun to face Captious, my patience suddenly gone. “You told me you found Christie wandering the streets. I saw you come out of that arcade with her.”
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” Captious said simply. “Things are getting very dangerous.”
“Huh?” An honest liar. The man was a living oxymoron. Beating him to a pulp was definitely sounding attractive.
“Mason Draudimon knew about the Jasmine girl’s disappearance before we told anyone at school. That made me very suspicious. I knew he would be at the Shadow Passage, so I stopped in to talk to him. When I got there, I found Christie. We got lucky.”
“Who is we and what does Mason have to do with this?”
“You heard Dalrymple’s announcement at the assembly.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s keeping tabs on Mason. Everybody knows Mason is bad news, but he’s the mayor’s precious son, and we have to be careful.”
“If he broke the law, they should arrest him. Arrest his dad, too. And his dog.”
“It’s not that simple. This town is completely corrupt. I don’t know whom to trust, even on the police force,” Captious admitted. “Rinnie, I know your father consults with the police, so I want to tell you something…in case anything happens to me.”
How did he know Dad helped the police? I never talked about it to anyone. Not even Kathryn. “How do you know these things? What do you have to do with the cops?”
Captious drew a deep breath and gazed up at the full moon as though it was the last time he’d ever see it. His eyes glistened with tears. “They already got to Munificent. After the stunt I pulled tonight, they’ll be after me. I upset some very powerful people in the Shadow Passage when I left with Christie.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Mason is backed by a group called the Walpurgi. They’re behind the corruption. Their leader is…” He shuddered. “Things happen in the Shadow Passage that nobody sees. Munificent was right when he said the drug ring is just a cover-up for something much more significant. He stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. Once he learned of the man in the skull mask, well, look what happened. With him dead, I’m not sure how much time I have. Munificent assigned me to watch Mason and his gang from the inside. My job is to gather evidence against him so even his father can’t save him. But now, my cover’s blown. There are police involved in the cover-up. I don’t know which side Dalrymple is on.”
“You’re the police informant?”
“Please make sure you tell your father everything I’ve told you.”
The police force was corrupt. No news there. Captious was an informant. I could deal with that. But the Knights are backing Mason! How did Captious know about them? He even knew they called themselves The Walpurgi. I wasn’t prepared for that. The Knights were as covert as we were. Munificent was the only non Psi Fighter with that knowledge. The Kilodan trusted him. Did he tell Captious? Did he also tell him about the Psi Fighters?
This was way beyond curiouser and curiouser. This was terribler and terribler. And that isn’t even a word, which was how bad the situation had become in my tired little brain.
Chapter Sixteen
The Class Project
I woke up tired. Mostly because I couldn’t stop dreaming about Walpurgis Knights sneaking through my house, capturing my family, and making us eat egg drop soup. Don’t ask. Exhaustion makes my brain malfunction. Fortunately, I had chemistry the next morning, and that particular class didn’t require a functioning brain. We were getting our introduction to the Class Project.
I have to say, chem lab always disappointed me. I kept wanting it to look like a mad scientist’s laboratory. But alas, there were no flasks spewing green smoke. No body parts in jars. No brains labeled Abnormal. Nothing freakish at all. Instead, sparkling glassware neatly lined the polished shelves, and petri dishes, stacked and dusted like fine china, rested on the bench tops. Major yawn. If linen tablecloths and candles had covered the lab benches, we could have been learning chemistry in Rachael Ray’s kitchen. Okay, that was freakish.
Kathryn and I had strategically placed ourselves at the smallest bench in the lab, off to the side, where we could discuss life without being overheard.
“Let me get this straight,” Kathryn whispered as she plopped her chemistry book open on the bench. “Short-Fat-and-Squatty-All-Butt-and-No-Body saved Christie Jasmine? The man is not exactly a poster boy for fitness. I thought cops had to be in better shape.”
“Kathryn! If you say a word, I’ll never tell you anything again.”
“Dude, open the dictionary to the word ‘clandestine’ and there’s my picture. By the way, you look like poodle poo. Why don’t you nap through class? Miliron’ll never notice. I sleep in Math Club all the time.”
“Not a bad idea.”
Just as I was about to lay my head on a test tube, the lab door opened and Dr. Miliron, resident mad scientist, promenaded in. He stopped at the front of the room, grinning as though he had won a prize.
“For those of you who may be a tad curious,” he said, bouncing on his toes and making his fingers do pushups against each other, “today we’ll get a taste of the chemistry Class Project. I know you’ve all been waiting for it. I haven’t mentioned it to you yet, but I hear about it all over the school. I must say, the excitement is contagious!”
I sighed. Dr. Miliron was one of the most likable teachers in the school. And one of the most clueless.
“The Project includes many captivating experiments, but today you are especially lucky! We’re making an absolutely fascinating sixteen-carbon structure of fashionable hexagons. Technically, it’s 6-Methyl-9,10-didehydro-ergoline-8-carboxylic acid, with a molecular mass 268.31 grams per mole.” Dr. Miliron laughed quietly and shook his head as he passed around a lab handout. “Of course, in everyday language, it’s simply C16H16N2O2. So, slap on your goggliers and let’s get cooking, gang!”
Dr. Miliron held the title for spewing the incomprehensible. He spoke in long, chemically abundant phrases that apparently excited him, but completely confazzled those of us who only spoke English. I put on goggles and measured out some odd-colored powder labeled Ergot.
“Okay, so about Egon,” Kathryn whispered. She shot a sly glance at me. “Did he ask you to the Spring Fling yet?”
“How did that come up?” I felt my face getting warm.
“Well, he did offer to be your bodyguard, and the Spring Fling is next week. It’s the perfect place for guarding.” She did a finger quote around “guarding.” “Two and two, Rinster.”
The Spring Fling. Biggest event of the school year. And Kathryn’s area of expertise, not mine. She’d been on a gajillion dates. I had a grand total of one under my belt, and it was technically a fact-finding mission. “Must have slipped his mind. You should probably check your math. You going?”
“Not sure.” Kathryn blushed. “Mark and John and Matt and Luke and Hank and Jeremy asked. But, you know, I’m not sure I’m right for them. They’re such sweethearts, but I told them I probably wouldn’t be able to go.”
“All four Gospels and the captains of the football and track teams? Amazing. Holding out for Bobby, are we?”
“Could be. However, Ms. Noelle, it seems to me that you have two major hitters at the moment.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Did you, or did you not turn your bodyguard down so you could go out with Mason?”
“No, you told Egon I wasn’t allowed out on school nights. And I didn’t go out with Mason. I spied on him.”
“And learned that the evil wombat hangs out with the wrong crowd as suspected. Correct?”
“He does. And let me tell you, Scallion is super creepy.”
“Like the Sith, they are,” Kathryn said in a first-rate Yoda voic
e. “Two there should be— no more, no less. Master and apprentice.”
I shook my head. “Not exactly. You don’t get an army with two.” I pulled an envelope from my backpack and took a piece of paper from inside. “I found a sort of…something…at the police station. I think it may be information Andy’s looking for. It’s from Mr. Munificent.” I had tried to pull the image of Scallion from it again, but that required mundo concentration, and I was just too out of it.
“The dead dude?” Kathryn’s eyes widened. She snatched the paper from me. “Did he write to you from the Great Beyond?”
“No, from the police station.”
“That is just weird.” Kathryn turned the page upside down. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. A sketch, I guess. He wasn’t a very good artist.”
Dr. Miliron clapped his hands and I nearly sullied my undies. “Okay, let’s continue! This is really an intriguing project, class. Those of you who can produce a successful chemical reaction will not only get an A, you will be helping medical research. Our work will benefit the production of an experimental drug used at the Old Torrents Mental Facility.”
“Look at all the pretty colors,” Kathryn squealed, pointing to a group of glass bottles. “Hey, what’s this?” She plucked a bottle labeled DMSO off the workstation shelf and popped the glass stopper. The powerful stench of rotten eggs wafted out. Kathryn touched two fingers to her lips and said in a giggly voice, “Excuse me, I fluffed.”
I choked back a laugh.
“I see you have discovered an important dipolar aprotic solvent from another experiment!” Dr. Miliron sniffed at the air. “It appears our last class failed to put away their dimethyl sulfoxide, or DMSO, also known as methylsulfinylmethane, an all-natural substance derived from the normal decomposition of plants. This wonderful, colorless liquid is readily miscible in water and a wide range of organic compounds, making it extremely useful. Isn’t that exciting? The disadvantage, as you may have guessed, is a rather foul odor, likely due to catabolic processes which reduce DMSO to dimethyl sulfide.”
“What did he say?” Kathryn asked me.
“It stinks.”
Kathryn held the bottle up to the light. “Do we have to use it in the Class Project, Dr. M? It clashes with my Bath and Body Works.”
“Heavens, no, dear,” Dr. Miliron said, prancing across the lab to plant himself at Kathryn’s shoulder. “A single drop of DMSO would contaminate our compounds, rendering them completely useless for the medical field.”
“Our ergot is ready to be boiled,” I whispered to Kathryn. “What’s ergot?”
“Ergot,” Dr. Miliron whispered back, “is the common name of a saprophyte in the genus Claviceps. This particular saprophyte is parasitic on certain grains and grasses. It is, in fact, a sclerotium! This small structure is usually referred to as ergot, although,” he put his hand over his mouth and laughed quietly, “referring to any member of the Claviceps genus as ergot is also correct. Claviceps can affect a number of cereals including rye, wheat, barley, and triticale. It affects oats only rarely.”
“I see,” I said, although I didn’t.
“What did he say?” Kathryn asked when Dr. Miliron had moved on to the next group.
“We’re boiling gookem puckey.”
“I prefer lobster. But I’m flexible.”
As our gookem puckey boiled happily away, Dr. Miliron sprang from group to group explaining in extremely long words how the gunk we were making would be taken to Old Torrents Labs for final processing, then used to help the mentally ill. I personally didn’t see how it would help them do anything but smell like mildew. After what seemed like hours, the bubbling glop at our workstation turned reddish and became thick, like syrup.
“Nice work, Miss Noelle,” a charming voice said from over my shoulder. Mason stood right next to me, staring intently at my beaker. “I had hoped you were this talented.”
“How did you get in here?” My first instinct was to tackle him and tactfully beat out a confession about what happened in the little room beside the SSA after I left. Then I remembered my cover. I needed to be friendly and caring so I could stay close to the filthy wombat.
“I’m the lab assistant. I told you. I thought you knew.”
“Oh, that’s right,” I said, smiling. “I knew.”
“I knew you were an egotistical megalomaniac,” Kathryn said.
“I don’t know what that means, but I like the sound of it.” Mason glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Dr. Miliron, I think we have a successful experiment.”
Dr. Miliron danced his way across the lab and planted himself between Kathryn and me. Rubbing his hands together, he said, “Now observe the reflux condenser. That’s the key to this experiment. You’ll notice that the condensate progresses up the inner cylinder, then cascades back into the elixir, which, of course, is home to a chemical reaction that will alter the carbon chain.” He smiled and shook his head. “Once again, I get carried away.” He turned to me and winked. “We’re really only hydrolyzing lysergamides. A simple process, actually. Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. Go ahead and analyze this one, Mr. Draudimon.”
Dr. Miliron pranced over to the next experiment, whistling the Star Wars theme song.
“What did he say?” Kathryn asked me.
“We’re done boiling gookem puckey.”
“Ladies,” Mason said, “if you don’t mind, I’d like to show you the analytical tests we use.”
I faked a sweet smile and handed Mason my beaker.
Kathryn and I followed him to the other end of the lab where a heap of equipment sat blinking and flashing. I’m sure Dr. Miliron had a techno term for it, but to me, it was a silver and black doohickey with curly metal tubes. Next to it were shelves with sealed bottles labeled pass and rework. Much more mad scientist lab-ish.
“This,” Mason said, swishing his hand like a game show host, “is a gas chromatograph.”
“It has a name,” I said.
“It does.”
“Just a sec’.” Kathryn stepped close to Mason, took him by the face and tilted his head up, then sideways, like she was checking him for fleas.
“What are you doing?” Mason asked quietly.
Kathryn released his face. “You’re confusing me, Mason. You’re being nice. I thought maybe you had been replaced by an alien.”
“Sorry, it’s the real me.” Mason opened a drawer under the chromatohickey, pulled out a thin glass syringe with a long needle, and filled it with solution from my beaker.
His eye caught mine, and he smiled. “I fake being nice pretty well, don’t I?”
Half truthfully, I said, “You have your moments.”
“Do you like it?”
“Maybe.”
“Careful, it might become a habit.”
I’ll believe that when I see it.
Mason’s deep blue eyes sparkled, but behind them lay the pain I saw Friday night, and a tenderness I had never noticed before.
“It’s you, all right.” Kathryn suddenly shoved me behind her and dropped into what I could only assume was a fighting stance, although it looked more like SpongeBob doing the Jellyfish Jam. “Come near us with that needle and I’ll kick you so hard your mother will feel it.”
Mason looked hurt. “Hey, it’s me.”
“Hence my defensive posture,” Kathryn said.
“I told you she doesn’t like me,” Mason said to me.
“What’s to like?” Kathryn said, shuffling her feet, apparently adjusting her fighting stance. “You pick on skinny blonds who don’t stand a chance against you, you’re nasty to any teacher who hasn’t had the benefit of a doctoral dissertation, and you abuse smaller boys who are too polite to slam you into oblivion.”
Mason dropped his eyes to the floor. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I get carried away when my friends let me down. I’ll talk to Bobby. And for the record? My mother’s dead. But she had no feelings when she was alive.”
For the first time since
I had known Kathryn, she was totally speechless. She just shook her head slowly and stared at Mason. “I’m so sorry,” she finally whispered. “I didn’t know.”
“Nobody does,” Mason said. “Don’t worry about it. Hey, do you want to see how the chromatograph works? Watch, this is cool!” He stuck the syringe into the front of the machine, pushed a button, and it started to hum quietly. A narrow strip of paper with a jaggedy line emerged. Something beeped, and Mason ripped off the printout.
“Another good one, Dr. Miliron. Chromatogram looks excellent. These two ladies have perfect peaks.” He poured my experiment into a new bottle, sealed it and placed it on the shelf labeled pass.
Mason grinned at Kathryn, but the twinkle in his eye was gone. “It was a long time ago, and I’ve moved on.” He turned to me and the twinkle reappeared. “Rinnie, I would like you to consider donating some time after school to help continue this project. It would mean a lot to me, and it’s for a very good cause. Please think about it. For me.” Then he nudged me gently with his shoulder and went to the front of the lab. I stood in a mild state of shock, gaping at Mason as he glided to the next finished experiment.
Then I turned toward Kathryn. “Hey, what’s with the skinny blond crack?”
“Just covering your trail, girl. When he pulled the needle, I was afraid you might kick his wombat butt with one chromatogram tied behind your back.” Kathryn smiled. “I’m practicing to be a Whisperer.”
Chapter Seventeen
The Strange Nature of Gookem Puckey
“Absolutely not,” Kathryn said as we exited the lab.
“You don’t think it’s weird that I noticed Mason has a nice side?”
“Weird, no. Blind, definitely. Mason only has one side, and nice it’s not.”
“Maybe he just had a bad childhood. Maybe he’s trying to change.”
“Maybe he’s an evil wombat. Be afraid. Be very—” Kathryn must have sensed a disturbance in the Force or something, because she suddenly spun on her heels. Bobby rounded the corner down the hall.
And I was supposed to be the psychic one.
Psi Another Day (Psi Fighter Academy) Page 15