Immediately, the Trouble sisters scrambled around the end of the cabinet and through the gap into the stairway. Two safe, two to go, Eric thought. If Mr. Trouble could get Eric’s mom and Maggie out of there, it would be all right.
By Eric’s count, there were now only six surrogates still standing: Peter, Vice Principal Rose, the three behind the shelf, and, of course, Maggie.
“Nicely done, Mr. Trouble,” the blond male Maker said.
“We would have let your sisters go eventually,” one of the women explained. “They were of no use to us now that we have our Eric.”
“And we do have our Eric,” another woman said.
“So on that front you failed.”
“So very sorry.”
The five Makers in the arc looked at Eric.
“Come,” the brunette woman said. “It’s time to go.”
With sudden realization, Eric knew hers had been the voice he’d been hearing in his head.
He gritted his teeth. “No. Let my mom and Maggie go first, or the deal’s off.”
“There is no off,” the brunette woman said.
Maggie started pulling Eric toward the center of the room, carefully keeping his body between hers and the doorway. He tried to fight her, but she was far stronger than she should have been. All he could do was slow their progress, not stop it.
“Eric?” Mr. Trouble called from behind the china cabinet. “Remember, we talked about this.”
Eric scrunched his eyebrows together. They hadn’t talked about this. They hadn’t talked about anything even close to this.
“That first night you visited the Lady Candice,” Mr. Trouble continued, “I told you then how this would all end.”
Eric tried to think back, but Maggie yanking his arms wasn’t helping. The only things he could remember Mr. Trouble talking about were the tracking devices, the welcome pamphlet, and that stupid unicorn necklace.
Wait, he thought. There was one other thing.
When the time comes, it’ll all be up to you.
If that’s what he meant, then great. Not a whole lot of help there. Because the time had definitely come, and if he had to rely on himself to get out of it, he was in even more trouble than he thought.
“Don’t listen to him,” the brunette woman said. “Your home is with us now.”
Maggie stopped him a few feet in front of the arc of Makers. He looked at them, and felt suddenly horrified that they might reach out and touch him. Though they were beautiful, perfectly so as Mr. Trouble had said, there was something awful about them. He could sense it deep inside. It made his heart feel like it was being strangled.
Then he remembered something else Mr. Trouble had told him. They can’t take you if you don’t let them. He didn’t want to let them, but he had to get his mother and Maggie free. So he had to let them, didn’t he?
They beat you down, make you think you’re going crazy, that everything’s hopeless, then they take you. Mr. Trouble’s voice again.
There were footsteps on the barn floor above them, then a few tidbits of wood and dust sprinkled down from the newly created gap. “Hey, Maggie. How’s it going?”
Everyone looked up.
Fiona and Keira were peering over the edge, each holding one of the dart guns.
“Get out of the way,” Mr. Trouble whispered over the radio.
Eric did nothing for a second, then realized the message was meant for him.
He leaned to his left. Maggie, who was also still wearing her radio, heard the message, too, but her Maker masters hadn’t made the same connection.
Pfffft.
The dart whizzed across the room and stuck into Maggie’s shoulder.
She staggered back, jerking Eric with her, then crumpled to the floor. He barely kept his balance, then tripped over her leg and stumbled straight at the arc of Makers.
And right—
“No!”
—through the screaming brunette female Maker in the center.
It was like the feeling he’d had when he visited his cousin in Houston once. It had been hot and humid and the air felt thick and moist. That’s what passing through the Maker felt like.
“Aaaaaaaahhhhh!” she screamed.
“Yuck!” Eric groaned.
He was now between the group of Makers in the arc and the huddling group of four behind them. But the four looked bewildered and dazed, and no longer had their arms around each other.
Of course, Eric realized. They had been controlling Maggie. It had taken four of them to make her do what they wanted, but now that she’d been knocked out, they had no one to control.
“Aaaaaaaahhhhh,” the brunette Maker continued to wail.
Eric wheeled around. She was twisting and turning and bending and jerking. It was almost like she was trying to take on a new shape. She rotated violently to the right, then to the left, then to the right, until she was whipping back and forth almost too rapidly to see.
The other Makers pulled away from her, their faces full of horror. Some moved their hands up to block their view of her, but couldn’t quite manage not to watch.
Suddenly flames sparked at the tips of her hair then raced rapidly up the strands, leaving white ash in their wake. The moment the fire hit her scalp, a single blazing flash shot down her body.
The scream continued until the last bit of flame finally went out. What was left was the ashy, gray remains of the woman, only she wasn’t a woman at all now. She was a girl, no older than Eric. And she was looking at him.
“Thank you,” the ashy lips said.
There was a shy smile on her face, and relief in her eyes.
Suddenly a breeze rushed down through the hole in the ceiling, and the ash girl scattered into a million tiny particles, forming a gray cloud that rushed around the room then whisked out the hole.
Fiona’s shocked voice came through the radio. “You killed her.”
“Did I?” Eric was horrified. “Oh, no. I didn’t mean to. That little girl.”
“Not the girl,” Mr. Trouble said. “She died long ago. You freed what was left of her. Her soul, I guess. It was the Maker you killed.”
“Freed her?” Eric asked. Then he knew that Mr. Trouble was right. Suddenly he realized what he had to do. It was up to him. He had to help them all.
He threw his arms out wide and ran through the basement, touching as many Makers as he could and chasing after the ones that tried to get away.
Screams and more flames and more ash and more children freed from the slavery their bodies had endured for who knew how long. Their ashy remains then followed the first girl’s into the night.
Finally, of the nine Makers, only the blond man remained. He had been quicker than the others and had moved to the far back wall, at the very edge of the light from the lanterns.
Panting, Eric moved toward him. For the first time in his entire life, he felt in total control of himself. He was focused. He had a purpose. He knew what he had to do.
The blond maker hissed at him and bared his teeth. “You will not be forgotten.”
“Yes. He will,” Mr. Trouble said as he moved up behind Eric with Fiona and Keira.
Mr. Trouble leaned forward and said into Eric’s ear, “You have to tell him to leave you alone. Tell him to never come back.”
Eric took another step toward the Maker and said in a strong, commanding voice he’d never had before, “You will leave me, and my friends, alone.”
Another hiss.
“You will never, ever come back here again.”
The Maker started vibrating, faster and faster, his hiss turning into a growl, then a roar. After a few more seconds, he seemed to collapse in on himself, and in an instant he was gone.
Eric whipped from side to side, searching. “Where is he?”
Mr. Trouble grabbed his arm, stopping him. “He left.”
“But I didn’t release the boy he’d taken. He’s still using that body. It’s not his.”
“This one we had to let go.”
<
br /> “But why? I could have saved—”
“If you had gotten rid of him like you did the others, your message to leave you alone would have been useless. Other Makers would have come to find out what had happened. They would have made another attempt to take you. He needed to see they could not break you. The curse that governs us, also affects them. You’ve banished them. They can’t come back now.”
Eric stared at the place where the Maker had been. In that moment, he was more upset about the one that got away than happy about the other eight possessed bodies he had freed.
29
“What…what’s going on?”
Eric spun around. “Mom?”
His mother was standing near the boxes Vice Principal Rose had pulled her behind. She was swaying slightly, and having a hard time keeping her eyes open.
Eric ran over. “Here, sit down.” He lowered her onto one of the boxes then knelt beside her.
“Eric?” Her voice was full of sleep. “What are you…doing here? Where are we?”
“It’s okay, Mom. You’re fine now. I’m going to take you home.”
“Home?” She smiled. “I want to go home.”
Mr. Trouble walked over. “Sorry, Mrs. Morrison.”
Eric looked at him, confused. When he saw the injection gun in Mr. Trouble’s hand, he reached out to stop him, but was too late. The gun had already shot its contents into his mother’s arm.
“Ow,” she said, then swayed for a moment before falling into Eric’s arms, unconscious.
“Why did you do that?” Eric asked, staring up at Mr. Trouble.
“Do you really want to explain all of this to her?” Mr. Trouble asked.
“She already knows something’s happened.”
“Doubtful. Makers tend to keep abduction victims in a trance. Easier to control that way. We’ll take her home, put her in bed, and when she wakes up, it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”
“Nothing ever happened? My father is going to wonder where she’s been.”
“Trust me,” Mr. Trouble said, smiling. “Okay, everyone, we should get out of here.”
Mr. Trouble lifted Eric’s mom in his arms, while Eric and the Trouble sisters picked up Maggie. Then, as a group, they headed back upstairs and out of the barn.
“You could have prepared me a little better,” Eric finally said, breaking his silence. “I didn’t know you meant it would actually be up to me to get rid of them.”
Mr. Trouble took several steps before he said anything. “Well, that’s not what I meant at all. What I meant was what you did there at the end, telling them to leave you alone and not come back. They had to hear that from you. It had to be said with strength and meaning.”
“You did that great, by the way,” Fiona said.
“Then what was all that other stuff about?” Eric asked. “The fire? The wind? The ashes?”
Mr. Trouble shook his head and shrugged. “That was something new.”
“Are you saying that no one’s touched a Maker before?”
“No. People have touched them. My own family.” He paused. “There’s something inside of us, given to us a long time ago. The males in the direct line of descent are immune to Maker mental attack. My sisters are resistant but not fully immune. Unfortunately, this immunity comes at a price. If Fiona or Keira were to touch a Maker, they would become very sick. If a male direct descendant, like me, were to do it, we would be the one to die, not them.”
Eric was silent for a moment. “Your father.”
Mr. Trouble nodded. “The thing is, we’ve done such a good job keeping a barrier between our clients and the Makers, none has ever touched one.”
“Until me.”
“Until you.” Mr. Trouble paused for a moment.
They walked the rest of the way to the car in silence.
Uncle Colin and Uncle Carl must have picked them up on one of the monitors, because they and Mother Trouble were soon out of the plane and heading to meet them.
“What if one of them touched a Maker?” Eric asked.
Mr. Trouble’s mother and uncles weren’t related by blood to the Trouble family.
“Nothing really. The Makers would feel like real people to them.”
“Solid?”
“Yeah. You’re actually the first person I know who’s gone through them. We didn’t know that was possible.”
Mother Trouble rushed up, her arms wide open. “Is it over? Please tell me it’s over.”
“Yeah,” Mr. Trouble said. “It’s over.”
She looked at the woman in her son’s arms. “Is this your mother, Eric?”
“Yes.
“You found her. Such wonderful news.” Though Eric was still helping to carry Maggie, Mother Trouble gave him a hug. “You done good.”
“He’s done better than good,” Fiona said.
Uncle Colin was all smiles, and even Uncle Carl’s usual scowl was gone.
Uncle Colin tousled Eric’s hair. “So? Another satisfied client then?”
Eric smiled. “Yeah. Definitely.”
“Oh,” Uncle Colin said, looking down at Maggie. “We should do something about that.” He looked at his brother. “Do you have another wake-up shot?”
“I think maybe we’ll just let her sleep,” Mr. Trouble said. “We’ll get her home, and her parents won’t even know she was gone.”
“If that’s what you prefer,” Uncle Colin said. “So, what happened? All of a sudden there was no one in the monitors and the radios weren’t working.”
“They were playing tricks with the frequency,” Mr. Trouble said.
“Wait until you hear what Eric did,” Fiona told him.
Uncle Colin’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Something we’ve never seen before.”
“What? What?”
“Later,” Mr. Trouble said. “Right now, I think we need to get these three home.”
“Ah, you can’t leave me hanging like that.”
“Sorry, we’ll tell you when we get back.”
As Mr. Trouble put Eric’s mom in the front seat, Fiona whispered to Uncle Colin, “He turned the Makers into ash.”
“What?”
“Time to go,” Mr. Trouble said. “Fiona, Keira, you’re with us. The rest of you get the Lady Candice ready. It’s time to go home.”
They stopped at Eric’s house first and carried his mom through the quiet house and into the bedroom, where they laid her down next to Eric’s snoring father. When they got to Maggie’s, all the bodies that had been lying around the yard when they’d left were gone.
“Where’d they go?” Eric asked.
“Wandered home, I would think,” Mr. Trouble said.
While Fiona and Keira combed the front lawn for any stray darts, Mr. Trouble carried Maggie into her room.
“You want us to drive you back to your place?” Mr. Trouble asked as they stepped back onto the front porch.
The eastern sky was starting to glow pink with the coming morning. “I can walk.”
“All right. Then I guess this is it. Fiona will call you with a follow-up in about a week. Standard stuff, nothing to worry about. But other than that…” He shrugged. “I guess it’s time to give you the bill.”
“Bill?” Eric asked, surprised.
Mr. Trouble smiled. “Kidding. We’re done.”
Eric took a breath, relieved. “So it’s over? My life will go back to normal?”
“What is normal, really?”
“Oh, please,” Fiona said. “Eric, everything will be fine now.”
“But remember,” Mr. Trouble said, “everyone always runs into a little bad luck now and then. And there are still jerks out there you’ll have to deal with.”
“I think I can handle them.”
Mr. Trouble gave him a knowing smile. “Yeah. I think you can.”
“Oh,” Keira said, looking quickly toward the house. “Our books.”
“That’s right,” Fiona said.
They ran back into the hous
e and reappeared a few moments later with their book bags.
“Eric, you did great,” Fiona said. She held out her hand. “You could easily be nominated for best client ever.”
Here Comes Mr. Trouble Page 23