For church, Scott surmised. Guess that leaves door number three.
Back in the hallway, Scott tried the closed door. His palm slid around the brass knob. Locked? He stooped to eye the keyhole and then shrugged his pack from a shoulder.
“Guess you are gonna see some action tonight, boys,” he whispered to his lock-picking tools.
Scott moved the penlight to his mouth and slid the tension wrench from its sleeve and into the keyhole. The end of the pick disappeared beneath it. He probed the locking mechanism.
Interesting. Not your run-of-the-mill design.
In fact, it was similar to the lock on the Leonards’ shed door that had protected Oakwood’s underworld. Serious security, in other words.
Maybe our Mr. Shine isn’t so simple after all…
He listened to ensure all remained quiet outside and then set to work, his mind folding around the task. In the living room, beyond Scott’s field of vision, a shadow separated from the dark curtains.
21
Janis wheeled to see who had pulled her from Scott’s presence at the worst possible time and was met by the sight of a black bowler hat and John Lennon shades.
“Creed?” It came out an accusation.
“Hey, listen, I—”
“What are you doing?” Then, in a lowered voice, “No associating, remember?” But even as she said this, Janis realized that Creed wasn’t grinning, giggling, calling her gorgeous or, more generally, behaving like a jackass. His hands fidgeted with one another, his face wincing.
“Something’s up,” he said.
“This isn’t a good time.” She attempted to reach for Scott, but that connection was broken. She would need to concentrate in order to reestablish it, but Creed wasn’t getting the hint.
He seized her arm again. “I’m serious.”
“I’m serious, too.” She jerked away, making sure the crowded area around them was still blurred. The last thing she needed was to get hit with another probation. “Scott’s in trouble, and I need to reach him.”
“Me and Star sort of got into it tonight,” Creed said, seeming not to have heard. “She doesn’t think I’m supportive enough of her activism, you know? I haven’t been to any of her talks or rallies. Course I can’t tell her about the training or our missions or any of that crap.”
“That’s great.”
“Anyway, I dropped her at home, then went over to Eddie’s to find Jesse. Loretta said he’d been in earlier, but he left, mumbling something about maybe never seeing her again. I drove around but couldn’t find him at any of his other spots. I even tried him on his watch, but he didn’t answer. He’s not home, neither. Something’s going on, man. Something bad.”
“What do you want me to do, Creed?”
“Well, can’t you use those mind powers of yours?”
“My mind powers,” Janis said, checking to see that the students around her were too engrossed in each other to hear her, “are invested in helping Scott right now—or were until you grabbed me. Anyway, if Jesse’s missing missing, the Program would’ve summoned us back to HQ, like they did the last—”
Creed’s watch beeped first, followed closely by Janis’s. From her pocket, Scott’s watch sounded the same alert.
“‘Report immediately to CC,’” Creed read. “Oh man, that can’t be good.”
Janis looked up. The Axelrods had already begun to circle the bonfire. They were coming to collect her, and who they believed to be Scott, to drive them back to the neighborhood.
She gave Creed a shove. “Scram. I’ll see you in Oakwood.”
Creed scowled, palmed his hat, and disappeared. Moments later, Mr. and Mrs. Axelrod (who lived in the house beside the old Leonard stead and just happened to be Thirteenth Street High boosters), made deliberate eye contact with her: a signal. Janis separated from the crowd, dropping the blurring effect as she approached them.
“Where’s Scott?” Mr. Axelrod asked.
“He went up to the school to see if he could find an unlocked bathroom.”
“But…” Mrs. Axelrod looked from the tall student Janis had been standing beside down to the watch on her own wrist. Though Janis couldn’t see the watch face, she knew it showed their positions.
Janis pulled Scott’s watch from her pocket. “He must’ve been wearing it too loosely. It fell off.”
“Well, we’re supposed to take you both back to Oakwood,” Mr. Axelrod said.
“Just give me a minute. I’ll go get him.” Without waiting for an answer, Janis took off running toward the school. She was betting that they wouldn’t want to draw attention to themselves by chasing her. She was right.
Out of their sights, Janis sprinted the length of B wing, then doubled back to C wing. From D wing, where her first period chemistry class met, she descended the grassy lawn until she found the path that entered the band of woods. The path where she and Tyler had spoken on the first morning of school. Inside the trees, she stopped to catch her breath.
I’m so sorry, Scott. Please be in one piece.
She closed her eyes and reached, spanning the distance between their physical forms. How long had it been since she’d lost contact—four minutes, five? Expecting to find him still surrounded on his bike, or worse, being punched and stomped into the asphalt, she was surprised to come upon Scott stooped before a door in a dark house. He was picking a lock.
Scott?
That you, Janis?
The sound of his voice—the sound of him, safe—warmed and soothed her, even in her astral form. She peered around the small hallway. So what happened to the welcoming committee?
Oh, them. He bowed his head closer to the knob and spoke-thought with the pleasant distractedness of someone engaged. Not entirely sure, but I think an exploding transformer had something to do with it.
Nice, but listen, Scott. You’re going to have to abort and come straight back. We’re being summoned to headquarters.
Just give me another minute. He’s got some major security stuff going on with this locking mechanism. His head lifted. Or, hey, now that you’re here, maybe you could take a look-see through the door?
There’s no time for a look-see. A peek, maybe… Janis stopped. The smooth undulations of her out-of-body energies had taken on a cold, prickly quality. Like nausea. Scott, you need to leave right now.
Just a few more sec—
No, there’s someone else in the house, someone behind you.
A pair of watch beeps, more insistent this time, broke through Janis’s concentration. Their sound was followed by crunching footfalls and the voices of Mr. and Mrs. Axelrod.
“What are you doing back here, Janis?”
“Did you find Scott?”
She had found him but for the second time that evening had lost him just as suddenly. Blinking the Axelrods’ approaching shadows into focus, she replied, “No, but I know where he went. And we need to drive there right now.”
The tension wrench and pick spilled to the floor as Scott shot up straight. He didn’t realize he’d opened his mouth to holler until the penlight fell from between his lips. The light source bounced around his fumbling palms before it, too, clattered to the floor. From the living room, another wooden plank creaked.
His mind ran in circles. Oh shit oh shit oh shit.
Both of his escape routes—to the front door and to the side door in the kitchen—passed through the living room. The only other option was the window in the bedroom, but he guessed it was fortified by the same iron bars as those over the window on the side of the house.
A match flared with a harsh hiss and touched a candle’s wick. A glow took hold in the darkness, growing around large hands and reflecting from a pair of eyes. Scott stared, mesmerized by fright.
“You lose something?” a man’s voice asked.
The candle’s orb rose to an oily-dark face, age lines drawing the cheeks down.
“Mr. Shine?”
But if the voice belonged to Mr. Shine, its rich, folksy texture had been smoo
thed down to something hard and blunt. The man took another step closer. “Wanna explain what you’re doing?”
“The, uh, the kitchen door was open.” Scott hadn’t moved. His hands remained upturned as though still expecting to catch the penlight, which had rolled to the baseboard. “You invited me over a couple months ago, remember? Said you could teach me that coin trick.”
“Those don’t look like quarters.”
Scott followed Mr. Shine’s gaze to the tension wrench and pick, considered retrieving them, but clasped his hands instead.
“Who are you?” Scott blurted.
“You don’t get to pose that question. I’m the one found you sneaking around my house. So let’s turn that around. Who are you?” Mr. Shines eyes remained dark and serious—not a trace of blue. For a moment, Scott doubted his and Janis’s regression experience.
“You know me,” Scott said with a chuckle that he hoped conveyed confusion. “Scott Spruel. I live in Oak—”
“Why don’t you start by splainin’ why I’m holding this candle.”
“Um, because the power went out?”
“And how did that happen?”
The proximity of the candle’s flame began to pull sweat from Scott’s brow, but his organs felt as though they’d been placed in a subzero freezer. He knows. Holy crap, he knows about my powers.
He reached for Janis, but their connection was still broken.
“Transformer blew, probably,” Scott heard himself answer.
“Probably, huh?”
“That’s usually how it happens.”
The light from the raised candle made the man’s face look half crazed. Scott saw what Jesse, Creed, and Tyler must have seen the day Mr. Shine menaced them with his garbage pick. No wonder they’d bolted the tennis courts. Given the opportunity, Scott would be bolting now, too.
Mr. Shine’s sudden turn brushed Scott’s face with cool air and that musky scent from earlier. The hallway fell dark. Candle light beat over Mr. Shine’s raised arm and stooped back.
Scott retrieved his picking tools and penlight from the floor before following him.
In the growing light, the living room looked even smaller to Scott, and he wondered just where in the hell Mr. Shine could have been hiding. And if he hadn’t been hiding, where had he appeared from?
Scott considered making a break for the kitchen. But he didn’t. Hands to his pack straps, he watched Mr. Shine drip candle wax onto a ceramic coaster and then hold the base of the candle in place until the wax hardened. There was something distinctly elderly in the act. Mr. Shine set coaster and candle on the coffee table and then retired into one of the old button leather chairs.
“Think it’s time we talked,” he said, his voice taking on its old texture. “It’s what you came here for, ain’t it?”
Scott removed his backpack and, without being asked, sat in the chair opposite.
“Been watching you for a long ol’ time,” Mr. Shine said. “But I ’spect you know that by now.”
Scott nodded.
“Gotta admit. At seven, eight years old, you weren’t much to look at.” Mr. Shine folded his hands behind his head, the darks of his eyes glistening in the candle light. “Them ears on your head was near big as you. I kept worrying you’d trip over ’em.” He chuckled softly. “But now look at you, all grown.”
Scott kept his hands clasped in his lap to keep from touching his glasses. “Why were you watching?”
“Short answer? ’Cause I promised someone I’d look out for you.”
As hungry as Scott was for information, he knew he’d have to be careful about how he elicited it. He didn’t want to give away too much to a man he still didn’t know. “I can’t think of any reason someone would’ve been interested in me,” he said. “Especially back then.”
“It may not look it, but we’ve got some people in common.”
Must be talking about the Champions Program, but I can’t risk compromising them. Janis doesn’t think he’s connected to them anymore. Something to do with whatever happened to the last team.
“How did you know I lived in Oakwood?”
“Well, now that took some honest to goodness detective work. Some leads that looked promising didn’t pan out. Others that didn’t look like diddly squat actually led somewhere.”
“To the County Recorder’s Office?”
Scott hadn’t planned to say it, but wanted—no needed—to connect that final dot between Mr. Shine’s arrival in Florida to the man the secretary had seen gathering housing transaction data for Oakwood.
Mr. Shine unclasped his hands from behind his head and leaned forward, elbows descending to his knees. Shadows stretched Mr. Shine’s aging features. For a moment, he looked like someone else entirely. Someone capable of violence.
Heart slamming in his chest, Scott crept an arm down toward his backpack before remembering his laser was smashed.
Mr. Shine burst into laughter. He stamped a foot against the floor. “Looks like I’m not the only detective ’round here.”
Scott felt his lips tremble into a smile. “No, I guess not.”
“Anything else you got on me I should know about?”
“Your eyes.” Once more, the words came out before Scott could arrest them. But he had to know. “When I was a kid—you know, tripping over my own ears—I could’ve sworn I caught your eyes turning blue.”
“Something like this?” Mr. Shine blinked, and his irises became the color of topaz. When he blinked a second time, they were brown again. The transformation was no less stunning than when Mr. Shine had disappeared and reappeared the quarter for him that first time at school.
“Is that a trick, like you do with the coins?” Scott asked. “Or is it…?”
Mr. Shine chuckled. “No more a trick than blowing a transformer to kingdom come. Just something I can do. Something I could always do. With a little practice, a little patience, guess you could say I done mastered it. Or thought I had. Didn’t fool you, though.” His eyes glistened with humor.
“Which is the real color, the brown or the blue?”
“Real? You want real?” Mr. Shine inhaled as he stood. He pulled the candle toward him on the coffee table so that the glow enveloped him from the thighs of his work pants to his varnished brow.
Scott fixated on the man’s unblinking eyes. But the transformation wasn’t happening in his eyes. It was happening all around them: lines thinning, gray hairs darkening, pouches of skin conforming to a strong jaw and stark cheek bones.
Scott watched, not moving. A shape shifter, he thought. He’s a freaking shape shifter.
Ten years fell away, then twenty. Mr. Shine’s back straightened. His chest expanded. The irises were the last to shift, sliding from brown to blue in one fluid motion.
Mr. Shine took his seat and crossed one leg over the other. He was fifty years old, easy, but the suddenness of the transformation made him look much younger. He raised his smooth eyebrows as though to ask, Well?
“That is so cool,” Scott whispered.
“This is what I relax in,” he said, the folksiness gone from his voice again. “But I don’t get that chance too often.”
It took Scott a moment to sort through the jumble of questions in his head. “You said you were looking out for me,” he said, “that you made someone a promise. But to what end?”
“There’s some bad people out there, Scott. I want to be close in case they try anything.”
Scott wondered if these “bad people” were card-carrying members of the group Director Kilmer had warned them about.
“What would they try?”
The man’s blue eyes cut toward the front door. “Believe that’s your ride.”
It took a moment for Scott to register the sound of the idling car engine: the Axelrods’ minivan. In the same moment, he remembered what Janis had said about being summoned to command and control. Crapola. Scott grasped a pack strap and rose to his feet.
“So now what?” he asked.
“
Now nothing,” Mr. Shine replied, an aging, brown-eyed man again. “Just know you’re being looked out for. If there’s something I need to tell you, I’ll tell you. Until then, I’ve got plenty ’nough to keep me busy.”
“Okay.” Scott searched for something more to say. “Well, thanks.”
Mr. Shine nodded, then aimed his gaze past him. “You’re welcome to use the front door this time. And hey…”
Scott turned.
“Hold onto that thanks. I ain’t done nothing yet.”
Reginald Perry listened to the voices fall off. Seconds later, a car door slammed. An engine droned away. He strained his eyes toward the door. Footsteps sounded, followed by a key entering the lock.
The door creaked inward. Reginald observed a figure in the hallway, backlit by candlelight. He recognized the shape. He’d been impersonating the man for the last twenty-five years—up until a week ago, anyway. As Reginald watched, the stooped figure straightened and grew curves.
“Just had an interesting visitor,” a woman’s voice said. “A young man by the name of Scott Spruel.”
Reginald kept watching her. He couldn’t have spoken if he wanted to. Neither could he move or change shape. The contraption that imprisoned him saw to that. He was seated, as though on a throne, his ankles and wrists encased in metal. The leads in his skull conducted a low-level current, just strong enough to scramble his speech centers and abilities.
“I didn’t intend to leave you in the dark.” The woman disappeared into the living room and returned with a candle. “It seems your young friend blew a transformer down the street. But not to worry, you’re on battery backup. You’ll still get your three square meals.”
To Reginald’s left, a machine whirred softly. The clear tube that plunged into the crook of his left arm was conducting some sort of saline, to keep him hydrated. A thicker tube disappeared into his stomach, that one delivering nutrition. The occasional flush and gurgle beneath the hole he sat on told him another system was whisking away his waste matter. The machine attended to all of his bodily needs without him having to flex a single muscle.
XGeneration (Book 4): Pressure Drop Page 15